Prophets, Perfection and God's Choices

In seminary this year I'm teaching The Old Testament. Part of the lessons we have had this week are about Moses and his many moments of questioning God's instruction. The class decided that he must have had difficulty maintaining his faith in God and in God's power. I am inclined to agree.

I thought about this a great deal today. Moses was a prophet,led by God, and a talented leader. But he was human. He had grown up with the teachings of the Pharaoh, not the gospel. In essence, he was a convert and in spite of that he ended up being an incredibly righteous man.

He was given the opportunity to frequently commune with the Lord. He spoke with him face to face. He was transformed in order to withstand the immense presence of God, and yet he was not a perfect person. In fact no prophet in ancient or modern history has ever been perfect. All of them were and are human and are therefore fallible.

Being a prophet doesn't mean you are no longer tempted, or no longer make human mistakes. It does mean that for reasons only God knows, that person was chosen to receive revelation for the church and it's population. That individual was the one whom the Lord chose to carry out His plan at that particular time.

Was Joseph Smith perfect? Absolutely not. But he was a prophet. He was chosen by the Lord to receive the fullness of the gospel and to restore Christ's church on the earth with the proper priesthood authority and organization that Christ originally brought to the Earth. Jesus Christ is the only person to live on the earth from birth to death in a state of complete perfection.

Today President Hinkley is a prophet to the world. Is he perfect? Absolutely not. But he and he alone has been given all the keys to the priesthood as well as the authority to receive revelation for the good of the church.

When we are confronted by people who argue that a prophet has led an imperfect life, fill them in on the facts here. Imperfection is human. That is precisely why Christ came to the earth, to atone for our sins. That is why we are taught to forgive, and to repent for our misdeeds. The only real sin is to deny that the atonement pertains to all. The act of repentance is what makes the difference between righteous men (and women)and those who remain in sin.