"As the prophet spoke, I looked to him. He redirected my focus to look up to God, where I could be healed and strengthened through Christ’s Atonement. That is what prophets do for us. They lead us to God."
“The trouble with most of our prayers is that we give them as if we were picking up the telephone and ordering groceries—we place our order and hang up. We need to meditate, contemplate, think of what we are praying about and for and then speak to the Lord as one man speaketh to another”
Gordon B. Hinckley (Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley, 469).
"It is important to understand that God never sealed the heavens in the first place; man did. It was man who proclaimed that there would be no more revelation, that God had said all He had to say. Yet how presumptuous for man to tell God that He can't speak to His children! Indeed... Heavenly Father spoke to a 14-year-old boy who approached him in simple, earnest prayer and who clearly believed that He would respond. I take comfort in knowing that God loves His children today as much as He loved those in ancient times who had the blessing and benefit of prophetic direction."
M. Russell Ballard (Our Search for Happiness, 92)
"Continuing revelation does not demean or discredit existing revelation. The Old Testament does not lose its value in our eyes when we are introduced to the New Testament, and the New Testament is only enhanced when we read the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. In considering the additional scripture accepted by Latter-day Saints, we might ask: Were those early Christians who for decades had access only to the primitive Gospel of Mark (generally considered the first of the New Testament Gospels to be written)—were they offended to receive the more detailed accounts set forth later by Matthew and Luke, to say nothing of the unprecedented passages and revelatory emphasis offered later yet by John? Surely they must have rejoiced that ever more convincing evidence of the divinity of Christ kept coming. And so do we rejoice."
“Brothers and sisters, the prophecies of Christ's first coming were fulfilled, ‘every whit.’ As a result, many throughout the world believe that the Savior did come and did live in the meridian of time. But there are still many prophecies yet to be fulfilled! In this and other conferences, we hear living prophets prophesy and testify of Christ's Second Coming. They also witness of the signs and wonders all about us, telling us that Christ will surely come again. Are we choosing to believe their words? Or despite their witnesses and warnings, are we waiting for evidence--are we ‘walking in darkness at noon-day’ (D&C 95:6), refusing to see by the light of modern prophecy, and denying that the Light of the World will return to rule and reign among us?”
“Sometimes it seems we take the scriptures too much for granted because we do not fully appreciate how rare a thing it is to possess them, and how blessed we are because we do have them. We seem to have settled so comfortably into our experiences in this world and become so accustomed to hearing the gospel taught among us that it is hard for us to imagine it could ever have been otherwise. . . .
“We need to sense something of the depth of the spiritual darkness that prevailed before that day in the spring of 1820 when the Father and the Son appeared to Joseph Smith—a darkness which was foreseen by the prophet Nephi and described as ‘that awful state of blindness’ in which the gospel was withheld from man.”
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