What We Can Learn from Non-Biblical Prophet Movements

Frequently a new religion comes into being by means of a prophet—a per-son feeling himself divinely commissioned, who has had divine revelations and feels compelled to inform his fellow men of them. Should people re-spond to his message a prophet movement is born, and it may then develop into a new religion. If a number of prophet movements are examined, so many of their features appear similar or identical that one is justified in speaking about a "prophet pattern". Knowledge of this pattern may help to increase the understanding of more elusive religious movements. I have examined about fifty different prophet movements from various periods and various parts of the world, and here I will give a brief account of the fundamental pattern which I think they reveal. For various reasons the biblical prophets have been excluded from this examination. The different elements of this prophet pattern stand out clearly if we try to answer these three questions: 1. Which are the causes for the appearance of a prophet? 2. What is the significance of his message? What function does it have? 3. Why do certain prophets get followers, but not others? In the middle of the eighteenth century the advance of the white settlers in North America caused the old indian societies to disintegrate. Then quite a number of indian prophets appeared, and they acquired followers in vari-ous parts of the country. Usually, in a sort of a trance-like state, these pro-phets had met some divine figure from their native religion, who had or-dered the indians to repudiate the white man and his customs: the indians were to revert to their traditional leather clothing, make fire in the old way etc. This would bring about a state of happiness by means of divine inter-vention, a state characterized by the old ways of indian life: game would return to the prairie and salmon to the rivers several prophets predicte