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Our Contingent Constitution

On September 17, 1787 (236 years ago this month), thirty-nine delegates signed the United States Constitution. It begins with these words:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

It took four months of intense and divisive closed-door debates in Philadelphia to get the Constitution signed, and that was only the first precarious step in a long, high-stakes fight over whether it would ever become the basis of our government.

One state had refused to send delegates to the convention at all. Many delegates had left the convention early. Three delegates who stayed refused to sign. Once the Constitution was signed it still had to be ratified by at least nine of the thirteen states. And some of America’s most persuasive and patriotic leaders were outspokenly opposed to it, including Samuel Adams, George Mason, and Patrick Henry.

James Madison was a proponent of the Constitution. He realized mid way through the convention that he could not get everything he wanted. So he had to choose between getting some of what he wanted or none of what he wanted. Wisely, he chose to compromise. He had argued that the Constitution did not need a bill of rights, but he lost that fight and, in the end, saw the wisdom of including ten amendments to the Constitution that forbade the government from encroaching on freedom of religion, of speech, of assembly, and to petition or protest, among others.

President Dallin H. Oaks taught,

Without a Bill of Rights, America could not have served as the host nation for the Restoration of the gospel, which began just three decades later.

James Madison’s example, and the June 1, 2023 letter from the First Presidency together with recent teachings from President Nelson and President Oaks, highlight the point I want to make in this post. It is that we need to live in tension without giving way to contention. In other words: In order to form a more perfect union, we must do the difficult work of holding firmly to what the Lord called “just and holy principles” while we humble ourselves, learn from other children of God whose views differ from ours, and find common ground for the general welfare.

President Oaks taught, “on contested issues, we should seek to moderate and unify.” He models how to do that while upholding just and holy principles. Some people have been critical of him for it. They are free to be so. But it was only by making concessions and accepting the wisdom of others’ points of view that James Madison got the Constitution through both the convention and the ratification process.

The Constitution is contingent. It always hangs by what Joseph Smith called “a brittle thread” (Burgess, James. Journal, 1841–1848. CHL. MS 1858). That thread is vulnerable to being severed when we the people pridefully choose parties over principles. President Oaks’s 2021 General Conference talk, “Defending Our Divinely Inspired Constitution” uses the word principle(s) 22 times. There is something important for us to understand about standing on principles.

Many troubling studies have shown that people (of all parties) tend to be more loyal to their party than to their principles.Voters are even more willing to sacrifice democratic principles for partisan interests when the electorate is highly polarized, as ours is. And lots of troubling evidence shows that unprincipled, partisan voters support candidates who violate the voter’s principles. We often overlook or justify the evil of our candidate when we would condemn or vilify the same behavior in the opposing candidate.

Living prophets have encouraged us to participate in politics, including in political parties, but they urge us to put revealed principles above all party loyalties. In 1833 the Lord revealed one principle that should always transcend party loyalty: “When the wicked rule,” he said, “the people mourn. Wherefore, honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold; otherwise whatsoever is less than these cometh of evil. And I give unto you a commandment, that ye shall forsake all evil and cleave unto all good.”

Earlier this year the First Presidency declared that “merely voting a straight ticket or voting based on ‘tradition’ without careful study of candidates and their positions on important issues is a threat to democracy and inconsistent with revealed standards (see Doctrine and Covenants 98:10).”

So the prophets have urged us “to spend the time needed to become informed about the issues and candidates you will be considering. Some principles compatible with the gospel may be found in various political parties, and members should seek candidates who best embody those principles. Members should also study candidates carefully and vote for those who have demonstrated integrity, compassion, and service to others, regardless of party affiliation.”

At the recent Joseph Smith Papers Conference, Spencer McBride, the best informed historian of Joseph Smith’s political thoughts and actions, said and illustrated that Joseph Smith’s politics were motivated by two principles above all others, namely political independence (not being the pawn of any party), and liberty and justice for all.

Before the 14th Amendment was added to the the Constitution and the Supreme Court interpreted its equal protection clause to apply to state and local governments, Missouri or any other state could issue executive orders to exterminate Latter-day Saints and the federal government said it would not, and maybe could not, do anything about it. That defect in the Constitution peeved Joseph Smith, and he vowed to do something about it. He was motivated by the principles the Lord had revealed to him earlier, in 1833, when the saints were driven–by men who owned other human beings–from their legally owned and occupied land in Jackson County, Missouri.

That detail about slavery is not tangential to understanding what the Lord revealed about the Constitution. It is at the heart of what the Lord revealed. He said that he had let it be established and that it “should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles.” The inclusion of all flesh, not just Americans, not just white people, not just men, is important and intentional. In the next verses the Lord highlights a major shortcoming of the Constitution that conflicts with his plan. He says that all flesh should be protected in their rights according to just and holy principles so that every person “may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I have given unto him, that every [one] may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment. Therefore, it is not right that any [one] should be held in bondage one to another. And for this purpose,” the Lord continues, “have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose” (D&C 101).

This important revelation shows us that the Lord is bigger than the Constitution. He established it, not the other way around. President Oaks taught:

Our belief that the United States Constitution was divinely inspired does not mean that divine revelation dictated every word and phrase . . . . The Constitution was not “a fully grown document,” said President J. Reuben Clark. “On the contrary,” he explained, “we believe it must grow and develop to meet the changing needs of an advancing world.” For example, inspired amendments abolished slavery and gave women the right to vote.

In this sense the Lord himself compromised with the framers of the Constitution and didn’t originally get everything he wanted in it (or taken out of it). President Oaks continued:

What was God’s purpose in establishing the United States Constitution? We see it in the doctrine of moral agency. In the first decade of the restored Church, its members on the western frontier were suffering private and public persecution. Partly this was because of their opposition to the human slavery then existing in the United States. In these unfortunate circumstances, God revealed through the Prophet Joseph Smith eternal truths about His doctrine.

God has given His children moral agency—the power to decide and to act. The most desirable condition for the exercise of that agency is maximum freedom for men and women to act according to their individual choices. Then, the revelation explains, “every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment” (Doctrine and Covenants 101:78).

“Therefore,” the Lord revealed, “it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another” (Doctrine and Covenants 101:79). This obviously means that human slavery is wrong. And according to the same principle, it is wrong for citizens to have no voice in the selection of their rulers or the making of their laws.

Joseph Smith taught that the time could come when “even this Nation will be on the very verge of crumbling to peices and tumbling to the ground and when the constitution is upon the brink of ruin this people will be the Staff up[on] which the Nation shall lean and they shall bear away the constitution away from the <very> verge of destruction.”

We can fulfill that prophecy, but unless we do it by following our living prophets, we are part of the problem rather than part of the solution. President Oaks warned about “threats that undermine the inspired principles of the United States Constitution.” He said:

“The stature of the Constitution is diminished by efforts to substitute current societal trends as the reason for its founding, instead of liberty and self-government. The authority of the Constitution is trivialized when candidates or officials ignore its principles. The dignity and force of the Constitution is reduced by those who refer to it like a loyalty test or a political slogan, instead of its lofty status as a source of authorization for and limits on government authority.”

The contingent Constitution hangs in the balance. Latter-day Saints are supposed to be among the people who preserve it. What can we do in order to form a more perfect union? We can follow the examples of our greatest presidents and the teachings of our living prophets.

Constitutional scholar Justin Collings recently showed how George Washington’s vital role in creating and preserving the Constitution hangs on five principles we can espouse. In addition to these, George Washington had what an eminent historian called a sense for power. Washington could could have seized power several times but he always laid it down instead. He surrendered his command of the Continental Army when the war of independence was won. He could have made himself a king like Napoleon did. Instead he handed power peacefully to his duly elected successor. He exemplified the Constitutional principle President Oaks described in these words:

We are to be governed by law and not by individuals, and our loyalty is to the Constitution and its principles and processes, not to any office holder. In this way, all persons are to be equal before the law. These principles block the autocratic ambitions that have corrupted democracy in some countries.

George Washington’s principled leadership showed us how to live by just and holy principles. Abraham Lincoln’s leadership extended those just and holy principles to all flesh, or at least to more of God’s children than ever before.

President Lincoln steered us safely through our greatest Constitutional crisis by followed a nearly perfect recipe of faithfulness to the just and holy principles of the divinely inspired Constitution, the humility to eagerly listen to others whose views differed from his, and the courage to act decisively for a more perfect union, the general welfare, the common defence, and to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

When his army won the war and his party won the White House for the second time, Abraham Lincoln could have put party over principles. He did just the opposite. He said to the deeply wounded country, “With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Lincoln was doing what Joseph Smith had taught years earlier when he read 1 Corinthians 13 on charity and said:

Don’t be limited in your views with regard to your neighbors’ virtues, but be limited towards your own virtues; and not think yourselves more righteous than others; you must enlarge your souls toward others if yould [you would?] do like Jesus, and carry your fellow creatures to Abram’s bosom.

This is akin to what President Oaks taught in October 2020 when he urged us to act on the Savior’s teaching to love our enemies. He said:

Knowing that we are all children of God gives us a divine vision of the worth of all others and the will and ability to rise above prejudice…. . As I have lived for many years in different places in this nation, the Lord has taught me that it is possible to obey and seek to improve our nation’s laws and also to love our adversaries and our enemies. While not easy, it is possible with the help of our Lord, Jesus Christ. He gave this command to love, and He promises His help as we seek to obey it.

President Nelson recently taught us the Savior’s command to be peacemakers:

… Venomous contention . . . infects our civic dialogue and too many personal relationships today. Civility and decency seem to have disappeared during this era of polarization and passionate disagreements. . . .

Too many pundits, politicians, entertainers, and other influencers throw insults constantly. I am greatly concerned that so many people seem to believe that it is completely acceptable to condemn, malign, and vilify anyone who does not agree with them. . . .

Anger never persuades. Hostility builds no one. Contention never leads to inspired solutions. . . . .As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are to be examples of how to interact with others—especially when we have differences of opinion. One of the easiest ways to identify a true follower of Jesus Christ is how compassionately that person treats other people. . . . .

The Savior’s message is clear: His true disciples build, lift, encourage, persuade, and inspire—no matter how difficult the situation. True disciples of Jesus Christ are peacemakers. . . . One of the best ways we can honor the Savior is to become a peacemaker. . . .

Contention drives away the Spirit—every time. Contention reinforces the false notion that confrontation is the way to resolve differences; but it never is. Contention is a choice. Peacemaking is a choice. You have your agency to choose contention or reconciliation. I urge you to choose to be a peacemaker, now and always.

Brothers and sisters, we can literally change the world—one person and one interaction at a time. How? By modeling how to manage honest differences of opinion with mutual respect and dignified dialogue.

We almost didn’t get a Constitution. We have almost lost it several times. The Constitution is contingent. It always hangs by what Joseph Smith called “a brittle thread” (Burgess, James. Journal, 1841–1848. CHL. MS 1858).

The biggest threat to our divinely inspired Constitution is us–the petty, partisan, prideful worst parts of each of us. The good news is that the greatest hope for our divinely inspired Constitution is also us–the best parts of us; the principled, prayerful, and patriotic parts. If we choose to let God prevail, we can be fully faithful to just and holy principles including the extension and preservation of moral agency for all flesh, and we can do so with charity for all and malice toward none.

That’s how we’ll defend our divinely inspired Constitution.

Do you know how old Joseph was when he saw his first vision?

Why is this even a question? Doesn’t everyone know that Joseph Smith was 14 when he saw God and Jesus Christ in a grove? The answer is no. Some people think they know. That’s not the same as knowing.

So was Joseph 14 or not?

He probably was. Why the qualifier? Because the evidence shows that the answer isn’t so simple. The evidence says that Joseph began worrying about his soul when he was about 12. He continued to do so through his early teens. His memory of his age at the time of his vision was vague. Joseph usually remembered his age at the time as an afterthought.

Joseph’s 1832 autobiography says

“At about the age of twelve years my mind become seriously imprest with regard to the all importent concerns for the well fare of my immortal soul.” That led Joseph to search the scriptures and observe churches and Christians. He concluded that the scriptures and the versions of Christianity didn’t match. Joseph felt grief as a result. In 1832, he remembered that this process lasted “from the age of twelve to fifteen.”

Joseph did not specify his age in the 1832 account

He said simply that “while in the attitude of calling upon the Lord a piller of light above the brightness of the sun at noon day come down from above and rested upon me and I saw the Lord and he spake unto me saying Joseph my son thy sins are forgiven thee.” Frederick Williams later inserted the words “in the 16th year of my age” into the clause quoted above. No one knows whether Joseph told Frederick to do so or why he wrote “16th year.” Some people may think they know. That’s not the same as knowing.

Joseph’s scribe recorded

an 1835 telling of the vision in Joseph’s journal. In that telling, the last thing Joseph says about the vision is, “I was about 14 years old when I received this first communication.” On that day at least, his age at the time of the vision was an afterthought, and he approximated it. That line contrasts with the intense and emotional lines before it. The foreground in this memory is of discovering the truth, overcoming the unseen power that startled him, praying, seeing divine beings, and being filled with joy. His age at the time is background. It was important enough to him to try to recall at the end but not more important than that.

In his manuscript history

Joseph remembered that unusual religious excitement started “in my fifteenth year.” He was, in other words, fourteen. Of all the accounts, this one does the best job of establishing a date and situating Joseph in time: early spring, 1820. Compared to the others, this memory is uncharacteristically sharp about Joseph’s age and the date of the vision. Joseph remembered later in this account, “I was an obscure boy only between fourteen and fifteen years of age,” after which his scribe added “or thereabouts.” A later revision of this document is more typical. In it Joseph says he was “about 15 years old” during the “unusual religious excitement.” Estimating like that is typical of the way Joseph dated things in his vision memories. Certainty about dates and his age is uncharacteristic in his vision accounts. In his letter to John Wentworth, Joseph said, “When about fourteen years of age I began to reflect upon the importance of being prepared for a future state.”

The secondary accounts follow this pattern

Orson Pratt says, “When somewhere about fourteen or fifteen years old, he began seriously to reflect upon the necessity of being prepared for a future state.” Orson Hyde’s version is less wordy but no more precise: “When he had reached his fifteenth year, he began to think seriously . . . ” The journal of Levi Richards just says “when he was a youth he began to think about these things.” David Nye White quoted Joseph saying God “revealed himself to me first when I was about fourteen years old, a mere boy.” Alexander Neibaur’s journal entry doesn’t say anything about Joseph’s age at the time.

Those are the facts of the historical record

That’s the evidence we have on which to base an answer to the question with which we began: How old was Joseph Smith at his first vision? He typically said he was about fourteen, and usually as an afterthought. Once he said clearly that he was fourteen. His scribe added, “or thereabouts.” Another scribe said he was fifteen. Some people interpret the vagueness and variety as evidence that Joseph didn’t see the Father and the Son. Some people think they know that he could not possibly mis-remember his age if he actually saw a vision. That’s not the same as knowing.

Joseph didn’t remember exactly how old he was

He didn’t claim to. He claimed to see the Father and the Son. He knew that God knew it. He couldn’t deny it. “Some said he was dishonest, others said he was mad, and he was ridiculed and reviled, but . . . he had seen a vision. He knew he had, and all the persecution under heaven could not make it otherwise.”

Was Joseph Smith a true or a false prophet?

Joseph Smith, Christmas, and the End of the World

Today’s post discusses what the Lord’s Christmas day 1832 revelation to Joseph Smith says about prophets, prophecy, and the end of the world. The revelation came a bit before Charles Dickens created Christmas as we know it.

The United States was in a state of political turmoil

Congress had passed tax laws that favored northern factories over southern planters. So a South Carolina convention “unilaterally nullified the tariff and forbade its collection. President Andrew Jackson, refusing to acknowledge this assertion of state power, called out troops. By Christmas 1832, a military confrontation appeared imminent” (Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 191).

Latter-day Saints and other Christians

Viewed these events (along with a plague in India and a nearly global outbreak of cholera) in eschatological terms. Ess-cat-a-loj-i-cal is an adjective. Es-ca-tahn is the related noun, and it means the end of the world. Es-ca-tall-o-gee is theology about the end of the world.

The eschaton must be coming soon

At least that’s how it looked to Joseph Smith and others that Christmas. The United States was on the brink of civil war. Wars and rumors of wars, desolating sicknesses and desolating scourges were in the news (“Signs of the Times,” The Evening and the Morning Star 1:8 [January 1833], 62.) Joseph asked for and received a revelation about what was to come. It said that wars–plural–would begin shortly with South Carolina’s rebellion, then continue until wars had gone global and resulted in “a full end of all nations” (D&C 87:6). The revelation foresaw slave rebellions and the uprising of “remnants” vexing the Gentiles, which Joseph and the early Saints would have interpreted in Book of Mormon terms to mean descendants of Lehi irritating the unrepentant (Mormon 7:1-10, 3 Nephi 10, D&C 19:27).

This revelation is mainly descriptive, not prescriptive

D&C 87:1-7 describes what God knows will happen because people reject His laws and His love. It’s not about what He wants to happen, or what would happen if people obeyed His laws and reflected His love. It describes unfathomable violence by which the inhabitants of the earth “feel the wrath, and indignation, and chastening hand of an Almighty God” whom they have rejected. Given the impending eschaton, the prescriptive point in the last verse is “stand ye in holy places, and be not moved” (D&C 87:8).

Joseph Smith’s Christmas 1832 revelation

Is that a command to be passive?

Does it mean we should be a bystander or immobilized by fear? I don’t think so. I think it means something like, take a stand for holiness and don’t get pushed around. I interpret it as a command to take an immovable stand for the laws and love of God in a world descending into self-destruction. The otherwise depressing revelation ends with good news for those who take such a stand: The day of the Lord–the eschaton–comes quickly (D&C 87:8).

Joseph Smith may have looked foolish to some when the crisis blew over

Civil war didn’t come. It didn’t start with the rebellion of South Carolina, nor result in death and misery, or global warfare, or the end of nations. Well, at least not right away, as Joseph and others probably expected.

The eschaton never seems to happen as expected

When I was a kid in the 70s and a teenager in climactic years of the Cold War, I didn’t know the words eschaton or eschatology. I didn’t read the scriptures much nor understand what I read. I just knew—I was certain—that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ was inseparably connected with MAD, the mutually assured destruction we all anticipated when the US and the Soviet Union inevitably started raining nuclear bombs on each other. What I saw was all there was. I had no sense of history, the long history of war and violence or of Christian eschatology. I had no idea that what I assumed was different from what I knew. I thought I knew all there was to know about the topic. It was black and white.

Then the world didn’t end when or how I expected it to

That’s the story of Christian eschatology in a nutshell. Since the days of Paul at least, Christians have been expecting the end of the world any day. Every generation of Christians has waited for the end times, and there are always some Christians somewhere who are sure that it’s coming very, very soon.

Early Latter-day Saints were like that

But not quite as much as the followers of William Miller. He was a generation older than Joseph Smith. He was a Baptist, then a Deist, but the combination of having his life miraculously saved in the War of 1812 and the deaths of loved ones led him to conversion to Jesus Christ, and he renewed his Baptist faith. He longed for Jesus’ return to end wars and death. Like me, William Miller didn’t have the knowledge or skills or the revelation necessary to read and understand apocalyptic parts of the Bible in context. So he made some assumptions that led him to interpret Daniel 8:14 to mean that the Savior would return sometime between March 21, 1843 and a year later.

Some of William Miller’s followers got even more specific

They narrowed the day of the Savior’s Second Coming to April 3, 1843. They were not the only ones interested as that day approached. Latter-day Saints were also looking forward to the Savior’s Second Coming, studying the prophecies, trying to discern the signs of the times, as Christians had been doing for nearly two millennia.

So It was no wonder that on Sunday April 2, 1843

the subject came up in Elder Orson Hyde’s sermon. Joseph’s journal entry for that day says “Elder Hyde Preached 1 epistle John 1 chap 1st 3 verses–when he shall appear we shall be like him &c he will appear on a white horse–as a warrior & may be we shall have some of the same spirit–our god is a warrior–John 14:23–it is our privilege to have the father & son dwelling in our hearts &c . . . . .” After the sermon Joseph had lunch with Elder Hyde, and said, “Elder Hyde I am going to offer some corrections to you. Elder H. replid–they shall be thankfully received.”

Joseph clarified that when the Savior appears

“we shall see him as he is. We shall see that he is a man like ourselves. And that same sociality which exists amongst us here will exist among us there only it will be coupled with eternal glory which glory we do not now enjoy.”Joseph taught further that John 14:23 is about “a personal appearance” of the Father and the Son. “To say that the father and the Son dwells in a man’s heart is an old Sectarian notion. and is not correct. . . . ”

Then Joseph prophesied

“I prophecy in the Name of the Lord God that the commenceme[n]t of bloodshed as preparat[o]ry to the coming of the son of man. will commenc[e] in South Carolina.— (it probably may arise through the slave trade.)— this the a voice declard to me. while I was praying earne[s]tly on the subje[c]t 25 December 1832. I earnestly desird to know concern[in]g the coming of the Son of Man & prayed. when— a voice said to me, Joseph, my, son, if thou livest until thou art 85 years old thou shalt see the facce of the son of man. therefore let this suffice & trouble me no more on this matter.”

The next day was April 3, 1843

Joseph Smiths journal entry for April 3, 1843 pokes at Millers followers who expected the Second Coming that day. Image courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org

It turned out not to be the eschaton. Joseph’s journal entry pokes at Miller and his followers: “tis too. pleas[a]nt. for false prophets.” A few days later on April 6, 1843, Joseph again told his experience a decade earlyer of praying to know when the Savior’s Second Coming would be, and this time he added how he had decided to interpret the Lord’s intentionally vague revelation:

“. . . were I going to prophecy. I would procpesy [prophesy] the end will not come in 1844. or 5— or 6. or 40 years more [p. [72]] there are those of the rising generation who shall not taste death till christ come. <I was once praying earnestly upon this subject. and a voice said unto me.> My son, if thou livest till thou art 85 years of age, thou shalt see the face of the son of man. . . . <I was left to draw my own conclusions concerni[n]g this &,> I took the liberty to conclude that if I did live till that time Jesus <he> would make his appearance.— <but I do not say whether he will make his appeara[n]ce, or I shall go where he is.—> I prophecy in the name of the Lord God.— & let it be written. <that the> Son of Man will not come in the heavns till I am 85. years old 48 years hence or about 1890.—” (cross ref. D&C 130:14-17).

I’m quite fascinated by the way

Joseph read his own revelations in the context of his culture’s eschatology. He accurately prophesied the American Civil War, but he didn’t understand his own prophecy. When he received the Christmas revelation in 1832, as South Carolina was threatening secession, he assumed, as almost all Christians have done, that the Savior’s Second Coming would be soon. Then in 1843 Joseph specifically noted the difference between what the Lord revealed and what he, Joseph, interpreted it to mean:

The Lord’s revelation:

“Joseph, my, son, if thou livest until thou art 85 years old thou shalt see the face of the son of man. therefore let this suffice & trouble me no more on this matter.”

Joseph’s interpretation:

“I was left to draw my own conclusions concerni[n]g this &,> I took the liberty to conclude that if I did live till that time Jesus <he> would make his appearance.— <but I do not say whether he will make his appeara[n]ce, or I shall go where he is.—> I prophecy in the name of the Lord God.— & let it be written. <that the> Son of Man will not come in the heavns till I am 85. years old 48 years hence or about 1890.—”

This is a terrific way to show that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God and a frontier farmer in the antebellum (pre Civil War) United States. That means that he knew things from God that no one else could, and that he understood them as most everyone else in his time and place would.

One reason that Joseph was such a good revelator is that he worked at what he called “the spirit of revelation.” He taught:

“A person may profit by noticing the first intimation of the Spirit of Revelation for instance when you feel pure Inteligence flowing unto you it may give you sudden strokes of ideas that by noticeting it you may find it fulfilled the same day or soon. (I,E,) those things that were presented unto your minds by the Spirit of God will come to pass and thus by learning the Spirit of God. & understanding it you may grow into the principle of Revelation. until you become perfect in Christ Jesus.”

Sometimes Joseph didn’t understand

How to interpret the Lord’s revelations, at least not right away. He had to work at it and see how things unfolded first. He referred to his Christmas 1832 revelation occasionally but never published it during his lifetime. Latter-day Saints began to pay attention to it in the 1850s as the American Civil War loomed. Then, in 1861, when it began to be fulfilled to the letter, a Philadelphia newspaper reprinted the revelation and asked, “Have we not had a prophet among us?” (“A Mormon Prophecy,” Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, 5 May 1861, reprinted in Robert J. Woodford, The historical development of the Doctrine and Covenants, 3 volumes [PhD dissertation, Brigham Young University, 1974], 2:1110).

Joseph didn’t always get it right

There was a gap between what God revealed through him and his limited ability to understand, interpret, and explain. He wasn’t a perfect revelator. He was just the best one the world has ever seen. Happy birthday Brother Joseph. And Merry Christmas everyone. Be of good cheer! When the news is bleak and violence leads to death and misery across the globe, take a stand for holiness and don’t move.

The Prince of Peace will be back soon!

Death, big brothers, and solving soteriological problems

My oldest brother was born on December 13, 1955. He would be 64 today. He was killed in 1993 in a terrible car accident. It was the worst day of my life.

Marvin John Harper — Inscribed: your missionary brother, Marvin John

Joseph Smith was born on December 23, 1805. So in the days leading up to Christmas my mind dwells on death and the role big brothers play in solving soteriological problems. Let me explain.

Soteriology (so·te·ri·ol·o·gy) is theology about salvation. Christianity’s soteriological problem is based on three premises:

God loves all people and desires their salvation (1 Timothy 2:3-4)
Salvation comes to those who knowingly and willfully accept Jesus Christ as their Savior (John 3:16)
Most people live and die without accepting Christ, or even knowing that they could or should

The problem says that all three premises are true but they can’t be reconciled

Proposed solutions tend to discredit one of the premises. Maybe God doesn’t desire the salvation of all people. Or maybe Jesus saves people who don’t knowingly and willfully accept Him.

The first Christians didn’t have this problem

Because they didn’t make the unstated assumption that makes it a problem in the first place. In other words, the first Christians didn’t believe that death was a deadline that determined a person’s salvation. Peter taught that Jesus Christ preached His gospel to the dead so they could be judged as justly as the living (1 Peter 3:18-20, 4:6). Paul taught that Christians could be baptized for the dead (1 Corinthians 15:29).

Rescue for the Dead by Jeffrey Trumbower — Trumbower’s very cool book traces the doctrine of redemption for the dead through Christian history

It was Augustine, not Jesus or His apostles, who decided

That death should be a deadline that determined a person’s salvation. But Augustine’s view prevailed in Christ’s church, at least in the West. Many medieval Christians continued to believe that after his death and before his resurrection, Christ opened the spirit prison. They called this event the harrowing of Hell, and they created a lot of art depicting it.

illulstrate how Joseph Smith's revelations affirm the harrowing of hell — My favorite images are the ones in which Hell is an awful monster, and Christ causes it to cough up its captive dead (as in 2 Nephi 9). This one is Grandes heures de Rohan. I got it from jessehurlbut.net. He got it from gallica.bnf.fr Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Latin 9471, fol. 76r.

However, the Protestant reformers, for all the good they did, generally followed Augustine on this point.

Then along came Joseph Smith

He was immersed in Protestant culture and assumptions. His big brother died painfully in 1823. The loss was heartbreaking to Joseph. It stung even worse when Reverend Benjamin Stockton implied pretty strongly at Alvin’s funeral that he would spend eternity in Hell. Joseph couldn’t reconcile Alvin’s goodness, Rev. Stockton’s doctrine, and a just and merciful God.

Fast forward twelve years to 1836

Joseph now knows from the Book of Mormon that unaccountable infants who die are not damned, but as distasteful as Rev. Stockton’s doctrine still sounds, Joseph doesn’t know that adults who die before embracing the Savior’s gospel are not automatically damned. Sincere and devout but mistaken theologians have caused this problem. If you’re the Lord Jesus Christ, how will you solve it?

How will you inform a world that has already decided otherwise

That your saving grace reaches beyond death and saves all who choose to embrace your gospel? Joseph hasn’t even thought to ask, being so thoroughly acculturated by Protestantism and all. So how do you get him to become open to it? How do you help him become aware of things he doesn’t know that he doesn’t know?

You show him a vision of the future, and of heaven, and you make sure he sees Alvin there. That makes him marvel and wonder. How will Alvin get past the flaming gates of God’s kingdom? Having purposely provoked the question, you answer it:

All who have died without a knowledge of this gospel, who would have received it, if they had been permitted to tarry, shall be heirs of the celestial kingdom of God— also all that shall die henceforth, without a knowledge of it, who would have received it, with all their hearts, shall be heirs of that kingdom, for I the Lord will judge all men according to their works according to the desires of their hearts (D&C 137).

Joseph Smith journal entry, January 21, 1836 — Joseph Smith’s journal entry for January 21, 1836, is the source text for D&C 137, the vision of Alvin in heaven, and the restored truth that desire, not death, determines salvation through Christ. Image is courtesy of josephsmithpapers.org.

Desire, not death, is the determinant of salvation through Jesus Christ

He saves all who desire to be saved by Him once they know that good news. Which side of death they are on makes no difference at all. By removing the assumption that death determines salvation, Jesus resolved the soteriological problem for Joseph and for everyone else. There is no conflict between the premises now.

That’s just the beginning. After restoring this truth, Joseph restored the early Christian practice of baptism for the dead. The prophets after him restored endowment and sealing ordinances for the dead. And in 1918 his nephew, Joseph F. Smith, received a series of visions that reveal how Jesus harrowed Hell. His report of that experience testifies: “The dead who repent will be redeemed, through obedience to the ordinances of the house of God” (D&C 138:58).

That is a good verse, no doubt. But my favorite is the one right before it, the one in which Joseph F. Smith says that he saw that “the faithful elders of this dispensation, when they depart from mortal life, continue their labors in the preaching of the gospel of repentance and redemption, through the sacrifice of the Only Begotten Son of God, among those who are in darkness and under the bondage of sin in the great world of the spirits of the dead” (D&C 138:57).

That verse is about all three of my big brothers–

Marvin J. Harper, Howard K. Harper, and the Only Begotten Son of God–and about how they’re solving the soteriological problem. “O the greatness of the mercy of our God, the Holy One of Israel! For he delivereth his saints from that awful monster the devil, and death, and hell, and that lake of fire and brimstone, which is endless torment” (2 Nephi 9:19)