Every once in awhile, someone writes to The Refiner's Fire to challenge the validity of the Bible because "it was written by men". These people do not realize that God "breathed" His Word through chosen prophets whose every word was written down. If a prophet ever spoke a single word for the Lord that didn't come true - to the letter - all his writings were destroyed and the prophet was killed (Deut. 18:20).

These days one hears of "Prophet Schools", with people collecting money in order to "teach" or "train" us to become prophets. One should be very leery of people who collect money for a gift that GOD gives us for free!

There were actually prophet "guilds" back during "Old Testament" days. These were apparently people who felt they had the gift, and got together to discuss their various prophecies (I Sam. 19:19-20, II Kings 2:3, 2:5, 4:38, and 6:1). But, prophets who were actually used by God in the Old Testament were appointed by God through divine revelation (Num. 12:6), and were inspired by God, to speak for God (II Pet. 1:21). Once they announced that God had revealed their "Prophet of God" status to them, they were granted special privileges, such as not having to work. To weed out any false prophets (those claiming to be prophets when God had not actually called them - Ezek. 13:3, Jer. 23:16), the Levitical priests would record every word when a prophet spoke for the YHWH (II Sam. 23:2). The prophecies recorded were for the immediate future (days, weeks), the near distant future (months, years), and the long-term future (centuries, millenniums).

As mentioned above, if a prophet ever spoke a single word for the Lord that didn't come true, all his writings were destroyed and he was killed.

God makes no mistakes. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, etc., all lived their whole lives, uttering 100% accurate prophecies; therefore their writings were preserved.