"If I have the gift of prophecy...but have not love, I am nothing" (1 Cor. 13:2).
 
Introduction
What is prophecy? Here is what a web search with Google yields:
 
Prophecy Central
Prophecy Today: Examining current events in the light of God's prophetic Word
 
Divination: Reading Portents and Omens
A Magic Eight Ball
Auspices: chicken guts and entrails
 
In Livy's account of Pompey's defeat oat the battle of Pharsalus ( 169 B.C.), he includes omen's that Pompey should have heeded:
 
At Anagnia a torch was seen in the sky and a cow talked. At Menurnae the sky seemed to be on fire. At Reate it rained stones. At Cumae the statue of Apollo wept for three days and three nights. In Rome a crested snake was seen in the temple of Fortuna, a palm-tree grew in the forecourt of the temple of Primigenia Fortuna, and it rained with blood. A further prodigy, which was not officially recognized, occurred at Fregellae when a spear blazed for more than two hours without being consumed. (Livy, History XLIII, 13, 3-7) cited in R. M. Ogilvie, The Romans and their Gods, p. 59
 
Leviticus 19:26b: You shall not practice augury or witchcraft.
Deuteronomy 18:9-14: When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you must not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, or who practices divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or one who casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks oracles from the dead. For whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord; it is because of such abhorrent practices that the Lord your God is driving them out before you. You must remain completely loyal to the lord your God. Although these nations that you are about to dispossess do give heed to soothsayers and diviners, as for you, the Lord your God does not permit you to do so.
 
Who are our modern prophets?
Does our answer to this question reflect another meaning for the word prophecy?
Plug the phrase "modern prophets" into Google and our search yields something different if we rule out the Mormons and sights promoting particular leaders of new religious movements.
 
Modern Prophets
 
What distinguishes a prophet from other human beings?
What does it mean to hear the word of God?
The Symbol of the Hair Shirt
 
Paul Tillich

     The prophetic spirit has not disappeared from the earth.  Decades before the world wars, men judged the European civilization and prophesied its end in speech and print.  There are among us people like these.  They are like the refined instruments which register the shaking of the earth on far-removed sections of its surface.  These people register the shaking of their civilization, its self-destructive trends, and its disintegration and fall, decades before the final catastrophe occurs.  They have an invisible and almost infallible sensorium in their souls;  and they have an irresistible urge to pronounce what they have registered, perhaps against their own wills.  For no true prophet has ever prophesied voluntarily.  It has been forced upon him by a Divine voice to which he has not been able to close his ears....  Most human beings, of course, are not able to stand the message of the shaking of the foundations.  They reject and attack the prophetic minds, not because they really disagree with them but because they sense the truth of their words and cannot receive it.  They repress it into mockery or fury against those who know and dare to say what they know.  63
 
Abraham Heschel THE PROPHETS,
"The prophet is not a mouthpiece, but a person; not an instrument, but a partner, an associate of God. The conception of the prophets as nothing but mouthpieces, the assumption that their hearts remain unaffected, would almost compel us to apply to them the words that Jeremiah used of the people: "Thou art near in their mouth And far from their heart. Jer. 12:2 The point here is that they have the "burden" of the Lord; they feel what God feels, and are not merely "mechanical mouthpieces." Heschel goes on in saying: "To a person endowed with prophetic sight, everyone else appears blind; to a person whose ear perceives God's voice, everyone else appears deaf. No one is just; no knowing is strong enough, no trust complete enough. The prophet hates the approximate, he shuns the middle of the road. Man must live on the summit to avoid the abyss. There is nothing to hold to except God. Carried away by the challenge, the demand to straighten out man's ways, the prophet is strange, one-sided, an unbearable extremist."

 

 

Chronology of Prophets

 1250 Exodus

 Moses - mediates covenant: God institutes prophetic office to assist Moses (Num 11:24-25)

Miriam (Exodus 15)

 Period of Judges

 Deborah

Samuel - transition from priestly to prophetic leadership and from judge to king

 1000 United Kingdom  Gad and Nathan (Historical Prophets) to King David

 922 Divided Kingdom  Judah  Israel
   

 Ahijah

Elijah

Elisha

Micaiah

 722 Assyrian Crisis

 Joel?

I Isaiah

Micah

 Hosea

Amos

 587 Babylonian Crisis

 Huldah (historical prophet ot Josiah)

Zephaniah

Jeremiah

Habbakuk

 
 586 Exile

 Ezekiel

Obadiah

2 Isaiah

 
 537 Restoration

 Haggai

Zechariah

Malachi

3 Isaiah?

 

Historical -- those that appear in the historical narratives -- versus Classical -- those whose oracles are preserved in separate books, eg. Jeremiah.

Former -- Joshua through 2 Kings -- versus latter -- Isaiah through Malachi

Major -- classical prophets to whom an entire scroll is dedicated (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel) -- versus Minor -- the remaining classical prophets who share one scroll

 

The Now Rejected Torah Versus Prophets Paradigm

"After the spirit of the oldest men of God, Moses at the head of them, had been in a fashion laid to sleep in institutions, it sought and found in the prophets a new opening; the old fire burst out like a volcano through the strata which once, too rose fluid from the deep, but now were fixed and dead. It is vain imagination to suppose that the prophets expounded and applied the law... The voice of the prophets, always sounding where there is need for it, occupies the place which, according to the prevailing view, should have been filled by the law: this living command of Jehovah is all he knows of, and not any testament given once for all." Julius Wellhausen 1878

"What did the Israelitish prophets accomplish? What was the result of their work, and what value are we to assign to it? Ethical monotheism is their creation. They have themselves ascended to the belief in one only, holy, and righteous God, who realizes his will, or moral good, in the world, and they have, by preaching and writing, made that belief the inalienable property of our race." Abraham Kuenen 1877

"Originally, the prophets were not writers, but became such towards the end of their history. They were originally orators, as can be seen from the expression "Hear!" with which their speeches begin .... Their public was the people, either in the market place or in the forecourt of the temple." Hermann Gunkel

[Regarding the writers of the Book of Jeremiah] "They represent exactly a circle of tradition of their own, within which certain of the sayings by Jeremiah have been transmitted and transformed according to the ideas and the style which prevailed in the circle, exactly the deuteronomistic ideas and forms of style and interests." Sigmund Mowinkel