God Speaks Through Prophets: Understanding the Pattern of Revelation

In a world filled with competing voices claiming truth, make the choice to recognize God's established pattern of revelation.

One of the central beliefs of our faith is that God reveals His will through prophets, and has done so since the beginning of time. This isn't just a historical fact—it's an ongoing reality. The heavens are still open, and God still speaks to His children through chosen servants.

The Divine Pattern of Revelation

The Lord declared in Amos 3:7, "The Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets." This pattern is woven throughout scripture. In fact, all scripture comes from this revelatory relationship between the Lord and His prophets and apostles.

When a prophet receives a revelation from God, he shares it, records it, and often uses it to interpret and expound upon past prophecies and revelations from former prophets.

Consider how the gospel writers understood Christ's mission. As Christ's divinity was revealed to Matthew, he saw in Him the fulfillment of prior prophecy. Throughout his gospel, Matthew quotes or refers to Old Testament scripture 124 times to illustrate that Christ is the fulfillment of ancient prophecies. Mark does this 70 times, Luke 109, and John 27.

Why does this matter? Think about the Jews at the time of Christ, who missed His divinity because they were only relying on past scripture. What might we miss when we pick and choose which of the Lord's prophets we are willing to accept and which ones we aren't?

The revelation given to prophets illuminates the bigger picture and plan that God has for His children, and the reason that Jesus Christ is so central to that plan.

Prophets Always Point to Christ

Prophetic revelation always points to Jesus Christ. In Revelation 19:10, we learn that the spirit of prophecy is a spiritual gift and is the testimony of Jesus.

In 2 Nephi 25:26, we read: "And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins."

It's one of the primary roles of a prophet to be a witness of Jesus Christ. The word "witness" can mean to see or know by personal presence, to bear testimony, or to give evidence of.

We have example after example of people witnessing the Lord in vision:

- At the beginning of the book of Ezekiel, he describes the heavens being opened and visions of God on His throne being shown to him.
- In Acts 7, we read Stephen's vision: "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God."
- The apostles of the New Testament bore witness of the risen Lord, whom they had seen with their own eyes. Christ said to them: "Ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judæa, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."

Prophets bear witness to the world of Jesus Christ, and the things they teach point to Him. This is the pattern established by God throughout scripture.

The Preservation of Truth

The Book of Mormon itself originates from a prophet named Lehi who had a revelatory experience where he saw "God, sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels in the attitude of singing and praising their God." He also saw "One descending out of the midst of heaven" whose "luster was above that of the sun at noon-day," along with twelve others following Him. What he saw was God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ, and what follows is his commission to preach repentance to the people of Jerusalem.

His sharing of this revelation got him death threats, and he had to take his family and flee Jerusalem just before the Babylonian invasion in 587 BC.

Some might pause here and say that the Christian gospel didn't exist until 600 years later. But the gospel centered around Jesus Christ as the Savior of the World did not originate with Christ's earthly ministry. When He came to suffer, die, and rise again, He also restored truth that had become lost or corrupted in the years leading up to His birth.

Prophecies of Christ had existed for centuries, but many of them have been lost from the Bible that we know today. What has survived are the almost esoteric writings of Isaiah, essentially speaking in code about Christ to avoid removal from the canon.

In 1 Nephi 13:24-26, Lehi's son Nephi sees a vision of the coming of the Messiah, and the subsequent obscuring of the plain and precious truths about His mission, His character, and His covenants:

"And the angel of the Lord said unto me: Thou hast beheld that the book proceeded forth from the mouth of a Jew; and when it proceeded forth from the mouth of a Jew it contained the fulness of the gospel of the Lord... Wherefore, these things go forth from the Jews in purity unto the Gentiles... And after they go forth by the hand of the twelve apostles of the Lamb, from the Jews unto the Gentiles, thou seest the formation of that great and abominable church... for behold, they have taken away from the gospel of the Lamb many parts which are plain and most precious; and also many covenants of the Lord have they taken away."

One of my favorite descriptions of the Book of Mormon comes from Jonah Barnes, author of *Key to the Keystone*, who says it's like R2D2 boarding the escape pod with the Death Star plans, getting out just in time to escape the destruction. The Book of Mormon preserves the precious truth of Jesus Christ as the Savior, preached before the Christian era—truth that would've been in the Bible had there not been a removal of plain and precious truths after the Babylonian invasion and then again with the New Testament after the lives of Jesus' 12 apostles.

This one true gospel was originally revealed to Adam and Eve after they were expelled from the Garden of Eden, and was always centered around the Savior Jesus Christ. They taught it to their family, but eventually, their descendants rejected it. These descendants went on to found nations and institute religious traditions that closely mirrored what they knew, but had lost the fullness of truth.

Understanding Dispensations

In our faith, we refer to time periods where the true gospel is revealed, preached, and practiced as dispensations. These periods are separated by widespread apostasy, or falling away from the truth. Each new dispensation is essentially God putting a stop to the apostasy by revealing the truth anew.

It's unclear exactly how many dispensations there have been since Adam, but we know from the scriptures that Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Moses led dispensations in ancient times. Christ Himself led the dispensation in which He came to fulfill all of the ancient prophecies and to turn the key to this gospel He had revealed to prior prophets throughout time.

He spoke against the ruling religious elite of the time, who in the absence of the plain and precious truth of Christ as the central figure and key to the gospel, had let the law become their God. His dispensation was a dispensation of restoration as well as fulfillment.

The Restoration in Our Time

Remember when Christ, in establishing His church in His dispensation, said this to Peter? "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

One way that the gates of hell never have and never will prevail against Christ's church and gospel is by the repeated restoration of truth through prophets in each dispensation.

In Ephesians 1, Paul says "He hath made known unto us the mystery of His will… that in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ."

The Lord's New Testament apostles prophesied about the dispensation we are living in right now, which is the dispensation of the fulness of times, led by a restoration of the true gospel to Joseph Smith starting with a vision in 1820.

This is what the Lord promised in Isaiah when He said "for behold, I will proceed to do a marvelous work among my people, even a marvelous work and a wonder."

The Importance of Prophets Today

Prophets are an important part of God's revealing His truth to us in each dispensation. They stand as witnesses of Him and teachers of His gospel, no matter what the most prevalent beliefs, practices, or schools of thought are in their day.

In Acts 3:19-21, we read: "Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began."

​In a world where many claim that God no longer speaks, choose to believe in His unchanging pattern of revelation through prophets. Through them, we can understand the bigger picture of God's plan and the central role of Jesus Christ in bringing to pass our immortality and eternal life.