Living Prophets and Continuing Revelation
As taught in the Latter-day Saint tradition
How Latter-day Saints hold that God still speaks through prophets and an open canon.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, organized in 1830 under Joseph Smith, Jr., teaches that the heavens are not closed and that God continues to direct his church through living prophets and apostles. This conviction sits at the center of how Latter-day Saints understand authority, scripture, and the believer's own access to God. Where much of historic Christianity treats the apostolic age as the moment when public revelation was completed and the canon of Scripture effectively sealed, the Latter-day Saint tradition holds the opposite: that revelation is ongoing, that the canon remains open, and that a man called and sustained as a prophet today speaks for God with the same kind of authority once exercised by Moses, Isaiah, or Peter.
By the end of this lesson
- Explain why Latter-day Saints argue from God's unchangeableness in Mormon 9:7-9 that revelation, prophecy, and spiritual gifts have not ceased.
- Summarize the Book of Mormon's claim in 2 Nephi 29:9-14 that the biblical canon is open and that God has caused more than the Bible to be written.
- Distinguish binding prophetic revelation given through the church president from the personal revelation members seek through the pattern of Moroni 10:4-5.
- Contrast the Latter-day Saint reading of Ephesians 2:20 and 4:11-14 as describing ongoing church offices with the mainstream reading of them as a closed foundational era.
- Identify the formative LDS sources for the doctrine — the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the eighth and ninth Articles of Faith — and what each contributes.
- State precisely where the tradition diverges from Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant views on the closure of public revelation and the limits of the canon.
Scripture
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