Prophet
From Encyclopedia Of Stupid
Prophets are stupid.
A prophet is a person (almost always male) who allegedly knows about impossibly distant future events. Coincidentally, the events tend to be about the end of the world as we know it, and how right around then Jews will finally come to know and accept the truth their ruthless, jealous God has been trying to beat into them for millenia. Furthermore, when communicating these events to others - a process known as prophesying - prophets never describe the events explicitly: rather, they employ symbols. Finally, prophets are only those future-knowers referred to in the Bible. All other future-knowers are godless demon-possessed hell-bound homosexual heathen pagans, if not worse.
Contents |
History
The Origin
Right after Adam sinned for the first time, God said1 of the snake, "He shall smite the heel of man, but man shall crush his head". But there's no evidence the snake ever had anything to do with Adam's heel, nor did Adam crush the snake's head. So wtf? Well, God was using symbols to describe events in the distant future. Woot! Prophet numero uno!
Later
Ezekiel saw a wheel, Daniel saw seventy really special weeks, Isaiah saw the State of Israel, John saw the second coming of Jesus, and Charles Taze Russell saw the spiritual end of the world in 1914... or 1878... or 1910... well, pick a year, any year. Russell's not in the Bible, but when the happiest people on earth believe something, who are miserable little 'ole you to argue?
Today
These days people are extremely careful not to make predictions other than regarding death or taxes or the value of a share of Google increasing, especially after George Herbert Walker Bush foresaw no new taxes in his one term as President of the United States, therein making the extremely un-prophet-like mistakes of foreseeing too near into the future, and of being insufficiently symbolic.
Symbols
As location is to real estate, so is vagueness to prophetic symbols, and so do those who believe prophecy cling to their precious swamp land.
1It's not clear who God could have been talking to at this point. Probably to his tridimensional self (all apologies to those who don't believe in the Trinity).
