What is a Prophet?

beloved wrote: How do you know what God does?.......how do you know God sends "prophets"?   remains unanswered.

[sarcasm] While we're at it, we might as well as ask: How do you know God exists? [/sarcasm]

Deus wrote: beloved wrote: How do you know what God does?.......how do you know God sends "prophets"?   remains unanswered. [sarcasm] While we're at it, we might as well as ask: How do you know God exists? [/sarcasm]

Dear Deus,

Please let's keep on focus, this thread is about people who call themselves or are considered as "prophets, chosen by God"

Why not start another thread about "How do you know God exists"?

Here is something to think about when it comes to the question of "prophets"

Mind-Manipulating Groups:

Are you or a Family Member a Victim?

The following statements, compiled by Dr. Michael Langone, editor of Cultic Studies Journal, often characterize manipulative groups.

Comparing these statements to the group with which you or a family member is involved may help you determine if this involvement is cause for concern.

Place a checkmark beside all items that characterize the group in question.

If you check many of these items, and particularly if you check most of them, you might consider examining the group more closely.

* The group is focused on a leader to whom members seem to display excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment.

* The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.

* The group is preoccupied with making money.

* Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.

* Mind-numbing techniques (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, debilitating work routines) are used to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).

* The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think, act, and feel (for example: members must get permission from leaders to date, change jobs, get married; leaders may prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, how to discipline children, and so forth).

* The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members (for example: the leader is considered the Messiah or an avatar; the group and/or the leader has a special mission to save humanity).

* The group has a polarized us- versus-them mentality, which causes conflict with the wider society.

* The group's leader is not accountable to any authorities (as are, for example, military commanders and ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream denominations).

* The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify means that members would have considered unethical before joining the group (for example: collecting money for bogus charities).

* The leadership induces guilt feelings in members in order to control them.

* Members' subservience to the group causes them to cut ties with family and friends, and to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group.

* Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group.

* Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members

�

Jazz,

look in this link may be you will find the answer from your own bible:

   http://www.aslamt.com/research/21.html

Jazz wrote: What is a prophet? What qualities, traits and virtues would be required to be considered a prophet? What qualities, traits or virtues would render a person not qualified to be considered a prophet? I have difficulty understanding why is it that in the faith through Islam, one must believe that Mohammed was a prophet, for one to be considered a true believer in God, and those who don't believe Mohammed's claims of being a chosen prophet are considered to be of lesser faith or on the wrong "path". I just don't get it...........why is that?

Well to quote the famous Jewish Philosopher (whose book I'm
currently studying now for Grad studies) Moses Maimonides
said that a prophet is one who like the rest of us are born with
the faculties to receive spiritual revelation. It is such that like our
own individuality it is different from person to person. Though it
is a common faculty not all people can be prophet's because
the other half is by the will of God.

In addition its not only those faculties and the will of God, it is
also a combination of being wise and one who morally
compatible to receive revelation. Muhammad not only
possessed the common faculty that we all have but he was also
morally compatible and naturally, a distinct human being than
from most humans in his time just like prophets before him.
What he possessed was a faculty that no scientist perhaps can
empirically study nor a psychologist can examine. Of course
this is a matter of faith but if you wanted a more in depth
approach to this then here is my understanding of it.