Prophets have foreseen our day, when there would be wars and rumors of wars and when the whole earth would be in commotion. As followers of Jesus Christ, we plead with leaders of nations to find peaceful resolutions to their differences. We call upon people everywhere to pray for those in need, to do what they can to help the distressed, and to seek the Lord’s help in ending any major conflicts.
Russell M. Nelson
"Preaching the Gospel of Peace" General Conference April 2022
Years ago, I received a phone call from an individual who had been arrested for trespassing. He told me it had been revealed to him that additional scripture was buried under the ground floor of a building he tried to enter. He claimed that once he obtained the additional scripture, he knew he would receive the gift of translation, bring forth new scripture, and shape the doctrine and direction of the Church. I told him that he was mistaken, and he implored me to pray about it. I told him I would not. He became verbally abusive and ended the phone call.
I did not need to pray about this request for one simple but profound reason: only the prophet receives revelation for the Church. It would be “contrary to the economy of God” for others to receive such revelation, which belongs on the prophet’s runway.
Dale G. Renlund
"A Framework for Personal Revelation" General Conference October 2022
If we trust the doctrine of Christ, we will approach our Heavenly Father every day in humble, secret prayer, where we can express gratitude for the gift of His Son and for all of our blessings. We can pray for the revelatory companionship of the Holy Ghost, pray to align our will with His, pray to reflect upon our covenants and renew our commitment to keep them. We can pray to sustain and express love for our prophets, seers, and revelators; pray for the cleansing power of forgiveness; and pray for the strength to resist temptation. I invite you to make prayer a priority in your life, seeking each day to improve your communication with God.
If we trust the doctrine of Christ, we will set aside the shiny things of the world so that we can focus on the Redeemer of the world. We will limit or eliminate time spent on social media; digital games; wasteful, excessive, or inappropriate entertainment; the allure of this world’s treasures and vanities; and any other activities that give place to the false traditions and misguided philosophies of men. It is only in Christ we find truth and lasting fulfillment.
"Trusting the Doctrine of Christ" General Conference April 2023
The Savior is not absent from our mortal journeys. For the past two days we have heard Him speak through His chosen leaders that we might draw closer to Him. Time and again, with His pure love and mercy, He sustains us as we face the drama of life. Nephi describes: “My God hath been my support; he hath led me through mine afflictions. … He hath filled me with his love.”
That love is evident when we sustain one another in His work.
We sustain our living prophet at general conference, and the First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, General Authorities, and Officers of the Church. To sustain means to hold up another person, to give them our attention, to be faithful to their trust, to act upon their words. They speak by inspiration of the Lord; they understand the current issues, the moral decline of society, and the adversary’s increasing efforts to thwart the Father’s plan. In holding up our hands, we are committing our support, not just for that moment but in our daily lives.
Sustaining includes holding up our stake presidents and bishops, quorum and organization leaders, teachers, and even camp directors in our wards and stakes. Closer to home, we hold up our wives and our husbands, children, parents, extended family, and neighbors. When we hold up one another we are saying, “I am here for you, not just to hold up your arms and hands when they ‘hang down’ but to be a comfort and strength at your side.”
Ronald A. Rasband
“Behold I Am the Light Which Ye Shall Hold Up” General Conference October 2024
To the Nephites, Jesus said: “Hold up your light that it may shine unto the world. Behold I am the light which ye shall hold up.” We hold up the Lord’s light when we hold fast to our covenants and when we support our living prophet as he speaks the words of God.
President Russell M. Nelson said, when serving in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “Our sustaining of prophets is a personal commitment that we will do our utmost to uphold their prophetic priorities.”
To hold up the prophet is a sacred work. We do not sit quietly by but actively defend him, follow his counsel, teach his words, and pray for him.
Ronald A. Rasband
“Behold I Am the Light Which Ye Shall Hold Up” General Conference October 2024
Brothers and sisters, we need to do more lifting and less murmuring, more upholding the word of the Lord, His ways, and His prophet, who has said: “One of our greatest challenges today is distinguishing between the truths of God and the counterfeits of Satan. That is why the Lord warned us to ‘pray always, … that [we] may conquer Satan, and … escape the hands of the servants of Satan that do uphold [the adversary’s] work’ [Doctrine and Covenants 10:5; emphasis added].”
Ronald A. Rasband
“Behold I Am the Light Which Ye Shall Hold Up” General Conference October 2024
God the Father and His Son’s way of imparting Their wisdom to us prioritizes inviting the power of the Holy Ghost to be our personal teacher as we center Jesus Christ in our lives and in our faithful seeking for Their answers and Their meaning. They invite us to discover truth through devoted time spent studying holy scripture and to seek for latter-day revealed truth for our day and our time, imparted by modern-day prophets and apostles. They entreat us to spend regular, worshipful time in the house of the Lord and to take to our knees in prayer “to access information from heaven.” Jesus’s promise to those present to hear His Sermon on the Mount is as true for us in our day as it was during His earthly ministry: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” Our Savior assures that “your Father which is in heaven give[s] good things to them that ask him.”
Tracy Y. Browning
"Seeking Answers to Spiritual Questions" General Conference October 2024
How could a once-righteous people [the Nephites] become hardened and wicked in such a short period of time? How could people so quickly forget the God who had blessed them so abundantly?
In a powerful and profound way, the negative example of the Nephites is instructive for us today.
“Pride … began to enter … into the hearts of the people who professed to belong to the church of God … because of their exceedingly great riches and their prosperity in the land.”
“[They] set [their] hearts upon the riches and the vain things of this world” “because of that pride which [they] … suffered to enter [into their] hearts, which … lifted [them] up beyond that which is good because of [their] exceedingly great riches!”
Ancient voices from the dust plead with us today to learn this everlasting lesson: prosperity, possessions, and ease constitute a potent mixture that can lead even the righteous to drink the spiritual poison of pride.
Allowing pride to enter into our hearts can cause us to mock that which is sacred; disbelieve in the spirit of prophecy and revelation; trample under our feet the commandments of God; deny the word of God; cast out, mock, and revile against the prophets; and forget the Lord our God and “not desire that the Lord [our] God, who hath created [us], should rule and reign over [us].”
Therefore, if we are not faithful and obedient, we can transform the God-given blessing of prosperity into a prideful curse that diverts and distracts us from eternal truths and vital spiritual priorities. We always must be on guard against a pride-induced and exaggerated sense of self-importance, a misguided evaluation of our own self-sufficiency, and seeking self instead of serving others.
As we pridefully focus upon ourselves, we also are afflicted with spiritual blindness and miss much, most, or perhaps all that is occurring within and around us. We cannot look to and focus upon Jesus Christ as the “mark” if we only see ourselves.
David A. Bednar
"In the Space of Not Many Years" General Conference October 2024
Whom we choose to trust is one of life’s important decisions. King Benjamin instructed his people, “Believe in God; believe that he is … ; believe that he has all wisdom … ; believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend.”
Fortunately, we have the scriptures and guidance from living prophets to help us understand God’s truth. If clarification beyond what we have is needed, God provides it through His prophets. And He will respond to our sincere prayers through the Holy Ghost as we seek to understand truths we do not yet fully appreciate.
Elder Neil L. Andersen once taught that we should not be surprised “if at times [our] personal views are not initially in harmony with the teachings of the Lord’s prophet. These are moments of learning,” he said, “of humility, when we go to our knees in prayer. We walk forward in faith, trusting in God, knowing that with time we will receive more spiritual clarity from our Heavenly Father.”
At all times, it is helpful to remember Alma’s teaching that God gives His word according to the attention and effort we devote to it. If we heed God’s word, we will receive more; if we ignore His counsel, we will receive less and less until we have none. This loss of knowledge does not mean that the truth was wrong; rather, it shows that we have lost the capacity to understand it.
My brothers and sisters, hope is a living gift, a gift that grows as we increase our faith in Jesus Christ. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for.” We build this substance—the evidence blocks of our faith—through prayer, temple covenants, keeping the commandments, continually feasting on the scriptures and the words of modern-day prophets, taking the sacrament, serving others, and worshipping weekly with our fellow Saints.
Neil L. Andersen
"The Triumph of Hope", General Conference October 2024
Brothers and sisters, unlike vintage comic books and classic cars, prophetic teachings do not become more valuable with age. That is why we should not seek to use the words of past prophets to dismiss the teachings of living prophets.
"A Living Prophet for the Latter Days," General Conference April 2023
Knowing by revelation that there is a living prophet on the earth changes everything. It causes one to be uninterested in the debate about when is a prophet speaking as a prophet or whether one is ever justified in selective rejection of prophetic counsel. Such revealed knowledge invites one to trust the counsel of a living prophet, even if we do not fully understand it. After all, a perfect and loving Father in Heaven has chosen the pattern of revealing truth to His children through a prophet, someone who never sought such a sacred calling and who has no need of our help to be aware of his own imperfections. A prophet is someone God has personally prepared, called, corrected, inspired, rebuked, sanctified, and sustained. That is why we are never spiritually at risk in following prophetic counsel.
"A Living Prophet for the Latter Days," General Conference April 2023
Prophets invite us to seek His face. I take this as a reminder that we worship our Father, not a formula, and that we’re not finished until we see Jesus as the face of our Father’s love and follow Him, not just His rules.
"Sir, We Would Like to See Jesus" General Conference October 2023
You may struggle to see God as a loving Father. You may look heavenward and see not the face of love and mercy but a thicket of rules through which you must wend your way. Perhaps you believe God rules in His heavens, speaks through His prophets, and loves your sister, but you secretly wonder whether He loves you. Perhaps you have felt the iron rod in your hand but not yet felt your Savior’s love to which it leads.
"Sir, We Would Like to See Jesus" General Conference October 2023
It was a crisp fall day when I first heard the words “You have cancer.” My husband and I were stunned! As we drove home in silence, processing the news, my heart turned to our three sons.
In my mind I asked Heavenly Father, “Am I going to die?”
The Holy Ghost whispered, “Everything is going to be OK.”
Then I asked, “Am I going to live?”
Again, the answer came: “Everything is going to be OK.”
I was confused. Why did I receive the exact same answer whether I lived or died?
Then suddenly every fiber of my being filled with absolute peace as I was reminded: We did not need to hurry home and teach our children how to pray. They knew how to receive answers and comfort from prayer. We did not need to hurry home and teach them about the scriptures or words of living prophets. Those words were already a familiar source of strength and understanding. We did not need to hurry home and teach them about repentance, the Resurrection, the Restoration, the plan of salvation, eternal families, or the very doctrine of Jesus Christ.
In that moment every family home evening lesson, scripture study session, prayer of faith offered, blessing given, testimony shared, covenant made and kept, house of the Lord attended, and Sabbath day observed mattered—oh, how it mattered! It was too late to put oil in our lamps. We needed every single drop, and we needed it right now!
"Abide the Day in Christ," General Conference October 2023
We do not need to… seek counsel from exotic sources, prizing the novelty of the source and thinking such counsel will be more enlightened than that which we can receive from a humble prophet of God.
“Jesus Christ is the Treasure” General Conference October 2023
