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Throughout history, prophets existed in almost all religions, acting as the voice of God, delivering important messages (better known as: prophecies) to humanity; Most of these prophecies were predicaments or revelations of future apocalyptic events (among others: plagues, wars, floods, earthquakes, droughts and wars), with their main message always being preaching repentance or following God's will. Most probably, the earliest prophet in history was Laocoon, from the Iliad. Laocoon was a Trojan priest who tried unsuccessfully to warn the Trojans into not accepting the Greek Trojan horse by saying: "Do not trust the horse, Trojans, whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even bearing gifts". Unfortunately for Laocoon, his prophecy earned him a painful death for him and his 2 sons, since Goddess Athena, send giant serpents that killed him on the spot. Come to think of it, prophets were prominent figures throughout the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions respectively: In the Hebrew Bible, God is quoted saying about his prophet: "..and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him". In Christianity, prophets apart from being bearers of God's messages to Christians also warned them of God's wrath in case they would not uphold His divine message, whereas in Islam prophets were considered to be special envoys from the God himself on a mission - and in bulk numbers: Qur'an mentions that there were at least 124.000 prophets, since Allah send one prophet to every nation of people since the beginning of time. Since prophets were unarguably prominent figures throughout history and enjoyed a charismatic status in most religions - as envoys send from God, it would be interesting to find out if people today do believe in them or their prophecies. Therefore, a Jeebboo poll (www.jeebboo.com) was created: "Do you believe in prophets?" Surprisingly enough, a combined 65% of the Jeebboo members admitted that they actually do believe in prophets. More specifically, 22% said 'Yes', while another 43% said that that they believe 'In some of them'. This data finding from the Jeebboo survey is extremely important because it reveal us that -even nowadays- most people do believe that certain charismatic people are God's envoys or have the power to predict future events and cataclysmic incidents. Trying to explain it, one can assess that people still believe in prophets because the latter are closely and irrevocably related with all major religions; thus, believing in a religion also means believing the prophets of this religion. Another reason can be that some people do believe in supernatural, thus they perceive prophets to be channels of communication with the 'other side' - such as: Michel de Nostradamus. Nostradamus (1503-1566AD) and his famous book called 'The Prophecies', claimed to have experienced a pass to a parallel universe that allowed him to see all major future world events up to almost 3000AD, from the Great fire of London and the rise of Napoleon, to Adolf Hitler and the 2nd World War and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Nostradamus 'The Prophecies' has been translated to more than 50 languages and has sold some 60 million copies worldwide. In direct contradiction to the above, 35% of the Jeebboo members stated that they do not believe in prophets or prophecies. These Jeebboo members most probably do not uphold any theories about supernatural and prefer instead to explain and analyze each phenomenon based on sheer logic. Being able to talk to God or the ability to predict future events, contradict logic and scientific proof, that's why they are rejected as products of 'irrational thinking'. Moreover, the members of this group argue that ancient doomsday myths that survived time (and were believed even today by some) have proven to be false, with the latest example being the Mayan prophecies about the end of our world on December 21, 2012. As for Nostradamus, they maintain that no Nostradamus prophecy has been interpreted as predicting a specific event before it occurred, mainly due to the vague (in meaning) language that Nostradamus used. In fact, Nostradamus fame can be mostly attributed to his believers, who, after the occurrence of a cataclysmic event, they rush to tweak or interpret accordingly Nostradamus quatrains in order to demonstrate that he actually had foreseen it.
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