“And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.” (1 Samuel 15:22). It might seem strange to us that Saul lost his kingdom over a few cattle. After all, it seems like he wasn't even trying to keep the cattle to get rich or anything, but planned on using them for a good cause - to sacrifice them to the Lord. But what Saul was really doing was trying to put the commandments or counsel of a dead prophet - in this case, Moses, with his commandant to sacrifice - over the living Word of God as delivered by His current prophet Samuel. God gives us commandments to help us navigate the challenges we face in life. We often face similar challenges to those that have come up in the past, which is why a lot of God’s commandments apply over and over again. But sometimes we face unique challenges that don't fall neatly within the old commandments, which is why we need current revelations and the living Word from a living prophet. Thou shalt not kill is applicable most of the time, but Saul was commanded to kill every last Amalekite, even down to the last cow. This living commandant superseded any other previous commandment, including commandments against killing or commandments to set aside the firstlings of flocks and herds for sacrifice. In a Conference Talk in 1953, President Marion G Romney explained, “It is an easy thing to believe in the dead prophets, but it is a greater thing to believe in the living prophets. I will give you an illustration. One day when President Grant was living, I sat in my office across the street following a general conference. A man came over to see me, an elderly man. He was very upset about what had been said in this conference by some of the Brethren, including myself. I could tell from his speech that he came from a foreign land. After I had quieted him enough so he would listen, I said, ‘Why did you come to America?’ ‘I came here because a prophet of God told me to come.’ ‘Who was the prophet?’ I continued. ‘Wilford Woodruff.’ ‘Do you believe Wilford Woodruff was a prophet of God?’ ‘Yes,’ said he. ‘Do you believe that his successor, President Lorenzo Snow, was a prophet of God?’ ‘Yes, I do.’ ‘Do you believe that President Joseph F. Smith was a prophet of God?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ Then came the ‘sixty-four dollar question.’ ‘Do you believe that Heber J. Grant is a prophet of God?’ His answer: ‘I think he ought to keep his mouth shut about old age assistance.’” Saul’s danger in setting aside those cattle, and the same danger that we also are susceptible, is that he tried to use obedience to some other commandment as a defense against obeying the commandant of the Living Word, which would have been harder or more distasteful than the other commandment that seemed more agreeable to him. If we have a commandment to do no work on the Sabbath but the Spirit leads us to an ox stuck in the mire, then we follow the direction of the living Word, even if it means working on the Sabbath. If we were to visit a friend's house, a place we've been to a million times and know the route backwards and forwards, but our friend informs us to take an alternate route because there is heavy construction on the usual way, would we hearken to our friend’s updated directions, or stubbornly say we know how to get there and waste a lot of hours getting stuck down a path that is currently closed to us? That is what following the Living Word of God is like. The commandments or the routes that may have worked in the past might be temporarily closed to us, but if we just hearken to the Living Word, then we will get there safe and sound and much quicker and less distressed then if we insisted on going the old way because we liked it better. I hope we can all learn to hearken to the Living Word, even when it leads us down new and exciting paths.
