Of Prophets and Revelation

One of the more bizarre notions found in religious discourse is the one that holds that the heavens are closed, that God who for thousands of years spoke through prophets does not do so anymore. If God ever spoke through prophets anciently--and the record and evidence are strong that He did-- then why would He be silent today?

Three arguments are offered:

1. He has said enough, and nothing more needs saying, at least not from a direct Divine Source.

2. The prophets were intended to prepare the way for Christ, and after His mortal ministry and atonement the mission of the prophets had been accomplished.

3. We all are prophets (or can and should be)--God speaks to everyone without any prophet needed to stand in between man and his God.

Those who hold to the first argument carry the burden of demonstrating that man would not benefit from more of the word of God. If man could be helped by new revelation from God, then the love of God would surely provide it. The new and perplexing challenges to human happiness in our day suggest a deep need for continuing revelation.

In ancient times mankind was perplexed by many challenges to happiness--and the Lord spoke through prophets to help His children overcome those challenges. The fact that the human condition is no different (unless even worse) would seem to argue for a continuation of the same help from God. Moreover, the enormous--and often angry--disagreement over what God said and meant in the past would suggest a great need for God (who loves His children enough to be clear in His messages to them) to continue to speak to man with the clarity of contemporary language and modern relevance.

Regarding the second argument, it may be true that there is less of a need for a prophet while the Savior personally dwells on the earth. The Savior need not speak through anyone when He can do so directly. Speaking through prophets is what the Lord did prior to His mortal ministry, but what did He do after He ascended to heaven? Did He close the heavenly door behind Him and speak no more to man? If the risen Lord were to continue to speak to man from the heavens, He would speak through someone who would share it. That man would be a prophet. The record is clear that He continued to speak through His apostles and prophets after He returned to the presence of the Father. The Apostle Paul was converted long after the Savior's resurrection and ascension, and the word of God was spoken powerfully through Paul. In the ancient Americas there were many prophets who continued to transmit the word of God after the Savior's earthly ministry. Clearly the work of God did not end when the Savior returned to Heaven. It continues and will continue even until He returns to earth, and He will speak to guide those engaged in His work.

The third argument is a partial truth. The Lord wishes and intends for us all to be prophets. The concept of continuing revelation is not reserved for just one man on earth at a time. Moses, thousands of years ago, was confronted by this misconception when the man who would succeed him in leading Israel, Joshua, urged Moses to forbid others in the camp of Israel from prophesying. Rather than express any jealousy of his rights to revelation, Moses taught Joshua an important lesson about revelation, responding,

Enviest thou for my sake? would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them! (Numbers 11:29)

Having established this principle, however, it must be understood that God is a God of order. Each person--man, woman, child--is privileged to receive revelation for his or her own sphere of responsibility. Parents may receive revelation for themselves and also for their family. It would be absurd and chaotic to suppose, though, that God would reveal to them His will for someone else or for another family. The Lord wants us all to be prophets, to be possessed of His spirit to receive direct revelation for our own walk of life. He has never meant for all of His children to receive revelation for each other or for the whole world.

As an orderly God, for matters involving the whole world the Lord speaks through someone whom He has called to receive revelation for the world. Moses was the one chosen by God to lead all Israel, and Moses had no fear that his responsibility for leading Israel would be diminished were all to receive revelation for their own individual conduct. As the Lord chose Moses to speak for all Israel in his day, the Lord has chosen men today through whom He speaks to all the world.

The first weekend in April, the Lord's prophet spoke to all the world, as he regularly does. His message was broadcast throughout the world. You can find the message on the Internet, at this link:

http://lds.org/conference/sessions/display/0,5239,49-1-1032,00.html

It could be that, while God speaks through a prophet today, men's attention is just as distracted now as it was when God spoke in the days of the ancient prophets. Now, just as then, those who pay attention will find the way to a happier and more successful life. Do we need guidance from God any less today than did the early Christians in the days of the Roman Empire? Fortunately God still speaks through prophets, as always.

Of Temples and Homes

In a few weeks I will witness the marriage of my youngest daughter. The simple but sacred ceremony will be held in a Latter-day Saint Temple, where she and her husband will be united forever, never to be separated, not even by death. Our Heavenly Father desires our families to be forever and has arranged for the family associations to continue throughout the eternities. The union of a man and woman in the bonds of eternal marriage is the most sacred ceremony (or sacrament) performed on earth. The consequences have enormous importance (despite the efforts of popular culture and other loud voices to cheapen marriage and the marital relationship), and for that reason the Lord has asked for the building of sacred places away from the ordinary walks of life, where these ceremonies can be held in a setting befitting their importance.

A Temple is a holy place. As such it is designed to encourage people to aspire to live and act so as to be holy themselves in order to enter. A Temple is set apart to be a place of peace were God can seem nearer and heaven a closer reality. Careful efforts are made to keep the mundane, the crass, the vulgar, and even the ordinary outside of the Temple’s walls. Anyone may enter a Temple who makes promises and demonstrates in his walk of life a commitment to living a higher set of standards. These promises include dedication to Jesus Christ and a discipleship revealed in service, obedience to the Ten Commandments and other commandments from God, chastity, honesty, and a willingness to make self-improvement a constant way of life.

In a world where evil masquerades as good, where truth is taught to be a dangerous concept, where the contemporary culture applauds instant gratification that cheapens all things of value, a Temple stands as a beacon of truth, a preserver of value, and an encouragement to all who would seek to approach God. It is a refuge where the kind, the good, and the gentle can find rest, and where the temporary merges into and becomes part of the eternal.

Such a place provides the perfect setting for a man and a woman to begin their partnership that extends beyond this life and into the eternities. And it becomes a place where they may often return and find a model of the conditions to promote in their own homes as they make their homes sacred places.

When the Savior gave instructions for building His first Temple in modern times, He called for it to be “a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:119). So the Temples are, and so can our homes become.

Of Watermelons and Conservationists

Notice how the prescriptions of the radical environmentalists trend in the same direction: more government controls over private life. Certainly the global warming agenda is all about how government needs to control numerous aspects of our lives, from the way we travel (cars bad, public transportation good), what we eat (meat bad, vegetables good), the comfort in our homes (warm bad, cold good—except in the summer, when it is the other way around), to family size (three children bad, no children good).

If these people just limited themselves to preaching their ideas we could debate them and let people make a choice—which invites the risk that these proposals would be exposed as being irrelevant or even counterproductive to the achievement of the environmental purposes in which they are wrapped—but instead these environmentalists loudly call for elaborate government programs to force compliance with their schemes. It seems that it is the solution, the governmental mandates and controls, that matters far more than the real environmental issues. The enviro-advocates routinely reject better solutions that do not involve government intrusion. For good reason such state controllers in environmental clothing have earned the nickname, “Watermelons”: green on the outside, but red on the inside. These are not seedless Watermelons, as I would add that the Watermelons’ solutions rest on the seedy old notion that government knows best—the monarchist worldview that the American Revolution resisted and that the American experiment has in practice so often refuted.

I suppose that these environmentalists are eager to rely upon the force of government, because they seek to inhibit some very basic human endeavors, such as earning a living, bearing children, and breathing. The radical enviro agenda destroys jobs, sees people (and their offspring) as the source of all environmental problems, and has named the chief gas people exhale as they breathe—carbon dioxide—public pollutant number one. Only the coercive powers of government could hope to curb action that is such a natural part of life and living.

This Watermelon formula is no accident. The more common the activity that must be controlled, the more sweeping the governmental controls that are called for. And, the more undefined—or even indefinable—the problem, the easier it is to justify nearly any governmental action served up as a solution. Global warming serves the pro-government agenda of the Watermelons very well.

This is by no means an argument to ignore the environment. Care for the environment is as old as the Garden of Eden. It was one of the first commandments given to our first parents. “And I, the Lord God, took the man, and put him in the Garden of Eden, to dress it, and to keep it.” (Moses 3:15) Such counsel has been echoed through modern prophets. In 1833 the Lord revealed that the earth’s resources are “to be used with prudence and thanksgiving.” (Doctrine and Covenants 89:11)

This was not, however, man-is-the-problem environmentalism. Man is the focal point of the world, the reason for its creation. The Lord’s counsel is make the most of the earth and do not pollute your nest. This concept lies at the heart of what has been called conservation. Conservationists recognize that the world is a stewardship entrusted to man to be used for man’s best advantage. Again, as the Lord has revealed to modern prophets,

all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart; yea, for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body and to enliven the soul. And it pleaseth God that he hath given all these things unto man; for unto this end were they made to be used, with judgment, not to excess, neither by extortion. (Doctrine and Covenants 59:18-20)

The difference is that to the Watermelons, people are a problem, and the fewer the better. The conservationist sees the environment as a treasure house to be managed for the benefit of man, and when subjected to the creativity and wisdom of the mind of man can become an inexhaustible source of increasing wealth and benefit.

The Malthusians and their modern disciples have been predicting the environmental doom of mankind for centuries, and those unlucky enough to have followed their prescriptions have found doom and destruction. Whenever we have trusted instead to the creed of the conservationists who would manage the world’s resources in line with human incentives and martial them for human benefit, the result has been increasing wealth and welfare, just as God intended for His children.

Of Commandments and Happiness

We sing a hymn, “How Gentle God’s Commands,” the first two lines of which proclaim—

How gentle God’s commands!
How kind his precepts are!

I suppose that the Ruler and Creator of the world, who offers us all that He has, eternal life (“the greatest of all the gifts of God”—Doctrine and Covenants 14:7), could require from us anything in return. What He asks of us is that we be happy, and He shows us how. Every commandment of God (here I speak of God’s commandments, not the commandments of men) is calculated to promote our happiness and guide us away from unhappiness.

Let us examine a few to illustrate. The Lord commands that intimate sexual relations be reserved for a man and a woman within the bonds of matrimony. This commandment, much disparaged by popular voices, would if followed virtually end all forms of venereal diseases, including the modern scourge of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and the heartbreaking and life-ending consequences they bring. Abortion would also nearly end, since the vast majority of abortions are performed on unwed women. The social and economic trauma of children being born into one-parent households would similarly be dramatically reduced. And the deadened emotional wasteland caused by promiscuity would be avoided.

The Lord has commanded that we observe the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy. The Sabbath is a day to gather with fellow believers in the worship of God. It is also a day to refrain from usual activities we would call work and focus instead on rest and acts of service to one another. Perhaps less observed today than ever before by the world in general, this commandment is particularly suitable for modern times. Increasingly, people are cut off from one another, associations reduced to momentary casual encounters. The Sabbath brings people together in pleasant association and sharing, with a focus on what uplifts one another. Furthermore, it offers a pause from the daily routine, giving opportunity for mental rest and perspective, a time for pondering, meditation, and preparation for renewed and more thoughtful endeavor.

A third example I would choose is the law of the tithe. The Lord commands the saints to donate one-tenth of their income. At first view, this commandment might seem all loss. Is not a person better off with 100% of his income than he is with 90% of his income? The answer to that is undeniably yes, particularly if that income were forcefully taken away, as in excess taxes. The tithe, however, is purely voluntary. The Lord requires it, but He does not take it. You still have all of your income, for it is by your free choice that you make a donation or not, much as with any other way in which you would choose to dispose of your income. That is important, for by making a freewill donation, you give of yourself and receive all of the moral benefit that comes from such a voluntary gift. That gift is not diminished if you, like I, have noticed that you have always received more back in services and blessings than you have ever given. After all, you could choose to be a free rider and never contribute a dime. Moreover, the law of the tithe is eminently fair. All are asked to donate 10%, rich or poor. Those who earn more contribute more, those who earn less donate less, but all are subject to the same rate. Through the tithe—together with the voluntary labor of the membership of a church without a paid, professional clergy—all have full opportunity and satisfaction of participation in the most important work and activity in the world today: sustaining the work of the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

These are but three examples of many. I chose them, because they are among the commandments that some today might consider onerous. These, like all of God’s commands are rich and generous in their benefits. I have merely touched the surface of the benefits from observance of each of these commandments. God loves us, and His commandments are a bounteous example of that love.