Through all of my study and meditation about our Savior, Jesus Christ, I have only felt a growing hope in His invitation: “Come, follow me.” With an ever increasing faith I find myself trusting my spiritual ears as I hear Jesus saying to me: “You can do the things that I did. You can work the works that I worked. You can know the Father as I knew Him while I walked the earth.” It is not Jesus’ desire to leave us in the dust as He races on ahead to heaven. Rather, He would that we let Him run the road with us, and trust Him to carefully coach us in handling the difficulties of the terrain.
With all of this in mind, it should not surprise me to learn that Jesus’ beloved servant, the Prophet Joseph Smith, would stir in me the same feelings while extending the same invitation. It was Joseph’s desire that the Lord would speak to all men, that they might all know Him as Joseph did. He said: “I was…introduced to a man from the east. After hearing my name, he remarked that I was nothing but a man, indicating by this expression that he had supposed that a person to whom the Lord should see fit to reveal his will, must be something more than a man….Indeed, such is the darkness and ignorance of this generation, that they look upon it as incredible that a man should have any [communication] with his Maker” ( History of the Church, vol. 2, p. 302). “…God hath not revealed anything to Joseph, but what He will make known unto…even the least Saint…as fast as he is able to bear [it]” (Ibid., vol. 3, p. 380).
It is our privilege to purify ourselves and come up to the same glory, and see for ourselves, and know for ourselves. “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” (See Ibid., vol. 1, p. 284).