This volume gives a concise but comprehensive overview of the rich diversity of prophecy, its role in major world religions as well as in new religions and alternative spiritualities, its social dynamics and its impact on individuals' lives. Academic analyses are complemented with contextualized primary source testimonies of those who live and have lived within a prophetic framework.

Chapter 1 From the Extraordinary to the Ordinary: An Overview of Prophecy, Suzanne Newcombe, Sarah Harvey; Part 1 Perspectives on Prophecy; Chapter 2 Messages from Beyond: Prophecy in the Contemporary World, Michael Barkun; Chapter 3 Prophecy: Social Scientific Perspectives and Lubavitch, Simon Dein; Chapter 4 Prophecy on the Margins: A Case Study of the Apocalypse in Later Seventeenth-Century England, Warren Johnston; Chapter 5 Prophecy: A Perspective from the Early Church and the Contemporary Experience of a Methodist Minister, Andrew Maguire; Part 2 Perennial Prophecy in Mainstream Traditions; Chapter 6 The New Apostolic Reformation: Main Street Mystics and Everyday Prophets, Margaret M. Poloma, Matthew T. Lee; Chapter 7 The Mahdi and the End-Times in Islam, Hugh Beattie; Chapter 8 The Coming Golden Age: On Prophecy in Hinduism, Luis González-Reimann; Chapter 9 Divination, Prophecy and Oracles in Tibetan Buddhism, Christopher Bell; Chapter 10 Chasing the Horizon: Prophecy in Secular Contexts, Wendy M. Grossman; Part 3 Contemporary Case Studies; Chapter 11 Living in the Time of the End: A Personal Commentary from My Experiences with the Children of God and the Family International, Abi Freeman May; Chapter 12 Mormonism and The Family International: Toward a Theory of Prophecy in the Development of New Religious Movements, Gordon Shepherd, Gary Shepherd; Chapter 13 The Dispensation of Providence: Growing Up as a Blessed Child in the Unification Church, Hani Zaccarelli; Chapter 14 Waco: Living Prophecy, Livingstone Fagan; Chapter 15 (Always) Living in the End-Times: The 'Rolling Prophecy' of the Conspiracy Milieu, David G. Robertson; Part 4 2012 Prophecies; Chapter 16 From Mushrooms to the Stars: 2012 and the Apocalyptic Milieu, Andrew Fergus Wilson; Chapter 17 Viral Email and the 2012 Apocalypse Contagion: Seven Reasons Why the World WON'T End in 2012, Kristine Larsen; Chapter 18 Remembering the Future: 2012 as Planetary Transition 1 This paper is based on a talk given at the Inform Seminar, New Religions and Prophecy, held at the London School of Economics, 22 November 2008 and has been supplemented with material taken from a dkfoundation.co.uk web-page, 'The Particular: Where We Are Now', written for web site readers June 2011., Suzanne Rough; Chapter 19 2012 and the Revival of the New Age Movement: The Mayan Calendar and the Cultic Milieu in Switzerland, Jean-François Mayer; Chapter 20 Looking into the Future: Why Prophecies Will Persist, J. Gordon Melton;