For further study, we recommend this book by Duane Boyce and Kimberly White. Purchase here.
Duane Boyce
Letter to a Young Friend:
Everyone runs into criticisms of the Church from time to time—I know you have—and sometimes such challenges can seem disconcerting. They make you wonder if the restored Gospel is really true. In light of the criticisms around you, this questioning is normal.
It is useful to recognize, though, that criticism of God’s work is nothing new. It has actually attended His work from the very beginning: Lucifer objected to the Father’s Plan right at the start, in the pre-earth life (Moses 4:1–4); later, Cain had a rebellious and complaining spirit toward God’s actions (Moses 5:16–26); the children of Israel complained incessantly about Moses;1 later prophets, from Elijah to Samuel the Lamanite to John the Baptist, were similarly criticized;2 and the scribes and Pharisees at the time of Christ devoted themselves to condemning the Savior and his actions.3 So there is nothing new in the fact that criticisms abound in our day; they have always abounded.
There is another matter that is also useful to recognize. It is that there are certain core truths, that, taken together, address every criticism you might encounter. There are eleven of these core truths, and they include: three about the Gospel itself; three about academic writing and research; four about how the Lord leads His Church; and a final core truth about how the Lord leads all His Saints. I would like to share these with you over the next few pages, and then illustrate their application with two examples of such criticisms. With this background, I believe you will be equipped to take it from there on your own if that’s what you want to do. I think you will find it all quite easy.
Three Central Truths about the Gospel
We Do Not—and Cannot—Even Come Close to Knowing All that Heavenly Father Knows
Think of a puzzle with a thousand pieces. The shape, shading, and color of any individual piece makes no sense on its own. When we see the whole puzzle, however, and see how the piece fits in with everything else, it actually makes perfect sense.
With this in mind, think of those who mocked Jesus as He hung on the Cross.4 They just “knew” that if He were really divine, He would come down and end His suffering. But the truth is that those who ridiculed the Savior actually had no idea what a Divine Being would do. They didn’t understand what motivates God, were ignorant about the plan of salvation and the Atonement, and were completely mistaken about the Savior’s reasons for being on the Cross in the first place. They had no idea what the big puzzle looked like and thus no idea how this event—this particular “piece”—fit into it. They thought they knew a lot, but they really didn’t know anything.
We, too, risk thinking we know more than we do. Even with the Gospel, it is best to acknowledge, explicitly and right up front, that we do not—and cannot—even come close to knowing all that God knows. Unfortunately, criticisms of the Church routinely ignore this fact. In the spirit of Lucifer, Cain, and the scribes and Pharisees, they assume at the start that beings less than God are nevertheless good judges of God—of what He would and wouldn’t do, and even of what He should and shouldn’t do. But not only is this folly, it also leads to absurd consequence—like the mockers at the Cross ridiculing the Savior at the very time He was sacrificing His life to save them.
Far better to acknowledge, explicitly and right up front, how little we actually comprehend of God’s infinite knowledge and perspective. Then, when we encounter some element of God’s work that we can’t quite understand (really, why couldn’t the Gentiles receive the Gospel at the same time as the Jews? didn’t that make them second-class? and is having a second-class group really consistent with God’s love?), we can at least be open to the possibility that the problem might not be with that element but with our understanding. Such an attitude would have helped the children of Israel in following Moses, for example, not to mention how it would have helped the mockers at the Cross. Both groups thought they were witnessing something that God would never do—at the very time He was doing it. For both groups, a little humility would have gone a long way.
However, Although We Can Never Know Most Things, Through the Spirit We Can Know the Most Important Things
To repeat: because our mortal intellects are so limited, we know virtually nothing compared to what the Lord knows. Indeed, we will never even come close to knowing most things in this life. However, the Lord is eager to testify to us of the most important things. These things we can know with absolute, perfect certainty through the Spirit. They include: There is a God, He truly is our Heavenly Father, and He has a divine Plan for us; we have a Savior, Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten of the Father, who performed the infinite Atonement for us; the Gospel of Jesus Christ was restored through Joseph Smith—the prophet chosen to hold the keys of this final dispensation of God’s work on earth; the Book of Mormon is the word of God; and, the Lord directs His Church today through living prophets, seers, and revelators.
Because these (and matters closely related to them) are the most significant and comprehensive matters pertaining to our lives, they are the most important things to know. In fact, knowing only these things—and nothing else—is enough to tell us how to live and whom to follow. There will still be much we don’t know, and even never know in this life, but we can be content that we know what is most important to know . . . and that changes everything.
Knowledge through the Spirit
And the way we know these things is through the Spirit. Our mortal intellects are so paltry that the Lord does not rely on providing evidence to them to convince us of the truth—evidence based on what we can see, hear, feel, and use our intellects to think about. Thinking is involved in examining spiritual claims, of course, but it is not what the Lord relies on. Instead, He ultimately communicates eternal truth by the Spirit—manifestations that the Prophet referred to as “pure intelligence.”5 Such pure intelligence, communicated by the Spirit, provides the perfect certainty that reason and the senses alone cannot provide. Everyone who has received such revelation can testify that this is true. Indeed, President Joseph F. Smith once said that through the power of the Spirit, we should come to know the truth “as God knows it.”6 That is how literal it is to say that we can know with perfect certainty. In fact, it is how Peter, Andrew, and the others came to follow the Savior: not because He confronted them with convincing arguments, but simply because, without argument, He called them—and, in hearing His calling, they recognized the voice of the Shepherd.7
Again, examining intellectual evidence is fine, of course, and for some it is an important place to start—either in first learning about the Gospel, or in wondering about criticisms of the Church. But we don’t ultimately need it. The Lord has told us how to access His Spirit and receive His witness about the most important things: we are to earnestly obey (John 7:17), and to earnestly ponder and pray to Him (Moroni 10:3–5). That is His formula for us to learn the truth, and it is a formula that is real. It is tempting to try every formula but this one, of course; nevertheless, this is the one He has established.
The Intellectual Approach—and Its Problems
Criticisms of the Church invariably either overlook this reality about the Spirit or at least fail to appreciate it. They assume that reaching a conclusion about the Church is a matter of the intellect—of straightforward logic: we just add up all the evidence, pro and con, and then reach a decision about what to believe. Critics’ objective is to pile up enough “con” evidence to show that the Church’s claims can’t be true, or at least to show that the claims are completely implausible, and thus to justify rejection of them.
There are two major difficulties with this approach, however. One is that this logical process is just not as tidy as critics suppose. When it comes to spiritual matters (for example, was Joseph Smith a prophet or not?), there will never be an end to the evidence that various people will believe ought to be considered, and there will never be an end to arguments about the proper interpretation of things that one side or the other claims to be evidence. This means that the intellectual approach will never come to an end—it will leave us in limbo forever—because it can never produce proof. Whatever intellectual conclusion one reaches, there will always be an intellectual reason to doubt it.
The other problem is what I said earlier: the intellectual approach overlooks our ability, through the Spirit, to know the most important things with certainty. Possessed of this sure knowledge, there will still be a huge number of things we don’t know (that’s what we learn from #1), but we can be content in recognizing that we know what is most important to know. At that point, ongoing intellectual arguments might interest us, but they will not be important to us. We might engage in them in order to help others along the path, but to us personally they won’t really matter.
Bottom line: the Lord does not have us rely on intellectual means to learn spiritual truths. Ultimately, He has us use spiritual means to learn spiritual truths. And the spiritual truths He wants us to learn are those that are most important.
The Most Important Things to Know are Also the Most Important Things to Teach
If a non-Christian friend asked you to tell him about Christ, there are many places you might start. You could tell him that we don’t really know what year He was born, that the Gospels aren’t consistent in what they say about the resurrection, that He once assaulted people in the temple, that He destroyed multitudes in the flood, that He will destroy multitudes more at His Second Coming—and so forth.
But my guess is that you wouldn’t start with any of these, because all of them omit the most important things about the Savior: His divinity, His role in the Father’s Plan, His infinite Atonement, His perfect love and wisdom, etc. These are the most important things to know about Him, and, because of this, my guess is that you would believe they are also the most important things to teach about Him.
I think this is a general principle that applies everywhere: the most important things to know are also the most important things to teach. This is useful to note, because many criticisms of the Church overlook this: they say that the Church “hides” things. But this is like saying that Christians generally are “hiding” the obscurity surrounding the date of Christ’s birth, the differences in accounts of the resurrection, and so forth. The reality, though, is not that they are being hidden; they are simply being treated commensurate with their relative importance: they amount to nothing when compared to what matters most about the Savior. Such matters will be learned in due time, but they are not the things that should be emphasized about the Lord or even taught first about Him.
Three Central Truths about Academic Writing and Research
Academic Research is Inherently Flawed When It Leaves Out the Most Important Things
Another reason I imagine you would want to focus on the most important things about Christ is that they provide the context for making sense of everything else about Him. Suppose, for example, that the only thing you knew about the Savior were that He wielded a whip and drove people out of the temple. Or that He once actually helped cast people out of heaven. Or that over the course of earth’s history, He will actually destroy millions of lives. If one of these were all that you knew, it would be pretty hard to understand how He could ever be called the Prince of Peace. Indeed, more than one smart person has rejected Christ precisely because of what He said in the New Testament about hell.
However, if you understood the most important things about Christ first, and thus saw the big picture of the Father’s Plan—the infinite, divine context of the Savior’s actions—you would understand that all of these are actually expressions of that Plan and of the Savior’s own divine work and love for us. You might not understand all of the whys, of course (again, that’s what we learn from #1), but you will understand that there are divine whys for all that the Lord does. Conversely, when we don’t know the most important things first—i.e., Jesus’s divinity, His omniscience, His perfect love and wisdom—we are guaranteed to question and even challenge many of His actions. Failing to see what matters most, we will fail to see anything about Him correctly.
This is why no secular history about the Savior can ever tell the truth about Him. It is impossible to understand what Christ did without first understanding who He was, and yet that is the very part of Him—the most important part—that scholars’ secularism prevents them from seeing. Their secularism, in other words, guarantees that they will not see what is most important to see about Him, and thus, to one degree or another, that they will also misunderstand everything else.
The same is true in our day. If, for instance, we don’t know what is most important to know about Joseph Smith—namely, that he saw the Father and the Son, that he was called by the Lord to found this dispensation, that he received innumerable spiritual manifestations—and so forth—there is no chance of understanding things he did. This is why no secular history can ever really tell the truth about him. It is impossible to understand everything Joseph Smith did without first understanding who he was, and yet that is the very part of him that historians’ secularism prevents them from seeing. Once we understand who the Prophet was, however, we have a completely different perspective on things he did. Though, like all mortals, Joseph was flawed—and thus not close to the Savior’s perfection—nevertheless, if we appreciate who he was, then, when we encounter some element of his work that we can’t quite understand, we can at least be open to the possibility that the problem might not be with that element but with our understanding. Just as with the Savior Himself, this perspective is essential in any attempt to actually comprehend Joseph Smith.
No Academic Writing Should be Taken at Face Value: Anyone Can Make Important Errors in Accuracy, Logic, or Context
It is pretty tempting to think that anyone who has gone to the trouble of putting something in print (including online) must be scholarly—that they must know what they are talking about and that it must be accurate.
But this is far from the reality. Even the best scholars can be inaccurate, commit logical fallacies, and overlook important context—which is why scholarship never comes to an end. There is always more to discover, correct, and improve, and thus, at any given time, there are always a lot of intellectual conclusions in circulation that are just waiting for the day when they will be discarded. I once reviewed a book by a famous historian, a book described by various scholars as “magisterial,” “remarkable,” “brilliant,” and “impeccably researched.” But it actually contained many demonstrable errors.8 Another example is seen in a famous book, by the same author, that explored the purported relationship between magic and the early Church in this dispensation.9 Though widely embraced, this historical work has been roundly debunked.10 Indeed, the reviewer reported that he once assigned undergraduate students in a history seminar to read this book precisely because it provided a perfect example of how not to write history.11 Though it is tempting to think otherwise, the reality is that nothing in the scholarly realm can be taken for granted, especially when the topic is controversial.
And, of course, some people are not scholars at all. Their whole purpose is to argue against something—to criticize the Church, for example—and thus do not even try to be accurate, or, perhaps, don’t actually know how to be accurate. Here are three questions to ask to determine if an author you are reading is like this:
a)Does the author present the position being challenged fully and fairly? (Serious writers always do this. Non-serious writers, on the other hand, will produce a caricature of the contrary position, presenting it in a way that is misleading, or even outright false.)
b)Does the author take care to read statements carefully and in context? (Serious writers always do this. Non-serious writers will read carelessly and take things out of context.)
c)Does the author consider and present the strongest possible objections to his or her own view—alternative interpretations of the data, for example—and address them fully and fairly in reaching a conclusion? (Serious writers always do this. Non-serious writers will either overlook possible objections and alternative interpretations, minimize them, or simply avoid raising them.)
So, when you are reading something that presents itself as criticism, a good place to start is to look for: (a) how fairly/unfairly it describes the view (or entity) it is arguing against; (b) how careful it is to read statements accurately and in context; and (c) how often, and how well, it brings up likely objections to its own view and alternatives to its own interpretations—and then addresses them. This will tell you a lot about the quality of what you are reading, and it is something that will be evident very quickly.
Historical Research is Massively More Difficult When Gospel Truths are Involved
If you can imagine it, salacious stories were actually told about Jesus anciently. Among other things, early accounts say that He was ashamed of being “born in a miserable Jewish village to a poor working woman of the lowest class,” and that, after being thrown out by her husband for adultery, Mary “wandered around like a tramp” until she eventually “bore Jesus in disgrace.” Moreover, it was in Egypt that Jesus learned skills that later allowed Him to perform feats that were thought to be miraculous.12
So there’s some history to think about: early stories about the Savior’s life cast Him as a flamboyant charlatan, a manipulator and a liar, and, for that matter, as one born of the lowest class of parentage.
This tells us something pretty significant: Writing history is difficult enough on its own, but it is massively more difficult when Gospel truths are involved. In such cases, not only are a person’s contemporaries likely to be suspicious, jealous, motivated by their own agendas, etc.—and thus prone to see everything in the worst possible light—but Satan’s entire project depends on distorting spiritual truth and damaging important figures’ reputations. These two realities make it pretty hard to get any spiritual account right—which is exactly what we see in the case of the Savior Himself.
So whenever you are reading history on a controversial spiritual topic, it pays to be extremely thorough in identifying sources and evaluating their reliability. If false and salacious stories could be told about the Savior, who can’t they be told about?
Four Central Truths about How the Lord Leads His Church
The Lord Directs His Work on Earth, but He Does So in Particular Ways
Prophets consistently bear testimony of receiving frequent revelation. Reading their testimonies can open the way for the Spirit to bear witness to us that it is true.13 However, the Lord follows certain principles in providing revelation to His leaders. Among them are the following.
He Reveals Truth “Line upon Line”
For multiple reasons, the Lord reveals matters one-step-at-a-time, “line upon line.”14 Here are three quick examples: (1) The Book of Mormon itself is coming to us one-step-at-a-time: portions of it have been withheld, and are to be revealed only later.15 (2) It was only after the Church was fully organized that the Lord revealed anything about eternal families.16 (3) The Lord established His Church in 1830, but didn’t reveal its name until 1838.17 These cases (and many others) are examples of the Lord giving revelation, not in one fell swoop, but line-upon-line.
One reason for this pattern is that we are often being tested: hearkening to what the Lord reveals at one time is what qualifies us to receive what He will reveal later.18 Another reason for this pattern is the Lord’s mercy. President George Q. Cannon once said that
there are many things that the leading men of this Church can see and understand that they cannot impart to the people nor ask the people to do. Why? Because they know that the people would not come up to the requirement and that therefore they would be disobedient.19
He thus observed that “the Lord deals with His children mercifully. He gives them intelligence according to their capacity to receive it.”20 A conspicuous example of this is seen in the Law of Moses—a law given to the children of Israel precisely because they could not live the fulness of the Gospel.21 The Law was a “schoolmaster” to help them eventually come unto Christ (Galatians 3:24–25).
He Gives Guidance and Direction According to What is Needed
Multiple times, figures in the early Church were told to decide a particular matter on their own, because, the Lord told them, that particular issue “mattereth not unto me.”22 The Lord also directed Sidney Rigdon to do as “seemeth him good” on certain ordinary issues—without the specific direction of the Spirit (D&C 41:8; 58:51). When John Taylor prayed for the Lord to give direction to the Twelve on how to handle some complex property matters, the Lord told him simply:
Be one, be united, be honest, act upon the principles of justice and righteousness to the living and to the dead and to my Church, and I, the Lord, will sustain you and will acknowledge your labors.23
In all of these cases, the issue either didn’t matter much to the Lord, or He felt that, guided by general principles and righteous desires, His servants could navigate the issues sufficiently on their own; He didn’t need to do the thinking for them. Thus, one early interviewer reported of the Prophet: “Speaking of revelation, he [Joseph Smith] stated that when he was in a ‘quandary,’ he asked the Lord for a revelation, and when he could not get it, he followed the dictates of his own judgment . . . ”24 In cases like this—where the Lord lets His leaders follow their own judgment—apparently, more than one option is acceptable to Him, and He is willing to live with any choice in that acceptable range. However, as the Doctrine and Covenants clearly demonstrates, on many other matters the Lord provides very definite direction: more than one option is not acceptable to Him, and thus He gives clear instruction.
What all this would seem to indicate is that the Lord operates according to a “sliding scale”: revelation on a given matter is proportional to that matter’s importance to the Lord at a given time, and to the need for His direction regarding it. And the result, it turns out, is not a small amount of revelation but actually a great deal of it.
He Gives Direction According to Heavenly Law and the Circumstances of His Children
Joseph Smith once taught that “whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire.” He also remarked that “everything that God gives us is lawful and right,” and also that revelation is “adapted to the circumstances in which the children of the kingdom are placed.”25
All of this means that the Lord’s direction can change. Although it will still be based on eternal, divine principles, His direction will be adapted to the situation His children find themselves in. Examples are not hard to find. The Lord commanded “thou shalt not kill,” but nevertheless directed Abraham to slay his son Isaac. He once administered His kingdom through a system of patriarchs, but today (and starting millennia ago) He administers it through apostolic councils. Christ proactively took the Gospel during His earthly ministry exclusively to the house of Israel, but then authorized Peter to take it to everyone. Through the first part of this dispensation, the Saints gathered to various locations in the United States; but now they are asked to gather in their homelands. Though conforming to heavenly law, all of these actions demonstrate how the Lord’s specific direction can change over time. When it does, therefore, we should not be surprised.
The Lord Permits Some Errors, and Prevents Others, According to His Divine Priorities
Because the Lord provides clear guidance and direction on the issues that matter most to Him, He prevents errors that would significantly harm or undermine His work. This is what it means to say that the Lord won’t allow the Church to be led astray, a promise that has been made multiple times.
But this does not mean that errors never occur. Because (as seen previously) many matters are either relatively unimportant to the Lord at a given time, or can be worked out well enough without the Lord’s direction, it is inevitable that some choices will be less than ideal, even though they fall in the acceptable range. Not everything is equally important to the Lord, and thus He willingly permits errors of a certain type.
Think of the Book of Mormon. Moroni speaks of it as containing “the mistakes of men” (Title Page), and he also speaks of its “imperfections” (Mormon 8:12)—but this does not prevent the Lord Himself from saying that “as your Lord and your God liveth it is true” (D&C 17:6). This seems significant. If it had been important to Him, the Lord could have found a way to prevent whatever mortal mistakes appear in that record. But He didn’t. He willingly permitted them. Apparently, He was satisfied with the reality that what is mortal in the book is trivial, and therefore completely dwarfed by what is divine in it.
There is something else to consider as well. While it is true that the Lord permits errors of a certain kind in His work, it is equally important to recognize that we aren’t any good at telling what those errors are. It is hard for our finite brains to tell the difference between something that is a mistake and something that is directed by the Lord for reasons our mortal eyes can’t see.
This follows from #1 (how little we know compared to God), and it includes things that are painful. Remember: the Lord arranged for Joseph and the family of Israel to inhabit the land of Egypt, even though they were His chosen people and even though He knew this would eventually doom them to bondage for centuries. In hindsight we can at least partially understand the Lord’s long-term plan in orchestrating all this, but it certainly was not evident to those who suffered through it. And then, when the Israelites were finally delivered from their bondage, the Lord’s guidance away from Egypt looked to them like just one big human mistake after another by Moses. They complained so bitterly about his leadership that, at one point, Moses “cried unto the Lord, saying, What shall I do unto this people? They be almost ready to stone me” (Exodus 17:4). They were being led by God, but they couldn’t see it.
Nor was the Lord’s Crucifixion comprehensible to those who were present during His earthly ministry. To them His death was a tragic and mournful loss. Anguishing and catastrophic in every way, it seemed wrong—and their grieving was relieved only by what they came to understand later. During the experience they were able to understand nothing of it.
So again, we don’t know what we don’t know. We often don’t understand the Lord’s purposes. We do know that He prevents some errors and permits others— according to His divine priorities—but we also know that it is hard for our mortal intellects to tell which is which. The good news, though, is that it doesn’t really matter: the Lord can tell, and He is the One actually running the show, not us.
Official Teachings Come from the Scriptures and the Presiding Councils—Not from Individuals
In 1835, the Lord declared that “every decision made by either of these quorums [the First Presidency and the Twelve] must be by the unanimous voice of the same” (D&C 107:27). This command made clear how the Lord would govern His Church: it would be through His presiding councils. And since “every decision” would include decisions about what to teach, it is clear that official teachings, too, come only from these councils. The scriptures provide the core foundation for the doctrines of the kingdom, but in terms of mortals’ teachings, the highest authority in the Church lies in these presiding councils—not in any individual.
Neil L. Andersen of the Twelve, therefore, explained that what constitutes the doctrine of the Church are only those things taught “by all 15 members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve”—in other words, only those matters taught “frequently and by many.”26
We naturally speak of “following the prophet”—exactly as we should. The living prophet is the President of the Church and he has been chosen above all others: he holds the highest spiritual office in mortality and he presides over all those who hold the apostolic keys with him. But he also works with the other prophets, seers, and revelators in council, and they follow the principle of unanimity in their actions and teachings. They counsel together in seeking the Lord’s will. Because of such unity, following the prophet means more than following a single leader, acting alone. The prophet actually carries the combined voice and weight of all those who hold the keys of the holy apostleship, with himself at the head. The voice of the prophet is weighty, indeed.
Historically, there have been times when the President of the Church has said something on his own that did not reflect the clear teachings of scripture or the views of all the other presiding Brethren. That has been rare, but it has happened. People think of Brigham Young in this regard. It is useful, therefore, to remember something President Young said in general about his teachings. He remarked that where there is no clear revelation on a matter, “it is as much my right to differ from other men, as it is theirs to differ from me, in points of doctrine and principle.”27 This remark is not well-known, but I think it should actually be his most famous statement. Brigham Young recognized that when he was not acting officially in teaching doctrine—i.e., when he was not relying on clear scriptural teachings (and therefore not reflecting the views of all the presiding Brethren)—members were entirely free to differ from him.
According to Brigham Young, the arbiter of truth was not Brigham Young.28
The fact that the Lord works through councils also makes it unsurprising that members of these councils can disagree with each other. President Gordon B. Hinckley stated:
As Brethren [in the presiding councils], we discuss various problems that come before us. Each man is different. We speak from various backgrounds and experiences. We discuss ways to improve and strengthen the work. At the outset of these discussions, there may be various points of view. But before the discussion is ended, there is total unanimity, else no action is taken. The Lord Himself has declared that such unity is an absolute necessity.29
In other words, the presiding Brethren do in council what the Lord instructed Oliver Cowdery to do: namely, “study it out.” During this process, whether over the course of one meeting or many, individual leaders will obviously have different views along the way to a decision. Sometimes people find this fact noteworthy, and even scandalous: “How can prophets disagree with each other?” But this overlooks the very “studying it out” process, through councils, that the Lord has ordained. When we understand that this is the Lord’s very way of working, we do not find disagreements during the process surprising; we understand that they are inevitable, and, again, actually ordained. What matters is that in the end, through the guiding influence of the Spirit, unanimity of feeling will ultimately prevail, and this is what becomes official.
10. The Lord Rarely Explains Himself, Even to Prophets
Dallin H. Oaks once observed: “If you read the scriptures with this question in mind, ‘Why did the Lord command this or why did he command that,’ you find that in less than one in a hundred commands was any reason given. It’s not the pattern of the Lord to give reasons.”30
And note that these were commands often given to prophets. Elder Neal A. Maxwell thus stated: “There will be times when we follow the prophets even as they are in the very act of obedience themselves.” He remarked that, like Adam offering sacrifices after being expelled from the Garden of Eden, prophets will often not be able to explain “why they are doing what they are doing.”31 He thus said on another occasion simply that “the Lord gives more instructions than explanations.”32 Elder Neil L. Andersen said the same: “The Lord’s voice,” he remarked, “often comes without explanation.”33
A striking example of this is how the Savior treated His disciples prior to His death. He did not prepare them in advance, in ways that they could understand, for all that was coming—explaining that He would be tried and crucified, that shortly afterward He would be resurrected and appear to them again, and that He would then spend a lengthy time teaching them. Such clear explanation of coming events would have spared the disciples much anguish and uncertainty, and would thus seem the natural, even kind, thing to do . . . but He didn’t do it. He did give them a final discourse (John 14–17), but in it He did not explain the coming events and what they could expect. He simply instructed them to “abide in me,” and said that He would not leave them “comfortless” but instead would give them the Holy Ghost (John 14–17). In short, they didn’t understand much more about coming events after this discourse than they understood before it.
All of this makes unsurprising what President George Q. Cannon once said of those in the presiding councils of the Church:
The Presidency of the Church have to walk just as you walk. . . . They have to depend upon the revelations of God as they come to them. They cannot see the end from the beginning as the Lord does. They have their faith tested as you have your faith tested.
He added:
It is just as necessary that the Presidency and the Apostles should be tried as it is that you should be tried. It is as necessary that our faith should be called into exercise as that your faith should be called into exercise.34
Speaking specifically of how this relates to decision-making in the presiding councils, he said:
All that we can do is to seek the mind and will of God; when that comes to us, though it may come in contact with every feeling that we have previously entertained, we have no option but to take the step that God points out and to trust Him.35
So the Lord rarely explains Himself, either about coming events or about the direction He gives. He expects us to trust Him without explanations. And something significant follows from all this: Because the Lord rarely offers explanations for what He directs—even to prophets—it is risky for anyone to try to come up with explanations. After observing that it is not the Lord’s pattern to give reasons for His instructions, Elder Oaks added that “we [mortals] can put reasons to revelation. We can put reasons to commandments. When we do, we’re on our own.”36
This is a crucial point. Apostles and prophets are authoritative in following the directions they receive from the Lord, but they are not authoritative in offering explanations they have not received from Him. If and when they propose explanations that the Lord Himself has not given, they are “on their own” and do not speak officially for Him.
Elder Oaks thus cautioned: “Let’s don’t make the mistake that’s been made in the past, here and in other areas, [of] trying to put reasons to revelation. The reasons turn out to be man-made to a great extent. The revelations are what we sustain as the will of the Lord and that’s where safety lies.”37
A Central Truth about How the Lord Leads All the Saints
The Lord Confirms to Members So That They Can Know for Themselves
President Russell M. Nelson stated:
You may not always understand every declaration of a living prophet. But when you know a prophet is a prophet, you can approach the Lord in humility and faith and ask for your own witness about whatever His prophet has proclaimed.38