WHY WAS THERE MORE THAN ONE PROPHET IN THE DAYS OF LEHI?

For it came to pass in the commencement of the first year of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah, (my father, Lehi, having dwelt at Jerusalem in all his days); and in that same year there came many prophets, prophesying unto the people that they must repent, or the great city Jerusalem must be destroyed. (1 Nephi 1:4)

Some students of the gospel identify so strongly with the president of the church as "the Prophet" that they are bothered by the presence of multiple prophets in Old Testament times. Who was the President of the Church in Lehi's day? Was there one predominant prophet?

First of all, there is almost always more than one prophet on the earth at one time. Currently, there are 15 men on the earth set apart as Prophets, Seers, and Revelators. What makes the President of the Church unique is that he is the only man on earth who has authority to exercise all the keys of the priesthood, even though those keys were given to him when he was first ordained an apostle. Today's organization of prophets is much different than in Lehi's day.

In the Old Testament, there was no "President of the Church." The presiding priesthood authority under the Mosaic Law was the high priest of the Aaronic Priesthood (2 Kings. 22:8; Nehemiah 3:1). Since the ecclesiastical institution of the time was governed by the Aaronic Priesthood, these prophets (most of whom had obtained the Melchizedek priesthood through personal righteousness) were not ecclesiastical administrators in the same sense that they are today. Rather, they received mandates from the Lord to perform specific prophetic functions. The prophet Jonah is a good example; he was commanded of the Lord to preach repentance to the city of Nineveh. Lehi was commanded to prophecy to the Jews regarding their impending destruction and to call them to repentance. Other Old Testament prophets were given special callings to counsel the king in conjunction with their responsibility to cry repentance to the people, Samuel, Nathan, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. They may have been the major prophets of their day but they were not the administrative leaders of the religious organization under Mosaic Law.

The justice of God requires that he warn the people before they are destroyed. 2 Kings 17:13 says: "Yet the Lord testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets."

In the case of the Babylonian captivity, the Lord sent several prophets to warn the people. Lehi, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Habakkuk, Nahum, Urijah (Jeremiah 26:20-23), Zephanaiah and Obadiah were probably all contemporaries, and all but Obadiah and Nahum are known to have prophesied specifically about the destruction of Jerusalem.