Hi, my name is John Hilton III. Recently, somebody created a fake John Hilton III on YouTube,
stealing a picture of me from the Internet,
and has been making comments that look like they are coming from me. [insert image]
The comment itself is quite strange: “Beloved, I don't know you in person but God knows you.
God ministered to me in a revelation when I was on your profile to see things around you,
I saw blessings but spiritual attacks holding onto them, in prayers,
I saw a woman in the realm of the spirit monitoring and plotting delay in your life…”
The comment goes on to ask for money. If you think about it, this is kind of a weird comment, right?
If I actually had a revelation about you (which I haven’t)
I probably would contact you directly, not with a comment on YouTube.
We’ve seen this person create several fake accounts, using the same comment. Even a
fake account of Elder Holland! Please report any fake accounts using YouTube’s reporting features.
At first, I thought this was pretty funny. However,
I soon started receiving messages from people who thought the comment really was from me,
and they were concerned. This taught me an important lesson—there are counterfeits out there,
this person, or people like him, will continue to create fake accounts throughout our lives,
and sometimes there’s not a lot we can do about it. We have to be on guard.
This same principle is true spiritually and we see it in church history. In early Church history,
a member named Hiram Page found what he thought was a seer stone. He believed this stone was
giving him revelations. Some of what Hiram Page was teaching through his false revelations was
different than what Joseph Smith was teaching—they were counterfeit revelations. Through the Prophet
Joseph, the Lord instructed Oliver Cowdery, “Thou shalt take…Hiram Page, between him and thee alone,
and tell him that those things which he hath written from that stone are not of me and that
Satan deceiveth him; For, behold, these things have not been appointed unto him, neither shall
anything be appointed unto any of this church contrary to the church covenants” (D&C 28:11–12).
In other words, although many people claim to receive revelations,
we will not receive true revelation telling us to do something different
than the living prophets of God. A young man and woman can’t receive a “spiritual feeling”
telling them that it is o.k. to become sexually active with each other, because
God has already commanded through his prophets that sexual intimacy be reserved for marriage.
Some people today are deceived into thinking that they or somebody else purporting to be a spiritual
leader knows more than the prophet or has received additional revelation. This is of course another
counterfeit. The Lord taught, “no one shall be appointed to receive commandments and revelations
in this church excepting my servant Joseph Smith, Jun” (Doctrine and Covenants 28:2), or we might
say today, his current prophet. So if I were to think something like, “The prophets don’t
know as much about this as I do, they need to adjust their thinking,” it simply reveals that
I need to adjust my thinking. Nephi warned that when people “are learned they think they are wise,
and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they
know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not. And they
shall perish” (2 Nephi 9:28). To avoid counterfeit revelation, we must ask ourselves: Is what I am
being prompted to think, believe, or do contrary to what the current living prophets are teaching?
Let’s conclude with a little activity. Look at these three images—can
you tell which one is counterfeit? [[Can we find counterfeit images? If not say,]]
Imagine I were to show you three twenty-dollar bills—can you tell which one is counterfeit?
Elder David E. Sorenson once remarked, “There was a man who worked for the United States
Treasury Department . . . One evening at a press conference following his breaking up of a major
counterfeit ring, one of the reporters directed this statement to him:
‘You must spend a lot of time studying counterfeit bills to recognize them so easily.’
His reply to this was, ‘No, I don’t ever study counterfeit bills.
I spend my time studying genuine bills; then the imperfection is easy to recognize.’”
The lesson for us should be obvious. If we want to avoid false revelation, we should
immerse ourselves in true revelations (like scripture and teachings from General Conference).
The more time we spend with real revelation, the easier false revelation will be to detect.