Question: My instinct tells me not everything we are taught is true. There are so many confusing voices these days. What is the best way to search the scriptures to find out if something is true? Answer: A simple way to search the scriptures and determine for yourself if something is true is to use […]
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Question: I have always wanted to follow the prophet but I’m having difficulty doing so recently. My friends say the prophet will never lead people astray because if he did the Lord would take him away. Is this true? Answer: The beliefs that we should follow a prophet and that a prophet of God won’t
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Vague ideas exist about the so-called “gathering” or “gathering of Israel,” but do we really know how the scriptures define what this is? The same applies to the idea of “hastening the work.” As both are an integral part of the same end-time scenario, and as neither has yet occurred according to their scriptural definitions,
Book of Mormon examples of the Davidic Covenant in action exist for anyone who wants a clear idea of how it operates. Without its end-time reinstitution among the Ephraimite Gentiles, the prophesied gathering and restoration of the house of Israel—Jews, Ten Tribes, and Lamanites—cannot occur. Nor can the coming in glory of Jehovah/Jesus to reign
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Because people’s spiritual awareness is proportional to the purity of their lives—to the degree they live by God’s divine laws—one can rarely say he knows God until he does so experientially through that process. The opposite is to never know God. When worldliness becomes the norm, it shuts out people’s ability to reach him and
Question: Can you give the signs needed to identify the “Endtime or Davidic servant”? Will his coming be easily detected? Answer: Because the servant is “hidden” from the world for the purpose of testing God’s people at the time God calls him, I tend to stay away from talking about this person’s identity other than
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When a corrupt few come to power who are upheld by the many—who themselves are on the high road to corruption—they can’t expect the few not to exercise controls over the many contrary to the latter’s expectations when their own lawlessness demands it. Nor—under those same ostensibly lawful auspices—can the many expect the few not
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We can observe a huge difference between “searching” the words of Isaiah and not doing so in responses to the question and answer in Doctrine & Covenant 113:5–6: “What is the root of Jesse spoken of in the 10th verse of the 11th chapter? Behold, thus saith the Lord, it is a descendant of Jesse,
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When first learning how the prophecy of Isaiah informs us today, it is important to understand four basic points. (1) That Isaiah spoke simultaneously of things that “have been”—in own his day or soon thereafter—and also of what “shall be” at the coming of the Lord (3 Nephi 23:3). In other words, even the purely
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Hugh Nibley used to tell of his grandfather who served in the church’s First Presidency in the early twentieth century that he personally knew of no one who had seen an angel, and that if one should appear to him he would “jump out of that window!” Almost a century earlier, the prophet Joseph Smith
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An eminent danger in following a man rather than Jesus Christ is that people so habituated who become disillusioned with one leader will simply transfer their allegiance to another. As false christs and false prophets will be the order of the day (Matthew 24:24), these will find fertile soil among persons who aren’t grounded in
Isaiah’s method of prophesying end-time events based on types or patterns from the past provides a safeguard against counterfeits, which inevitably precede and accompany the real thing. False prophets and messiahs, delusive promises of deliverance, spurious “miracles”—all will test people’s faith in God and their knowledge of the facts. The comforting thing about Isaiah’s prophecies
Patterns from Israel’s Past—A Sure Guideline Read More »
