Where have you seen me say otherwise? Can you quote me? On the contrary, I can quote me saying exactly that.

You may suspect as you wish. You, of course, have no evidence for this supposition. It is formed entirely out of your own prejudices and imaginations and as such says much more about you than about me.

I am sorry that you are not able to comprehend the answers, but I assure you they are comprehensible. The fault is not in the answers.

There is no strong isomorphism here from the scriptures.

1. One may have authority from God and yet fail as a servant.
2. One may be a servant and have no authority to guide and direct the Church or others.

I am sorry if it seems that way. I did not mean to make such a suggestion. What I was declaring was this:

Restoration through a Prophet (Joseph Smith) —> Priesthood Authority Passed on —> Authority from God.

This is true — again, as the LDS Church has taught since its inception. One must be called of God as was Aaron, to have that authority.

Are you unaware of this?

In terms of *claims* it is no different that what the Catholic Church claims. We have long ago admitted that both the LDS Church and the Catholic Church claim the same authority. The difference occurs when you go past the claims. In the case of the Catholic Church, they erred in thinking that they inherited the authority from an already dead Church. In the case of the LDS Church we have the authority from Jesus and His Apostles as restored.

As for the Jewish leaders, they never claimed any such authority and so it is far different.

Charles, how is this argument any different than the claimed authority of the Catholic Church or the Jewish leaders fighting against Jesus? It is the “we have authority so we speak for God” argument. Just because someone sits in a chair doesn’t mean they are a servant or have authority from God. They may have authority within a church, but not necessarily from God himself.

You seem to make a claim that can be illustrated thus:
Ecclesiastical position -> makes one a servant -> thus authority from God

I think, judging from the examples in the scriptures, it would look exactly the opposite:
Authority directly from God -> makes one a servant -> possibly a specific position (plenty of servants had no ecclesiastical position)

That seems a very odd argument. First, how easily you are deceived seems to depend upon the type of answer you receive, just as it does for any act of coming to knowledge. When as a student writing exams some answers I was confident in and others I was not. Some subjects I had more skill in than others. The places I was more skillful I had, because of that reliability, more trust in my answers when I felt them correct.

Now some people trust in answers they get when they haven’t really developed the skills they need. This is a fairly common topic in church. The old analogy was a radio with faulty tubes, but since almost no one knows that technology anymore you don’t hear it as much.

I rather suspect some people are much better at receiving and recognizing revelation than I am. Some are worse. The trick is in trying to follow the spirit and learning to discern. It’s both a practical skill but also tied to your spirituality/righteousness and the importance of what you’re praying for. Even at times when I was most spiritual some things (often warnings) were very clear whereas other things weren’t. And if I was angry or had done something wrong, then obviously my ability to discern or even get answers was significantly reduced.

This is pretty much irrelevant to the conversation here. I am not going to address the rest of your comment for that reason.

This is actually two questions.

There is no reason to believe fallible humans cannot make mistakes. If you have seen me claim otherwise, I would like to see where you saw me do so.

But as for leading us astray, when they speak as prophets they are in authority and they have revelation. Having authority is when “Whether by mine own voice or the voice of my servants it is the same” and it is when “If they reject you, they reject me”. This is true even if they are fallible and subject to error. However, the revelation part helps prevent that and if they persist the Lord will remove them.

Hence the trust and faith is not in the men but in the Lord. The Lord will see to it that we are not led astray and has, in times past, taken care of cases where errors were leading us off.