Thoughts on Prophets

I find it interesting how the definition of a prophet has changed over time. Now a days we see a prophet as someone who determines or can see the future. In biblical times this was viewed as more of a person who was a mediator between people and God, as stated in Coogan page 74. It's easy to hear prophetic speech and believe it to be a mandation on what is to come in the future. However, having been to my fair share of charasmatic churches, often times this is not the case at all. Sometimes people in the congregation give a vision about how the future will be and it never comes. This is not to say that theywere wrong but rather that we as a society view prophetic speech as the news and not as an idea for life later on. Coogan discusses this in the reading we are supposed to do and brings it up in such a way that it really helps the morph the modern definition of what it is to be a prophet like Isaiah.