We are blessed to live in a time of prophets. I define the word prophet in two ways. The first is that we

are fortunate to live in a time where the priesthood has been restored and that the president of the

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints speaks for the Lord under priesthood authority. The second is to

live in a time where God conveys his word for us to use through good people of all faiths or of no faith at all.

Prophecy, where speaking prophetically, can and must happen under the authority of the prophet, but also takes place in the way that we speak to each other, doing our best to align our wills with God,

and to care for their children as they would have us do.

In short, being prophetic is not only about authority, but about intent and about

service. For instance, I often think about President Monson and how he served the members of his

ward, especially visiting the widows and those who were sick, and think of that in a way that he

was being prophetic far before he was called to be prophet of the Church of Jesus

Christ of Latter-day Saints. We'll discuss prophecy and much, much more on today's episode of Abide,

a Maxwell Institute podcast. My name is Joseph Stewart and the public communication specialist

at the Neillai Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. Christian

Hill is a research fellow at the Institute. In each week, we discuss the week's block of reading from the Church of Jesus Christ of

Latter-day Saints, Come Follow Me curriculum.

We aren't here to present a lesson, but rather to hit on a few key themes from the scripture

block, so as to help fulfill the Maxwell Institute's mission to inspire and fortify

Latter-day Saints and their testimonies of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and engage the

world of religious ideas. Today we are joined

once again by Julia Evans, one of our research assistants, who is pursuing a degree in linguistics

and preparing to attend law school. Before joining our research team at the Maxwell Institute,

Julia worked the MTC for a year as a Norwegian teacher and then as a training supervisor.

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