What Is Prophecy?
These are two research articles from the Catholic Encyclopedia:
Prophecy,
Prophet, and Prophetess
Only God knows the future and those to whom He reveals it. We exist in time whilst God exists in the eternal present. When God speaks to souls of events that to us are future this is prophecy. This manner of speaking is varied but can be direct words, imagery or intuition. In short the prophet knows that God has spoken to them.
Examples of these three categories are the Old Testament prophets:"thus saith the Lord". Visionaries such as Catherine Emmerich who had visions and at times would even smell things. And Mary of Agreda who apart from visions intuited things. Another means of receiving prophecy is to have those future events in the present.
When dealing with prophecy we must always remember that a prophecy is conditional. In Culleton's Excerpts there are several cases of the course of world events changing. These I detail in my inline commentary. A good example of this is that Our Lady stayed the Hand of Divine Justice in the early 80's and we did not enter into nuclar war.
Tradition is what we know of our Faith, which includes the Bible, and what we know as oral Tradition which has been handed down to us from the Apostles. Tradition ended with the death of the last Apostle. Revelation is the Deposit of Faith of Truths which was complete at Pentecost. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit came to dwell in the Church and hence truth cannot be added to. When a seer is told something this is not properly speaking revelation, I prefer to term it illumination to distinguish it fromn Tradition and Revelation.
Today 24 Jan 2020, I found myself considering whether a lot of known prophecy is conditional and wont come to be, such as the reign of the great king and pope. I asked myself this considering whether we are advancing rapidly into the Apocalypse: And whether the Apocalypse could be over in ten years time! I found myself asking Our Lord for a sign if the latter were to be. The idea came to my head of the explosion and destruction of St. Peters Basilica. Fr Malchi Martin spoke of this possibility. I have a custom in the half hour before saying my Rosary of watching live cams of holy places. One such place is the Tomb of John Paul II inside St. Peters. And after this idea came to my head I looked at my computer screen and that's where I was. Should I see the destruction of St. Peters in the near future I will definitely start looking at the possible coming of the Apocalypse.