Prophecy is alive and well

Are you ready to fulfill your calling?

“There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”¹

(Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance)

[Image: Bah'ai Temple and Gardens in Haifa, the famous Israeli city of prophecy (and Yuval Noah Harari!). Home of the Bah'ai faith and Elijah's miracles upon Mt Carmel. Was Baháʼu'lláh, Malachi or anyone “the last messanger”?]

For all their constant bickering, religions have one thing in common: their stubborn insistence that prophecy had ended. For Judaism it fell with Malachi in the 5th Century BCE². Christians then accepted the Jewish prophets, but declared that prophecy ended with the apostles. Muslims accepted the Jewish and Christian prophets, but declared that prophecy ended with Mohammed. That was meant to be definitive, but alas no. For ultimately came the Bah’ai who took semantics to the next level. They accepted all the Jewish, Christian and Muslim prophets - and the Buddha and Krishna and Zoroastar - and even said that prophecy ended with Mohammed³ - but then added that Baháʼu'lláh was the last Messenger⁴! It is indeed the very mark of a religion that the story ends with us. When our “last” Prophet/Messenger arrives, time freezes and we need to obey. And that is why I, as both as believer in God and a recogniser of the wisdom present in every major religion, feel myself incapable of following any. For to do so would be to admit the end of prophecy. And to do that would be to admit a lie. The prophets are alive and well today. Each and every one of us is a prophet; or at least a dormant one. Our job is to wake up and get in touch with our Divine spark.

Prophecy isn’t a religious category. Prophecy is the rejection of religion or any imposed sovereignty. It is the smashing of the idols of submission and the declaration that one is obliged to follow one’s own path.

It isn’t about crushing tradition. One can be a conservative prophet, building slowly on the work that has been done before you and recognising as giants the great men and women of human history. They are your teachers; the one’s that guide you to the light. A prophet will see the wisdom that has come before and only call for the minimum change necessary, but they will not bend the knee for the sake of comfort. The easy life repels them. They will only stop when each person can sit under their own fig tree with none to make them afraid. A prophet is a consciousness that recognises the consciousness of the other and asks for the freedom to be; all the while respecting the commonwealth of selves in their presence. The prophet is not greater than others, at least not inherently; they know that all others are or can be prophets and only as a unity of humanity can the image of God be revealed entirely.

Emerson in his famous essay speaks of self-reliance. Trusting oneself. But in the categories of faith he can be speaking of none other than prophecy. Doing what you believe to be correct without reference to authority or slavish devotion to books. In his words “Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not of men but what they thought”. 

He continues:

“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being.”⁵

We all know our values; what we truly believe; what we and only we can do. In the words of Simone Weil we are to be attentive, listening, accepting and becoming vessels of God.⁶ Emerson listened by striking out into nature, seeing himself as part of the unity of creation and answering the call. In this way, he was a modern Elijah who fled from the sovereignty of Ahab into the desolate wilderness where only God’s power held sway. As with Emerson, God was not to be found in the storm; he was absent from whirlwind. Instead there, beyond the reach of human power, he accessed the still, small voice that connected him with creation.⁷ Elijah may have spoken of God and Emerson of nature with a big N; yet both were channeling the same energy of action, divorced from influence of Kings and governments. Simone Weil recognised the power of nature, but understood that transcendence could be found elsewhere; both in good deeds and in the eternal nothingness of the human religious ceremony. Bowing furiously in the midst of the Amidah standing prayer, the Jew can lose themselves from the judgmental glance of others. The football fan ecstatic in mindless celebration does likewise, his weekday troubles being the playthings of a different dimension. Wherever we free ourselves from the onerous norms of a foreign sovereign, there we will find the truth. There we will find our calling as a Prophet. And the only question is whether we will then have the courage of our convictions.

To pronounce values is facile. To wave a banner at a fashionable demonstration, To wear the in vogue symbol on our lapel. The art of prophecy is living one’s values; and dying for them if necessary. Simone Weil was one such martyr to her professed values. Her political idealism led her to refuse to eat more than her compatriots in German-occupied France. She died at the age of 34. At one year younger, Jesus also perished according to the accounts of the New Testament. He too pronounced values that sought to change the world and then lived courageously. More, he died for them painfully on a Roman cross.  Nietzsche, a virulent critic of Christian values, admired Jesus, not for the content of his beliefs, but for the strength and courage with which they were held. Indeed, he said that he was the only Christian⁸. Whereas Jesus was prepared to die for his beliefs, Christians were servile seekers of unheroic comfort and fighters for the equality of the lowest common denominator. Christianity was the battle standard of the meek because the meek didn’t have the strength to fight for what they believed. They hid in the cowardly shadow of a billion plus collective, hoping to impose their will in the manner of individual-less bee colony. In the protests of an American campus, Neitzche would have seen the anti-hero, the anti-prophet, the equality-seeking collectivist without the courage to fight and possibly die for their values.

The prophet eschews slavery. They do not seek to impose their will on others in the manner of a dictator, but neither do they see a mushy equality which excuses non-action. Instead they see the equality of all people who choose to hear the call, fight for their fig tree and seek to change the world in accordance with the continuing freedom of all others. Moses in the Torah calls for all the people to be prophets.⁹  The burden of supporting people who wish to swap one slavery for another is too much for him to bear. He calls upon God to end his life.¹⁰ And it is indeed difficult for the prophet, ancient and modern, to accept the non-action of the unheroic masses. The prophet alone recognises another way; far from a world in which the powerful few impose themselves on the vast masses who choose to sell themselves into bondage, there is a different future where all people do what they know they must.

We live in a world that prizes comfort. The big house, the big car, the protection from the vagaries of suffering. And in exchange we contract ourselves to follow the precise actions of great people past to the letter. We quote their words, follow their actions, even wear their clothes; their wisdom is to be followed exactingly. We seek not the new path; the field unfurrowed, the undiscovered country. We see freedom as merely being able to choose our own slave master. Conversion to submission.

And slavery has fringe benefits. I may be poor, drug-addled, hopelessly addicted to vodka, but at least Russia is great! At least this collectively oppressed, criminally underdeveloped, country has a big military. We can destabilise the world together and cause endless mischief, but no matter. We can never be defeated! We have nuclear weapons! We are uninvadable! And in this justified sense of collective power, we sacrifice our entire being. We bend the knee to Mother Russia and her leader. For the steep cost of submission to one collective sovereign, we are sovereign. We can cause our will to dominate. But our will is no will. It is the illusion of unity disguising the reality of a multi-consciousness world. It is slavery as willed weakness.

The trap into which we fall is refusing to fight for our own sovereignty. If it be so that Ahab will not let us be; leave the land of Ahab! If our mother opposes us, our culture tells us no, our religion give us rules that are unquestionable, then one must find pastures new. It is no choice; only an obligation. To uproot oneself from familiar surroundings is a wrench; an unpleasant discomfort that we seek to avoid. But there lies the path to greatness. To dwell as a stranger is to dwell in one’s own sovereignty. Yes, in this strange, new world, one may need to conform to petty conventions that one would not choose. But to do so is a little pain in defence of one’s greater values. To submit to some irrelevant foreign customs is the price to pay for living. For free from the unconscionable burdens of Ur¹¹ and the gilded comforts of Pharaoh's palace, lies your freedom to act; to be in this world. And there, untrampled by the unwanted impositions of those that would destroy your spark, stands divinity. The change you wish to be in the world¹². Prophecy realised.     

Choose your values. Live by your values. Die for them if necessary. And suffer for them without causing the suffering of others. That is the journey that is demanded of us all.

1. The self-reliance essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841)

https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/selfreliance.html

2. See, for example, Sanhedrin 11a: “The Sages taught: After the last of the prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, died, the Divine Spirit of prophetic revelation departed from the Jewish people.”

3. Buck, Christopher (2017) Muhammad: the Last Prophet? on https://bahaiteachings.org/last-prophet-muhammad/

“Most Muslims agree: since Muhammad is the “Seal of the Prophets” (Quran 33:40), therefore Muhammad is the last prophet, end of story, case closed.

But what if Muhammad is also the gateway for future messengers of God, and not the last of the prophets? Such a possibility would come as a complete surprise to many if not most Muslims. So let’s look at a surprising Muslim tradition, which Baha’u’llah himself actually refers to in the Baha’i writings.

In Baha’u’llah’s Sura of Patience—revealed on April 22, 1863 in Baghdad on Ridvan, the first day of the Baha’i Festival of Paradise—he wrote:

Recite then unto them that which the celestial Dove of the Spirit hath warbled in the holy Riḍván of the Beloved, that perchance they may examine that which hath been elucidated concerning “sealing” by the tongue of him he who is well-grounded in knowledge in the prayer of visitation for the name of God, ‘Alí [Imam ‘Alī]. He hath said—and his word is the truth!—:

“[He (Muḥammad) is] the seal of what came before Him and the harbinger of what will appear after Him.”

In such wise hath the meaning of “sealing” been mentioned by the tongue of inaccessible holiness. Thus hath God designated His Friend [Muhammad] to be a seal for the Prophets who preceded Him and a harbinger of the Messengers who will appear after Him. – Baha’u’llah, the Sura of Patience, provisional translation by Omid Ghaemmaghami." '

4. From the official website of the world Bah’ai community (https://www.bahai.org/beliefs/god-his-creation/revelation):

“Throughout the ages, God has sent Divine Messengers known as Manifestations of God—among them Abraham, Krishna, Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Jesus Christ, Muḥammad, and, in more recent times, the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh—to cultivate humanity’s spiritual, intellectual and moral capacities. Following the coming of a Manifestation of God extraordinary progress occurs in the world. Reaching to the roots of human motivation, His teachings awaken in whole populations capacities to contribute to the advancement of civilization to an extent never before possible.”

5. Discussion of Self-Reliance on Philosophise This with Stephen West:

6. Weil, Simone (1950), Waiting for God

From the Philosophise This episode #175 transcript on Simone Weil Vessels of God:

“The only way that God ever exists in the world to Simone Weil is if we are ones who are enacting this universal good. To Simone Weil then we are essentially vessels of God. And when you start to you look at it that way doesn’t that view just instantly make you realize the responsibility that we have as people to do good things?

If God can be thought of as a kind of frequency. Then to extend that comparison you can think of yourself as kind of like an antenna. And there are messages being sent all the time over this frequency for you to potentially receive. You can call these messages God if you’re religious. If you’re more secular you can call these messages the universe. Totally different option is to call them mass consciousness…but whatever you decide to call them one things for sure, you don’t access these more universal messages if you’re locked into a closed system of thinking like an ideology.”

7. Kings 19: 11-13 - “¹¹ Then He said, “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; ¹² and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire ^[a]a still small voice. ¹³ So it was, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave.”

8. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1895), The Antichrist, §39

“I shall go back a bit, and tell you the authentic history of Christianity.—The very word "Christianity" is a misunderstanding—at bottom there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross. The "Gospels" died on the cross. What, from that moment onward, was called the "Gospels" was the very reverse of what he had lived: "bad tidings," a Dysangelium. It is an error amounting to nonsensicality to see in "faith," and particularly in faith in salvation through Christ, the distinguishing mark of the Christian: only the Christian way of life, the life lived by him who died on the cross, is Christian.... To this day such a life is still possible, and for certain men even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will remain possible in all ages.... Not faith, but acts”

9. Numbers 11:29 - ‘But Moses replied, “Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the LORD's people were prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!”’

10. Numbers 11:11-15 - “11 So Moses said to the Lord, "Why have You afflicted Your servant? And why have I not found favor in Your sight, that You have laid the burden of all these people on me? 12 Did I conceive all these people? Did I beget them, that You should say to me, 'Carry them in your bosom, as a guardian carries a nursing child,' to the land which You swore to their fathers? 13 Where am I to get meat to give to all these people? For they weep all over me, saying, 'Give us meat, that we may eat.' 14 I am not able to bear all these people alone, because the burden is too heavy for me. 15 If You treat me like this, please kill me here and now--if I have found favor in Your sight--and do not let me see my wretchedness!"

11. Reference to the biblical Abraham

12. Gandhi didn’t actually say “Be the change you want to see in the world. Instead he said: “We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” (Mahatma Gandhi)