As we have seen, our universe is spiritual through and through. Its true nature is focused in Jesus Christ, who reveals himself to cause men to love one another. The church receives this revelation through a properly constituted organ-the prophetic office. There are prophets who have ably and accurately forecast the future who are not in or of the church. Norman Angell wrote a book called The Great Illusion in 1910 in which he accurately predicted the economic situation which actually followed the first great war of 1914-18. He was a prophet in economics and international trade. H. G. Wells more recently has given us the feeling of dramatic destiny in his repeated emphasis that mankind must adapt to ways of brotherhood or perish-perish as other species have perished when they grew too big and cumbersome, or overran their food supply. He was a prophet who is still quoted and will be quoted for many years to come. Arnold Toynbee has given to the world in his Study of History a profound Christian interpretation of the rise and fall of civilizations, and based thereon are far-reaching implications of what may await us in the not too distant future. Well's prophetic genius led him into despair. Toynbee still (1959) has hope.

All these are prophets-prophets in terms of ability to predict the future. And why not? The Spirit "lighteth every man that cometh into the world," and always for rational people the future is more significant than the past and the natural bent is for men to be concerned in regard to it. These men mentioned, along with many more not mentioned, are by no means fake prophets; quite the reverse. Many of them are true prophets in so far as their predictions transpire. "All truth" is certainly not limited or garnished by any man or by any institution. History may be written beforehand by those who profess no creed and worship not in the sense we do. We may expect to find now, as in Paul's day, those like Celsus the Greek poet whose "wisdom was lighted from on high" when he said, "We also are his offspring."

 The Kingdom Prophet

But there is a different and more significant kind of prophet. The glory or intelligence of man is perishable and tenuous and so his prophecies fall short. Such glory may reflect the divine word in varying degrees at different periods in the world's history and, like the phases of the moon, throw a dim light on our darkness. For a little season the wisdom of men like Angell, Wells, and Toynbee may carry men a little way, but the distance will not be far. About the ultimate questions, such as God, immortality, heaven, and human destiny, we need a "more sure word of prophecy."

Simmais, a friend of Socrates, in talking about immortality, emphasized the stern duty of man to use his reason to the utmost. I quote from his statement:

Well, Socrates, then I will tell you my difficulty . . . for I dare say that you feel as I do, how very hard or almost impossible is the attainment of any certainty about questions such as these in the present life. And yet I deem him a coward who did not test what is said to the uttermost, or whose heart failed him before he had examined them on every side. For he should persevere until he has obtained one of two things: either he should learn or discover the truth about them; or, if this is impossible, I would have him take the best and most irrefragable of human word, and let this be the raft upon which he sails through life-not without risk, as I admit-if he cannot find some word of God which will more surely and safely carry him. -Plato, Phaedo, 85 (Jowett's translation).

This Word of God which Simmais desired, about which he talked to Socrates in the passage just quoted, requires for its birth and expression a different kind of prophet than those who utter the "most irrefragable of human words." About this kind of prophet and his work we are to concern ourselves here, a prophet who has the word of God. For this kind of prophet human words are not enough. He must have "some word of God." That divine word is his inward life. In it he exercises himself, and out of it he speaks. Notice the emphasis here, it is important. He does not speak the word. He speaks out of it. The divine word cannot be put into words: sounds in the air, or marks on a paper. Some faint semblance of its meaning may be left on record. Sounds and marks may become sacramental of it-as the Book of John is the literary sacrament of the Christian church. But always the Word of God himself is more than these, and it is the possession of this Word which makes men prophets, or rather the possession of men by Him-the Word. For it is impossible to discus the function of a prophet without intimate and continuous reference to Christ-the Word.

Jesus Christ, our Lord, is the author of all prophecy and the creator of the prophets themselves. He reminded Moses that he made his mouth and told Enoch that the business of justifying the divine utterance rested not with man-not with the prophet-but with God himself, the author of prophecy. There is no prophet greater than Christ; he is foremost. And there is no greater prophecy than the incarnation of the Son of God in human life. That incarnation was a movement of heaven to earth, of spiritual to natural, of that which is above to that which is beneath. It was a lifting of the earth to heaven, a raising of the natural in the likeness of the spiritual, a purging of that which is below by the indwelling of that which is from above, and constitutes a microcosm of all existence.

 The Prophetic Function

It is the function of a prophet to receive this divine word and to give expression to it as the Word himself may dictate, and to labor and work and suffer and die in the glorious hope that this vision may come to prevail. He may not be called to martyrdom as Joseph Smith was. But he must just as surely "lay down his life for the brethren." He must persevere, and lift men sunward above the earth to face and meet the glorious dawn which shall herald the acceptable year of the Lord. Nothing more is required of a prophet than this. Yields he anything less, then, in such measure he fails.

Now the implications here are tremendous, and the testimony of history as to these implications is very impressive indeed. One hesitates to write of them lest he miss the mark. But the attempt must be made.

Every prophet worthy of the name must receive commission and endowment from above. Part of his function is to keep himself available for such commission and endowment. If we think back through the centuries in which the prophetic impact has been felt, we will find men who have paid the price necessary to walk with God. Enoch "preached in righteousness"; Noah sustained a lonely social ostracism; Abraham and Isaac endured the agony of Mount Moriah and rejoiced to see the day of deliverance; Moses died in the wilderness; and John the Baptist lived a life of asceticism. Paul suggests that time would fail to tell of all that men endured to secure their commission and endowment, and to persevere in the discharge of their obligations, even enduring divine rebuke. Our Lord rebuked and chided the brother of Jared for his failure to call on his name. This function of the prophet, in which he is under requirement to commune with God, is an intensely personal one. It has been reported that Joseph Smith said, "No man knows my history," and we can readily believe that the significant doings of prophets when they have business with God are beyond the comprehension of ordinary men.

Such communion as the prophet sustains with Deity is expressed in various ways. The first and most obvious of these expressions is the testimony of righteousness and the triumph of God's kingdom which the prophet bears. These two are one. Righteousness other than kingdom righteousness is as "filthy rags." Kingdoms other than righteous kingdoms perish and pass away, as Toynbee reminds us; and as Kipling remarks, "all their pomp is one with Nineveh and Tyre." The prophet must testify of righteousness and its ultimate triumph in the kingdom of God, of its peaceful blessings here in this "vale of soul making," and its joys in the world to come. The very heart of the prophetic function is testimony of this kind. This testimony grows out of faith in a vision and results in work among men. The prophet must be mighty in word-and mighty in deed. The days of Noah attest that fact and foretell what lies before us. The ministry of the nineteenth century prophet confirms it. Righteousness must be preached, judgment foretold, and that which makes all effective to the condemnation of worldly ways, the ark of safety must be built. Joseph Smith laid the foundation of Zion, even as he shared his vision of it. Every prophet since is to be judged by how he builds on this foundation, and his building, one concludes, will be in proportion to his grasp of the vision.

It is great and marvelous work that is to come forth. Not a great and marvelous word. The function of a prophet is to share his testimony with others, and then to embody that testimony in life-personal and social, home and community-until his vision comes to prevail generally. These two great aspects of his work accord with the principle of the Incarnation. The testimony of the kingdom brings heaven down to earth. The work of righteousness among the people lifts earth to heaven. We must emphasize this relation between right doing and the ends or purposes of life, which the prophet sees and out of which he speaks to the present. To divorce right doing from the Zionic ideal is to rob men of all that makes righteous endeavor meaningful. If no glorious future beckons us, then why strive? If God is not a rewarder of those who "diligently seek him"; if there is nothing more than what our eyes have seen, our ears heard, and has entered into our hearts this far; if in this life alone "we have hope in Christ," why endure the disciplines of righteousness?

 The Kingdom Ideal

A play that begins in joy and ends in sorrow has not the same spiritual value in respect to happiness and misery as one that begins in darkness and despair and ends in joy and light. So it is with righteousness and the kingdom. So indeed is it with freedom and bondage. If man is destined for immortality and eternal life-then he outlives the state, and the state must be judged by the way it serves his immortal considerations. But if, as some believe, tomorrow we die, then the state is supremely important and man must subordinate his entire being to the demands of the state, whether it be right or wrong. Indeed such a philosophy holds that the state cannot err. We have already seen too much of such divorce of righteousness (or what passes for righteousness) from the kingdom ideal. The prophets have, again and again, functioned to make clear to their people that righteousness is in the nature of the Supreme Being, and that he has striven and is now purposively striving to "bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man."

It is the sharing of the kingdom vision which lays such a heavy burden on those blessed with it. In the mouth it is sweet, in the belly it is bitter. Communion with the Divine is a sweet and blessed experience, but turning from it the prophet measures what prevails among men with what ought to be as his vision has disclosed and finds heavy burdens in his soul. His vision brings eternal concern for the souls of men. He sees them as they are and as they were made to be. He finds in his soul no rest until, in the full measure of his capacity, he energizes and works for them, to bring into their souls his own vision and to guide their lives in the kingdom way.

 False Visions and False Prophets

This is a day of false visions and false prophets-false prophets because of false visions. Their folly and delusion is all about us. Christ said it would be so. Lately we have seen an ignominious end to the Fascist vision and its prophets, to the National Socialist vision and its prophet, and let us not be deceived, for the end is not yet. A greater than Hitler "being dead yet speaketh." Karl Marx had a vision. He dipped into the future, but unfortunately not as far as "human eye could see." At least not far enough. He stopped short at the material and mechanical aspects of man and his life in society, trusting alone in social reform and revolution to bring right relations among men. His vision was based on a materialistic analysis of the past, and out of it he predicted that a classless society one day would emerge. But he committed a fearful error when he misconceived man's environment and left out of the environment the Creator himself.

For Communism is faith in a false vision. It is trust in a false prophet, and the beast of physical force stands within it to guarantee success. Thus the communistic Trinitarian faith-the false vision, the false prophet, and the false power-stalks abroad today. The first twenty-two pages of The Witness by Whitaker Chambers sums up in better fashion than anywhere I know an evaluation of what our world faces today-and what our church faces today-and what any prophet faces today. The measure of our own worth as a people, as a prophetic people, the quality of our ability to stay the course will be determined in the measure in which we are able to deliver men from this trinity of illusion.

Economic prophets cannot effect this deliverance. Political prophets cannot be depended upon. Scientific prophets only frighten us by saying that unless we behave we shall be atomized into oblivion. The Wellses, the Einsteins, the Toynbees, the wise men, may point the way, but they have no power to control man's behavior. The sorcerers like Hitler, who promise to banish the demons of war and poverty, cannot deliver us.

 The True Vision

Our hope is in God, and in him alone, and our trust is in his Spirit and its guidance which he gives to all who are called according to his purpose. Our hope is in the vision he has given and does now give and will continue to give to all who seek that vision in faith. Our peace is in doing his righteous will, expressed by the Spirit through his prophets. For the true vision is that of his kingdom, and to see it one has to be born anew. The true prophet is Jesus Christ-and all who will not hear him when he speaks will be cast into oblivion if they persist in their refusal to hear. Jesus Christ is the prophet. And the power of the kingdom is the power of love-righteous love.

 The True Prophet

Thus the prophet who speaks in the name of the Lord must, if his ministry and utterance are to be effective, exemplify in his own life the demands his vision makes on others. He himself must embody the trinity of true value: vision and truth-things as they were and are and are to come; voice of truth-the Spirit of Christ speaking out of the life of the prophets; and power of truth which is the power of love-love, with its instrument of sacrifice as opposed to pride with its instrument of force.

If ever "a strong man armed" kept his palace he keeps it today. The beast of Babylon, who is "a strong man," deceives always by telling men half-truths and making plausible lies. He trusts in the armor of pride, riches, success, and appeals to selfishness. If ever there was needed a stronger than he to come it is now! And who but our God is stronger-strong enough to bind the strong man-and who but perfect love can take away all the armor the beast trusts in, and can defeat pride by making men humble? Who but Christ can preach the gospel to the poor, can tell captive men that the door of death is open and inspire them to go forth out of the prison house of lust? Who but a true prophet can preach the acceptable year of the Lord, and in the splendor of his vision turn all man's mourning to joy, and give beauty for ashes and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness?

For the sight of the ashes brings the spirit of heaviness. To know that, one has only to visit the ruined cities of central Europe. Where is the faith that will take men to those peoples, except Christ? Who but the prophet of God can speak peace to them? It is the function of the prophet to bind the strong man first. Only the preaching of the truth in love can hold in check the raging passions or the cynical pride of selfish man. Only a man with the kingdom vision can speak the truth in love. Only a prophet of God can be brave enough, kind enough, true enough, and self-effacing enough to win men from themselves.

For it is the ultimate task of the prophet to prepare a people, for a people must be prepared.

Charles Gore long ago pointed out that Christ was really the Savior of the world in its social as well as individual life, and that social salvation-which is really the only salvation there is-would never come by the simultaneous conversion of men in masses. He said that if experience "is any guide and prophecy holds any hope, the general alteration will arise from the influence in society of groups of men, inspired by prophetic leaders, who have attained to a true vision both of the source of our evils and of the nature of the true remedies, and who have the courage of faith to bind them either to act or to suffer in the cause of human emancipation until their vision and their faith come to prevail more or less completely in the general mind and will."

 The Divine Love

To create a people! To bring forth Zion! Perhaps it had better be said, "To assist the Savior in bringing forth a people!" That is the basic business of prophetic leadership! It has always been so. Enoch preached in righteousness and so great was his faith that "he led the people of God," subduing all their enemies. In vision even after he saw that his people had fled this stage of action we are told in the extract from his prophecy that he had to be reminded of the divine love for the remainder of earth's children. That is the lesson of Section 36. The divine love encompasses all. It is eternal. It is triumphant! A prophet cannot be content with writing and speaking this message; he must sometimes "serve with their sins." Mormon did so, even captaining the armies of wicked men against other wicked men knowing the futility of the endeavor. His love for his people required this. Enoch led his people triumphantly and gained exaltation. Mormon had the opposite experience. He saw the destruction of his people. Yet in both cases the people belonged to the prophet and he to them.

Noah similarly was blessed with a few souls, which he gathered into the place of safety. To him came the stewardship of presiding over the restoration of nature and men after the cleansing waters of the flood had passed over the earth. Abraham and Isaac also, chosen heads of a race yet to be elected, went through the agony of Moriah to secure to their posterity the testimony "of the Father and the Son" in which alone a people could be brought forth. Moses, standing in the midst of a horde of sensual slaves, pleaded with the Lord Jesus to spare them; or if not, let him, Moses, be destroyed with his people. He had no interest in any other people that might yet come even from his own loins. His concern was for these people, his people, under God.

 Prophetic Atonement

Down through all the ages this same spirit of atonement has prevailed in the lives and determined the functions of the prophets. Any writing they did was first in the hearts of men. The first tablets could well be broken in pieces if the people could find no place for the commandments in their lives. Moses must needs ascend the mountain a second time for a lesser law with lesser blessings. All the visions and benefits, the spirit and effort of the nineteenth century prophet are reflected in the Doctrine and Covenants, in the Book of Mormon, in the Inspired Version. But their significance as literature could never overcome the tragedy that would ensue if their teaching were not embodied in the lives of the people. So under prophetic leadership the church was called out of the wilderness. The vision found response and actualization in the lives of good men and women; doctors, lawyers, mathematicians, philosophers, farmers, builders, and just plain ordinary folk. Presiding over them was the prophet. A people was prepared: "my people."

There is a sense of belonging between a prophet and his people, and this goes on down from the President to the humblest follower bearing his feeblest testimony. The great prayer of our Lord recorded in John's seventeenth chapter gives us the key to this principle. When praying for the church, Jesus said, "Thine they were, and thou gavest them me; . . . those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition." If one may indulge in exegesis here, he could quote: "As my Father hath sent me"-that is, to win a people through prophetic testimony-"even so send I you." Paul talked about travailing again "until Christ be formed" in his people. And who can fathom the depths of wisdom reflected in the statement of Joseph Smith when he went to Carthage "like a lamb to the slaughter" and "calm as the summer's morning"? For the people's sake, to secure them in the testimony of Jesus, was this travail undertaken. Every minister for Christ has a vision of the kingdom, which lays on him the obligation to testify. Every testimony thus borne wins those to God and in a peculiar way also to the minister who won them by his testimony.

Of course, the means by which people come to know the vision, the ordinances whereby they enter the kingdom, and under the blessing of which they grow up in it are all part of the prophet's task. He must not only utter his voice out of the divine word, but he must administer that word among his people. This, Moses found very burdensome, and others were ordained to share the task with him; so the prophetic office was also shared by the seventy. When it was found in the camp that others not ordained were prophesying, complaint was made to the man of Moses. He replied to this complaint in terms that give us some insight into the prophetic soul: "Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets."

So then the vision must be shared between prophet and people. Why? So that those not yet included in the family of God might see actualized what the prophet first saw in vision-or so that the world might see with the natural eye what would otherwise forever be hidden. The prophet himself is under obligation to do this. He does not say. "I see; you do." He says, "I see; may you be blessed also with the vision," then "together let us do."

In this sharing of prophetic vision in which a people is created, the prophet not only reaches into the future, but he also interprets the past. He never violates or ignores the spiritual and cultural inheritance of those who have preceded him. The true prophet is the most conservative of men. One has only to study the life and work of Joseph Smith-"Joseph the Just" as he was called-to know that his success as a prophet-leader was due largely to his patient conservatism, his careful sifting of the legacy from the past, his wise and farsighted policies. For the past is not dead; it waits to be justified by the future. It is not gone; it is before us.

Time and again comes to the prophetic eye the panorama of the past, as we know from reading the Inspired Version or Section 36 or 104 of the Doctrine and Covenants; and with this new vision of bygone days comes the words, "as it was-so shall it be." A prophet must function to preserve the spiritual inheritance of man. This is not only true in word, it is also true in deed. He must not take such forward steps now as to make forward movement more difficult tomorrow. He must consider the whole-not only his day, his ministry, his people, his word. He must take his place with others who have preceded him, and make easier, if possible, and perchance more effective, the work of those he knows will come after him. This is a difficult task, requiring a high degree of self-abnegation.

Again we have the words of the Great Prophet as an ideal to which we look: "If I honor myself, my honor is nothing." Atonement lies broad at the base of prophetic ministry. Only then may its apex reach safely to heaven.

 The Needs of People

Prophets of the kingdom are men faced with practical problems of political, moral, and cultural life. What will happen if South Carolina secedes from the Union, as she threatened to do in 1832? The prophecy of the rebellion gives answer. How shall the wrongs against "my people" be redressed? Section 98 came in reply. Where is the city of Zion located? Section 52. What are the moral requirements of the gospel? Section 42.

The prophet always faces some actual human need, and as he looks to God the divine word rests upon him and irradiates his mind. He speaks the saving words or orders and executes the saving deeds. Joseph Smith ordered the mission to England in 1837, "sensing that something must be done for the salvation of the church of Jesus Christ in these latter days."

What are the needs of today? The most irrefragable of human words will not meet these needs. Only the divine word will suffice to supply these needs. This word may be given to us through the medium of a historical event, or a course of such events, judgments, or consequences. It may be given so that words become its vehicle. But however it comes, and whatever the medium through which it is vouchsafed, always the divine word discloses the divine character. What is revealed through the prophets is not truth concerning God, but God himself! It may be he will come to individuals, or communities if not to individuals. The manner of its disclosure is relatively less important than the fact that always he demands righteousness and repentance from us. The real acceptance of such revelation is not only intellectual assent, but it is submission of will. And this must be, if the church is to remain free; not submission to the record of a revelation received by someone else, but each must himself feel the demand from God laid on his soul. For every prophet who functions to bring the word of God to men lays upon those who receive it a demand for adjustment to it.

 Knowledge Requires Obedience

Every revelation of God is a demand, and the way to knowledge of him is by obedience. We can never know God as we know things, because he is not a thing. We can only know God by personal and sympathetic communion with him, because he is personal. So then, the greatest need of our church today, and the greatest need the world has laid on the church, is that we be obedient to the word of God which we have received through the prophets. Our world is godless. It has been delivered over to its own selfishness. Every man does that which is right in his own eyes so far as he is not restrained by the law. It is twilight. Soon the night comes. Already over large parts of the world spiritual darkness has descended so that no ray of light is to be discerned. The echelons are forming. Armageddon is in view.

 Our Spiritual Needs

What are the needs of mankind today? Without question the greatest need is spiritual, not temporal. It is for a restoration of faith in God and a steady conviction concerning immortality. And this conviction of faith can only come as men hear the voice of God through prophetic leadership. Against this need the wicked one strives. For men have set themselves up as God and are trusting in their own wisdom and prowess. It seems that our life in this world is a baffled and thwarted enterprise; and according to scientists the scene of our endeavor is slowly becoming uninhabitable; and even though we labor now for a remote posterity, yet if this life only is permitted us, it will one day make no difference that we have striven for lofty ends and noble ideals. An earth as cold as the moon will one day revolve around a dying sun. Duty and love and righteousness will have lost their meaning. The "President of the Immortals" will have finished his sport with man. If at the end there is nothing but a cold dead cosmos-chaos-even though to us the presence of virtue shines like a jewel in the prevailing gloom, it were better that it had never appeared.

Every consideration of serious importance intensifies the demand on grounds of morality that life after the death of the body should be a fact. Yet there never was a time when there was so little positive belief in this and so widespread an absence of concern over the subject. Men have made this life so intensely interesting and this present world almost heaven, indeed they have built a tower to get to heaven with material prosperity, that they have no time to consider another life let alone pay attention to the moral demands that other life makes.

 Zion-The Prophetic Goal

How shall the conviction of immortality and eternal life be shared with men? How can their headlong rush to disaster be arrested and the attention secured and fixed upon "those things which are above"? Only through the voices and deeds of a prophetic people, who are willing to labor and suffer until their vision comes to prevail in the general mind and will! This means the building of communities, communities in which the environmental factors can be ordered in relation to the prophetic tradition and heritage-communities in which people may grow to maturity whole, and in the splendor of their grown manhood make the unique contribution necessary to save other men from themselves. That is the function of Zion. And the function of the prophets is to bring to pass the cause of Zion, to establish it, to speak and do all that is necessary to further it. It is the office of every prophet not charged with the responsibility for the guidance of the whole church to assist him who is charged with it. He is not worthy of a place in the priesthood who has not been stirred with a longing for the coming kingdom.

Today, says Toynbee,

We have invented the atomic weapon in a world partitioned between two supremely great powers; and the United States and the Soviet Union stand respectively for two opposing ideologies whose antithesis is so extreme that as it stands it seems irreconcilable. Along what path are we to look for salvation in the parlous light in which we hold in our hand the choice of life or death not only for ourselves but for the whole human race? . . .The United States and the Soviet Union are alternative embodiments of contemporary man's tremendous material power-their line is gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world-but in the mouth of these loud speakers one does not hear the still small voice. Our cue may still be given us by the message of Christianity and the other higher religions; and the saving words and deeds may come from unexpected quarters.

When shall come the saving words and deeds? And from where? We think we know the answer, but do we? Who shall utter the still small voice that will speak peace to the heathen; the still small voice that will be heard above the roar of the cannon, the groan of the dying, the cursing of the rebellious, and the laughter of the lustful? That voice must be uttered through a prophetic people, gathered into communities, led by prophetic leaders. The deeds bringing into existence those communities are the saving deeds men look for. But the prophet belongs to his people as well as to his God. By them is he bound, by them set free to function on higher levels.

His ability to pierce the gloom will rest in very large measure on our willingness to follow the direction already given. We ask of him what is asked of no other man, expecting him to keep the channels of communication open in his own soul to meet our need. But for what purpose shall we be reassured as to the future? Shall it be to feather our own nests? To save ourselves and our own? Why should the moral law be reinterpreted for us now, if we have no real desire to live on the higher planes expected of those to whom such interpretation comes? Shall we not all receive according to our needs and desires?

Thus there are prophets who prophesy, and there are prophets of the kingdom of God. There is a philosophy of the good life which brings inspiration. But such inspiration falls far short of that prophetic vision in which the salvation of man is conditioned. Wells and Toynbee can affirm that man without vision must perish. They may even adumbrate what such vision will require of men. But only the prophets of God can bring the vision itself, and preside over its embodiment in the general will of mankind. To this task they have set their hands down through the ages, and will continue to do so until the consummation decreed in the divine purpose is fully achieved.