✨ Those Who Walk With Jesus — Part 48 ✨ The “Sometimes” Prophet?
✨ Those Who Walk With Jesus — Part 48 ✨
The “Sometimes” Prophet?
📝 Their Message (Summary)
This post wrestles with the First Presidency’s worldwide letter urging members to be vaccinated. For many Saints who chose not to get the vaccine, the letter became a theological puzzle. Explanations abounded: “Sometimes he’s a prophet, sometimes a man.” Or “the administrative side wrote it, not the revelatory side.” Or “that counsel was just for the vulnerable.”
But if a prophet’s counsel can be compartmentalized as optional or “non-prophetic,” then what is a prophet? Someone who speaks God’s word face-to-face—or someone whose counsel we filter, decode, and weigh against our own preference?
The post points out the deeper inconsistency: if sustaining the prophet means sustaining sometimes, the office becomes muddled. The early pattern of prophets—Moses, Enoch, Melchizedek—was that they bore direct witness of God, with power. They did not “ease Zion in” over centuries by soft mention. They called, the Lord descended, and Zion arose. Even the Nephites, who had Christ personally minister among them for generations, eventually fell into apostasy. Are we really greater than they?
We live farther from Zion today than Nauvoo ever was. Our ordinances are many, but our assurances of salvation are few. We are the spiritually dead doing work for the physically dead—boasting of sealing power while rarely knowing if we ourselves are sealed up unto eternal life.
🔥 My Reflection
This post cuts to the heart: authority is either rooted in Jesus or it is not authority at all.
The problem is not vaccination—it’s the gymnastics around prophetic counsel. When members decide “this was opinion, that was revelation,” they reveal they no longer believe prophets always speak for God. And yet, they cannot bear to say so plainly, so they invent a middle ground: the “sometimes prophet.”
But scripture offers no such category. The Lord Himself defined prophets: “If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream” (Numbers 12:6). Oliver Cowdery charged the Twelve: “Never cease striving until you have seen God face to face.” Joseph Smith taught that authority and sealing power are conferred directly by heaven, not by men or by seniority.
The early apostles never centralized authority into a hierarchy. In Acts 15, they gathered, listened, and concluded together what “seemed good to us and to the Holy Spirit.” They didn’t draft a handbook or enforce orthodoxy. Their message was simple: abstain from immorality, remember the poor, avoid idolatry. Compare that to today’s endless institutional policies, programs, and admonitions to “follow the prophet.”
True authority is in Christ. He alone is Mediator (1 Timothy 2:5). Those who know Him will never substitute themselves in His place. Those who awaken to Zion must stand in His presence themselves.
🕊️ The Invitation
Stop waiting for a sometimes prophet. Listen for the Living Christ.
Test all authority: does it point directly to Him, or does it circle endlessly around itself?
Remember: Zion will not come by institutional loyalty, but by personal sanctification, personal visitation, and the presence of the Lord.
Authority is not hierarchy—it is truth embodied in Jesus.
📖 Scriptures to Ponder
“If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him.” — Numbers 12:6
“Seek this Jesus of whom the prophets and apostles have written.” — Ether 12:41
“Cursed be the man that trusteth in man…Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord.” — Jeremiah 17:5–7
“All will know me, from the least to the greatest.” — Hebrews 8:11
🔗 Walking with Jesus — A Family’s Story
This is part of a series sharing the six-year testimony of a family walking daily with Jesus.
Previous: Post #47 — The Lofty Vineyard
Next: Post #49 — (coming soon)
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