All along the watchtower, princes kept the view

"And behold, the watchman upon the tower would have seen the enemy while he was yet afar off; and then ye could have made ready and kept the enemy from breaking down the hedge thereof, and saved my vineyard from the hands of the destroyer." Doctrine and Covenants 101:54 

One of my favorite scenes in the film The Return of the King is when the warning beacons of Gondor are lit. As the camera pans out and moves (if I recall correctly how it goes) and we see the beacons on the tops of the mountains being lit each in turn, I was in awe. Part of it was that I like mountains, snow, and fire, and putting them together in a scene is really nice, but also what was happening as the distress call was being made from Minas Tirith. So many miles being spanned so quickly, and all might have been lost without those fires. 

But what if those fires had been ignored by Rohan? It would not have mattered that they were lit, then. In the same way it does not matter if God guides us, whether through scriptures, living prophets, or personal revelation, if we do not listen to His guidance. 

"Behold, I sent you out to testify and warn the people, and it becometh every man who hath been warned to warn his neighbor." D&C 88:81

We can stretch the idea a little bit more, however, in a way that we cannot with the typical "man in a watchtower" analogy that is used by many Latter-Day Saints to describe the role of living prophets and apostles. The prophets are in a position to receive revelation and counsel for the entire world, and so they are akin to a man in a high tower who can see what we cannot and warn us of dangers of which we may not be aware. However, not every person hears the watchman's cry- not that they fail to take it to heart, but that they literally never heard it. Nor is every invasion is one which the watchman is placed to see- an apostle cannot be in every neighborhood and family at once, and typically does not offer counsel for each local situation. 

Instead we find ourselves in the position of needing to light a warning fire ourselves when we see the prophet light his, and also of needing to light a warning fire should we be the first to see the problem, without waiting for someone else to do it. Let us not fall prey to the bystander effect when lives and souls are on the line. We must, all of us, be ever on the watch for danger both to ourselves and others. We're all in this together. 

Your turn: How can we be better beacon-wardens for each other?