Follow the Prophet
My sons and I have been listening to an audio book. The story is historical fiction taking place during the time of the revolutionary war. The main character of the book is Samuel. Samuel is a young boy, about 13, whose parents have been taken by the Red Coats. Samuel is now alone and instantly decides that he will find his parents by using his learned skills of tracking and following. To do this requires a keen use of his senses to know what he must follow to preserve his life and return freedom to his parents.
As I listened I wondered what it would be like to have life depend on my ability to assess my surrounding to know what direction I should go so I can follow the path that will result in happiness and freedom. Day to day, moment to moment our happiness and freedom are dependent upon the path we choose to follow.
In April 2001 General Conference M. Russell Ballard said…
“Have you ever had the experience of driving around and around the streets of a city with the driver saying, “I know where it is; I’m sure I can find it”? Finally, in frustration, he stops and asks someone for directions. I can tell you sisters have experienced this! How much easier it is to find our way when we follow the directions of someone who knows how to locate our destination.
Many of us may find ourselves in a similar situation as we make our way through life’s challenging thoroughfares. These are difficult times, and the world’s cultural and sociological landmarks of propriety, honesty, integrity, and political correctness are constantly shifting. Just when we think we know the way to happiness and peace, some new ideology comes along which can lead us down a path that will only heighten our confusion and intensify our despair. At such times, we might well ask, “Is there one clear, unpolluted, unbiased voice that we can always count on? Is there a voice that will always give us clear directions to find our way in today’s troubled world?” The answer is yes. That voice is the voice of the living prophet and apostles.”
The first step to assure our freedom and happiness is knowing who to follow.
Elder José A. Teixeira of the Seventy said…
“Through our prophets in every age, including our own, God has revealed His plan of happiness for individuals and families. Those who follow the prophets receive the blessings God has promised.
I love dictionaries. They are concise and easy to use. I also have a tendency to forget things and have found that no matter how many times I look up the same word the dictionary has yet to laugh at me for my inability to keep information in my brain.
Some of the definitions Webster gives for follow are:
- To come or go after
- Take up
- Engage in
- Obey
- Accept authority
- Watch or listen closely
- Observe
In addition to these definitions Webster gives this statement. “Follow is a general word meaning to come or occur after, but it does not necessarily imply a casual relationship with what goes before.”
Follow is a verb and requires action on our part.
After I was asked to speak on the topic, Follow the Prophet, I found myself anxiously engaged in repeating over and over the words, follow the prophet. I would be driving and in my mind I would say, follow the prophet. As I fell asleep at night the words, follow the prophet would chant through my brain and lull me to sleep. I would eat breakfast and the words would scroll through my mind. Strangely, as many times as the words twisted through my mind or rolled off my tongue I was unable to paste any information into a message to share today. Saying these words over and over was not enough. I had to do. Wanting and hoping left me with nothing. As I started searching for information and studying the scriptures and doing, I found answers.
We have to do more than want to follow the prophet to receive the blessings that are available and secure our happiness and freedom. We must DO –take action.
One way we can find out if we are on t rack would be to ask ourselves and truthfully answer these questions.
Have we studied His counsel and identified the things we need to avoid or to do differently? Are we listening? Are we hearing the words of the prophet to us as parents, as youth leaders, and as youth?
President Ezra Taft Benson once outlined fourteen fundamentals in following the prophet. I would like to use some of his words in describing a few of these fundamentals.
- The living prophet is more important to us than a dead prophet.
God’s revelation to Adam did not instruct Noah how to build the Ark. Noah needed his own revelation. Therefore the most important prophet so far as you and I are concerned is the one living in our day and age to whom the Lord is currently revealing His will for us. Said President Marion G. Romney, “It is an easy thing to believe in the dead prophets, but it is a greater thing to believe in the living prophets.”
- The prophet does not have to say “Thus saith the Lord” to give us scripture.
Sometimes there are those who argue about words. They might say the prophet gave us counsel but that we are not obliged to follow it unless he says it is a commandment. But the Lord says of the Prophet, “Thou shalt give heed unto all his words and commandments which he shall give unto you.”
- The prophet tells us what we need to know, not always what we want to know.
“Thou has declared unto us hard things, more than we are able to bear,” complained Nephi’s brethren. But Nephi answered by saying, “The guilty taketh the truth to be hard, for it cutteth them to the very center.” (1 Ne. 16:1–2.)
Said President Harold B. Lee:
“You may not like what comes from the authority of the Church. It may conflict with your political views. It may contradict your social views. It may interfere with some of your social life … Your safety and ours depends upon whether or not we follow … Let’s keep our eye on the President of the Church.” (Conference Report, October 1970, p. 152–153.) How we respond to the words of a living prophet when he tells us what we need to know, but would rather not hear, is a test of our faithfulness.
- The Prophet is not limited by men’s reasoning.
There will be times when you will have to choose between the revelation of God and reasoning of men—between the prophet and the professor. Said the Prophet Joseph Smith,
“Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof until long after the events transpire.” (Scrapbook of Mormon Literature, vol. 2, p. 173).
Would it seem reasonable to an eye doctor to be told to heal a blind man by spitting in the dirt, making clay and applying it to the man’s eyes and then telling him to wash in a contaminated pool? Yet this is precisely the course that Jesus took with one man, and he was healed. (See John 9:6–7.) Does it seem reasonable to cure leprosy by telling a man to wash seven times in a particular river, yet this is precisely what the prophet Elisha told a leper to do, and he was healed. (See 2 Kgs. 5.)
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isa. 55:8–9.)
In a talk given by Elder Henry B. Eyring he shares an example from church history. “Reddick Newton Allred was one of the rescue party sent out by President Brigham Young (1801–77) to bring in the Willie and Martin handcart companies. At the Sweetwater River South Pass , Captain George Grant asked Reddick Allred to remain there with a few men and wagons and be ready to help when the rescuers returned with the handcart pioneers.
The rescuers found the Willie company mired in the snow, freezing, starving, and dying. Some of the rescuers continued to search for the Martin company, while the others helped the Willie company make that heartrending pull up and over Rocky Ridge. Soon after they made camp, Reddick Allred and his men came to deliver essential assistance and supplies.
Allred then waited for Captain Grant to return with the Martin company. Week after week passed with no sign of them. As blizzards howled and the weather became life threatening, two of the men decided it was foolish to stay. They thought the Martin company had either wintered over somewhere or perished. They decided to return to the Salt Lake Valley
Those who returned took several wagons, filled with needed supplies, and started back to the Salt Lake Valley Big Mountain
Finally, more than three weeks after Reddick Allred had assisted the Willie company, Captain Grant arrived with the Martin company. These pioneers were even more destitute and had suffered dozens of deaths. Captain Grant’s rescue team was small and low on provisions—and still more than 200 miles (320 km) from the Salt Lake Valley
While the record does not prove it, I am confident that Brother Allred prayed while he waited. I am confident that his prayers were answered. He then knew that the counsel to stand fast was from God. We must pray to know that. I promise you such prayers of faith will be answered.
Sometimes we will receive counsel that we cannot understand or that seems not to apply to us, even after careful prayer and thought. Don’t discard the counsel, but hold it close.”
- The prophet and the presidency—the living prophet and the First Presidency—follow them and be blessed—reject them and suffer.
“When we begin to choose which of the covenants, which of the commandments we will keep and follow, we are taking the law of the Lord into our own hands and become our own prophets, and believe me, we will be led astray, because we are false prophets to ourselves when we do not follow the Prophet of God. No, we should never discriminate between these commandments, as to those we should and should not keep.”
In Alma
Starting in verse 12,
“And this Anti-Christ, whose name was Korihor, (and the law could have no hold upon him) began to preach unto the people that there should be no Christ. And after this manner did he preach, saying: ‘O ye that are bound down under a foolish and vain hope, why do ye yoke yourselves with such foolish things? Why do ye look for a Christ? For no man can know of anything which is to come. … Ye look forward and say that ye see a remission of yours sins. But behold, it is the effect of a frenzied mind; and this derangement of your minds comes because of the traditions of your fathers, which lead you away into a belief of things which are not so. And many more such things did he say unto them, telling them that there could be no atonement made for the sins of men, but every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature, therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength; and whatsoever a man did was no crime.”
When Korihor begins preaching to the people in the land of Gideon
In verse 22 Giddonah asks this of Korihor, “Why do ye go about perverting the ways of the Lord? Why do ye teach this people that there shall be no Christ, to interrupt their rejoicings? Why do ye speak against all the prophecies of the holy prophets? And Korihor said unto him: “Because I do not teach the foolish traditions of your fathers, and because I do not teach this people to bind themselves down under the foolish ordinances and performances which are laid down by ancient priests, to usurp power and authority over them, to keep them in ignorance, that they may not lift up their heads, but he brought down according to they words.”
In the talk “Safety in Counsel” Elder Henry B. Eyring tell us, “Korihor was arguing, as men and women have falsely argued from the beginning of time, that to take counsel from the servants of God is to surrender God-given rights of independence. But the argument is false because it misrepresents reality. When we reject the counsel that comes from God, we do not choose to be independent of outside influence. We choose another influence. We reject the protection of a perfectly loving, all-powerful, all-knowing Father in Heaven, whose whole purpose, as that of His Beloved Son, is to give us eternal life, to give us all that He has, and to bring us home again in families to the arms of His love. In rejecting His counsel, we choose the influence of another power, whose purpose is to make us miserable and whose motive is hatred. We have moral agency as a gift of God. Rather than the right to choose to be free of influence, it is the inalienable right to submit ourselves to whichever of those powers we choose.
The failure to take prophetic counsel lessens our power to take inspired counsel in the future. The best time to have decided to help Noah build the ark was the first time he asked. Each time he asked after that, each failure to respond would have lessened sensitivity to the Spirit. And so each time his request would have seemed more foolish, until the rain came. And then it was too late.”
President Dieter F. Uchtdorf reminds us, “It is our responsibility not only to listen but also to act upon His word that we may claim the blessings of the ordinances and covenants of the restored gospel. He said, “I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.
Later in his talk he urges us to not loose hope.
“There may be times when we feel overwhelmed, hurt, or on the edge of discouragement as we are trying so hard to be perfect members of the Church. Be assured, there is balm in Gilead . Let us listen to the prophets of our day as they help us to focus on the things that are central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children. The Lord knows us, He loves us, He wants us to succeed, and He encourages us by saying: “And see that all … things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that [men or women] should run faster than [they have] strength. … [But] it is expedient that [they] should be diligent. Are we diligent in living the commandments of God, without running beyond our strength? Or are we just leisurely strolling along? Are we using our time, talents, and means wisely? Are we focused on the things which matter most? Are we following the inspired counsel of the prophets? Let us in humility and faith refresh our dedication and our commitment to follow the prophets, seers, and revelators in all diligence. Let us listen and be instructed and edified by those who hold all the keys of the kingdom. And as we listen and follow them, may our hearts be changed that there will be a great desire to do good.”