The Lord’s Promise of Revelation

I recently wrote about the Biblical promise that every person would someday be his/her own prophet. But how does that look? What is a prophet? How does one receive revelation from God? The Book of Mormon answers these difficult questions with amazing and profound simplicity.

I think most people think revelation is a mystical, arbitrary thing, but one great premise of the Book of Mormon is that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Joseph Smith taught that truth is the knowledge of things as they are, as they were, and as they are to come. The way God worked with individuals two thousand years ago, two hundred years ago, four thousand years ago, and today is exactly the same. Our task is to learn the processes through which God works and then to follow them in order to obtain the blessings He has in store for us.

So, how does one receive revelation from the Lord? Nephi, gives us some great insight. Almost the first thing that happens in the story of the Book of Mormon is the report of a visionary dream Nephi’s father experiences. This dream seems to have aroused some great agitation among the family and each person seems to have gone about learning more about this dream in different ways. Nephi’s way of learning more is extremely important to understand. He says

1 … after I had desired to know the things that my father had seen, and believing that the Lord was able to make them known unto me, as I sat ^apondering in mine heart I was ^bcaught away in the Spirit of the Lord, …

And then he records a marvelous vision, one of the greatest in all of canonized scripture. When he finishes, he writes that he returns to the camp to find his brothers arguing about the meaning of their father’s vision. He asks what the matter was and learned that they didn’t understand. He demands: Have you asked God? And they say, “No, the Lord doesn’t make such things known to us.” This seems to greatly upset Nephi who was probably very tired by now of his brothers’ bouts with scarcity and lack of thinking. And he explains one of the most incredible things, at least in my mind at this time.

11 Do ye not remember the things which the Lord hath said?—If ye will not harden your hearts, and aask me in bfaith, believing that ye shall receive, with diligence in keeping my commandments, surely these things shall be made known unto you.

Right there is the answer to everything. Keep yourself humble; seek the Lord in faith, fully believing that you will receive; strive diligently to live a worthy life; and then the Lord will reveal His truths. It’s that simple. It is not arbitrary. It is not luck. It is as sure as the night follows day. Revelation will come. Now, if I can only remember to be humble and keep his commandments. Sigh…