In religion, a prophet or prophetess is an individual who is regarded as being in contact with a divine being and is said to speak on behalf of that being, serving as an intermediary with humanity by delivering messages or teachings from the supernatural source to other people. The message that the prophet conveys is called a prophecy.
Wallace Fard Muhammad, also known as Wallace D. Fard or Master Fard Muhammad, was the founder of the Nation of Islam. He arrived in Detroit in 1930 with an ambiguous background and several aliases, and proselytized idiosyncratic Islamic teachings to the city's black population. In 1934, he disappeared from public record, and Elijah Muhammad succeeded him as leader of the Nation of Islam.
Father Divine, also known as Reverend M. J. Divine, was an American spiritual leader from about 1907 until his death in 1965. His full self-given name was Reverend Major Jealous Divine, and he was also known as "the Messenger" early in his life. He founded the International Peace Mission movement, formed its doctrine and oversaw its growth from a small and predominantly black congregation into a multiracial and international church. Due to his ideology, many consider him to be a cult leader due to claiming to be God. He made numerous contributions toward his followers' economic independence and racial equality.
John Alexander Dowie was a Scottish-Australian minister known as an evangelist and faith healer. He began his career as a minister of religion in South Australia. After becoming an evangelist and faith healer, he emigrated with his family to the United States in 1888, first settling in San Francisco, where he developed his faith healing practise into a mail order business. He moved to Chicago in time to take advantage of the crowds attracted to the 1893 World's Fair. After attracting a huge faith healing business in Chicago, with multiple homes and businesses, including a publishing house, to keep his thousands of followers, he bought an extensive parcel of land north of the city to set up a private community.
Michael Joseph Curley was an Irish-born prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who served as the first archbishop of the Archdiocese of Washington (1939–1947). He served as the tenth archbishop of the Archdiocese of Baltimore in Maryland (1921–1947) and as bishop of the Diocese of St. Augustine in Florida (1914–1921).
Job is the central figure of the Book of Job in the Bible. In rabbinical literature, Job is called one of the prophets of the Gentiles. In Islam, Job is also considered a prophet.
Edgar Daniel Nixon, known as E. D. Nixon, was an American civil rights leader and union organizer in Alabama who played a crucial role in organizing the landmark Montgomery bus boycott there in 1955. The boycott highlighted the issues of segregation in the South, was upheld for more than a year by black residents, and nearly brought the city-owned bus system to bankruptcy. It ended in December 1956, after the United States Supreme Court ruled in the related case, Browder v. Gayle (1956), that the local and state laws were unconstitutional, and ordered the state to end bus segregation.
William Marrion Branham was an American Christian minister and faith healer who initiated the post-World War II healing revival, and claimed to be a prophet with the anointing of Elijah, who had come to prelude Christ's second coming; some of his followers have been labeled a "doomsday cult". He is credited as "a principal architect of restorationist thought" for charismatics by some Christian historians, and has been called the "leading individual in the Second Wave of Pentecostalism." He made a lasting influence on televangelism and the modern charismatic movement, and his "stage presence remains a legend unparalleled in the history of the Charismatic movement".
Charles Fox Parham was an American preacher and evangelist. Together with William J. Seymour, Parham was one of the two central figures in the development and early spread of American Pentecostalism. It was Parham who associated glossolalia with the baptism in the Holy Spirit, a theological connection crucial to the emergence of Pentecostalism as a distinct movement. Parham was the first preacher to articulate Pentecostalism's distinctive doctrine of evidential tongues, and to expand the movement.
Word of Faith is a movement within charismatic Christianity which teaches that those who believe in Jesus' death and resurrection have the right to physical health, that words have power, and that true faith is more than simply mental knowledge, but is deeply held belief that cannot be shaken. The movement was founded by the American Kenneth Hagin in the 1960s, and has its roots in the teachings of E. W. Kenyon.
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith is a nonfiction book by author Jon Krakauer, first published in July 2003. He investigated and juxtaposed two histories: the origin and evolution of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a modern double murder committed in the name of God by brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who subscribed to a fundamentalist version of Mormonism.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is a 1977 Newbery Medal awarded novel by Mildred D. Taylor. It is a part of her Logan family series, a sequel to her 1975 novella Song of the Trees.
Zionist churches are a group of Christian denominations that derive from the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church, which was founded by John Alexander Dowie in Zion, Illinois, at the end of the 19th century. Missionaries from the church came to South Africa in 1904 and among their first recruits were Pieter Louis le Roux and Daniel Nkonyane of Wakkerstroom who continued to evangelize after the Zionist missionaries left in 1908.
Thomas Sigismund Stribling was an American writer. Although he passed the bar and practiced law for a few years, he quickly began to focus on writing. First known for adventure stories published in pulp fiction magazines, he enlarged his reach with novels of social satire set in Middle Tennessee and other parts of the South. His best-known work is the Vaiden trilogy, set in Florence, Alabama. The first volume is The Forge (1931). He won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1933 for the second novel of this series, The Store. The last, set in the 1920s, is The Unfinished Cathedral (1934). Both the second and third novels were chosen as selections by the Literary Guild.
Fred Francis Bosworth was an American evangelist, an early religious broadcaster, and a 1920s and Depression-era Pentecostal faith healer who was later a bridge to the mid-20th century healing revival. He was born on a farm near Utica, Nebraska and was raised in a Methodist home. His Methodist experiences also included salvation at the age of 16 or 17, and a spontaneous healing from major lung problems a couple of years later. Bosworth's life after that was one that followed Christian principles, though his church affiliation changed several times over the years. Several years after his healing he attended Alexander Dowie's church in Zion City, Illinois, then joined the Pentecostal movement and attended Pentecostal services. Most of his later ministry was associated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance church.
Isaiah Mloyiswa Mdliwamafa Shembe, was a prophet and the founder of the Ibandla lamaNazaretha, South Africa, which was the largest African-initiated church in Africa during his lifetime. Shembe started his religious career as an itinerant evangelist and faith healer in 1910. Within ten years, he had built up a large following in Natal with dozens of congregations across the province. To date, there is a rapid emergence of organized congregations and seminary events across the nine provinces of South Africa.
The free-produce movement was an international boycott of goods produced by slave labor. It was used by the abolitionist movement as a non-violent way for individuals, including the disenfranchised, to fight slavery.
James Francis Marion Jones, also known as the Rt. Rev. Dr. James F. Jones, D.D and as Prophet Jones, was an American black religious leader, televangelist, faith healer and pastor who led the religious movement that developed into the Church of Universal Triumph, Dominion of God, Inc. from 1938 until his death in 1971.
Joseph Smith, Jr. was the leader and founder of the Latter Day Saint movement. Being Continuationist, the movement is characterized by a belief that the miracles, visions, prophecies, and revelations attributed to the biblical era continue still today, contingent upon need and the faith of those involved. This belief is based both upon scriptural teachings in the Bible and Book of Mormon and upon accounts of such miracles performed by Smith.
The Zion Apostolic Faith Mission Church is one of the earliest Zionist sects in southern Africa. It was formed out of a secession from the Pentecostal Apostolic Faith Mission in 1919, and attempted to create southern Africa's second "Zion City" in emulation of John Alexander Dowie. Although ZAFM was initially an influential church in Zionist circles, it failed to develop and prosper over the decades. It is best known today for spawning two secessions of its own that grew into large churches—the Zion Christian Church and the Zimbabwean Zion Apostolic Faith Mission.
