This month’s First Presidency message continues the incessant chant and chorus that perpetually emanates from the brethren:
Follow the prophet
Follow the prophet
Follow the prophet
Don’t go Astraaaaay eh
Follow the prophet
Follow the prophet
Follow the prophet
He knows the way!
We read of a vignette in President Monson’s life of some good advice and counsel he received from his then stake president and future president of the church, Harold B. Lee. This leader told him not to pursue a commission in the navy, something Monson supposedly had his heart set on. He took this advice and was glad that he got out. It was a close shave, because if he hadn’t gotten out when he did he just might have ended up in Korea during the Korean War. Whew!
What is interesting to me is this: what is being advocated here is the exact opposite of what we should be doing when we have questions about life.
We shouldn’t be running to the prophet, or church leaders for answers. On the contrary we should be running to the Lord, and seeking for the Holy Spirit to find answers to our questions. We should be counseled to become spiritually self-reliant and self-sufficient, instead of becoming spiritually dependent upon others. We don’t need spiritual food stamps or spiritual welfare.
Joseph Smith taught his people that their eyes were being darkened because they were relying too much on the prophet. He wanted them to look to the Lord first. My question is: Why don’t we hear similar messages today? Are we so insecure at the top that we can’t promote true doctrine and preach spiritually what we teach temporally — self reliance?
The final paragraph of the message points us right at the idol:
“If you want to see the light of heaven, if you want to feel the inspiration of Almighty God, if you want to have that feeling within your bosom that your Heavenly Father is guiding you, then follow the prophets of God. When you follow the prophets, you will be in safe territory.”
In other words, look to us. If you don’t you:
1- Won’t see the light of heaven or feel the inspiration of God
2- Won’t have a feeling that you are being guided
3- Won’t be in safe territory
Really? The Keeper of the Gate is the Holy One of Israel, and he employeth no servant there. Our salvation is not dependent upon our relationship with a human, it is dependent upon our relationship with the LORD!
How about delivering us a message straight out of the scriptures like this one:
I will not put my trust in the arm of flesh; for I know that cursed is he that putteth his trust in the arm of flesh. Yea, cursed is he that putteth his trust in man or maketh flesh his arm. 2 Nephi 4:34
The fact is that prophets can lead us astray. There is no safety in blindly following the president of the church or anyone who is sustained by common consent as a prophet, seer and revelator. We must become spiritually self-sufficient to survive. It has always been the case.
For examples and further discussion read this post on how not to be deceived.
One Who Is Searching 
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Great post! Overall I’m loving this blog so far! This particular first presidency message is the first time I know of in the history of the church where the prophet himself tells the church to follow him. This is a huge turning point. Although, I guess maybe not completely since Monson is suffering dementia and likely didn’t actually write this message. The message was a repeat of a previous talk with some extra “follow the prophet” mantra thrown in at the end. So maybe we can’t really consider this as the prophet coming out and saying “follow me”.
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IanG, your comment is a perfect example of how each aspect of apostasy begins. Now that someone else has taken the liberty to add lines to an old talk by President Monson and submit it under Monson’s name at the tail end of the 1st Presidency Message for the January 2015 Ensign, the path has been paved for future church Presidents who don’t have dimentia to advocate the same dangerous counsel. Only when they do it, it will be more forceful, more coercive, more brazen, and with their full, cognitive approval.
Satan uses small degrees of variation and the passage of time to slowly turn all of God’s commandments completely on their head. Consider the whole “follow the prophet” mantra.
Generations ago, Wilford Woodruff told the church that the prophet can’t lead the church astray, but not because he was trying to promote new doctrine; he was just trying to ease people’s minds about his flip flop on polygamy. The remark was almost flippant. A generation later, the concept that a prophet can’t lead the church astray was used in a church magazine, stating that on certain issues, “When the prophet speaks, the thinking has been done”.
A generation after that, this line about the prophet doing the thinking for everyone else found its way into a General Conference address by a member of Relief Society. Shortly thereafter it was edited and used completely out of a context by a General Authoriy.
Then a generation later we got Ezra Taft Benson’s infamous ’14 fundamentals’ speech given to BYU while a member of the quorum of the 12, for which he was chastised by President Kimball in private. Today we find the false and abominable creed being promoted in correlated gospel doctrine manuals. It is becoming a regular theme of General Conference addresses, and at least one apostle has arrogantly decared that “I am scripture” in a public venue.
Behind their closed doors, only God knows what these prideful, ambitious, extortioning, self-justifying, pseudo-scripture wiedling philosphers of men claim to know as they seek deep to hide their counsels from the Lord. (And their journals from the world, I might add.)
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Sorry for the delayed response but you bring up a very good point here in your comment. You said it takes “small degrees of variation and the passage of time” to completely change the commandments and how things work in the church. This is exactly right, just like Uchdorf’s talk about being off by only one degree. The church has changed by one degree many times over the years and each one of those degrees has resulted in a completely different church than what was started by Joseph. Just some examples of this one degree change that has resulted in enormous changes currently or in the past are: word of wisdom, temples, work for dead, tithing, follow the prophet, common consent, correlation, polygamy, blacks and priesthood, and much more.
You make a good point that this now paves the way for future prophets to potentially start telling people to follow them. However, I still feel like this may not happen because, in my opinion, once someone rises to become the president of the church they realize there is nothing that has changed or is special about them and the cognitive dissonance is so strong they just fall back on the things they believe are 100% true. Really all we ever heard from monson is to be good and follow Jesus. He never really said anything substantial in his conference talks.
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