June 9, 2010

Today I am starting my study in the Gospel Principles manual chapter 9 on prophets of God. I enjoyed reading the additional scriptures listed and I also read in the Bible Dictionary about prophets, seers, and revelators. From what I understand about what I read, a prophet is someone who has a testimony of Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Ghost and whose duty it is to testify of Christ to people, to teach people of the dealings of the Lord with his people in the past, and to call people to repentance. Sometimes a prophet is also called to warn the people of danger if they do not repent. A revelator is someone who uncovers, or reveals, makes known, truth. And apparently a seer is someone who is both a prophet and a revelator and they also have the gift to translate using the Urim and Thumim. What I find interesting is that while we sustain the president of the Church, his counselors, and the twelve apostles as prophets, seers, and revelators, we use only the term "prophet" to distinguish the head of the Church, who in reality is a seer. The dictionary said that a seer is greater than a prophet, and that there have been more prophets on the earth than seers, but there still has been a lot of seers. I wonder why we don't use the title of seer instead of prophet?