Following the Prophets in Unity In this there is safety, peace By Scott L. Vanatter, Reston Ward, July 20, 2014 INTRO Please return with me to my senior year in high school over forty years ago. It was just prior to my receiving a testimony of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. The foundational truths of the Restoration revealed by God through the Prophet Joseph Smith were about to be made known to me. At the time I was ignorantly, blissfully satisfied existing in the world without a belief in God. While others found truth and solace in religion, I was compelled to reject what I saw as the false, double predestination of automatically consigning most of humankind to eternal damnation. This very narrow sliver of philosophy, to me, seemed to infect most of the Christian churches I had encountered. I couldn’t conceive that, if there was a God, this plan was what he or she or it designed and set in motion. If there was a God, this world could not have begun as a major accident. I
Scott Vanatter