Foreordination: Church Leadership
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The responsibility that we bear as elders of Israel, before the heavens and before the earth and before each other, is very great. We are called of God; we have been chosen, we have been ordained as men who have been called to bear the priesthood and to attend to the ordinances of the house of God, to preach the Gospel, to warn this generation, to build up Zion, to redeem the earth, to erect temples unto the name of the Most High God, to redeem the living and the dead, and to carry out those great purposes which have been foreordained before the world was. It is a great calling, it is a great responsibility: and I feel that we, as servants of God and as elders of Israel, that we should try in our minds to comprehend these things. I reflect a good deal with regard to our position, as was described to us today by Brother Pratt. It has been my faith and belief from the time that I was made acquainted with the Gospel that no greater prophet than Joseph Smith ever lived on the face of the earth save Jesus Christ. He was raised up to stand at the head of this great dispensation—the greatest of all dispensations God has ever given to man. He remarked on several occasions when conversing with his brethren: “Brethren you do not know me, you do not know who I am.” As I remarked at our priesthood meeting on Friday evening, I have heard him in my early days while conversing with the brethren, say (at the same time smiting himself upon the breast), “I would to God that I could unbosom my feelings in the house of my friends.” Joseph Smith was ordained before he came here, the same as Jeremiah was. Said the Lord unto him, “Before you were begotten I knew you,” So do I believe with regard to this people, so do I believe with regard to the apostles, the high priests, seventies and the elders of Israel bearing the holy priesthood, I believe they were ordained before they came here; and I believe the God of Israel has raised them up, and has watched over them from their youth, and has carried them through all the scenes of life both seen and unseen, and has prepared them as instruments in his hands to take this kingdom and bear it off. If this be so, what manner of men ought we to be? If anything under the heavens should humble men before the Lord and before one another, it should be the fact that we have been called of God.
President Wilford Woodruff
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For millennia, methods of farming, travel, and communication were largely unchanged from ancient techniques. Developments since the birth of Joseph Smith, however, have risen in remarkable contrast. Joseph Smith had long been foreordained as God’s prophet for the restoration of the gospel in the fulness of times. (See 2 Ne. 3:7–15.) Twenty-five years after his birth, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was officially organized. Later in that same century, the telegraph was developed, the Atlantic Ocean was first crossed by a steamship, and the telephone, the automobile, and motion pictures were invented. The twentieth century has been even more extraordinary. Farming has become mechanized. Modern transportation allows travel to nearly any destination in the world within a day or two. Computers have been developed that allow the Church to serve living members and to organize information relative to progenitors who live on the other side of the veil. People throughout the world, once little concerned with family history, now search for roots of their ancestral heritage using technologies unavailable a century ago. Long-distance telephone, telefax, radio, television, and satellite communications have become routine. In these latter days it is possible for the word of the Lord to be broadcast from world headquarters of His Church and heard in the most remote areas of the globe. The divine promise is being fulfilled that this restored “gospel shall be preached unto every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.” (D&C 133:37.) Political changes have occurred recently in many countries. Previous restrictions of personal liberties have been relieved. The shell of spiritual confinement has been shattered. Swelling shouts of freedom fill the air. Surely the hand of the Lord is apparent. He said, “I will hasten my work in its time” (D&C 88:73), and that time of hastening is now.
President Russell M. Nelson
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