True and False Prophets. An analysis

Essay from the year 2021 in the subject Didactics - Theology, Religion Pedagogy, grade: 1.0, Kwame Nkrumah University, language: English, abstract: This present article aims at debunking the popular notion abroad, of a prophet as someone who foretells the future in the manner of someone who has a speed dial to God and is afforded a telescopic view into the future not available to ordinary mortals. A Zambian online newspaper, Zambian Eye, reported that Prophet T B Joshua was able to prophesy the enmity between President Edgar Lungu of Zambia and his nemesis, Hakainde Hichilema after the death in office of the incumbent, Michael Chilufya Sata. But prophetic revelations know no bounds. Their predictions range from predicting who in their congregation will be driving a BMW or will be pregnant this time next year, presumably with a little libidinal help from the prophet showing the woman's husband how to do it while she ecstatically reaches orgasm shouting, 'Alleluia' to who will win the elections in the United States because God is really bothered about the political affiliation of US presidents because of the country's privilege of exceptionalism. The paper tries to show that all this nouveau prophetism is a misunderstanding of the office of prophet in both the Hebrew Bible and Christian Bible. Rather than foretell the future, the prophet is someone who forth-tells - tells it as it is - whether about the past, present or future doesn't matter. In the process, the popularity of modern prophets as God's merchandisers, usually for personal gain, is discussed. As in the Hebrew Bible and Christian Bible there were always true and false prophets. How to tell the difference, one from the other was the recent conversation I had with my colleague whose niece had been haunted by a modern false prophet. If the truth be told and to be fair to latter-day prophets, the choice is not always binary, that is, either true or false. There are fifty shades of grey in between, to adapt a trope from E.L. James' erotica of the same title ranging from the genuine to the charlatan or spiritual conman.

Tarcisius Mukuka [Dipl. Pastoral Theol & Counselling, Dipl. Phil. & Rel. Studies, STB, SSL, PhD] is a biblical exegete by training. He holds a Licentiate in Biblical Exegesis from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome and a doctorate in Biblical Hermeneutics from the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. His doctoral dissertation was entitled "Orality as Casualty: Contextual and Postcolonial Analysis of Biblical Hermeneutics in Bembaland" (2014). He is currently a lecturer in Religious Studies Education at Kwame Nkrumah University in Kabwe. His research interests include postcolonialism and the Bible, gender and the Bible, religion, politics and power. He is the author of "Spoken Voice/Written Word: Negotiating How We Hear/Read the Bible" (2016) published by Lambert Academic Publishing and "In the Eye of a Very Catholic Storm" (forthcoming), by Crown Arts Publishers