It’s been cold lately where I live, but we had only had a little dusting of snow so far this season. During the years I’ve lived here, we haven’t had a large multi-inch snowstorm until January or later. So when a big snowstorm was forecast for the first day of December, it almost seemed odd to expect.
You could look outside the day before and not even see a sign of snow. And yet the weather forecasters were telling us that we had a one hundred percent chance of getting approximately 10 inches of snow by the end of the next day. Usually the forecasters don’t publish their predictions with such certainty; they often leave a little wiggle room in there.
Even when we woke up the morning of December 1, there was no snow. But we acted in faith that the predicted snowstorm would come. We had some travel plans, and completed them early. We got the snowblower ready for action. And, just as predicted by those who understand these things, the snow really did come. We might not have believed the predictions if they’d come from our next-door neighbor, but the ones we read came from a reputable government agency that we knew we could trust. I’m glad that we were prepared for this storm.
Just The Lord has spoken to man through prophets throughout the ages, as detailed in the Bible and the Book of Mormon. And, as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly known as the “Mormons“) will tell you, the Lord speaks to man through His prophets today.
The prophet Amos in the Old Testament tells us, “Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.” (Amos 3:7)
One example of this is found in the story of Noah. This story came to my mind in part because his warning to the people around him that the earth would be flooded is in some ways very similar to the weather forecasters’ warning that my locality would be pelted with snow. Even though when the warning came it may have seemed unlikely to many that the catastrophe would actually happen, those things predicted or prophesied did actually come to pass. In my example, those who followed the advise of the weather forecasts were prepared and ready when the storm hit. And in Noah’s case, those who heeded the words of the prophet were ready when the storm hit them. Unfortunately in Noah’s day, he and his family were the only ones who were prepared for the storm. But we have a living prophet on the earth today, Gordon B. Hinckley, who receives direction from the Lord and tells us what the Lord would have us do.
The Lord wants us to be prepared for what is to come. He wants us to all come unto Him and live in a way that we can be with Him again someday.
