I Gave You A Prophet!

May 7th, 2018

Scott

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TheDiscipleMD

Over 30 years ago I was teaching Seminary, as a volunteer, at a major university. Class started at 7am each day and the class consisted of twenty-five to thirty junior and seniors. At age 26 I was full of energy and vitality and I did my best to keep the attention of groggy teenagers who wanted to be somewhere else other than in a religion class. Sometimes I felt that I was putting on a one hour, one-man show. On one occasion I recall being out of ideals so I located a video-tape of Spencer W. Kimball, who was serving as the president of the church, and showed it to the class. I stood in the back of the class as the tape played showing a General Conference talk of his.

It was apparent that President Kimball couldn’t hold their attention as within minutes the students were either talking or sleeping. I let the tape run it’s full 15 to 20 minutes all the while observing what was going on, but never saying a word. After the tape ended I turned off the recorder and asked the class what they had learned. No one raised their hand, which was no surprise to me, they were teenagers after all. I then said:

“If I had put on a 30 minute TV show of any kind or showed you part of a professional sports event you would have watched with great interest. Instead I gave you a Prophet, and you paid no attention and gave no heed to his words.”

Perhaps I learned the most from that morning’s lesson. It is so easy to pass judgement on people in history. Whether they be from the scriptures or from secular history. We say to ourselves that we wouldn’t be like them. We wouldn’t have rejected Christ. We wouldn’t have stoned the prophets! We wouldn’t have done this, we wouldn’t have done that. But sometimes we have a moment of lucid enlightenment that tells us that we might not be as noble as we think.

Do we invite fictional entertaining characters created by man into our homes so often that they crowd out the words and messages of the Lord’s servants? May we also take time to entertain men and women of God in our homes via the great technology that has been inspired by our Heavenly Father.

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ROOTS OF INSPIRATION

In 2007 I began writing a daily inspirational thought to my children, now grown, with the intent to draw them closer to Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. The influence of the gospel of Jesus Christ is found in all aspects of our lives. The Savior was a great teacher because he taught parables that resonated with the common man. He could relate simple stories that could be understood by all. I have found the more simple the story, the more profound the message.All of our testimonies can have a powerful impact for good for centuries if we take the time to write them down. After all, the scriptures are simply the inspired thoughts and interaction of men with deity that have been written down for all to read. There is no reason that our influence for good has to go with us to the grave. I have hopes, as did Jacob whose final words were, “…to the reader I bid farewell, hoping that many of my brethren may read my words. Brethren, adieu”