Help with investigator questions

[Queolby]

Here's what she said:

" I have several questions for you.
1. What is your understanding of what a “prophet” is and  the word “prophecy” ? 
2. What are the roles of the prophets based on the bible? 
3. If someone comes to you today and tells you he/she is a prophet sent by God  to give you a “word”, what tests do you apply to determine if that person is indeed a “prophet”.
4. What do you need a prophet for when we have the full counsel of God in the bible and the Holy Spirit is given to a believer as The Teacher and Christ speaking to you and is mediating between you and God? 
5. Paul said in 1 Cor 2:16 “For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.”  What does the prophet knows that you do not when the bible says,we have the mind of Christ?"

Your responses will be greatly appreciated.

[Vort]

My response I:

1. A prophet speaks for God. Prophecy is the act of speaking in God's place.
2. Based on the Bible, prophets speak for God.
3. I check (i) whether the person has any authority for such a remarkable claim and (ii) whether the person's teachings accord with those revelations I have already received from unimpeachable sources.
4. This is no question at all. It is a lie parading as a question. The best response is something like, "Why did God ever have prophets? The fundamental relationship between God and man did not suddenly change at Christ's atonement. Or are you saying that God is a changeable God?"
5. The prophet has revealed to him the mind of Christ, which he can then teach to you, which makes you have more of the mind of Christ instead of continuing in your abased, prideful, foolish condition.

My response II:

While the first three questions are reasonable enough, it's clear to me that this person is not in a state to receive the gospel. She thinks she already knows the truth. Her questions are not designed to deepen her understanding, but to build the philosophical underpinnings of her resistance to the gospel teachings that the missionaries bring. Until she changes her heart, you and the missionaries are probably wasting your time with her as she pits her feeble understanding of things against the truths you are trying to teach. Such prideful idiocy is not and cannot be changed by having the stronger argument or knowing your scriptures better than she thinks she knows hers. A hard heart is never open to the truths of the Spirit. If this is truly her attitude, I would advise you to strongly consider not wasting your time.

My response III:

Check her reaction in casual conversation to the mention of "Jim theplains" and "GaleG".

Edited January 5, 2020 by Vort

[Just_A_Guy]

2 hours ago, Queolby said:

Here's what she said:

" I have several questions for you.
1. What is your understanding of what a “prophet” is and  the word “prophecy” ? 
2. What are the roles of the prophets based on the bible? 
3. If someone comes to you today and tells you he/she is a prophet sent by God  to give you a “word”, what tests do you apply to determine if that person is indeed a “prophet”.
4. What do you need a prophet for when we have the full counsel of God in the bible and the Holy Spirit is given to a believer as The Teacher and Christ speaking to you and is mediating between you and God? 
5. Paul said in 1 Cor 2:16 “For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.”  What does the prophet knows that you do not when the bible says,we have the mind of Christ?"

Your responses will be greatly appreciated.

1.  What @Vort said.  Also, in a loose sense, Revelation 19:10.

2.  What @Vort said.

3.  Deuteronomy 18:22 is a starting point.  But we should be aware that we are often poor judges of whether a prophecy was supposed to be absolute versus conditional; and whether a prophecy has in fact come to pass (which is why when Jonah thought his prophecy had failed, he sat under a tree and waited for death).  Fundamentally we look to the Spirit of God to confirm the truth of a prophet’s words—James 1:5, Galatians 5:22-23, etc.

4.  We don’t, and can’t, have “the full counsel of God” in any single book or group of books.  John 21:25.  God was quite capable of revealing Himself to non-prophets via the Holy Spirit in Old Testament times to inspire them to action (see, e.g., 2 Chr 32:31–no point in mentioning God having “left” a king unless God had ordinarily been in communion with him.  Other occasionally/ inspired Old Testament non-prophets include Pharoah, Rahab, Ruth and Naomi, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Esther and Mordecai, and so on.)

Even though post-Mosaic Israelites had both scripture and some measure of direct inspiration from God, God still sent prophets to Israel—because both the whisperings of the Spirit and the canon of scripture are subject to being innocently misinterpreted (2 Peter 1:20-21, 2 Peter 3:15-16) or even wrested out of context by the insincere and/or deceivers (Psalm 56:5, Matthew 24:24).  

Common sense also tells us the same thing that it told Joseph Smith:  that if the canon of scripture and an easily-understood, readily-accessible voice of God were so unambiguous and all-encompassing, then there shouldn’t be a plethora of conflicting “Christian” sects.  Any statistician tells you that more data points allows you to create a more reliable “best fit” extrapolation; any navigator will tell you that the more landmarks you have from which to take bearings, the more accurate your “fix” will ultimately be.  The Lord used and uses the same principle.  Living prophets provide us with another data point, another landmark, to help us verify that we are correctly applying the truths we already have from other sources (not to mention preparing us for future contingencies that either aren’t clearly laid out in scripture, or that the Spirit can’t warn us about because we have closed our mind to those possibilities).

5.  The prophet knows nothing that I can’t know.  But (due to maturity, life experience, study, authority, and individual revelation) he many things that I don’t (yet) know; about a variety of gospel-related topics both sublime and relatively trivial.  As I grow in the Gospel, hopefully the gap between what the prophet knows and what I know will consistently shrink.  

 

Edited January 5, 2020 by Just_A_Guy

[CV75]

2 hours ago, Queolby said:

Here's what she said:

" I have several questions for you.
1. What is your understanding of what a “prophet” is and  the word “prophecy” ? 
2. What are the roles of the prophets based on the bible? 
3. If someone comes to you today and tells you he/she is a prophet sent by God  to give you a “word”, what tests do you apply to determine if that person is indeed a “prophet”.
4. What do you need a prophet for when we have the full counsel of God in the bible and the Holy Spirit is given to a believer as The Teacher and Christ speaking to you and is mediating between you and God? 
5. Paul said in 1 Cor 2:16 “For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.”  What does the prophet knows that you do not when the bible says,we have the mind of Christ?"

Your responses will be greatly appreciated.

1. What is your understanding of what a “prophet” is and  the word “prophecy” ?

            My Answer: What is your understanding?

2. What are the roles of the prophets based on the bible?

           My Answer: What do you think they are?

3. If someone comes to you today and tells you he/she is a prophet sent by God  to give you a “word”, what tests do you apply to determine if that person is indeed a “prophet”.

            My Answer: What do you use?

4. What do you need a prophet for when we have the full counsel of God in the bible and the Holy Spirit is given to a believer as The Teacher and Christ speaking to you and is mediating between you and God?

            My Answer: What questions do you have that prompted you to investigate the Restored Gospel? What has led you to read, ponder and pray about the Book of Mormon?

5. Paul said in 1 Cor 2:16 “For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.”  What does the prophet knows that you do not when the bible says, we have the mind of Christ?"

            My Answer: What do you think is the difference between knowledge and keys?

Yes, these are answering questions with questions, but that helps me understand and answer the questions with greater insight.

[Moonbeast32]

Are you sure this woman is an investigator? Those final few questions sounded more like the words of an "aggrestigator." What you're leaving out of this post is, what got her interested in the church in the first place? Has she shown any willingness to go any measure of distance to affiliate herself? What sort of truths (the unique ones in particular) has she said to find agreeable or likely?

[Moonbeast32]

But as far as questions 4 and 5 go, why don't you just tell her what your interpretation and understanding of those scriptures? It'll be most genuine coming from you.

[bytebear]

If you truly believe #4 "we have the full counsel of God in the bible" then there is no need for a prophet.  But I don't believe that.  Not for a minute.  The Bible itself makes no such claim, and neither does the church claim it has the full counsel of God, at least not yet.

[Traveler]

On 1/5/2020 at 1:57 PM, Queolby said:

Here's what she said:

" I have several questions for you.
1. What is your understanding of what a “prophet” is and  the word “prophecy” ? 
2. What are the roles of the prophets based on the bible? 
3. If someone comes to you today and tells you he/she is a prophet sent by God  to give you a “word”, what tests do you apply to determine if that person is indeed a “prophet”.
4. What do you need a prophet for when we have the full counsel of God in the bible and the Holy Spirit is given to a believer as The Teacher and Christ speaking to you and is mediating between you and God? 
5. Paul said in 1 Cor 2:16 “For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.”  What does the prophet knows that you do not when the bible says,we have the mind of Christ?"

Your responses will be greatly appreciated.

#1 A prophet is someone called and authorized by G-d as was Abraham, Moses, Aaron and others as mentioned in scripture.

#2.  They hold the keys to perform the ordinances and establish the covenants of G-d.

#3. The test is that they speak with the power of the Holy Ghost.  I would recommend the following from a speech by Hugh B. Brown:

#4. To fulfill the prophesy of the fullness of times and to prepare a people (as prophesied) for the coming of the Messiah.

#5.  You are going to quote a prophet to prove that prophets are not necessary?  Do you understand the irony and spiritual contradiction of question #5?

 

The Traveler