Father in Heaven has chosen the pattern of revealing truth to His children through a prophet.
When I was a young boy, I loved Saturday because everything I did on that day seemed like an adventure. But no matter what I did, it was always preceded by the most important thing of all—watching cartoons on television. One such Saturday morning, as I was standing by the television and flipping through channels, I discovered that the cartoon I expected to find had been replaced by a broadcast of the general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While looking at the television and lamenting that there was no cartoon, I saw a white-haired man in a suit and tie sitting in a nice chair.
There was something different about him, so I asked my oldest brother, “Who is that?”
He said, “That’s President David O. McKay; he’s a prophet.”
I remember feeling something and somehow knowing that he was a prophet. Then, because I was a cartoon-crazed young boy, I changed the channel. But I’ve never forgotten what I felt during that brief, unexpected revelatory moment. With a prophet, sometimes it only takes a moment to know.1 Footnote: resident Russell M. Nelson recently invited the students at Brigham Young University to have the same personal revelatory experience: “Ask your Heavenly Father if we truly are the Lord’s apostles and prophets. Ask if we have received revelation on this and other matters” (“The Love and Laws of God” [Brigham Young University devotional, Sept. 17, 2019], speeches.byu.edu). See also Neil L. Andersen, “The Prophet of God,” Ensign or Liahona, May 2018, 26–27: “We have the privilege as Latter-day Saints to receive a personal witness that President Nelson’s call is from God.” The story of Alma’s conversion from listening to the prophet Abinadi provides further evidence that revelation concerning a prophet is available to all of us (see Mosiah 13:5; 17:2).
Knowing by revelation that there is a living prophet on the earth changes everything.2 “We either have a prophet or we have nothing; and having a prophet, we have everything” (Gordon B. Hinckley, “We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet,” Ensign, Jan. 1974, 122).
It causes one to be uninterested in the debate about when is a prophet speaking as a prophet or whether one is ever justified in selective rejection of prophetic counsel.3
“They began to disbelieve in the spirit of prophecy and in the spirit of revelation; and the judgments of God did stare them in the face” (Helaman 4:23; see also Doctrine and Covenants 11:25). “We sing and have done so constantly, ‘We thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet to guide us in these latter days.’ There are a great many who [ought to] put a postscript to that and say: ‘Provided he guides us to suit our own fancies and our own whims’” (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Heber J. Grant [2002], 80).
Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Heber J. Grant
President Woodruff announced that it was the will of the Lord that the Saints establish a business to manufacture beet sugar in Utah. Elder Grant served on a committee that was formed “to look into the matter.” After careful research, the committee unanimously recommended that the Church abandon the idea. However, reported President Grant, “President Woodruff was not satisfied. Another committee was appointed. I was on the first committee and he appointed me on the second committee. I begged to be excused, because I had already formed my opinion, had already signed my name to a report, but he would not listen to my request to be excused. We went into the matter again, thoroughly and carefully, and the second committee reported adversely. President Woodruff said: ‘Never mind the report. The inspiration to me is to establish the sugar industry.’” True to the instruction of the Lord’s prophet, President Grant and others made plans to build a factory for the manufacturing of beet sugar. However, a nationwide financial crisis in 1891 made it difficult to raise enough money to build the factory. Again a group of experienced businessmen suggested that it would be unwise for the Church to continue in the endeavor. President Grant recalled his leader’s response to the suggestion:
“When the recommendation was presented, Wilford Woodruff’s answer was this: ‘From the day I received a knowledge of the divinity of the gospel of Jesus Christ revealed through the Prophet Joseph Smith, from the day that I went out as a humble priest to proclaim that gospel, although it looked like death in front of me, if the path of duty that the gospel required me to tread called me to face death, I have never turned to the right nor turned to the left; and now the inspiration of the Lord to me is to build this factory. Every time I think of abandoning it, there is darkness; and every time I think of building it, there is light. We will build the factory if it bursts the Church.’”
“We did build it,” President Grant said later, “and it did not burst the Church.” In fact, the Church later built other factories as well, establishing an industry that was profitable for the Church as a whole and for individual Latter-day Saints.2
Years later, President Heber J. Grant offered this simple admonition to guide the lives of the Latter-day Saints: “I know of nothing that I feel is of so great value in life as to be obedient to the counsel and advice of the Lord, and of His servants in this our day.”
You need have no fear, my dear brothers and sisters, that any man will ever stand at the head of the Church of Jesus Christ unless our Heavenly Father wants him to be there...because they have all sought righteously for the inspiration of the Spirit of God to guide them in all they have undertaken to do...I know that upon all occasions, whenever he said: “This is what the Lord desires,” and his associates in the council of the apostles sustained his position, that upon every occasion he was vindicated and the inspiration of the Lord to him showed that his wisdom by the power of God, had been superior to the wisdom of other men.
Several times I have gone to meetings … , knowing that a certain matter was to be discussed and my mind was as perfectly set upon a certain position on that question as it is possible for a man to have his mind set. … While I have gone to meetings … determined in favor of a certain line of policy, I have willingly and freely voted for the exact opposite of that policy, because of the inspiration of the Lord that came to John Taylor. Upon every such occasion the servant of the Lord, President Taylor, was vindicated, and his superior judgment, by the inspiration of the Lord, asserted itself in favor of those things that were for the best good of the people.
I could relate circumstance after circumstance when the apostles have been sent out to accomplish certain labors under the inspiration of the Lord to John Taylor, when they thought they could not accomplish the labors. They have returned and been able to bear testimony that by and with the help of the Lord they had been able to accomplish the labor placed upon them by President Taylor, the Prophet of the Lord. …
I can bear witness that Wilford Woodruff was in very deed a servant of the living God and a true Prophet of God...He was a man of the most wonderful and marvelous humility; a man who had never been engaged in any great business affairs; a man who had devoted himself to farming, who had been engaged in raising fruits and cultivating the soil; a humble man, of whom I had heard many people say that he lacked the ability to preside over the Church of Christ. But I want to bear witness to you that, under the inspiration of the Lord, and because of the humility of the man, because of his godlike life and because God loved him, he was blessed upon more than one occasion with wisdom that was superior to all the wisdom of the bright financial minds in the Church.
I know that Lorenzo Snow was a Prophet of God. …this man, beyond the age of ability in the estimation of the world, this man who had not been engaged in financial affairs, who had been devoting his life for years to laboring in the Temple, took hold of the finances of the Church of Christ, under the inspiration of the living God, and in those three years changed everything, financially, from darkness to light. …
Joseph F. Smith...I bear witness that he was one of the greatest prophets of God that has ever lived; that God was with him from the day that he went forth as a little boy of fifteen years of age, to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ in the Hawaiian Islands, until the day when, after giving sixty-five years of his life to the work of God, he closed his earthly career.
The last words uttered by President Joseph F. Smith were to the effect..."Always remember this is the Lord’s work and not man’s. The Lord is greater than any man. He knows whom He wants to lead His Church, and never makes any mistake. The Lord bless you.”
… I have never heard in public or in private anything fall from the lips of the servants of God, who have been chosen to stand at the head of this work, but what was for the uplift and the betterment of the people of God.
... I do know that those who sustained these men with their faith and with their prayers, and with their good works, were blessed of God, not only with an increase of faith and love of God and a testimony of the divinity of the Gospel work in which we are engaged, but they were blessed in their basket, in their store, that their lands were blessed, and that they were blessed with wisdom in their families, to train them in the nurture and admonitions of God.11
Pray for the authorities of the Church, and then sustain them in every labor and in all that they undertake to do...there has ascended, day after day, earnest and heartfelt prayers to God for the inspiration of the Lord to attend the men who stand as the presidency of this Church, the apostles and the other general authorities; that they may, one and all, be inspired of God to accomplish those things that will be for the best good of His children and for the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world.
Let us be ready and willing to follow our file leaders, and to sustain them. … You will always be blessed and benefitted in following the advice and counsel of those whom God has chosen to preside over the Church. By honoring the man God has chosen, God will honor and bless you; and as you individually do your duty, you will grow and increase in the light and inspiration of the Spirit of God.
Do not allow the wisdom, the riches or the education of the world, or anything else, to blind our eyes to the fact that this is God’s work, and that the mouthpiece of God is on the earth; when he speaks, let us be ready and willing, with our time, our talents and all that has been given us, to labor to fulfill what God desires. I tell you, God will vindicate His mouthpiece.
I want to say that we expect every president of a stake and every bishop of a ward to teach the people the truth. We want them to tell the people that they are expected to obey the Word of Wisdom, to be honest tithe-payers, to remember the covenants that they make in the temples of God, … and that we expect them to do their duty as saints, and to preach the Gospel by living it.
There are many people who, if the servants of the Lord preach to them year after year, what is said has no particular effect upon them. But these same people, if they receive advice of some man of worldly wisdom, immediately follow it. I remember … preaching a sermon upon the Word of Wisdom. Subsequently I learned that a good sister who heard my sermon was taken sick and wired for a doctor to come from Salt Lake City, by special engine, and it cost her several hundred dollars to learn from this doctor that she was drinking too much tea, and unless she quit, would be sure to die. She accepted his advice and got well. Had she listened to my advice which would have cost her nothing, she would have saved several hundred dollars, to say nothing about being in perfect harmony with the teachings of the Lord, as revealed in the Word of Wisdom.
The prophets of God, from Joseph Smith to the present day, have guided us and they have guided us aright, when we have listened to that guidance. The mistakes which have been made have been because of our failure to listen to the prophet whose right it is to guide the people of God. …
I know that the path of safety for the Latter-day Saints is not only to sing, “We thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet, to guide us in these latter days,” but to be ready and willing and anxious to be guided."
Such revealed knowledge invites one to trust the counsel of a living prophet, even if we do not fully understand it.4
“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. If someone you trusted handed you what appeared to be nothing more than sand with the promise that it contained gold, you might wisely hold it in your hand awhile, shaking it gently. Every time I have done that with counsel from a prophet, after a time the gold flakes have begun to appear and I have been grateful” (Henry B. Eyring, “Finding Safety in Counsel,” Ensign, May 1997, 26
That is why we are never spiritually at risk in following prophetic counsel.
Whether we like it or not, all of us were chosen in some fashion in the pre-earth life to be born in these latter days. There are two realities that are associated with the latter days. The first reality is that Christ’s Church will be reestablished on the earth. The second reality is that things are going to get really challenging. The scriptures reveal that in the last days there will be “a great hailstorm sent forth to destroy the crops of the earth,”7 plagues,8
6 And thus, with the sword and by bloodshed the inhabitants of the earth shall mourn; and with famine, and plague, and earthquake, and the thunder of heaven, and the fierce and vivid lightning also, shall the inhabitants of the earth be made to feel the wrath, and indignation, and chastening hand of an Almighty God, until the consumption decreed hath made a full end of all nations;
“wars and rumors of wars, and the whole earth shall be in commotion, … and iniquity shall abound.”9
26 And in that day shall be heard of wars and rumors of wars, and the whole earth shall be in commotion, and men’s hearts shall fail them, and they shall say that Christ delayeth his coming until the end of the earth.
27 And the love of men shall wax cold, and iniquity shall abound.
When I was a child, those prophecies of the last days scared me and caused me to pray that the Second Coming would not come in my lifetime—with some success I might add so far. But now I pray for the opposite, even though the prophesied challenges are assured,10 because when Christ returns to reign, all of His creations will “lie down safely.”11
Current conditions in the world have caused some to panic. As God’s covenant children, we do not need to chase after this or that to know how to navigate through these troubled times. We do not need to fear.12
16 For the time soon cometh that the fulness of the wrath of God shall be poured out upon all the children of men; for he will not suffer that the wicked shall destroy the righteous.
17 Wherefore, he will preserve the righteous by his power, even if it so be that the fulness of his wrath must come, and the righteous be preserved, even unto the destruction of their enemies by fire. Wherefore, the righteous need not fear; for thus saith the prophet, they shall be saved, even if it so be as by fire.
23 But learn that he who doeth the works of righteousness shall receive his reward, even peace in this world, and eternal life in the world to come.
The doctrine and principles that we must follow to survive spiritually and endure physically are found in the words of a living prophet.13
18 For behold, they have rejected the words of the prophets. Wherefore, if my father should dwell in the land after he hath been commanded to flee out of the land, behold, he would also perish. Wherefore, it must needs be that he flee out of the land.
3 And after the Messiah shall come there shall be signs given unto my people of his birth, and also of his death and resurrection; and great and terrible shall that day be unto the wicked, for they shall perish; and they perish because they cast out the prophets, and the saints, and stone them, and slay them; wherefore the cry of the blood of the saints shall ascend up to God from the ground against them.
5 And all they who receive the oracles of God, let them beware how they hold them lest they are accounted as a light thing, and are brought under condemnation thereby, and stumble and fall when the storms descend, and the winds blow, and the rains descend, and beat upon their house.
That is why President M. Russell Ballard declared that “it is no small thing … to have a prophet of God in our midst.”14
President Russell M. Nelson has testified that “God’s long-established pattern of teaching His children through prophets assures us that He will bless each prophet and that He will bless those who heed prophetic counsel.”15 Russell M. Nelson, “Ask, Seek, Knock,” Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2009, 82. “No man can be more happy than by obeying the living prophet’s counsel” (The Teachings of Lorenzo Snow, ed. Clyde J. Williams [1996], 86).
So the key is to follow the living prophet.16 “Keep your eye upon those who preside in the Church today, or tomorrow, and pattern your life after them rather than to dwell upon how ancient prophets may have looked or thought or spoken” (The Teachings of Harold B. Lee [1996], 525).
Brothers and sisters, unlike vintage comic books and classic cars, prophetic teachings do not become more valuable with age. That is why we should not seek to use the words of past prophets to dismiss the teachings of living prophets.17 President Spencer W. Kimball once observed that “they who garnish the sepulchers of the dead prophets begin now by stoning the living ones” (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball [1982], 462). “The most important words we can hear, ponder, and follow are those revealed through our living prophet” (Ronald A. Rasband, “The Things of My Soul,” Liahona, Nov. 2021, 40).
I love the parables used by Jesus Christ to teach gospel principles. I would like to share a real-life parable of sorts with you this morning.
One day I walked into the cafeteria at Church headquarters to have some lunch. After getting a tray of food, I entered the dining area and noticed a table at which all three members of the First Presidency were seated, along with one empty chair. My insecurities caused me to make a quick detour away from that table, and then I heard the voice of our prophet, President Russell M. Nelson, saying, “Allen, there’s an empty chair right here. Come and sit down with us.” And so I did.
Near the end of the lunch, I was surprised to hear a loud crunching noise, and when I looked up, I saw that President Nelson had stood his plastic water bottle straight up and then flattened it and replaced the lid.
President Dallin H. Oaks then asked the question I wanted to ask, “President Nelson, why did you flatten your plastic water bottle?”
He replied, “It makes it easier for those who are handling recyclable materials because it doesn’t take up as much space in the recycling container.”
While pondering that response, I heard the same crunching sound again. I looked to my right, and President Oaks had flattened his plastic water bottle just like President Nelson. I then heard some noise to my left, and President Henry B. Eyring was flattening his plastic water bottle, although he had adopted a different strategy by doing it while the bottle was horizontal, which took more effort than with the bottle straight up. Noticing this, President Nelson kindly showed him the bottle-straight-up technique to more easily flatten the bottle.
At that point, I leaned over to President Oaks and quietly asked, “Is flattening your plastic water bottle a new recycling requirement of the cafeteria?”
President Oaks responded, with a smile on his face, “Well, Allen, you need to follow the prophet.”
I’m confident that President Nelson was not declaring some new recycling-based doctrine in the cafeteria that day. But we can learn from the prompt response18 “When we hear the counsel of the Lord expressed through the words of the President of the Church, our response should be positive and prompt” (M. Russell Ballard, “His Word Ye Shall Receive,” Ensign, May 2001, 65; Liahona, July 2001, 65).
of President Oaks and President Eyring to President Nelson’s example and President Nelson’s attentiveness to help teach those involved a better way.19 “The Church of Jesus Christ has always been led by living prophets and apostles. Though mortal and subject to human imperfection, the Lord’s servants are inspired to help us avoid obstacles that are spiritually life threatening and to help us pass safely through mortality to our final, ultimate, heavenly destination” (M. Russell Ballard, “God Is at the Helm,” Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2015, 24).
A number of years ago, Elder Neal A. Maxwell shared some observations and counsel that are prophetically on point with respect to our day:
“In the months and years ahead, events are likely to require each member to decide whether or not he [or she] will follow the First Presidency. Members will find it more difficult to halt longer between two opinions. …
“… Let us leave a record so that the choices are clear, letting others do as they will in the face of prophetic counsel. …
“Jesus said that when the fig trees put forth their leaves, ‘summer is nigh.’ … Thus warned that summer is upon us, let us not then complain of the heat!”20
The rising generation is growing up in a time when there are more fig leaves and there is more heat. That reality imposes a weightier responsibility on the already risen generation, particularly when it comes to following prophetic counsel. When parents ignore the counsel of the living prophet, they not only lose the promised blessings for themselves but even more tragically teach their children that what a prophet says is insignificant or that prophetic counsel can be picked through in a smorgasbord fashion without concern for the resulting spiritual malnutrition.
Elder Richard L. Evans once observed: “Some parents mistakenly feel that they can relax a little as to conduct and conformity … that they can ease up a little on the fundamentals without affecting their family or their family’s future. But if a parent goes a little off course, the children are likely to exceed the parent’s example.”21
As a generation that has the sacred charge to prepare the rising generation for its prophesied role in the latter days,22 D&C123:7 It is an imperative duty that we owe to God, to angels, with whom we shall be brought to stand, and also to ourselves, to our wives and achildren, who have been made to bow down with grief, sorrow, and care, under the most damning hand of murder, tyranny, and boppression, supported and urged on and upheld by the influence of that spirit which hath so strongly riveted the ccreeds of the fathers, who have inherited lies, upon the hearts of the children, and filled the world with confusion, and has been growing stronger and stronger, and is now the very mainspring of all corruption, and the whole dearth groans under the weight of its iniquity.
8 It is an iron ayoke, it is a strong band; they are the very handcuffs, and chains, and shackles, and fetters of bhell.
9 Therefore it is an imperative duty that we owe, not only to our own wives and children, but to the awidows and fatherless, whose husbands and fathers have been bmurdered under its iron hand;
10 Which dark and blackening deeds are enough to make hell itself ashudder, and to stand aghast and pale, and the hands of the very devil to tremble and palsy.
11 And also it is an imperative duty that we owe to all the rising generation, and to all the pure in heart—
12 For there are many yet on the earth among all sects, parties, and denominations, who are ablinded by the subtle bcraftiness of men, whereby they lie in wait to cdeceive, and who are only kept from the truth because they dknow not where to find it—
13 Therefore, that we should waste and awear out our lives in bringing to light all the bhidden things of darkness, wherein we know them; and they are truly manifest from heaven—
14 These should then be attended to with great aearnestness.
15 Let no man count them as small things; for there is much which lieth in futurity, pertaining to the saints, which depends upon these things.
16 You know, brethren, that a very large ship is abenefited very much by a very small helm in the time of a storm, by being kept workways with the wind and the waves.
17 Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us acheerfully bdo all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the csalvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed.
which role must be fulfilled in a time when the adversary’s influence is at its peak,23
14 And again, I will give unto you a pattern in all things, that ye may not be deceived; for Satan is abroad in the land, and he goeth forth deceiving the nations—we cannot be a source of confusion about the importance of following prophetic counsel. It is that very counsel that will allow the rising generation to see “the enemy while he [is] yet afar off; and then [they can make] ready” to withstand the enemy’s attack.24
54 And behold, the watchman upon the tower would have seen the enemy while he was yet afar off; and then ye could have made ready and kept the enemy from breaking down the hedge thereof, and saved my vineyard from the hands of the destroyer.
Our seemingly small deviations, quiet neglect, or whispered criticisms in response to prophetic counsel may result in our only walking dangerously near the edge of the covenant path; but when magnified by the adversary in the lives of the rising generation, such actions may influence them to leave that path altogether. Such a result is a generational price that is too high.25
1 Now it came to pass that there were many of the rising generation that could not understand the words of king Benjamin, being little children at the time he spake unto his people; and they did not believe the tradition of their fathers.
2 They did not believe what had been said concerning the resurrection of the dead, neither did they believe concerning the coming of Christ.
3 And now because of their unbelief they could not understand the word of God; and their hearts were hardened.
4 And they would not be baptized; neither would they join the church. And they were a separate people as to their faith, and remained so ever after, even in their carnal and sinful state; for they would not call upon the Lord their God.
Some of you may feel you have fallen short in your efforts to follow the counsel of President Russell M. Nelson. If that is the case, then repent; begin again to follow the counsel of God’s chosen prophet. Set aside the distraction of childish cartoons and trust the Lord’s anointed. Rejoice because once again “there is a prophet in Israel.”26
Even if you are unsure, I witness that we can withstand the heat of the latter days and even thrive in them. We are the Saints of the latter days, and these are great days. We were anxious to come to the earth at this time, having confidence that we would not be left to stumble when confronted by the adversary’s increasingly darker and more confusing mists27 “Thou shalt give heed unto all his words and commandments which he shall give unto you as he receiveth them, … for by doing these things … the Lord God will disperse the powers of darkness from before you, and cause the heavens to shake for your good, and his name’s glory” (Doctrine and Covenants 21:4, 6). “No man who ever followed the teachings or took advice or counsel from the one who stands as the representative of the Lord ever went astray” (Doctrines of Salvation: Sermons and Writings of Joseph Fielding Smith, ed. Bruce R. McConkie [1998], 243).
4 Wherefore, meaning the church, thou shalt give heed unto all his words and commandments which he shall give unto you as he receiveth them, walking in all holiness before me;
6 For by doing these things the gates of hell shall not prevail against you; yea, and the Lord God will disperse the powers of darkness from before you, and cause the heavens to shake for your good, and his name’s glory.
but rather to take counsel and direction from he who is authorized to say to us and the entire world, “Thus saith the Lord God.”28 Ezekiel 3:27. “For his word ye shall receive, as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith” (Doctrine and Covenants 21:5).
27 But when I speak with thee, I will open thy mouth, and thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; He that heareth, let him hear; and he that forbeareth, let him forbear: for they are a rebellious house.
5 For his word ye shall receive, as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith.
In the sacred name of the prophet whom God raised up, the Holy One of Israel,29 even Jesus Christ, amen.
20 And the Lord will surely prepare a way for his people, unto the fulfilling of the words of Moses, which he spake, saying: A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you. And it shall come to pass that all those who will not hear that prophet shall be cut off from among the people.
23 Behold, I am he of whom Moses spake, saying: A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you. And it shall come to pass that every soul who will not hear that prophet shall be cut off from among the people.
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