We and the prophet have no language in common. To us the moral state of society, for all its stains and spots, seems fair and trim; to the prophet it is dreadful. So many deeds of charity are done, so much decency radiates day and night; yet to the prophet satiety of the conscience is prudery and flight from responsibility. Our standards are modest; our sense of injustice tolerable, timid; our moral indignation impermanent; yet human violence is interminable, unbearable, permanent…. The prophet’s ear perceives the silent sigh.

  —Abraham Heschel, The Prophets

There are two patterns for prophets,” my friend Zina Petersen recently remarked in a Facebook conversation, “one is a monarch of a people, who guides and leads; the other is a freaky, horrible, bug-eating, hairshirt-wearing outsider, obnoxious and threatening, who tells a bunch of sinners what God’s thinking about their smug.” These latter kinds of prophets are the subject of Abraham Heschel’s marvelous book; he calls them “some of the most disturbing people who have ever lived.” 

Latter-day Saint scriptures contain plentiful examples of both prophetic patterns. Benjamin, Mosiah, Alma the Younger, and the biblical Samuel were the first kind of prophet—either political leaders themselves or figures to whom political leaders paid attention. Elijah, Abinadi, Hosea, Amos, and Samuel the Lamanite were bug-eaters. They showed up when the kings were wicked and the people had forgotten about God. They shouted at people until they got kicked out of town, and then they stood on the wall and shouted some more.

Both kinds of prophets are necessary, but they are necessary at different times and for different reasons. Prophetic leaders matter during good times, when people have the will to serve God but lack the knowledge to serve wisely. They show us the way, keep us on the straight and narrow, and minister to those they lead and guide. The bug-eaters matter during bad times—when leaders have become corrupt and society has become oppressive. They show us the way back—a path that usually takes us where we would rather not go. Unlike their counterparts, they have no part in comforting the afflicted; their job is to afflict the comfortable. Revelation is not always supposed to make us feel good.

When Amos said “surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7) he was talking about the bug-eaters. At the core of their being, these prophets are human beings who cannot live with injustice. They cannot stand societies that ignore the poor or tolerate gross disparities in wealth and income. They are mortally offended when powerful people exploit the weak and vulnerable. They know that this is not how the Kingdom of God works, and they cannot rest until things are on earth as they are in heaven.  Listen to Amos right before he says his famous bit about God not doing anything until he tips off the prophets:

Thus saith the Lord; For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes; That pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of the meek: and a man and his father will go in unto the same maid, to profane my holy name: And they lay themselves down upon clothes laid to pledge by every altar, and they drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their god. (Amos 2:6–8)

Or take Samuel the Lamanite, who found himself on the wrong side of a wall designed to keep people like him out of the great city of Zarahemla:

Behold ye, the people of this great city, and hearken unto my words; yea, hearken unto the words which the Lord saith; for behold, he saith that ye are cursed because of your riches, and also are your riches cursed because ye have set your hearts upon them, and have not hearkened unto the words of him who gave them unto you. Ye do not remember the Lord your God in the things with which he hath blessed you, but ye do always remember your riches, not to thank the Lord your God for them; yea, your hearts are not drawn out unto the Lord, but they do swell with great pride, unto boasting, and unto great swelling, envyings, strifes, malice, persecutions, and murders, and all manner of iniquities. (Helaman 13: 21–22)

This is classic afflict-the-comfortable prophecy: church, state, and society are all implicated in the same sweeping condemnation. It is anti-social, anti-clerical, and anti-governmental. And it doesn’t require any credentials. Nobody had to ordain or set apart Amos or Samuel. They didn’t have to wait their turn to speak. And they didn’t even have to be men; the Hebrew Bible recognizes 48 prophets and seven prophetesses in the canon of those who spoke for God. The prophets who have mattered the most in the scriptures are the ones who come from the margins and speak with an urgency inspired by their vision and an authority derived only from the power of their voice.

I find it profoundly comforting to belong to a spiritual tradition that sees times of bad government and systematic oppression as opportunities for special revelation—revelation that does not need to come through any official channels to bear witness to God’s displeasure. The wicked King Noah called forth Abinadi by creating a world in which prophecy became a necessity. It will always be so when people ignore the weak and condone the exploitation of the poor, turn their backs on refugees, and build walls to keep out prophets from another land.

This is not how it works in the Kingdom of God. This should not be how it works with the people of God. The most important thing that Christ ever taught about the Kingdom of God is in Luke 17:21: that the Kingdom is within us. We neither wait for it nor work to gain it as a reward. We create it where we are because it is the consequence of living among people who want it the most. It is not a coincidence that Joseph Smith taught exactly the same thing about Zion. 

As believers in continuing revelation, Latter-day Saints do not have to wait one minute for someone else to prophesy. We can all be prophets ourselves—not, perhaps, the kind of prophets who go to meetings and sit up front in General Conference. But we can all be the kind of prophets called forth by moments of great need in the world we inhabit. Not the respectable kind, but the disturbing kind—the kind who eat bugs and tell people what God thinks of their smug.