That test is as relevant today as when first given, for we too are deluged with discordant voices crying, “Lo here!” and “Lo there!” We too have our profusion of prophets. Just as there are those clothed in the robes of the priesthood declaring the doctrines of faith, repentance, and baptism, so there are those clothed in academic robes who declare the doctrines of mind and reason and invite us to worship at the shrine of intellect.
We have our prophets of false religion, with their God devoid of body, parts, and passions, who will save us by grace alone; our hedonistic prophets with their doctrine of self-love and pleasure, telling us to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die; our prophets of agnosticism and its freedom from commitment; and even our prophets of atheism and their doctrines of liberation from social restraint and moral responsibility.
These and many more “seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness,” but encourage every man to walk “in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall” (D&C 1:16).