Section 25: A Revelation to Emma

 This section is the only section of the Doctrine & Covenants which is addressed to a woman.  As I listened to my podcasts about it this week most of them talked about how wonderful that Emma is called an "Elect Lady" (v 3) and how she is ordained to "expound scriptures and exhort the church according as it shall be given thee by the Spirit." (v.7).  They talked about how wonderful it was that Emma was given the task of creating a hymn book (v.11).  

These things are all true, but I also know of a lot of women who would find this revelation to Emma as condescending. She is called to be a "comfort unto my servant Joseph Smith Jun., thy husband, in his afflictions, with consoling words, in a spirit of meekness." (v. 5) She is told to "Continue in the spirit of meekness, and beware of pride. Let thy soul delight in they husband, and the glory which shall come upon him." (14).  They might point out that the man in this instance is setting up a whole church and community, and Emma, who is better educated and very intelligent, is only asked to assemble a hymnbook. 

I can understand this point of view. In the modern world women have the opportunity to lead and make big things happen in the world. Emma ended up giving up so much to be Joseph's wife. Her family's financial situation was much better than the Smith's family. She was much better educated than Joseph and was already running her own cottage industry raising chickens and selling eggs.  For years after she married Joseph she never had her own home, and was often left alone to fend for herself and her children as Joseph fulfilled his church duties, or spent time incarcerated because of his religion. Later she faced feelings of betrayal and resentments as Joseph started to practice plural marriage. 

All the podcasters I listen too had nothing but praise for Emma but showed regret that after her husband's death she didn't follow the saints, but stayed back in Nauvoo, remarried, and gave consent for her son to head a new church patterned after the one Joseph started. 

What I was thinking all week was how can we judge Emma for her decision to basically leave the church and stay in Nauvoo?  Is it not possible that in doing so she was following inspiration? One of the reasons she stayed was to take care of Lucy Mack Smith who was too old to travel west. What if God wanted the prophet's mother to be taken care of and inspired Emma to stay.  Later Emma married a man who was a drunkard. The man had a child with another woman while they were married, and Emma took the child into her home and raised her. We don't know the ways of God.  Maybe the Lord knew the man would engender the child, and knew Emma was just the kind of woman who would be willing to take care of the child regardless. Is it not possible that that mission was more important to the Lord than anything Emma might have done if she had gone west?

The answer is, of course, we don't know.  We don't know if Emma acted by inspiration at any particular point in her life, or not. We do know that sometimes God inspires people to do things that don't make sense at the time, or that may even seem wrong to the outside observer. We just don't know and we just shouldn't judge. 

In the same way we cannot judge the Lord's revelation to Emma. It may sound like he was undervaluing her potential contribution to burgeoning church, but it is more likely, that with all the other things she had to contend with at that time, creating a hymn book was about as much as she could handle. Maybe instead of undervaluing Emma the Lord was protecting and supporting her. We just don't know what was really going on in Emma's heart at the time and we should refrain from judging.

The Articles and Covenants: Section 20

Section 20 of the Doctrine in Covenants outlines the basic tenets of church.  It was written mostly by Oliver Cowdery and edited through revelation by Joseph Smith. Joseph asked Oliver to create the document, basing it primarily on principles found in the Book of Mormon.  Oliver was particularly suited to do this because he was in the process of recopying the Book of Mormon manuscript so they would have a second copy to give to the printer. 

Oliver was an educated man and understood the different beliefs of the competing religions.  In this chapter he and Joseph clearly delineate where this new church fell in important questions of debate of the day. 

I got a lot of my ideas about this from the different podcasts that I listened to, but I wanted to write down the ideas so I could reference them the next time we go through the D&C. Here are some of the theological questions of the day.

The nature of the Godhead. The idea of the trinity was established at the Council of Nicaea in 325.  Since that time, no major Christian church contested the idea, even during the protestant reformation. Joseph Smith knows that the Godhead consists of three separate beings, but interestingly he does not state it overtly in this section, but he does suggest it in v. 2 when he states that he was called of God, and ordained by Jesus Christ. We know from the Lectures on Faith, written in 1835, that Joseph didn't yet understand that the Holy Ghost was also a separate being.

Ongoing Revelation: The idea that the leader of a church could receive new revelation on how to guide the church was a main point of division between the Catholics and the Protestants.  Catholics believed that the pope received revelation for the church, even after Jesus' and the apostles' deaths.  Protestants believed that all revelation was contained in the Bible, and that there was no need for further visitation of angels or visions etc. In v. 6, 11 Joseph declares that he had received the visitation of angels, and is inspired by God. 

Closed Cannon: Catholics and Protestants both believe in a closed cannon, though Catholics include more books in their cannon than Protestants do.  Joseph Smith departs from both groups by proclaiming that he had brought forth new scripture in v 8-11.

Unconditional Election: Calvinist believed that, because God knows the beginning from the end, he already knows who will be saved.  There is nothing anyone can do to change that, so your good works might show that you are elected, but they don't lead to your election. Joseph Smith refutes this idea in v 14-15 where he clearly states that people have a choice to receive or reject the gospel.

Universal Salvation: There was another religion called Universalist that believed that God is able to do his work and that everyone would be eventually saved after they had suffered the consequences of their sins.  Joseph Smith Senior was a Universalist earlier in his life, and that is why he had never been baptized. In v 29 refutes the idea of universal salvation, because it states that people must do certain things to be saved, and in v. 32 which states that man may fall from grace. 

Requirements for Baptism: Some churches of the day believed that baptism was the start of the journey to Christ and so there should be no requirements to qualify for baptism.  This was a view held by Oliver Cowdery, and he did not write this verse when he put together the Articles and Covenants.  This verse was added by Joseph Smith and it made Oliver Cowdery very upset. He convinced David Whitmer that they were in error as well, and Joseph had to travel to the Whitmer's home and convince both of them that this verse came as revelation from the Lord.  It was perhaps the beginning of Oliver's eventual split with the church.

Hierarchal Priesthood: The Catholics and Episcopalians believed that priesthood authority was essential and hierarchal.  In other words, in order to receive priesthood authority you had to be ordained by someone who already had that authority.  The Methodists, however, believed in universal priesthood.  Anyone who felt moved upon by the spirit to become a minister, could become a minister. In v. 38-67 the importance of a hierarchal priesthood organization. 

Baptism by Immersion: The importance of baptism by immersion was a point of contention between Catholics and some protestant religions, and Baptists.  Joseph is declaring here that he sides with the Baptists.

It is interesting to see the section within historical context, but that doesn't diminish its importance in the church today.  Although the way we administer the offices of the priesthood has been refined since 1830, the basic guidelines remain the same, as do the basic beliefs. 

Eternal Torment

This week in Come Follow Me we are studying Section 19 of the Doctrine and Covenants. This section has the amazing passage in which Jesus describes his suffering during the atonement. We as a church gain a lot of information about the nature of the atonement from this section. 

Today, however, I want to focus on a different part of Section 19, but first I want to remind the reader of the setting of the section.  Martin Harris has been asked to mortgage most of his farm to pay for the printing of the Book of Mormon. This is a really big ask. His farm is his livelihood, and he has spent his adult life building the farm into a productive vocation. In addition, Martin's wife, Lucy, is against the idea of risking the farm for the sake of what she sees as a scam.  She is afraid Martin is gambling away her future security, which, in fact, he is. He ends up losing both the mortgaged farm and his wife, who separates herself from him after he loses the farm.  

So why was Martin even willing to consider such a huge sacrifice?  It is because just two months before this revelation, he saw an angel who showed him the gold plates.  (it reconfirms my theory that that only people who see angels are those who are about to be asked to make a very big sacrifice).  This section is response to Martin's hesitancy to sacrifice his profession and his marriage to support Joseph Smith's prophetic mission.

This section basically says, "Martin, I am asking you to sacrifice a lot, but think of how much I sacrificed for you." That is why Jesus describes his suffering.  Jesus also warns that failure to be obedient leads to Judgement. He says the judgements have been called, "endless torment" (v. 6) and "eternal damnation." (v. 7), but then he clarifies these terms.  These punishments are called "endless" and "eternal" not because they are, in fact without end.  They are called "endless" and "eternal"  because God is Endless and Eternal, and they are God's punishments. (v. 1-12). He also says that he calls them "endless" and "eternal" so they might be "more express...that it might work upon the hearts of the children of men." (v.7)

I listen to a podcast called "Church History Matters" with Scott Woodward and Casey Griffiths.  In their podcasts they always have a section about the "controversies" found in that week's texts.  This week they both agreed that there weren't any real controversies in section 19.  I am like, What? To me this is one of the most controversial passages in all scripture. Why? because it basically says that God intentionally misleads us. Didn't he just say that he says things like "eternal torment" to "work upon the hearts of men." In modern language that is saying that he says something that he knows we will misconstrue in order to motivate us to do something he knows will be good for us. Dare I say, he lies?  It isn't technically a lie, but it kind of is. It is intentionally misleading. 

I have heard some people say that by reading the Doctrine and Covenants we come to know Jesus because most of the sections are revelations given directly from him. If that is so, and if this section is a revelation from Jesus, we need to accept the notion that God intentionally misleads us sometimes.  I think most people of faith would vehemently deny this idea, but I don't know how else you could interpret it. Could you say that he wasn't intentionally misleading? No, he admits that he is.  Could you say he didn't know we would take it wrong? No, he is omniscient. He knows how we would take it. 

In a way this understanding of the nature of God and how he interacts which his children is a little liberating. I think all of us at some point in time have received an inspiration to do something that didn't work out as we expected. Maybe someone felt inspired to marry someone but that marriage ended up in divorce. Maybe someone is inspired to take a job, only to have that job end disastrously.  The fact that God will mislead our understanding of something doesn't mean he doesn't love us.  In fact, it means the opposite.  It means he loves us so much that he is willing to tell us what we need to hear to motivate us to do the right thing, even if he knows we won't accurately understand what he is telling us.  Often, after whatever happened is over, we can look back and see that the failure caused by the misleading inspiration really was for our good. It made us a better/stronger person than we would have ever been if we hadn't gone through it. 

My conclusion is that we don't have to assume that everything God inspires us to do is going to lead to a happy ending.  I think we just need to trust that everything God inspires us to do will lead to the best ending, even if that doesn't come in this life. Still, it is a hard doctrine and it plays out over and over in early church history. We just have to make peace with it and be faithful and "willing to submit to all things the Lord sees fit to inflict upon him." (Mosiah 3:16).

The Restoration of the Melchizedek Priesthood

 This week in Come Follow Me we are studying Doctrine and Covenants 18.  In this chapter David Whitmer and Oliver Cowdery are commissioned to seek out twelve men to be apostles in the church (v. 37).  This section was given in June 1829 so it is assumed that it came about because Peter, James, and John had already come and given Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery the Melchizedek Priesthood.  There is no clear record of when this happened. We know it happened after John the Baptist conferred the Aaronic Priesthood on May 15, 1839.  Some historical records said it happened as Joseph and and Oliver were traveling between Harmony PA and Colesville (D&C 128: 20) There is only one time that Joseph and Oliver traveled to Colesville during this time period. So that is a likely time period.

One of my podcasts with Scott Woodward and Casey Griffiths, asked the question what exactly was restored by Peter, James, and John?  In D&C 27:12  God says that he sent Peter, James, and John "by whom I confirmed you and ordained you apostles and to be especial witnesses in my name and to bear the keys of your ministry."  It sounds like the main thing Peter, James, and John restored were the keys of the apostleship.  In Joseph Smith's history Joseph states that the power of laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost was given by the Lord to them in David Whitmer's home in the summer of 1829. (Church History Topics).  We also know that the sealing power was given to Joseph Smith by Elijah in the Kirtland temple 1836.  At that same time other messengers appeared and bestowed other keys.

So what keys do you have to have before you have the Melchizedek Priesthood?  Does one have to be a Melchizedek Priesthood holder to be an apostle?  Now they do, but did Jesus' original apostles have the Melchizedek Priesthood?  They were ordained as apostles by Jesus, so maybe they did.  Or maybe they just had the authority to be apostles.  

This line of thought made me take a new look at what is meant by the Melchizedek Priesthood.  In the current church, men are ordained as Elders as early as about 18 years old.  When they become Elders it is understood that they hold the Melchizedek Priesthood, but they don' t have many of the keys that were restored to Joseph Smith. They can convey the gift of the Holy Ghost, and give priesthood blessings, but that is about it. As they progress in the gospel they may get more keys or they may not.  They might become a bishop or a temple ordinance worker. Some become 70's or even Apostles.  These passages in the Doctrine & Covenants make it sound like each of those keys were considered separate gifts. The term Melchizedek Priesthood wasn't even used in the church until 1835. When Paul says that Jesus was a high priest after the order of Melchizedek (Heb 5:6) he is saying it because under the Mosaic Law a person couldn't be a high priest unless he was a Levite, and Jesus wasn't a Levite.  So Paul was going to a time before the Mosaic Law to justify Jesus' priesthood. 

I guess I am saying that the term Melchizedek Priesthood does not have a single clear meaning. In a newly ordained Elder it means one thing, and when we say that the Prophet holds all the keys of the Melchizedek Priesthood, it means another.  As a result, it makes sense to say there wasn't a single moment when the Melchizedek Priesthood was restored. Instead it was restored a piece at a time as those pieces, or keys, were needed. It may be that there are priesthood keys that we don't even have yet, that might given for the first time as part of the Millennium.  I do think we have all the keys we need for right now, and they were given to Joseph Smith over the course of the restoration of the Gospel.