[536] Gen. xii-xxv; Pearl of Great Price: Book of Abraham.
=4.= Samuel, who became so great a prophet in Israel, commissioned to consecrate, command, and rebuke kings, to direct armies, and to serve as the oracle of God unto the people, was chosen while yet a boy, and called by the voice of the Lord.[543] And such was the power that followed this call, that all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established a prophet of the Lord.[544] Time fails to permit the mention of many other men of might, who received their power from God, whose histories portray the honor with which the Lord regarded His chosen ministers. Think of the heavenly vision by which Isaiah was called and directed in the duties of his prophetic office;[545] of Jeremiah, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah;[546] of the priest Ezekiel, who first received the Divine message in the land of the Chaldeans,[547] and subsequently on other occasions; of Hosea,[548] and all the rest of the prophets to Zechariah[549] and Malachi.[550]
=5.= The apostles of the Lord were called by His own voice in the days of His ministry; and surely the Savior's authority is beyond question, vindicated as it is by the mighty works of the atonement, wrought through pain and the anguish of death, and by the authoritative declaration of the Father at the time of Christ's baptism. Peter, and Andrew his brother, while casting their nets into the sea, were called with the instruction,--"Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men;"[551] and soon after, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were similarly called. So with all of the chosen Twelve who ministered with the Master; and unto the Eleven who had remained faithful, He appeared after His resurrection, giving them special commissions for the work of the kingdom.[552] Christ specifically declares that He had chosen His apostles, and that He had ordained them in their exalted stations.[553]
=6.= In the period immediately following that of Christ's earthly mission, the ministers of the Gospel were all designated and set apart by unquestionable authority. Even Saul of Tarsus, afterward Paul the Apostle, who was converted with marvelous signs and wondrous manifestations,[554] had to be formally commissioned for the labor which the Lord desired him to perform; and we are told that the Holy Ghost spake to the prophets and teachers of the Church at Antioch, while they fasted before the Lord, saying, "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them."[555]