Church leaders are not able, each time we teach you, to offer a new or more glamorous route that will lead back to the presence of our Heavenly Father. The route remains the same. Hence, encouragement must often be given concerning the same things and warnings must be repeated. Just because a truth is repeated does not make that truth any less important or true. Indeed, the opposite is true. ...
I can imagine that if the Lord himself were standing on the Mount of Olives and if he were instructing the people, he would say much the same things that have been said and will be said [in our conferences]. ...
When the world has followed prophets, it has moved forward; when it has ignored them, the results have been stagnation, servitude, death. ...
Various excuses have been used over the centuries to dismiss these divine messengers [living prophets]. ... By one means or another, the swiftest method of rejection of the holy prophets has been to find a pretext, however false or absurd, to dismiss the man so that his message could also be dismissed. ...
The holy prophets have not only refused to follow erroneous human trends, but have pointed out these errors. No wonder the response to the prophets has not always been one of indifference. So often the prophets have been rejected because they first rejected the wrong ways of their own society. ...
Those prophets I have known are the most loving of men. It is because of their love and integrity that they cannot modify the Lord’s message merely to make people feel comfortable. They are too kind to be so cruel. I am so grateful that prophets do not crave popularity. ...
How do you teach your children to love the authorities of the Church? If you are constantly saying good things about the branch presidency, the district presidency, the mission presidency, and the Presidency of the Church, your children will grow up to love the brethren.
We pray for the Church leaders. If children all their days in their turn at family prayers and in their secret prayers remember before the Lord the leaders of the Church, they are quite unlikely to ever fall into apostasy. …
The children who pray for the brethren will grow up loving them, speaking well of them, honoring and emulating them. Those who daily hear the leaders of the Church spoken of in prayer in deep affection will more likely believe the sermons and admonitions they will hear. ...
The membership of the Church will always be safe if they follow closely the instructions and admonitions and the leadership of the authorities of the Church. ...
I would not say that those leaders whom the Lord chooses are necessarily the most brilliant, nor the most highly trained, but they are the chosen, and when chosen of the Lord they are his recognized authority, and the people who stay close to them have safety. ...
Let us harken to those we sustain as prophets and seers, as well as the other brethren, as if our eternal life depended upon it, because it does!
(President Spencer W. Kimball, Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball, Ch. 23: Shepherds of the Flock) ↗