Why Do Mormons Obey Their Prophet?
Filed under: Basic LDS Beliefs, Church Organization, Counsel from Church Leaders, Jesus Christ, LDS Q&A
Mormonism is often known as a strict religion with many rules. Mormons are often asked why they obey and why they let others decide how they should live.
It is helpful to understand a little about the role of the Mormon prophet and how Mormons view him. With this knowledge, it is easier to understand why Mormons are willing to follow a prophet.
Students of the Bible are familiar with the concept of prophets. In Old Testament times, God called men to be prophets to deliver God’s word to the people. While each person is able to pray to God privately and learn His word, it would be very complicated to pray about each possible doctrine individually. God also has messages for us we might not think to pray for. A prophet serves as a channel for all the information a person needs to live according to God’s plan. In a world in which many prominent people are willing to guess at God’s word, and to teach their personal beliefs as scripture, a prophet is a sure source of information. Christians want to be certain they are living as Jesus taught, and not as someone else has decided they should live.
Adam was the first prophet on earth, speaking directly to God to learn truth and to find out what God wanted Him to do. Other prophets soon followed. Of course, there have been times when God withdrew prophecy because the people refused to listen or to honor the prophets, but He has always restored them. Prophets were on the earth to prepare the people for the first coming of Christ, and as we approach the second coming, we naturally need prophets again. For this reason, God restored prophets to the earth in modern times. The second coming requires as much preparation as did the first coming.
But how do the Mormons know their prophet really is the prophet God has chosen for this time? Mormons are taught from early childhood, and, if they are considering becoming Mormon, to ask God who the prophet is. They are instructed not to take the word of anyone on earth—not the Church’s word, not that of their parents, not that of their teachers. All of those sources are a place to be taught the gospel, but no one can give another person a testimony. A testimony can come only from God through confirmation from the Holy Ghost.
“If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him,” taught James, believed by many scholars to be the half-brother of Jesus. (See James 1:5) Each person is entitled to turn to God for wisdom and to find out for Himself, from the only source that is completely trustworthy, that the head of the Mormon church is indeed God’s prophet. Prior to baptism, prospective members are interviewed and asked if they have taken this step.
Once a member has gained a testimony of the prophet, they can trust His teachings. However, should they at any time feel uneasy about something, they can again return to God to pray about it. This is why Mormons who have taken the time to pray about their choices are unshakable. They gained their testimonies directly from God.
Some outsiders will warn their members not to pray about which church to join, or about the prophets, because they claim the petitioner won’t know who is answering. Mormons, however, trust God. Because God promised in the Bible that we could ask Him anything and receive an answer, we trust Him to keep that promise. We know God can do anything, including answering us in a way we can recognize as coming from Him. The better we know God, and the more time we spend talking to Him and “listening” to Him, the more familiar His “voice” will become to us. Of course, prayer answers seldom come through a voice, so this is a symbolic way of speaking. It means we can recognize the ways he communicates with us, and understand how to know what the answer is. Mormons ask God because they believe Him when He makes promises.
Learn how to recognize answers to prayers.
Having an understanding of the process followed by Mormons to learn whether or not God speaks to us through prophets as well as individually, you are ready to understand why Mormons are willing to take direction from this prophet. You may already understand it, if you are a person who always strives to do what God wants you to do.
Mormons are taught the gospel of Jesus Christ as it is revealed in the scriptures. These scriptures include both the Old and New Testaments, as well as scriptures revealed through prophets in modern times, including the Book of Mormon and also as it is revealed to the prophets.
These scriptures teach us both the penalties for ignoring God and the blessings that come from obedience. We’ve seen throughout history that fear of punishment is not enough to make people obey God. Noah relentlessly taught the gospel to the people, and warned them of the upcoming flood. Despite this, they chose to ignore his warnings and continue in their sins. Why did they do this? Some probably didn’t believe Noah. Others thought it couldn’t happen to them. Most disobeyed simply because they did not love God more than they loved their sins.
Although Mormons are taught the consequences of disobedience, they don’t focus on them. Instead, they are taught to obey out of love for God. “If ye love me, keep my commandments,” Jesus taught. (See John 14:15) Love should always be the reason for obedience. Obedience that grows out of love for God is sincere and powerful. It is easier to keep the commandments for One we love, and the greater our love, the greater our obedience. Obedience that comes from fear or from a mere sense of obligation seldom lasts and does not produce all the blessings of obedience done from the heart. Obeying from love enlarges our spirit, increases our testimony, and helps us to become a better person. It allows us to become more like Jesus Christ.
A previous Mormon prophet, Ezra Taft Benson, taught, “When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power.” (See Elder Donald L. Staheli Of the Seventy CES Fireside for Young Adults on 2 March 2003.)
Did God Create the Earth in Seven Days?
Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints revere and honor the Bible as the word of God. They also have additional writings from Moses and from Abraham, as revealed to the prophet Joseph Smith. These writings clarify some important points about the creation as described in the book of Genesis.
The book of Genesis speaks of each portion of the Creation taking place during one day. For example, most of us are familiar with Genesis 1:5, which reads, “And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.”
The book of Abraham, in the Latter-day Saint book of scripture known as the Pearl of Great Price, uses slightly different terminology to describe the creative periods. After the day is divided from the night, mention is made of “the first, or the beginning, of that which they called day and night.” (Abraham 4:5). Beyond that, the creative periods are designated as “the second time” (Abraham 4:8) or “the third time” (Abraham 4:13) that night and day occurs.
One author has written, “We therefore learn that periods of time for the Creation may have lasted 24 hours each, 1,000 years, or even millions of years. The periods of time are indeterminate in length; as one phase of the creation was finished, the next began. Therefore the age of the earth before Adam and Eve could have been great indeed.” (Robert J. Woodford, “‘In the Beginning’: A Latter-day Perspective,” Ensign, Jan. 1998, 12)
Bruce R. McConkie, an apostle of the Church until his death in 1985, shared these insights: “But first, what is a day? It is a specified time period; it is an age, an eon, a division of eternity; it is the time between two identifiable events. And each day, of whatever length, has the duration needed for its purposes… There is no revealed recitation specifying that each of the “six days” involved in the Creation was of the same duration.” (“Christ and the Creation,” Ensign, Jun 1982, 9).
The important thing to remember here is our trust in the Lord and His purposes. It might be nice to know exactly how the world was created and how long it took, but God, in His wisdom, has chosen not to bog us down with that information at that time. As we exercise our faith in Him, we can come to understand that, regardless of exactly how He created the heavens and the earth, He did do so. And He did a pretty good job.
Are Mormons Christian?
Are Mormons Christian? The short answer is yes. The very name of the Church itself, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, indicates that we place Christ at the center of our religion. Nephi, a prophet in the Book of Mormon, tells us:
“We talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ” (2 Nephi 25:26). Notice that Nephi is writing to us more than 500 years before the birth of Christ. Yet he and his contemporaries had a knowledge of Christ, His impending Atonement for the sins of all mankind, and His resurrection. They looked forward to His coming.
In the same group of scriptures, Nephi says the following: “There is none other name given under heaven save it be this Jesus Christ, of which I have spoken, whereby man can be saved … We labor diligently to write, to persuade our children and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do … We are made alive in Christ because of our faith” (2 Nephi 25:20, 23, 25).
Countless other prophets have testified of the divine role of our Savior Jesus Christ. In January of the year 2000, the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles issued a statement entitled “The Living Christ: The Testimony of the Apostles, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” In it they state:
We bear testimony, as His duly ordained Apostles-that Jesus is the Living Christ, the immortal Son of God. He is the great King Immanuel, who stands today on the right hand of His Father. He is the light, the life, and the hope of the world. His way is the path that leads to happiness in this life and eternal life in the world to come. God be thanked for the matchless gift of His divine Son. (“The Living Christ: The Testimony of the Apostles, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” Ensign, Apr. 2000, 2)
Members of the Church recognize all who believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior as Christians. Yet some people outside the Church don’t extend that same definition to Latter-day Saints. Some erroneously believe we worship Joseph Smith, or that we don’t believe in Christ at all. Some are confused because of our nickname “Mormons,” and think that someone or something named Mormon must be at the center of our religion. Others are concerned because we don’t follow the Christian tradition of the Trinity, which came about in the First Council of Nicea in 325 AD, long after Christ and the Apostles were gone. Latter-day Saints believe fully in God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost. The difference is that we believe them to be three separate beings, although completely unified in purpose. Of this, President Gordon B. Hinckley, the current prophet of the Church, has said:
Our faith, our knowledge is not based on ancient tradition, the creeds which came of a finite understanding and out of the almost infinite discussions of men trying to arrive at a definition of the risen Christ. Our faith, our knowledge comes of the witness of a prophet in this dispensation who saw before him the great God of the universe and His Beloved Son, the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. They spoke to him. He spoke with Them. He testified openly, unequivocally, and unabashedly of that great vision. It was a vision of the Almighty and of the Redeemer of the world, glorious beyond our understanding but certain and unequivocating in the knowledge which it brought. It is out of that knowledge, rooted deep in the soil of modern revelation, that we, in the words of Nephi, “talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that [we and] our children may know to what source [we] may look for a remission of [our] sins” (2 Ne. 25:26). (Gordon B. Hinckley, “We Look to Christ,” Liahona, Jul 2002, 101-2)
To this I add my own testimony. As a Latter-day Saint, I believe with all my heart that Jesus Christ is my Savior and my Redeemer. I only hope that in some small way I can help Him, after all he has done for me.