Korihor's Argument

President Henry B. Eyring of the First Presidency

"Korihor was arguing (in Alma 30:20-23), as men and women have falsely argued from the beginning of time, that to take counsel from the servants of God is to surrender God-given rights of independence.  But the argument is false because it misrepresents reality. When we reject the counsel which comes from God, we do not choose to be independent of outside influence.  We choose another influence.  We reject the protection of a perfectly loving, all-powerful, all-knowing Father in Heaven, whose whole purpose, as that of His Beloved Son, is to give us eternal life, to give us all that He has, and to bring us home again in families to the arms of His love.  In rejecting His counsel, we choose the influence of another power, whose purpose is to make us miserable and whose motive is hatred.  We have moral agency as a gift of God.  Rather than the right to choose to be free of influence, it is the inalienable right to submit ourselves to whichever of those powers we choose.

Another fallacy is to believe that the choice to accept or not accept the counsel of prophets is no more than deciding whether to accept good advice and gain its benefits or to stay where we are.  But the choice not to take prophetic counsel changes the very ground upon which we stand.  It becomes more dangerous.  The failure to take prophetic counsel lessens our power to take inspired counsel in the future.  The best time to have decided to help Noah build the ark was the first time he asked.  Each time he asked after that, each failure to respond would have lessened sensitivity to the Spirit.  And so each time his request would have seemed more foolish, until the rain came.  And then it was too late."

(Conference Report, April 1997, 33; or Ensign, May 1997, 25.)