Following and believing in prophets - when you don't know about prophets

What I was leading to last time was the personal revelation part; we should ask, and we will receive.

One story that affected me a lot was about a friend of Wilford Woodruff. He had a vision where he understood that the earth was in an apostasy, but saw that a restoration was coming, and that he would know of it, but not be able to partake of the fruit. He did learn of the restoration as he was dying.

I did find the video, which can be seen at https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2010-07-003-the-great-apostasy?lang=eng.  It is a little long, because it is not really about the friend, but it was his story that stuck with me.

In the Church, we hear spiritual stories all the time, and shortly before seeing this, I had read some stories of things being revealed to the parents and grandparents of Joseph Smith. This was the first thing that really brought home to me that there are opportunities for revelation to everyone, everywhere. Yes, the earth has had long years of apostasy, and there are continents and countries that have been very hard to reach, but that has never made God unavailable.

When I was working with the Laotian refugees, most of them passed through some pretty dangerous times, and it was common that they found themselves praying. The prevalent religion there was Buddhism with roots in animism, but they knew they weren't praying to Buddha. They did not know whom they were praying to, but they sensed there was someone there.

We believe in the gift of the Holy Ghost, and I hope we appreciate how wonderful that is, but also, we believe in the Holy Ghost, and we believe in the Light of Christ. There is always the opportunity for spiritual knowledge.

There are some things worth noting from Robert Mason's story. One is that he had the vision, but he prayed to understand it. We can get some information and not follow up on it.

Also, just for having the vision in the first place, he thought about religion a lot, and about authority. He was trying to understand. That would put him in a place where having that vision made perfect sense.

It is very easy in our society to stay trivial. There is plenty of entertainment and plenty of distraction, and we can easily avoid going deep. It is also easy to be exhausted, and not have time to think about God and our relationship with Him.  This society has problems. We know that.

But also I know that there is a path to God. Even without teachers, there is the ability to know what is right, and what is good, and build on that. He is the rewarder of them who diligently seek Him.