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Scripture Thoughts

D&C 1:38

38 What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.

Notes:

This verse is quoted with great regularity for the purpose of showing that the words from the apostles and prophets of the LDS church are the same as the words of the Lord. But are we justified in assuming that the "servants" in this verse are talking about the LDS church leaders. If we go back to verse 14 of this revelation it makes it a point to lists servants separate from prophets and apostles.

And the arm of the Lord shall be revealed; and the day cometh that they who will not hear the voice of the Lord, neither the voice of his servants, neither give heed to the words of the prophets and apostles, shall be cut off from among the people; (D&C 1:14)

Servants that come from God with a message are usually called angels. Anyone who receives that message and passes it on would also be called a servant. We have an example of that with King Benjamin.

And the things which I shall tell you are made known unto me by an angel from God. And he said unto me: Awake; and I awoke, and behold he stood before me. (Mosiah 3:2)

And now, it came to pass that when king Benjamin had made an end of speaking the words which had been delivered unto him by the angel of the Lord, (Mosiah 4:1)

Now of course a prophet could receive a message from an angel and then deliver that message. But in such a situation you would expect that prophet to tell us that the message was from an angel just like King Benjamin did. We don't have to guess when a message come from the Lord nor always assume that it comes from God because a prophet has spoken the message. We can review several times that prophets have given messages that were not from the Lord. But we will leave that to be discussed under it's own topic.