Is the LDS Church really led by prophets?

[Rob Bowman]

Deborah,

So, for example, at what age did Thomas S. Monson understand that he would be "the prophet"? I understand a biography on him is out now, so perhaps someone here who has read it can answer this question.

I think it is clear that Monson didn't know he would occupy that position until shortly before it happened. When a sitting president of the LDS Church dies, there is speculation among Mormons as to who the next president will be. That wouldn't happen if "it was understood" who he would be.

Your example of Samuel, once again, proves my point. Samuel was not groomed by Eli to become the next prophet. The Lord did an end-run around Eli, who was not serving faithfully, and spoke directly to Samuel. Thus, Samuel was called to be a prophet when he was just a boy, and that call came directly from the Lord, not through a religious bureaucracy.

Moses, as you acknowledge, was also directly called by God. It wouldn't really be fair for me to cite him as part of my argument, though, because there apparently was no Israelite religion at the time.

The OT prophet Samuel went as a small child to live with the prophet Eli and be taught all he would need to take on the mantle of prophet. It was understood that he would be the prophet. This is similar to Latter-day prophets who are called as young men to offices in the councils of the church which will give them training and preparation to preside over the church. Even Moses, who was called directly by God, still received council from his father-in-law. With age comes wisdom and when the mantle of prophet is bestowed we can be sure that our latter-day prophets have been through the gristmill and refined.

[stemelbow]

stem,

Yes, God can do as he pleases. But you're ignoring the overall, big picture. If your leaders claim to be Spirit-led leaders, but act like bureaucrats except once every fifty years or so, the claim that they are prophets is merely hypothetical, not practical.

Perhaps I've missed something but I don't think so. I would question whether your claim that LDS leaders claim to be Spirit-led, but act like bureaucrats except once very fifty years or so. It can very well be that they are acting like Spirit-led leaders as they claim, but you have failed to understand what a Spirit-led leader would/should act like? For one, i don't think you've defined, very well, anything between what you're calling bureaucrats and what would be Spirit-led leaders. It appears you have let your assumption of that Spirit-led equals something other than LDS leaders, drive your explanation.

If God can do anything he wants, he can have the church led by apostles for its first generation and afterward have no more apostles, which is what God seems to have done at the end of the first century. I'm comfortable with that. Why aren't you?

I would be quite comfortable with that, if that is what happened. It seems more likely that the great falling away took place, awaiting restoration.

love,

stem

[Daniel Peterson]

Comparing LDS revelations since Brigham to non-LDS Christian revelations since Brigham is irrelevant; the point I made was that alleged revelation in the LDS religion slowed quickly from a flood to a trickle.

I don't know that that's true. Do you? On what basis?

But if you really want to do the comparison, you should consider all of the alleged revelations that various Pentecostals and charismatics have claimed to receive in the past century. The number probably runs into the thousands. Of course, I don't put any stock in the prophetic claims of such men as Kenneth Hagin or Benny Hinn, either. The issue is whether such claims are true, not merely whether they are being made.

I was, of course, talking about mainstream Christianity, not the fringe movements that you mention.

"I can tell you with absolute certainty," the then-third-ranking man in the Vatican personally told me in Rome some years ago (and I think I have his words pretty exactly accurate), "that no pope has ever received a revelation."

I agree, of course.

Your quick list off the top of your head rather proves my point, especially when they are examined with some care. The only alleged revelation in your list that is in the league of what Joseph claimed to get on almost a daily basis is Joseph F. Smith's vision.

You set up quite a straw man when you claim that Joseph claimed to receive such revelations virtually every day. He didn't.

Doctrine and Covenants 4, 12, 16, 40, etc. -- these are not vast, sweeping statements of cosmic doctrine.

The rest of these items are difficult to take seriously as anything but pragmatic decisions.

That's certainly not how those who were present when the revelations were received described what happened.

The most recent two "revelations" you list are especially good examples. It's been nearly a century since JFS's vision, and those two decisions are the best that came to your mind off the top of your head. An American in the late 1970s, a decade after Martin Luther King's assassination, decides that people of color can hold the LDS priesthood. That's a revelation?! Now, if he had come up with that in the 1870s, you'd have something of a more plausible argument.

And yet you presumably regard the vision that Peter received, and that is described in Acts 10, as a genuine divine revelation. Peter recognizes that God cares about non-Jews. And you call that a revelation?

I find it amusing that you dismiss President Hinckley's claim of a revelation directing the construction of small temples, while, at the same time, you almost certainly venerate the excruciatingly detailed description of the Tabernacle given in the book of Exodus as part of the inerrant Word of God.

You dismiss John Taylor's revelation calling Elders Grant and Teasdale to the Twelve as unworthy of being termed revelation, and yet, I assume, you believe that God spoke to Moses, as recorded in Exodus 4, and directed him to call Aaron as his spokesman before Pharaoh.

[CA Steve]

Lurker,

Are you trying to obscure the issue, or do you not even realize you are doing so?

The issue is when and how the alleged prophets are called, as part of the larger picture of whether they even act or function like prophets. Try to get the big picture of what I'm arguing.

You brought up the age issue as support for your premise that church has "became an organization, run by a bureaucracy, rather than a movement led by charismatic men"

I am pointing out that age seems to have nothing to do with the qualifications to be a prophet or an apostle. Nor does the age at which they are called have anything to do with their qualifications.

I understand your overall point is that you think the amount of revelation since JS and BY has greatly diminished and that does not fit with your concept of what LDS ongoing revelation should be. Pointing out they are old is not relevent.

[stemelbow]

Hi Rob,

The issue is when and how the alleged prophets are called, as part of the larger picture of whether they even act or function like prophets.

I'm not sure what you think one must do to act or function like prophets. Maybe it'd be best, for my understanding of your point, if you would define that. I don't see why there is any reason to accept, what appears to be, nothing more than your assumption that a prophet must act as you define how they should act.

love,

stem

[Ahab]

"I can tell you with absolute certainty," the then-third-ranking man in the Vatican personally told me in Rome some years ago (and I think I have his words pretty exactly accurate), "that no pope has ever received a revelation."

I agree, of course.

Heh, really? I don't. I think most if not all people receive revelation from God every day, even though many if not most don't consider it to be revelation from God.

I think Rob's problem is mainly just not realizing that our current First Presidency and Quorum of Twelve Apostles receive revelation from God every day, too, and that he also doesn't recognize the fact that they are God's highest ranking administrators in his organized kingdom on Earth today.

[ELF1024]

Mr. Bowman;

I guess the real question, is what does a Prophet have to do in order for you to consider him a Prophet?

Raise the dead? Part the Red Sea? Call down fire from the sky?

Since you seem fit to call them bureaucrats... what makes a Prophet?

[Ahab]

Mr. Bowman;

I guess the real question, is what does a Prophet have to do in order for you to consider him a Prophet?

Raise the dead? Part the Red Sea? Call down fire from the sky?

Since you seem fit to call them bureaucrats... what makes a Prophet?

I think Rob simply needs to be taught, rather than expecting him to come up with the right answers all by himself.

A prophet of God is someone who receives revelation from God, even if all God is revealing is what is true on an issue. And No, the truth God reveals to a person doesn't have to be something that nobody else but God knows, as some people erroneously believe. To receive revelation from God simply requires receiving revelation from God, about whatever God is revealing to a person, and what God reveals will always be true, every time, regardless of who receives that revelation from God.

[Senator]

The dirty little secret is that the contemporary LDS Church has replaced prophets with bureaucrats

[CV75]

The dirty little secret

supposedly

[Ceeboo]

John Taylor's revelation calling Heber J. Grant and George Teasdale to the Twelve, Wilford Woodruff's revelations on sealings and on plural marriage, Lorenzo Snow's revelation on tithing, Joseph F. Smith's vision of the redemption of the dead, Spencer W. Kimball's revelation on priesthood, Gordon B. Hinckley's revelation on smaller temples -- off the top of my head, that's seven more revelations than mainstream Christendom received during the same post-Brigham period.

You know how much I love and respect you Dr. Dan, yes?

Not one of your best posts (IMHO!)

Peace,

Ceeboo

[BCSpace]

Is the Proclamation on the Family a revelation?

It is prophecy according to the Biblical definition of prophecy. All talks given in conference certainly qualify as well. Just because something new, unique, and exciting isn't being given doesn't mean there isn't dynamic prophecy in the Church.

[Bill Hamblin]

Actually, by biblical standards, modern LDS prophets and apostles stack up pretty good.

How many revelations did Joshua or Aaron have compared to Moses? Over the course of 600 years of Israelite history (1000-400 BC) we have less than two dozen prophets whose revelations were worth preserving. And the next four hundred years there were none! Compare the fact that the Pentateuch as a whole is about 3/4 the size of all the other prophetic writings in the OT combined. Why the front-loading of revelations in the Mosaic age?

How many overt revelations did Peter have? Less than half a dozen? How many revelations are recorded for Christ's twelve apostles? Is choosing an apostle by lot revelation? Is the book of Acts a revelation? How many apostolic letters include revelatory claims. (Many are in fact, generally quite similar to conference talks.) Are 3 John and Jude and Titus really the best reveled writings produced by any of the early apostles? How many Gospels actually expressly claim to be revelation? Why do we have Gospels by Mark and Luke rather than Timothy or Nathaniel, or some other apostle? Why didn't Jesus personally record all his revelations?

So, LDS revelatory output is, in fact, overall quite comparable to that of the biblical period. I smell a whiff of the standard Evangelical double standard operating here.

[kolipoki09]

kolipoli,

I was careful to make clear that the drying up of new additions to the canon was only one piece of the evidence.

If you're going to include mission calls, then you will have to do so on the evangelical side as well (fair is fair!). Tens of thousands of evangelicals affirm every year that God has called them to missions. If that's what you mean by continuing revelation, we got it covered!

Rob, thank you for taking the time to respond to my posts, and that of others on this board.

Revelations on the same scale as that of Joseph Smith are just as much a part of the Church today as they were 175 years ago. The D&C, like many of Paul's pastoral epistles, deal directly with Church administration, policies, practices, and missionary work. The current apostles and prophets continue to produce lengthy treatments of doctrine from the Church's press, even if these works aren't included in the current "canon" of scripture. Many of the sections of the D&C included in the current edition weren't even canonized until after Joseph Smith's death. His inspired words and the words of his successors have laid the foundation from whence the current Church administers and functions. The number of sections added to the Doctrine and Covenants has relatively tapered off, but that is not to say that God is no longer operative in the Church in the same way that he was 180 years earlier. My personal belief is that there's no reason to "fix" a toy that isn't broken. Church members are already having a hard enough time understanding the fundamental tenets of the Restored Gospel...one of the reasons why the words of Joseph Smith's and other revelations are continually reiterated.

Comparatively speaking, most of the apostles and prophets mentioned in the Bible didn't author epistles or revelations either....but a number of them did. Some dominate the canon, others are relatively minuscule...but that is not to say that God was not as actively involved in the lives of His living oracles "off paper" as he was "on paper."

Latter-day Saints find it troubling that many fundamentalist and Evangelical Christians are opposed to the idea that God would call a prophet today or that they could add to the existing canon. Our witness is that in this dispensation, the canon has expanded and will continue to expand as the Lord sees fit. We're not saying God isn't operative in your life or the lives of other Evangelicals, nor that we have a monopoly on truth when it comes to a knowledge of God.

The number of revelations each prophet or apostle has added to the canon is not a definitive way of judging whether or not one has been called of God, or whether God is operative in one's life.

[Ceeboo]

I smell a whiff of the standard Evangelical double standard operating here.

I smell something too but I am not certain it's coming from the Evangelical.

Peace,

Ceeboo

[Balzer]

Perhaps what needs to be defined, then, in this thread is what is a revelation? What do you mean by revelation?

Good question. Also, I would like to know who decides and how it is decided. I ask because I think sometimes revelations are later determined not to be revelations. Who decides that and how is it decided?

Respectfully,

Balzer

[semlogo]

How charismatic was Moses? Not very, if we believe what's written about him.

[cdowis]

stem,

Yes, God can do as he pleases. But you're ignoring the overall, big picture. If your leaders claim to be Spirit-led leaders, but act like bureaucrats except once every fifty years or so, the claim that they are prophets is merely hypothetical, not practical.

If God can do anything he wants, he can have the church led by apostles for its first generation and afterward have no more apostles, which is what God seems to have done at the end of the first century. I'm comfortable with that. Why aren't you?

A prophet's job is not to be a common fortune teller. His primary duty is the use the keys the Lord has given him to administer and govern the church. We know that Christ ordained his apostles ("Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you"), gave them the autority and the keys were given to Peter to bind and unbind, to seal on earth and heaven.

General church and local leaders are called by inspiration, and revelation, and given their authority and keys by the laying on of hands by one having the authority. This authority did not come from attending a school, or seminary, but from heavenly beings ordaining the Prophet and his associates. This authority was then passed on to those called by the Lord, even as Aaron was called and ordained by a prophet.

Temples are built, and the keys to bind on earth and heaven are used to seal couples for time and eternity. The various affairs of the Kingdom of God are conducted through this authority -- missionary work, the priesthood quorums, the Relief Society, the welfare program, the educational programs, etc.

These are the primary duties of the apostles and prophets. If revelation becomes necessary, they are there to receive and validate that revelation, such as extending the priesthood to all worthy males, and the inclusion of new revelations into the canonized scripture.

Finally, their duties include training the new leaders, and admonishing the saints and calling the world to repentence in General Conference and other meetings.

You are the one missing the big, overall picture. The role of the prophet is not the fortune teller, but to use his priesthood authority and keys to administer to the church. I know from personal experience that they fulfill their duties with inspiration and revelation.

[DeepThinker]

DeepThinker,

Perhaps, instead of sarcasm, you might offer something of substance. Just how do you think the current apostles and prophets are selected? When is the last time one of them claimed to have had anything like either a Damascus Road or Sacred Grove experience? Do any of the current apostles and prophets claim that Christ appeared to them and called them to their offices?

I don't know the details of the process for selecting Church leaders and I don't know about any of their personal spiritual experiences - and I'm sure you don't either.

When you say "the big lie", you're saying you have knowledge that you simply don't posess. The best you could honestly say is that you have doubts , suspicions, or simply don't know. Calling the process 'the big lie" is a lie - and deserves sarcastic criticism.

[Bernard Gui]

I don't know an exact figure, but most of the prophets began their ministry as prophets as young men. Jeremiah makes a point of telling us that he was a youth when the Lord called him (Jer. 1:5). Daniel was also evidently a very young man, if not a teenager, when he began serving as a prophet; he was a youth when God enabled him to interpret Nebuchadnezzar's dream (Dan. 2, cf. Dan. 1:3-4; 2:1). In the NT, Jesus' apostles evidently included several younger men when they were called to be apostles; John the son of Zebedee was apparently a teenager.

Joseph Smith is in good company.

Bernard

[John Larsen]

John Taylor's revelation calling Heber J. Grant and George Teasdale to the Twelve, Wilford Woodruff's revelations on sealings and on plural marriage, Lorenzo Snow's revelation on tithing, Joseph F. Smith's vision of the redemption of the dead, Spencer W. Kimball's revelation on priesthood, Gordon B. Hinckley's revelation on smaller temples -- off the top of my head, that's seven more revelations than mainstream Christendom received during the same post-Brigham period.

God hasn't gone away, He has just become more concerned with the administrative minutia of running a bureaucracy. It's not like there have been really important questions dividing mankind in the last 150 years. I mean, he gave us important information like the detecting of demons through handshakes. Things like when does life begin, human evolution, nuclear weapons, embryonic research, race, climate change, global economics and the like just don't raise to the level of God's interest.

[TAO]

Comparing LDS revelations since Brigham to non-LDS Christian revelations since Brigham is irrelevant; the point I made was that alleged revelation in the LDS religion slowed quickly from a flood to a trickle.

Ah yes, perhaps you remember, that Brigham himself always felt bad that he wasn't receiving quite the same revelation as Joseph had. However, he realized that much had already been revealed, and that much else could not be spoken of. Yes, there are mysteries they know, which they cannot tell.

But if you really want to do the comparison, you should consider all of the alleged revelations that various Pentecostals and charismatics have claimed to receive in the past century. The number probably runs into the thousands. Of course, I don't put any stock in the prophetic claims of such men as Kenneth Hagin or Benny Hinn, either. The issue is whether such claims are true, not merely whether they are being made.

Well um... isn't it obvious how your supposed to know if they are true... by the Spirit?

Your quick list off the top of your head rather proves my point, especially when they are examined with some care. The only alleged revelation in your list that is in the league of what Joseph claimed to get on almost a daily basis is Joseph F. Smith's vision. The rest of these items are difficult to take seriously as anything but pragmatic decisions.

You need to look again - revelation isn't always received in blinding visions and massive miracles. Look at personal revelation for example. Not blinding, nor massive. Simply personal. God choses to revel himself in the way he does for some pretty good reasons, so I'd suggest you ask him what those reasons are before you say "those aren't revelation".

The most recent two "revelations" you list are especially good examples. It's been nearly a century since JFS's vision, and those two decisions are the best that came to your mind off the top of your head. An American in the late 1970s, a decade after Martin Luther King's assassination, decides that people of color can hold the LDS priesthood. That's a revelation?! Now, if he had come up with that in the 1870s, you'd have something of a more plausible argument.

Your forgetting - it was always KNOWN that African Americans would eventually receive the priesthood. We just didn't know when. Just a few years before, several AAs wrote a letter to the prophet, but he told them that it wasn't the time - in fact, he didn't know it was the time until it was. And it was unexpected and glorious. Now I'd call that revelation.

God's time isn't your time, remember. It doesn't matter if 1870 was the right time for you, it wasn't the right time for God, and that is plenty good enough.

[Bernard Gui]

The average age of the next seven presidents at taking office was 73 (ranging between 62 and 82), while the average age of the most recent seven presidents at taking office was 83 (ranging between 73 and 93). The average age of the President of the Church, his two Counselors, and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles is 75. These are all supposedly

[Bernard Gui]

Yes, God can do as he pleases. But you're ignoring the overall, big picture. If your leaders claim to be Spirit-led leaders, but act like bureaucrats except once every fifty years or so, the claim that they are prophets is merely hypothetical, not practical.

And you know of their intimate daily activities....how?

Bernard

[Bernard Gui]

God hasn't gone away, He has just become more concerned with the administrative minutia of running a bureaucracy. It's not like there have been really important questions dividing mankind in the last 150 years. I mean, he gave us important information like the detecting of demons through handshakes. Things like when does life begin, human evolution, nuclear weapons, embryonic research, race, climate change, global economics and the like just don't raise to the level of God's interest.

Revelations on climate change?

Bernard