Deborah the Prophetess

I’m not surprised at all. In fact, there was a TV show years ago profiling a non-Mormon who claimed he had the gift of prophecy and foresaw some future events in the World History, and published them. Apparently, he was correct on a number of counts. I mentioned that I believed he was a small-p prophet to someone while I was waiting for a session to start in the temple and got hugely reprimanded.

It’s not the kind of thing you say around traditional Mormons, unfortunately.

Your scripture confirms that I think yes, many people have gifts of prophecy, but they aren’t necessarily spiritual leaders or don’t have any authority to direct a Church. But they do have gifts to predict or see the future.

Also, there are certain people who have the gift of “being right all the time”. They are able to look at an uncertain, future situation and seem to know what the right thing is to do, considering all variables that will impact the situation in the future. This could also be called perfect judgment. I consider this to be a gift, which is akin to the gift of prophecy. This is because the gift allows them to foretell the impact of their actions now, on future events, or to predict how others will react in the future.

I had one such manager. I was charged with coordinating the annual budget for the company, and the sales department didn’t come out with the sales forecast in a timely manner. I asked the departments to get started on their budgets anyway. All the other department managers balked and said there was nothing they could do until they had the sales forecast. The gifted department manager gave me his expense budget without any complain at all. I asked how he did it without a sales forecast.

He described his “prophecy” of the future (my term, prophecy, not his). He put himself in the shoes of the sales manager. He knew business was terrible, and the sales would likely decline in the future, but knew the sales manager couldn’t produce a sales forecat that was lower than last year’s actual sales — he’d be fired if he did that. He also knew the sales manager would NOT come out with an outrageously higher sales forecast that put too much pressure on him to produce in the next year, given the terrible economic climate.

So, this gifted department manager took last year’s actual sales, and upped it by a couple percent.

The actual sales forecast came in a few days later, and it was within a few hundred thousand dollars of the gifted department manager’s own sales forecast arrived at through judgment. Given the total sales of the company, this was a miniscule difference which did NOT render his expense forecast/budget invalid in any way — we used it in our initial draft of the projected financial statements.

I saw this as a gift of prophecy, as he predicted the future using judgment and high-level reasoning skills. I think these things are gifts, particularly since this particular department manager had no formal education, and had risen to his position (plant and operations manager) from sheer talent.

So, the gift of prophecy exists in a number of different forms.

Pentacostalism is based on three gifts of the spirit, speaking in tongues, healing and prophecy. No reason to doubt that some have that gift. The problem is when prophecy is conflated with leadership and administration and people assume it’s all (in the LDS Church) and nothing outside in the rest of the world.

DA–do you have a source for that second quote?

I’ve been interested lately in the role of prophets. I think it’s pretty clear from reading the scriptures that a prophet may or may not be a church leader. But I think the issue has become clouded b/c the membership of the church has gradually embraced an assumption that “Prophet” is an office in the church. Which, as far as I can tell, has never been taught.

Does anyone know if there is doctrinal support for the idea of a Prophet of the Church? Or where this idea comes from? In the scriptures, the High Priest is usually a prophet, but I don’t think he is ever referred to as “The Prophet.”

Fwiw, I parsed the “I don’t know” statements in his interview, and they were NOT statements saying, “I don’t know the answer to that question.”

I grew up in Utah hearing that phrase used in the way Pres. Hinckley used it in that interview, and all it means in context is, “I wouldn’t say ________.” (e.g., his most often quoted response was to the question about the first part of the couplet, “As man is, God once was.” He said, “I don’t know that we teach that.” In context, the best translation for those who aren’t used to hearing that phrase used that way is, “I wouldn’t say that we teach that” – or, “I don’t have personal knoweldge that we teach that.” Such a statement is 100% correct, since “we” (The LDS Church) don’t teach that part of that couplet currently. Like Adam/God, it has been dropped from active use and isn’t taught from the pulpit at all.)

That is exactly the meaning I heard when I first listened to the interview – and it was like listening to my own grandfather and those of his age in my community all over again. My dad picked up that phrasing and used it often, so I am well aware of it and actually use it myself occasionally when I want to be more gentle and soft than it would be to say, “No, that’s wrong.” (e.g., “I don’t know that your mother would approve of that.”)

I’m not trying to dispute or prove anything about prophets with this comment, but I do think it’s important not to misinterpret what he actually said – and he never answered in a way that meant, “I don’t know the answer to that question.”

Speaking of President Hinckley’s interviews (I believe there was also one with the San Francisco Chronicle … ‘Musings of the Main Mormon’, or something like that), these were a big part of what ejected me from stage 3. Not that I didn’t like what I heard — on the contrary, I thought he was as honest and sincere as anyone I had ever heard at those levels of leadership. And when he described his experience with revelation, it was clear to me that it wasn’t at all that different from what I might expect to experience. So if I can get things totally wrong, so can anyone. Now some claim, when I point this out, that President Hinckley was simply making efforts not to cast his pearls before swine, but I don’t think so.

The Gospel Doctrine teacher this week made the comment that she is not a prophet and she was promptly corrected by a fellow who said, no, she was a prophet and could receive revelation relevant to her and those in her stewardship even if she didn’t have the authority to receive revelation for the church as a whole. I immediately thought of this thread. Didn’t really feel the need to add my thoughts as the other guy pretty much had it covered.

I was a just thinking about starting a thread about Huldah, but this seems to be an appropriate place to tack it on to. I was just so surprised to learn about Huldah the prophetess when i was teaching the 9 year olds a week or so ago. I had heard of Deborah, and heard plenty of people try to say she wasn’t really a prophet, just a judge, or a righteous woman. But I’d never heard anyone mention Huldah before, which i think is tragic. she was most definitely a prophet, and clearly had authority, which you wouldn’t expect to see in a woman based on modern day church practies. Her story is found in 2 Kings 22:14-20. It would be so nice if RS spent time studying prophets like Deborah and Huldah, and encouraged women to perform blessings as they have in the past. Thats a sisterhood I could really enjoy being a part of!