He uses the Prophets to warn us beforehand. This prevents us from saying events are not under God’s control. We should be convinced the revelations come from God as the foretold events are fulfilled. We get these prophetic disclosures in advance to prevent us from saying they are due to our false religious beliefs or our idols (of learning, scholarship, science or other “arm of man” philosophy). It prevents us from saying the false gods we worship have had something to do with the event.
God tells us beforehand so we can see His presiding authority in the events.
We see His power. This prevents us from saying our goodness, or our false religious beliefs, or our Neo-Platonic, incorporeal, Historic Christian figment-of-a-god had some responsibility for the event.
We tend to fill in with superstition, or dismiss as luck, the events in our lives. God does not want us doing that. He wants us to give credit where it is due: to Him.
In the case of Latter-day Saints, we have our Patriarchal Blessings given to us as a prophetic blessing and foretelling of our life’s events. It is not merely a guide, but also an individualized prophecy. It serves the purpose of telling us, in advance, of the things each of us will encounter here in mortality. It provides an anchor which assures us of God’s involvement in our life. As the events unfold, we can know for certain we have lived, and are living, the way which God foresaw and foretold. Through these individual blessings we can know God told us beforehand, because He is involved in each of our lives. This is what we are supposed to see. Not mere happenstance or luck. God lives. And God is involved in all of our lives. We should know that and, more importantly, we should acknowledge it.
We have many idols. Among ourselves (as Latter-day Saints) they consist primarily of worshiping men, false educational notions, or an organization, rather than Christ and His Gospel. Moroni summed up the way in which we can tell if we are living the Gospel: We should have angels visiting us, miracles among us, and profound gifts from the Spirit in our individual lives. For the most part we prefer instead to share among ourselves reassuring flattery that heaven dotes with particular delight upon us.
We have a difficult time seeing ourselves in our wretched and fallen state, in desperate need of a Savior to bring us into harmony with the laws of heaven. We cannot conceive of ourselves in our true light. Unprepared for eternal glory, unwilling to live a portion of the Celestial Law, and unthankful for the succor Christ offers to us, we proceed along in our arrogance, happily reassuring each other of our delightful and enlightened state. As we turn away, like the Pharisee, from the beggars among us, and let the apostate Samaritans minister to them, we re-enact the very scenes Christ alluded to in His parables. But we are blind to it all.
We worship idols. And the chief among them is us with our illusions of holding a “healthy self-image” and preoccupation with “self-esteem.” We cannot conceive of ‘losing ourselves’ because of the delight we take in ourselves. Again Nephi is standing on our toes, and shouting into our faces. But Nephi’s is a needed and therapeutic confrontation for us. It is like being rebuked by a loving, elder father, whose words are always motivated by our needs and best interests. He wants us to be saved. He is trying to help us.