What has the Prophet said Lately?

Two of our meetings at church today focused on the same issue: What Has the Prophet Said Lately?

The first speaker in sacrament meeting related a story from her mission where a person they were teaching about the gospel got very excited about the idea of a living prophet and asked the two missionaries, “Well, what has the prophet said lately?” Unfortunately, the sisters were caught unaware and could not think of anything the prophet had said in recent months. It is a remarkable claim that we are able to make, that we have a Living Prophet who speaks to us as a mouthpiece for God; as such, we should be thirsty for any messages or information that comes from him.

I found myself unable to recollect anything the prophet has said recently. Fortunately I know where to look to find this information and will relay to you what I have found in links and brief summaries.
There are a few different avenues where we are able to hear from the Prophet. Most notably is the semi-Annual General Conferences of the church, held in the first weekend of April and October. (it’s coming up!) The church also publishes a monthly magazine (The Ensign) wherein the opening article comes from one of the three members of the First Presidency. The Ensign also publishes all the addresses from General Conference in the May and November issues.
In General Conference the Prophet generally addresses the church 4-5 times, usually the opening and/or closing remarks come from the prophet as well as other more instructive talks throughout the two day event. So in the past year (two conferences) here is what our Prophet, Thomas S. Monson, has had to say to us:
April 2010 Conference
  • Welcome to Conference
    • Recent humanitarian aid, 25 years since humanitarian aid program began. Listing of Temples recently announced or built.
  • Preparation Brings Blessings
    • This message was given to the priesthood brethren (men ages 12+). Good choices in youth will lead to blessings later in life. Stay away from destructive thoughts, influences and environments. Blessings will result if faithful.
  • He Is Risen!
    • “Our Savior lived again. The most glorious, comforting, and reassuring of all events of human history had taken place—the victory over death. The pain and agony of Gethsemane and Calvary had been wiped away. The salvation of mankind had been secured. The Fall of Adam had been reclaimed.”
  • A Word At Closing
    • Study the words which have been spoken at this conference. Look to the lighthouse of the Lord to direct your paths.

October 2009 Conference

  • Welcome to Conference
    • Temples recently built, temple work is important. Members should embrace new converts.
  • School Thy Feelings, O My Brother
    • This message given to the Priesthood Brethren (Men ages 12+). Refrain from anger and angry actions. “To be angry is to yield to the influence of Satan. No one can make us angry. It is our choice. If we desire to have a proper spirit with us at all times, we must choose to refrain from becoming angry. I testify that such is possible.”
  • What Have I Done For Someone Today?
    • “My brothers and sisters, we are surrounded by those in need of our attention, our encouragement, our support, our comfort, our kindness—be they family members, friends, acquaintances, or strangers. We are the Lord’s hands here upon the earth, with the mandate to serve and to lift His children. He is dependent upon each of us.” Focus on helping someone else everyday.
  • Closing Remarks
    • “We live at a time when many in the world have slipped from the moorings of safety found in compliance with the commandments. It is a time of permissiveness, with society in general routinely disregarding and breaking the laws of God. We often find ourselves swimming against the current, and sometimes it seems as though the current could carry us away…He is ever mindful of us. He loves us and will bless us as we do what is right.”
Ensign Articles since September 2009 written by President Monson:
  • Canaries With Gray on their Wings June 2010
    • To live greatly, we must develop the capacity to face trouble with courage, disappointment with cheerfulness, and triumph with humility. You ask, “How might we achieve these goals?” I answer, i“By gaining a true perspective of who we really are!” We are sons and daughters of a living God, in whose image we have been created. Think of that: created in the image of God. We cannot sincerely hold this conviction without experiencing a profound new sense of strength and power.
  • On Being Spiritually Prepared February 2010
    • “In the search for our best selves, several questions will guide our thinking: Am I what I want to be? Am I closer to the Savior today than I was yesterday? Will I be closer yet tomorrow? Do I have the courage to change for the better? …”
  • Finding Strength Through Obedience October 2009
    • The best examples of Obedience can be found in the scriptures. “Obedience is a hallmark of prophets, but it should be realized that this source of strength is available to us today.”
These are the messages we have been given most recently. In the first weekend of October, we will be given some more. We believe as Amos taught, “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secrets unto his servants the prophets.”
We are privileged to get such access to the prophet and what the Lord wants for us through his messages.

Listening to a Prophet of God

This upcoming weekend (April 3-4), Mormons everywhere will take some time to listen to the prophet of God, Thomas S. Monson.  Each year, during the first weeks of April and October, Mormons have a special meeting called “General Conference.”  This is where we can hear from living apostles and the prophet.

Yesterday, I was thinking about being able to listen to a modern-day prophet, so I e-mailed a few of my friends about it.  I asked them a couple of questions, and below I’ll share some of their responses.

Do you believe there is currently a prophet of God on the earth?

Yes

Yes, I do.

Yes.  I believe it’s an act of God’s love.

Is it important for there to be a prophet today?  If so, why?

Yes, because the world is ever changing and while principles may remain the same, applications are varied.

Yes.  We need God’s direction today more than ever before.  People that want to do the right thing don’t know what the right thing even is, or even if there IS a right thing, because of all of the false ideas (that are often combined with some half-truths) that are so widely propagated. As a result, too many good people wander around and get lost in life because they have no direction. A prophet of God can teach us what is right and what is wrong, and help us avoid dark paths and find the true way to happiness.

Yes.  I picture him as the liaison between God and us in a more literal sense, than just by prayer and personal revelation alone. He directs the world as a whole because they are all under his care

What does it mean to you to be able to listen to a modern day prophet?

It means so much more to me the older I get.  They give council and advice that applies to my modern day problems.  The older I get the more problems I get.  I love listening to the modern day prophet to see what the Lord wants me to do today.

I probably do not appreciate it enough.  Sometimes hindsight shows me that I should have listened better.

Any other thoughts or comments?

I know that God lives, and that He loves us. He is our Father. We can return to live with Him again after this life. This is possible because Jesus Christ atoned for our sins, which enables us to repent and become better people when we make mistakes. I know that Jesus lives today.

I know that there is a modern day prophet and that he is called of the one true God.

The Prophet directs us to follow Jesus Christ, who is our Savior.  If you are interested in hearing what the Prophet of God has to say, take a look at the following website.

www.generalconference.lds.org

A FAIR Perspective on Critical Claims

Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who don’t like us Mormons.

I can understand why.  We aren’t like most break-off sects, based on our peculiar interpretation of scripture.  People are more or less comfortable with these groups.  After all, if Martin Luther said something you don’t agree with, you can rest assured that his foundation is firmly rooted in the Bible.  He might be mistaken on some things, but by and large he agrees with mainline protestantism.  He never claimed to be a prophet.

But Mormons are new and different.  It’s all or nothing.  It can’t be swallowed half-way.

Joseph Smith described in detail a visitation from God the Father and Jesus Christ.Either Joseph Smith was honest about his first encounter with God or he lied about it.  He was visited frequently by angels or he wasn’t visited at all.  He was a prophet or a hoaxer.  If one is not Mormon and will not be baptized, “Joseph Smith was a fraud” is the stance one is required to take.  The middle ground is removed.

This polarization has energized detractors to produce mountains of criticism to discredit Mormonism, which if seen by itself makes our religion look plain silly, or worse.  The criticisms range from sophomoric name-calling and laughably-inconsistent retelling of our beliefs to historical documentation and intellectual DNA analysis.  Most of this is aimed not at Mormons (these kinds of attacks rarely have the gravitas to significantly shake LDS faith), but primarily at potential investigators of Mormonism.  They are designed to damage the Church’s reputation enough that you’ll dismiss anything we might offer.

The criticism, in turn, has prompted Latter-day Saints for years to rebut the arguments and point out evidences in our favor.  This rebuttal in defense of faith is called apologetics from the Greek apologia, meaning “defense.”

The leading body defending Mormon doctrine from critical arguments is the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR).  It is an independent, non-profit group of Latter-day Saints dedicated to “providing well-documented answers to criticisms of LDS (Mormon) doctrine, belief and practice.”  They have a website and a wiki full of every piece of anti-Mormon material you could ask for and a confident, clear response to each.

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A few weeks ago I attended their annual conference in Sandy, UT.  They had speakers from a variety of professional backgrounds.  A lawyer-economist spoke on the failed Kirtland Safety Society, a banking endeavor that Joseph Smith initiated (and according to critics, caused to fail in order to steal parishioners’ money).  A physicist (a former member of the federal government’s — and no, this isn’t a joke — Dark Energy Task Force) gave a lecture on Joseph’s cosmology compared with a modern physics account of the creation of the universe.  There were talks with titles like, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Plural Marriage (but were afraid to ask),” “Haplogroup X in Light of Recent Book of Mormon Claims,” and “Joseph the Seer, or Why Joseph Translated with a Rock in His Hat.” I came away impressed with their professionalism and their ability to make the topics accessible, interesting, and relevant.

Dr. Daniel C. Peterson, the face of modern Mormon intellectualism

My favorite FAIR contributor is a professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic named Daniel C. Peterson.  I became a fan through watching his FAIR presentations on YouTube.  (Click here to see Dr. Peterson’s review of Christopher Hitchens’ infamous book god is Not Great).

Members of FAIR look into the criticisms in their spare time and on their own dime; the Church doesn’t fund their research.  There are important reasons for that.  One of the key reasons is that Father has a different method for teaching us, which the Church favors.  It doesn’t require advanced degrees or superior reasoning capacity, and the objective isn’t merely knowledge.  The objective is goodness, even Godliness.  He created this whole world as a sort of school.  A proving ground.  What is required is a humble heart and a will to follow Jesus Christ.  Learning how to pray is much more vital to this kind of education than writing a thesis.

So, if you are investigating the Church, and you’ve been bombarded with defamatory information in anti-Mormon pamphlets or movies, first go to God.  You can learn a lot through prayerful revelation.  This should be your first step.  Always.  If it still bothers you, poke around FAIR’s website.  They’ve heard it all.  You may find peace in knowing that when you don’t have all the answers, some smart, faith-filled people have blazed the trail ahead of you.  It certainly helps me.

General Conference

If you’ve been reading this blog much, you’ve probably heard us raving about how great it is to have a modern-day living prophet. We think it’s pretty cool. It’s the connection to God that sets our religion apart.

Thomas S. Monson is the Lord's mouthpiece on earth today.You too can learn what all the hullabaloo is about: this weekend is the semiannual, world-wide broadcast of the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Over the course of two days, our beloved prophet, Thomas S. Monson (along with his two counselors and the twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ) will gives us the guidance that the Lord wants us to receive about issues that matter to us,today.

Sad that you missed Moses’ great sermons? Disappointed that the preaching days of Peter, James, and John are through? Those eras are past and gone, but there is revelation now and you can take advantage of this opportunity this Saturday and Sunday!

If you live near Utah, tune your TV or radio to KSL. Satellite and cable stations generally carry the BYU channel, and you can always watch live online in streaming video. (Streaming audio is also available in just about any language you like). If you’re in Salt Lake City on either day, you can also try to get tickets to the conference center. They are always free, so you’ll need to act fast to find some. Contact your local missionaries, or the sisters on temple square.

The schedule is as follows (Mountain Daylight Time):
Saturday October 4, 2008
10 am – noon ~ First session
2 pm – 4 pm ~ Second session

Sunday October 5, 2008
10 am – noon ~ Third session
2 pm – 4 pm ~ Fourth session

And please, share with us what you thought of it.

Come Hear the Voice of a Real Prophet

monson_mediumToday and tomorrow are what is known to Mormons worldwide as “General Conference Weekend.” It happens twice a year — the first weekend of April and of October. It’s a broadcast service in which the living Prophet and the twelve Apostles speak to all the world. Usually, Mormons are the bulk of the audience, but the messages are for all people, regardless of religion, and I would like to invite you to tune in.

If you live anywhere near Utah, you’ll likely find the station on broadcast TV and radio. Satellite carries the BYU channel throughout the world. I believe some cable companies also carry it. If all else fails, the Church offers live streaming video on their website, along with LOTS of options for streaming audio in whichever language you prefer.

The schedule is as follows (Mountain DST):
Saturday April 5, 2008
10:00am – noon ~ First session
2:00pm – 4:00 pm ~ Second session

Sunday April 6, 2008
10:00am – noon ~ Third session
2:00pm – 4:00 pm ~ Fourth session

And please, share with us what you thought of it.

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ADDENDUM:
The weekend is over and there were some terrific talks. I particularly liked Elder Dallin H. Oaks’ sermon on testimony. How can we know things? There is more knowledge than can be gained by the scientific method, and a lot of it is more important.

Since there is no longer live streaming video, check out the Church’s online audio and video archives to catch the talks you might have missed.