The Fire on the Altar: Emerson’s Longing and the Restoration’s Reply

The Spectral Preacher

In 1838, Ralph Waldo Emerson stood before the graduating divinity students at Harvard and said aloud what most of them had only whispered over supper. Christianity, he told them, had become a cold hearth, a place where men gathered to describe the fire that once burned there. The living flame had been swept into labeled jars, catalogued and safe. He wrote plainly: “Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead.”¹

Then he described a preacher he had heard:

“A snow storm was falling around us. The snow storm was real; the preacher merely spectral.”

The storm had weight. It pressed against the windows and piled on the sills. The sermon had none. And why? Because the man behind the pulpit spoke of God the way a docent speaks of a pharaoh’s sarcophagus: with reverence for something safely entombed. Religion had become a thing under glass. And like all things under glass, it was perfectly preserved and perfectly dead. Emerson named the sickness with a surgeon’s hand: “The stationariness of religion; the assumption that the age of inspiration is past, that the Bible is closed; the fear of degrading the character of Jesus by representing him as a man; indicate with sufficient clearness the falsehood of our theology.”

His plea could not have been plainer: “It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake.” He wanted faith with mountain wind in it, faith that left frost on the beard and breath in the lungs. He wanted, in short, a religion that could catch cold. He wanted what he called “the true Christianity,—a faith like Christ’s in the infinitude of man.” And he cried out to those young ministers: “The need was never greater of new revelation than now.”

The Boy in the Grove

What Emerson searched for among the elms of Cambridge, a boy in upstate New York had already encountered. Joseph Smith refused to live on second-hand bread, or, for that matter, second-hand fire. He would not sit politely before the ash of ancient miracles and call it warmth. He walked into a grove of hardwood trees and discovered that God is, not was. That He speaketh, not spake. Christianity stepped out of the glass case and back into the weather, where breath clouds and hands tremble.

A God with a body you could see overthrew the pale philosophies. A new book of scripture proved that heaven had not gone mute. Priesthood authority returned to the earth. The heavens that Emerson’s Harvard had declared sealed were torn open; not like a page turned, but like a veil rent. The Restoration did not erase the past; it returned the present tense to religion. We are not curators of vanished wonders. We are summoned into the same column of light. Not to admire it, but to stand within it.

Emerson had waited for a teacher who could prove that God is, not was. That teacher came from a grove of sugar maples, not a divinity school.

The Spirit Does Not Float

The Restoration did not merely announce that God still speaks. It revealed the manner of His speaking, and what His voice does to the body that receives it.

We have a habit of imagining the Holy Ghost as a kind of warm glow, a spiritual quilt draped over the shoulders. Parley P. Pratt would have none of it. Spirit, he insisted, is matter. And the Holy Ghost acts upon the whole man, flesh and sinew:

“The gift of the Holy Ghost… quickens all the intellectual faculties… develops beauty of person, form and features… gives tone to the nerves… In short, it is, as it were, marrow to the bone, joy to the heart, light to the eyes, music to the ears, and life to the whole being.”²

“Tone to the nerves.” “Marrow to the bone.” This is resurrection in rehearsal: the body remembering its future. The Spirit does not hover over the body like morning fog over a millpond. He fills it. He crowds out falsehood the way daylight crowds out a candle. He clears the eyes. He wakes the sleeper to his own royalty. When scripture promises that the Spirit “quickeneth all things” (Moses 6:61), it is not promising that we shall become less human. It promises we shall be human at last, human in full measure, human as the word was always meant to sound. To be filled with the Holy Ghost is the discovery of what we were built for.

This is what Emerson’s spectral preacher lacked. He was, in the most precise sense, a geographer of the divine. That is to say, a man who has mapped every road to a country he has never entered.

Newborn Bards of the Holy Ghost

Emerson did more than diagnose the disease. He glimpsed the cure. His charge to those young ministers remains one of the most stirring sentences in American letters:

“Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost,—cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity.”

A bard is not an echo. A bard is a maker. He does not merely respond to the world; he addresses it truthfully, the way a king addresses a court or a father addresses a son. Emerson understood this: “Always the seer is a sayer.” The person who has truly seen God cannot remain silent, not because the vision demands self-expression, but because truth, once received, demands truthful address. The vision demands a voice the way a bell demands its tongue. This is not performance. It is the only honest way to live in a world where God has spoken.

Orson Pratt explained the inner workings of how this becomes possible:

“Without the aid of the Holy Ghost… a person would have but very little power to change his mind… Hence, it is infinitely important that the affections and desires should be… changed and renewed… To thus renew the mind of man is the work of the Holy Ghost.”³

Here lies the bard’s fire: the power to rewrite the inner script. With the Spirit, we gain the strength to dislike what once dazzled us and to love what once seemed dull. We stop living borrowed lives. We become first-hand witnesses of the Light. Emerson’s “bard” is not a poet in the literary sense alone. He is anyone who has met the living God and refuses to pretend the meeting never happened.

You Cannot Breathe Once a Week

A bard cannot speak without breath. And this life demands more than occasional spiritual oxygen; it demands an entire atmosphere. So the sacramental promise comes with its solemn beauty: that they may always have his Spirit to be with them.

If Emerson diagnosed the death of the soul, President Nelson provides the emergency oxygen for its resuscitation. He has warned with prophetic urgency: “But in coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.”⁴

Note the word survive. Not thrive. Not excel. Survive. The days ahead will not permit a casual acquaintance with the Spirit. A guest appearance will not do. Only a dwelling Companion can sustain us. A man cannot live on oxygen delivered only on Sundays. The lungs do not work that way. Neither does the soul.

But we must be careful here. The Spirit is not a resource to be managed or a fuel to be topped off. He is a Person, and what President Nelson is describing is not a maintenance schedule but the terms of a relationship. We do not survive the coming days by optimizing our spiritual intake. We survive by remaining in genuine communion with a Being who knows us, addresses us, and will not be reduced to a mechanism. The Holy Ghost does not fill us the way air fills a tank. He fills us the way a true companion fills a life: by being present, by being known, and by being welcomed home. A tank, after all, does not mourn the air when it is empty.

And because He is a Person, He possesses a divine delicacy: He respects the agency of the human soul with a quiet, perfect reverence. He does not intrude where He is not invited, nor does He remain where He is ignored. Elder David A. Bednar has warned that the Spirit speaks quietly and withdraws quietly.⁵ When we distance Him, He recedes—not out of divine sulking, but out of a profound respect for our choice to walk alone. This is the physics of the spiritual life, as real as gravity. Distance from God is not a sentence passed down from a bench; it is a condition simply lived. Emerson’s spectral preacher had no fire because he had no ongoing encounter with the living God. He was running on the fumes of a revelation he had only read about. We cannot afford to repeat his error. To be bards, to love well and speak truly, we must carry the air of Zion into the smoke of Babylon.

Rekindling the Fire on the Altar

Emerson closed his address with a plea that still burns:

“And now let us do what we can to rekindle the smouldering, nigh quenched fire on the altar.”

He looked westward with longing:

“I look for the hour when that supreme Beauty, which ravished the souls of those eastern men, and chiefly of those Hebrews, and through their lips spoke oracles to all time, shall speak in the West also.”

He looked for a “new Teacher” who would show the shining laws come full circle. He could not have known that the Teacher had already come, that a fourteen-year-old boy had already knelt among the trees and seen the heavens open. But we know. We have the fire Emerson longed for. The question is whether we will carry it or merely label it and set it behind glass again.

The world is filled with people who are solid enough to buy groceries and sign documents, yet who have somehow misplaced the one self that was supposed to do the living. They live on borrowed routines. They call numbness normal. Emerson saw them filling the pews of New England. They fill ours too, if we are not careful. 

But we know something older and truer. The Restoration is the announcement that the famine is over. The Holy Ghost is the marrow that wakes the sleeper. The vow is never to return to sleep.

Emerson’s charge belongs to us now. Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost. Acquaint men at first hand with Deity. Do not speak of God as if He were dead.

“Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High” (Psalm 82:6). Holiness is not an exception to being human. It is what humanity looks like when nothing is withheld. We were not fashioned to be shadows, nor built for the long defeat of numbness and borrowed days. We were made for the column of light: and that, when we step into it, is what burns. The fire does not ask to be studied. It asks for wood.

Footnotes

1 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “An Address” (also known as The Divinity School Address), delivered at the Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, MA, July 15, 1838, in The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903), 1:132–151; see also https://emersoncentral.com/texts/nature-addresses-lectures/addresses/divinity-school-address/ 

2 Parley P. Pratt, Key to the Science of Theology (Liverpool: F. D. Richards, 1855; repr., Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1965), 101–2.

3 Orson Pratt, The Essential Orson Pratt, ed. Breck England (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1991), 28–29.

4 Russell M. Nelson, “Revelation for the Church, Revelation for Our Lives,” Ensign, May 2018.

5 David A. Bednar, “That They May Always Have His Spirit to Be with Them,” Ensign 36, no. 5 (May 2006): 29–32.

The Solitary Savior: Finding Restoration in the Silence of Single Life

For many singles, loneliness is not a constant roar, but a persistent, low-frequency hum. It is the cumulative weight of “small silences” that build up over weeks and years. I remember one time in my first year of mid-single life realizing that I had never truly lived alone. Growing up, I lived with my parents. When I left for my mission, I had companions. In college, I had roommates until I got married. So, until I separated from my former spouse, I had never known the silence of living alone. That silence sometimes felt unbearable.

This oppressive silence is the echo of an empty house where no one asks, “How was your day?” or notices if you’ve arrived home safely. It is the invisible burden of a triple load—logistical, financial, and emotional—that must be borne by a single set of shoulders. Logistically, there is no “backup” for the mundane tasks that prove vital when they remain undone. 

Financially, a single adult navigates a world built for two incomes, where every emergency threatens your financial foundation. Emotionally, the lack of a daily witness to your life—someone to share a small victory or a burnt dinner—can lead to a profound sense of invisibility. We often feel like observers in a world designed for pairs, whether we are sitting alone in a church pew, at a dinner party, or during holiday celebrations. When the phone remains silent, the weight of being “unseen” can feel like a heavy shroud. (Have you ever sat for a couple of hours looking at Facebook, just thinking about who you might be able to chat with—just for a little company?)

Holy Week offers a profound, almost jarring irony to the experience of being lonely. We might call this the Gethsemane Paradox. The most important and universal act in human history—the Atonement of Jesus Christ—was performed in absolute solitude.  Centuries before Jesus went to Gethsemane, the prophet Isaiah recorded the Messiah’s own description of His coming moment—perhaps the most visceral acknowledgment of divine loneliness in holy writ: “I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me” (Isaiah 63:3).

In the ancient world, treading a winepress was a communal, rhythmic task—a harvest celebration involving many hands and joyful songs. But the Savior’s “harvest” was different. To truly suffer for everyone, He had to be separated from everyone. In Gethsemane, when He asked His closest friends to “watch with [Him],” they fell asleep. Even in His moment of greatest agony, those who loved Him most could not comprehend His burden. He was physically surrounded by people yet, emotionally and spiritually, He was in a vacuum. 

The irony deepened on the cross when Jesus experienced the ultimate human fear: the withdrawal of a loving Father who had always been there to comfort and protect Him. His soul cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34), was the moment He became the ultimate patron of the lonely. Jesus didn’t just observe loneliness. He fully entered it. He did this so the single person sitting alone in a quiet room, feeling forgotten, may have the sincere comfort that only the understanding borne of experience can deliver. You are not talking to a God who looks down on you with pity, but a Savior who sees you with the experiential insight of one who has been there and will never forsake you–who will walk to Gethsemane and back with you in your moment of maximum loneliness and despair. And you are never more in His fellowship and embrace than when you feel utterly alone.

While the “Saturday” of our lives can feel like an eternal waiting room, the scriptures promise that restoration is a central, literal law of the universe. Consider the woman who had suffered for twelve years with a blood issue. She had spent everything she had on doctors, but none had cured her. She must have been spiritually exhausted. Her society branded her as perpetually unclean, and she was isolated. No one would have wanted to touch her! She was “fearing and trembling” when she realized that Jesus had sensed her touch. Yet the moment she touched the Jesus’s robe, she was “straightway” healed (Mark 5:29). Perhaps the most profound moment of her restoration was not the physical healing, but the words Jesus spoke next. He called her “Daughter.” Jesus didn’t just mend her body. He welcomed her into the family of God, replacing her twelve years of isolation and loneliness with an immediate and eternal sense of belonging. Twelve years of suffering and despair ended in a single second. 

Similarly, Job’s story reminds us that long seasons of loneliness and loss do not dictate the speed of recovery. After a grueling trial of isolation, where even Job’s friends turned against him, the Lord “turned the captivity of Job” and “also, the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before” (Job 42:10). His restoration was a double blessing that arrived as a divine gift—not a relentlessly slow climb that He had to make alone.

The Resurrection itself is the ultimate example of an “overnight” transformation. On Saturday, the cause seemed lost as the tomb had been sealed. By Sunday morning, the entire direction of the world had shifted forever. Restoration doesn’t always have to be a slow, agonizing crawl. It can come like a thief in the night—sudden, miraculous, and total. The message of Holy Week is that morning is coming, and it has the power to restore everything loss and despair took away.

Deep inside, I have understood this truth for a very long time. I think, in a large sense, virtually everyone has known the loneliness of feeling misunderstood, forgotten, or dismissed. 

As a newly returned missionary, I wrote the following poem— before knowing the lonely darkness of rejection by a wife I loved; before watching my beloved 17 year-old brother suffer and die a horrific death from brain cancer; before a second divorce; and before the loss of my sweet 24-year-old son in a tragic rock climbing accident—then burying my mother only four months later. Life has been harder than I might have thought when I wrote this poem. But I have held close the promise that, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning” (Psalm 30:5), and that has made all the difference. 

Joy Cometh in the Morning

Life began, for Adam, in sweet innocence,
But it didn’t endure very well,
For Eden reigned but one shining moment,
And shortly gave way to pure hell.

Days can be filled with sweat on our brows,
And the pain and sorrows of life.
Headlines read of murder and drugs,
And of international strife.

In humanity’s quest for the good things of life,
Everything got all mixed up.
It turned from a charming garden of God,
To a relentless bitter cup.

So, what of the sorrow and all the despair,
That seems our common lot?
Of the hopeless depression,
The lifeless shame of every negative thought?

For they seem to canker the souls of many,
With bitterness and with gloom.
An existence that is not really life,
Is the poison of Satan’s doom.

Yet in the beginning God made a plan,
To renew and refresh and redeem,
To give each soul some hope for itself,
And a little courage to dream.

God called the light day, and the darkness night,
And gave laws to govern their dawn,
And with the dawning of each new light,
Comes new courage and strength to go on.

As the sun descends in the death of the day,
And the chill of twilight is born,
God’s children lie down to the death we call night,
No more their sorrows to mourn.

Then morning comes, first in one golden strand,
Later in brilliance clear,
And with the night flees the desperate sorrow,
With all its burdens and tears.

The soul is renewed in each new morn,
With new mercy and grace from above,
For God wants to lift the spirits of all,
To eternal temples of love.

As one walks through this veil of tears,
Forgotten by all his friends,
And feels forsaken by God himself,
Approaching a bitter end,

Morning’s dawn heals the broken heart,
And makes new the wounded soul,
And gives strength to bear mortality’s cross,
With an eye on eternal goals.

Let us take hope in a gift that is real,
To see and taste and hear and feel…

All the wonders of each new day,
And of every sunlit golden ray…

Which gives a heart the hope to believe,
That after that very darkest eve…

When the Prince of life hung on the cross,
And the depths of hell he knew,
That His morning of resurrection came,
And eternal hope was renewed!

Resource:

Intentional Courtship can help in this journey.

About the Author

Jeff Teichert, and his wife Cathy Butler Teichert, are the founders of “Love in Later Years,” which ministers to Latter-day Saint single adults seeking peace, healing, and more joyful relationships. They are co-authors of the Amazon bestseller Intentional Courtship: A Mid-Singles Guide to Peace, Progress and Pairing Up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Jeff and Cathy each spent nearly a decade in the mid-singles community and they use that experience to provide counsel and hope to mid-singles and later married couples through written articles, podcasts, and videos. Jeff and Cathy are both Advanced Certified Life Coaches and have university degrees in Family & Human Development. They are the parents of a blended family that includes four handsome sons, one lovely daughter-in-law, and two sweet little granddaughters.

Purchase Jeff & Cathy’s book Intentional Courtship:

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Connect with Jeff & Cathy:

Website: http://www.loveinlateryears.com/

Podcast: https://anchor.fm/loveinlateryears

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/loveinlateryears

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Reflections on “the Meridian of Time”

From the editors: When we formulated the idea of a magazine for Latter-day Saints, we wanted just the right name that would have our purpose in its meaning. We wanted a name that invited excellence and illumination, and so we chose Meridian. We knew that it meant the highest point of light in one sense and a measure of the world in another. Author Jeff Lindsay is on the same wavelength in this article.

Readers of Meridian Magazine may have thought about the meaning of “meridian” in the scriptures. There’s an interesting range of possibilities and a puzzle or two to ponder.

Four times the Book of Moses uses an extremely rare English term, “the meridian of time,” to describe the time when Christ would come:

For they would not hearken unto his voice, nor believe on his Only Begotten Son, even him whom he declared should come in the meridian of time, who was prepared from before the foundation of the world. (Moses 5:57)

Wherefore teach it unto your children, that all men, everywhere, must repent, or they can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God, for no unclean thing can dwell there, or dwell in his presence; for, in the language of Adam, Man of Holiness is his name, and the name of his Only Begotten is the Son of Man, even Jesus Christ, a righteous Judge, who shall come in the meridian of time. (Moses 6:57)

And now, behold, I say unto you: This is the plan of salvation unto all men, through the blood of mine Only Begotten, who shall come in the meridian of time. (Moses 6:62)

And it came to pass that Enoch looked; and from Noah, he beheld all the families of the earth; and he cried unto the Lord, saying: When shall the day of the Lord come? When shall the blood of the Righteous be shed, that all they that mourn may be sanctified and have eternal life?

And the Lord said: It shall be in the meridian of time, in the days of wickedness and vengeance.

And behold, Enoch saw the day of the coming of the Son of Man, even in the flesh; and his soul rejoiced, saying: The Righteous is lifted up, and the Lamb is slain from the foundation of the world; and through faith I am in the bosom of the Father, and behold, Zion is with me. (Moses 7:45–47)

We first consider relevant meanings of “meridian.” Linguist Stanford Carmack kindly sent me some definitions and examples of use from the extensive Oxford English Dictionary, 2^nd edition:

2.2 The point at which the sun or a star attains its highest altitude.

c1450 Lydg. Secrees 347 Phebus‥In merydien fervent as the glede.1647 Crashaw Poems 130 Sharp-sighted as the eagle’s eye, that can Outstare the broad-beam’d day’s meridian.a1667 Cowley Ess., Greatness, There is in truth no Rising or Meridian of the Sun, but only in respect to several places.1728 Pope Dunc. iii. 195 note, The device, A Star rising to the Meridian, with this Motto, Ad Summa.1843 James Forest Days viii, The sun had declined about two hours and a half from the meridian.

b.2.b fig. The point or period of highest development or perfection, after which decline sets in; culmination, full splendour.

1613 Shakes. Hen. VIII, iii. ii. 224 And from that full Meridian of my Glory, I haste now to my Setting.1638 Sir T. Herbert Trav. (ed. 2) 93 Yet in the meridian of his hopes [he] is dejected by valiant Rustang.c1645 Howell Lett. (1655) III. ix. 17 Naturall human knowledg is not yet mounted to its Meridian, and highest point of elevation.1673 Temple United Prov. Wks. 1731 I. 67, I am of Opinion, That Trade has, for some Years ago, pass’d its Meridian, and begun sensibly to decay among them. 1700 Dryden Fables Pref. *Bb, Ovid liv’d when the Roman Tongue was in its Meridian; Chaucer, in the Dawning of our Language. a1761 Cawthorn Poems (1771) 61 My merit in its full meridian shone.a1859 Macaulay Hist. Eng. xxiii. (1861) V. 67 This was the moment at which the fortunes of Montague reached the meridian. The decline was close at hand.1893 G. Hill Hist. Eng. Dress II, 268 Dress was in its meridian of ugliness.

c.2.c The middle period of a man’s life, when his powers are at the full.

c1645 Howell Lett. i. vi. lx. (1655) 307 You seem to marvell I do not marry all this while, considering that I am past the Meridian of my age.1703 E. Ward Lond. Spy xvii. (1706) 406 As for her Age, I believe she was near upon the Meridian.1795 Mason Ch. Mus. ii. 133 When Purcel was in the meridian of his short life.1864 H. Ainsworth John Law Prol. iii. (1881) 19 Though long past his meridian, and derided as an antiquated beau by the fops of the day.1873 Hamerton Intell. Life iv. ii. (1875) 143 Any person who has passed the meridian of life.

The origins of the word “meridian” are explained at Etymology Online:

mid-14c., “noon, midday,” from Old French meridien “of the noon time, midday; the meridian; a southerner” (12c.), and directly from Latin meridianus “of midday, of noon, southerly, to the south,” from meridies “noon, south,” from meridie “at noon,” altered by dissimilation from pre-Latin *medi die, locative of medius “mid-” (from PIE root *medhyo- “middle”) + dies “day” (from PIE root *dyeu- “to shine”).

The cartographic sense of “a great circle or half-circle of a sphere passing through the poles” is attested from late 14c., originally astronomical. Figurative uses tend to suggest “point of highest development or fullest power,” implying a subsequent decline. [emphasis added]

“Meridian” is thus related to noon, the high point of time, the time of greatest light, with the figurative sense of fullest light or divine power, after which there would be a decline. While it has sometimes been understood as a chronological midpoint in 7,000 years of sacred history, it may be fruitful to consider more figurative meanings such as a high point, a time of fulness in power and authority, etc.

A Parallel to “the Meridian of Time” in the Book of Mormon?

One of the surprising things about the Book of Moses is that numerous passages in the small book are reflected in the Book of Mormon, sometimes with precisely matching language or language expressing related concepts, often with a common context – without being readily explained by an appeal to the King James Bible.

This possibility was first raised by Noel B. Reynolds in 1990 in “The Brass Plates Version of Genesis” where thirty-three parallels were found, including several that pointed to an unexpected direction of influence from the Book of Moses to the earlier translated Book of Mormon — a surprise that led Reynolds to hypothesize that a text related to our Book of Moses may have been on the brass plates.

In collaboration with Reynolds, that work was expanded in 2021 in “‘Strong Like unto Moses’: The Case for Ancient Roots in the Book of Moses,” bringing the number of proposed parallels up to ninety-six. In 2024, “Further Evidence from the Book of Mormon for a Book of Moses-Like Text on the Brass Plates” raised the number to 133, and then a project looking at statistics and the distribution of parallels further raised the number to 146 in a 2025 two-part publication (see Part 1 and Part 2 at Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship).

Currently there are 162 proposed parallels. (The list is published at and will continue to be updated as needed at both AriseFromTheDust.com and JeffLindsay.com.) With that many parallels and with many of them occurring in multiple places in the Book of Mormon, 10.2% of the verses of the Book of Mormon (after excluding the chapters from the Bible that are essentially quoted in the Book of Mormon) are involved in one or more parallels with the Book of Moses.

That average of 10.2% comes from a highly non-uniform distribution, with parallels being nearly twice as frequent in the small plates text (15.8%) as in the remainder of the Book of Mormon (8.67%). The non-uniform distribution may in part be due to the high familiarity with the brass plates of early prophets such as Lehi, Nephi, and Jacob. On the other hand, in Mormon’s writings in his book of Mormon, the number is just under 4.0%.

A recently proposed and still tentative parallel, #162, involves the coming of Christ in the “meridian of time.” But how can this be a parallel when the Book of Mormon does not use the term “meridian of time” or even the word “meridian” at all? In this case, the parallel is not based on identical language but on semantically related language.

In light of the dictionary definitions and etymology of “meridian” discussed above, I propose that the “meridian of time” may be tantamount to “the fulness of time” used by Lehi twice in 2 Nephi 2 and by Nephi in 2 Nephi 11:

Wherefore, thy soul shall be blessed, and thou shalt dwell safely with thy brother, Nephi; and thy days shall be spent in the service of thy God. Wherefore, I know that thou art redeemed, because of the righteousness of thy Redeemer; for thou hast beheld that in the fulness of time he cometh to bring salvation unto men. (2 Nephi 2:3)

And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon, save it be by the punishment of the law at the great and last day, according to the commandments which God hath given. (2 Nephi 2:26)

For if there be no Christ there be no God; and if there be no God we are not, for there could have been no creation. But there is a God, and he is Christ, and he cometh in the fulness of his own time. (2 Nephi 11:7)

Nephi appears to be reciting Lehi’s words, not just in using a phrase similar to “the fulness of time” but also Lehi’s words: “And if these things are not there is no God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things” (2 Nephi 2:13).

Lehi’s phrasing may have other connections to the Book of Moses to consider. In 2 Nephi 2:3, Lehi includes the term “salvation” in “in the fulness of time he cometh to bring salvation unto men,” related to “This is the plan of salvation unto all men” in Moses 6:62 (Parallel 13).

Further, 2 Nephi 2:3 also includes “dwell safely,” perhaps influenced by another parallel with the Book of Moses, Parallel 93, “Dwell in safety forever,” involving Moses 7:20 and 2 Nephi 1:9.

Lehi’s words in 2 Nephi 2:26 include “to act for themselves and not to be acted upon,” which involve Parallel 125, “Agents unto themselves” with Moses 4:3 and 6:56, coupled with 2 Nephi 2:26, 10:23; Alma 12:13; and Helaman 14:30.

Connections to the Book of Moses are also evident in the adjacent verses around 2 Nephi 2:26, as shown with inline annotations:

Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy [Parallel 144: “Adam fell that men/we might be” with Moses 6:48]. (2 Nephi 2:25)

Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life [with v. 28, part of Parallel 14, “eternal life” with Moses 1:39] , through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil [with v. 29, part of Parallel 9, “devil-lead-captive-his will” with Moses 4:4]; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself [with vv. 5, 11, 13, 18, and 23, part of Parallel 44, “Misery (either for Satan or his followers)”]. (2 Nephi 2:27)

2 Nephi 2 is one of the richest in the Book of Mormon for parallels with the Book of Moses. In terms of parallels per 1,000 words, it is essentially tied with Ether 8 for the most parallel-rich chapter (Ether 8 is rich in parallels pertaining to secret combinations, but lacks the thematic diversity of Lehi’s speech). Thirteen different parallels are found in its 30 verses, involving seventeen verses, seven of which have more than one parallel.

Lehi’s heavy use of Book of Moses-related material (material not easily explained by an appeal to the KJV Bible) in this chapter increases the likelihood that the reference to the time of the coming of the Messiah might have been influenced by the Book of Moses, even though “the meridian of time” was used in the English translation of the Book of Moses instead of “the fulness of time.”

Time(s) and Fulness in the New Testament

The parallel involving Lehi’s “fulness of time” and the Book of Moses is weakened by similar but not identical language in the New Testament that must be considered. While New Testament language would not have been available to influence Nephi or Lehi, it could have influenced Joseph Smith if or when the choice of wording was his, and likewise could have influenced the choice of English given to Joseph Smith in the translation process (e.g., it could have influenced wording choice by a hypothetical angelic agent assisting in the translation, if such were part of the translation process). Galatians 4:4 speaks of “the fulness of the time”:

But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, . . .

“Fulness of the time” conveys an important difference relative to Lehi’s phrasing. It points to a specific time, with the concept of fully reaching a specific moment in time rather than an era that is the zenith of time or history. The Greek word chronos is used here for time, referring to a specific time, a chronological event. The New International Version of the Bible (NIV) has “when the set time had fully come,” while the New English Translation (NET) has “when the appropriate time had come.” Without the definite article before “time,” Lehi’s “fulness of time” seems more analogous to “the meridian of time.”

The other New Testament verse to consider is one often heard in Latter-day Saint discourse, Ephesians 1:10:

That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him:

This is still slightly different from Lehi’s “fulness of time.” This verse is not about the time of Christ’s mortal ministry, nor about a precise time per se, but about a dispensation. The phrase “fulness of times” in this context may point to the completion of history or the culmination of time (or of multiple eras) when everything is finally put under Christ and united. Latter-day Saints generally understand our current era, called the “dispensation of the fulness of times,” to be the culminating era in the “last days” before the Second Coming of the Lord, preparing the world for the great Millennium.

Paul’s use of the term “dispensation” (sometimes translated as “administration”) can refer to the administrative era of the Restoration when authority and apostolic organization have been restored and the work of gathering begins in earnest, preparing mankind for the Millennium.

The era of “dispensation of the fulness of times,” a phrase used several times in the Doctrine and Covenants (see Doctrine & Covenants 27:13, 76:106, 112:30, and 124:41) can be considered to point to the era of the Restoration in the last days leading up to the Millennium. This need not be the same time as “the fulness of times” itself, as we glean from Doctrine and Covenants 76:106, referring to the punishment of the impenitent wicked:

These are they who are cast down to hell and suffer the wrath of Almighty God, until the fulness of times, when Christ shall have subdued all enemies under his feet, and shall have perfected his work.

In summary, “the dispensation of the fulness of times” begins with the Restoration and leads to the Millennium, while the “fulness of times” itself can point to the final completion of mortal time at the end of the Millennium when Christ has conquered all. But this is an entirely different issue than what Lehi refers to with “the fulness of time” when Christ shall come as a mortal to earth.

Neither of the two New Testament passages can adequately serve as the source for concepts and language in the Book of Mormon verses about the coming of Christ in “the fulness of time.” Thus, in spite of the overlapping New Testament language that weakens the parallel, it is still offered tentatively as a possible conceptual parallel for consideration.

More Puzzles: The Rarity of “Meridian of Time” and Its Presence in Doctrine & Covenants

A puzzling aspect of this inquiry into a potential parallel is how rare “meridian of time” is in English. Searching Google Books reveals no instances of this term before 1870 (obviously missing many Latter-day Saint publications). However, there are two instances of use in the Early Modern English Era, which ran from roughly the late 1500s to about 1700. For example, Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) wrote Hydriotaphia, urne-buriall, or, a discourse of the sepulchrall urnes lately found in Norfolk, published in 1658, accessible via Early English Books Online, which has this passage:

… even old ambitions had the advantage of ours, in the attempts of their vain-glories, who acting early, and before the probable meridian of time, have by this time found great accomplishment of their ddsignes [designs], whereby the ancient heroes have already out-lasted their monuments, and Mechanicall preservations: but in this latter scene of time we can not expect such mummies unto our memories, when ambition may fear the prophecy of elias that the world may last but fix [six] thousand years…

This does not seem to involve the coming of Christ, but about a future time — relative to more ancient days — of greater development with respect to the topic of burial urns.

Two more finds were shared with me by linguist Stanford Carmack, whose studies identifying Early Modern English influences on the originally dictated language of the Book of Mormon translation have opened significant new vistas of understanding. The first comes from Joseph Cooper in Misthoskopia, A prospect of heavenly glory for the comfort of Sion’s mourners, written no later than 1699 (the year of Cooper’s death) and published in 1700, roughly at the end of the Early Modern English era:

The good things of this Life, they are only calculated for the Meridian of Time, and do only shine with a borrowed light: So that when Death shall seize upon you, and Judgment overtake you, they will then be gone, and like a Shadow disappear for ever.

This seems to refer to the meridian of one’s mortal life, after which comes decline and death.

A second find also kindly provided by Carmack occurs shortly after the Early Modern English era in Benjamin Bennet (1674–1726), The christian oratory: or, the devotion of the closet (London: S. Chandler, 1725):

The RESOLUTION. ND am I immortal? Doth my Spirit at Death return to God, and exist for ever in a separate State? I wou’d henceforth resolve to live for Eternity, to prepare for my Return: In order to which I resolve Lord, help me by thy Grace to have my Eye fixed on the other World; and, in all my Designs, Undertakings and Ations [Actions], to preserve a constant Reference thither. I wou’d esteem every thing as little, as nothing comparatively, that’s calculated only for the Meridian of Time, that ferveth [serveth] only a present State. I resolve to chuse, prefer, pursue things, as they stand related to Eternity, judging of them by this Mark and Property.

This also refers to one’s fleeting mortal life, contrasting it with the eternal afterlife.

At least these finds may suggest that “the meridian of time” was a part, though perhaps a rare part, of Early Modern English, consistent with Stanford Carmack’s find that the dictated language of the Book of Moses reflects a strong Early Modern English component. This is related to his impressive work on examining the language of the originally dictated text of the Book of Mormon and finding a unique signature of Early Modern English influence that cannot be explained by imitating KJV language or by Joseph’s dialect, but points to elements of Early Modern English that sometimes significantly predate the King James Bible. For a collection of important papers on this topic, see Carmack’s list of publications at Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. For his work on the Book of Moses, see his 2021 paper, “The Original English of the Book of Moses and What It Indicates About the Book’s Authorship.” Carmack examined 30 different linguistic categories and compared their traits across the Book of Moses, the Book of Mormon, the King James Bible, Joseph’s early writings, and pseudo-archaic texts that sought to imitate archaic biblical syntax. Carmack’s findings are significant:

Joseph Smith’s native usage can explain 30 percent of Book of Moses usage, pseudo-archaism 44 percent, and King James usage 37 percent. The Book of Mormon, however, is able to account for most of the patterns and forms investigated: 86 percent of them, by this count. (It is possible, of course, to include other features, which would change the percentages somewhat.) But the Book of Mormon falls short of being able to explain a few of the linguistic features mentioned in table 2, most notably the past-tense usage. The few usage issues it cannot explain occur in the early modern period. Indeed, broader early modern usage (most of the time not Joseph Smith’s modern usage) accounts for all the linguistic features. Thus the simplest explanation of the Book of Moses’s English usage would be to adopt an early modern perspective—in other words, that a text showing true early modern sensibility in language use was revealed to Joseph Smith in 1830. [pp. 634–35]

The prominent use of the rare and apparently Early Modern English phrase “meridian of time” in the Book of Moses may be one more factor to consider regarding the linguistic influences on the Book of Moses text. As with the Book of Mormon, the existence of non-KJV Early Modern English in either the Book of Mormon or the Book of Moses is something that scholars did not expect. It is not a conclusion driven by any kind of apologetic agenda. It is based on objective data that may require us to reconsider common and sometimes simplistic assumptions about the translation process(es) related to both texts. Why that influence exists is still a matter of debate, though Early Modern English, especially the kind found in both texts, appears to be well suited to simplifying translation in many languages.

Yet another significant puzzle involves the Doctrine and Covenants, where the rare term “meridian of time” occurs twice, both shown here in context:

That as many as would believe and be baptized in his holy name, and endure in faith to the end, should be saved—

Not only those who believed after he came in the meridian of time, in the flesh, but all those from the beginning, even as many as were before he came, who believed in the words of the holy prophets, who spake as they were inspired by the gift of the Holy Ghost, who truly testified of him in all things, should have eternal life…. (Doctrine and Covenants 20:25–26)

Hearken and listen to the voice of him who is from all eternity to all eternity, the Great I Am, even Jesus Christ—

The light and the life of the world; a light which shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not;

The same which came in the meridian of time unto mine own, and mine own received me not. (Doctrine and Covenants 39:1–3)

Section 39 was given in January 1831. According to the timeline for Joseph Smith’s work of his translation of the Bible given by Kent P. Jackson in Understanding Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, and Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2022), pp. 3–4, the portion of that project that became the Book of Moses was given between June 1830 and December 30, 1830. Thus, it is logical that the 1831 text of Section 39 would employ a colorful and meaningful phrase from the unique Book of Moses.

The problem is that Section 20, which also uses “the meridian of time,” is based on revelation said to have been given in April 1830, although it was not published until 1835. The generally accepted April 1830 date is well before Joseph Smith began work on his translation of the Bible in June 1830. Was the term “meridian of time” something Joseph picked up from the dictation of the Book of Moses, that was later edited into our Section 20 of the Doctrine and Covenants? Was there a revelatory process associated with Section 20 that brought this term to Joseph’s mind for some reason? Or was “meridian of time” a term from the Book of Lehi in the lost 116 pages of the initial Book of Mormon translation?

While we don’t seem to have original manuscripts from 1830 related to Section 20, there are a few manuscripts prior to the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants that help us better understand the timing of the use of “the meridian of time.” One such source is provided in the Joseph Smith Papers website as “Articles and Covenants, circa April 1830, as Recorded in Gilbert, Notebook [D&C 20].” The Gilbert manuscript does not use “meridian” at all. Here is the passage corresponding to the part of Section 20 that has had “the meridian of time” at least since 1835:

[A]nd that he ascendid into heaven to sit down on the right hand of the Father to reign with Almighty power according to the will of the father that as many as would believe and be baptized in his name & endure in faith to the end should be saved, yea even as many as were before he came in the flesh from the beginning which believed in the words of the holy Prophets which were inspired by the gift of the Holy Ghost which truly testified of him in all things as well as they which should come after which should believe in the gifts & callings of God by the Holy Ghost, which beareth record of the Father & of the son, which father and son and the holy Ghost is one God infinite, eternal without end, Amen. [p. 4, emphasis added]

So in 1831, the relevant revelation had “even as many as were before he came in the flesh” instead of “those who believed after he came in the meridian of time, in the flesh” as we now have in Section 20.

A related manuscript on the Joseph Smith Papers website, “Articles and Covenants, circa April 1830, Symonds Rider Copy [D&C 20],” also contains a copy of the material related to Section 20. It was copied by Symonds Rider in May 1831, again without “the meridian of time.”

Surviving copies of the 1833 Book of Commandments, the publication of which was interrupted by a mob destroying the Church’s printing press, also show that “the meridian of time” had not yet entered what is now Section 20. Like the 1831 copies of the “Articles and Covenants,” it has “even as many as were before he came in the flesh, from the beginning,” with no mention of “the meridian of time.”

However, Chapter 41, with its January 1831 revelation related to our Section 39, has “The same which came in the meridian of time unto my own” in v. 2, the same as our Section 39. It seems plausible that in the final edits made for the 1835 publication, that Section 20 was edited to include its current language with the poetic phrase from the Book of Moses.

Conclusion

The “meridian of time” as used in the Book of Moses may be a particularly appropriate figurative and poetic term for describing the time of Christ’s mortal ministry and the spiritual revolution He brought. This was a meridian or a zenith of history in which the Son of God lived with humans on the earth, founded His church, and completed His infinite work. After the rapid growth of the church, there was decline in both the Old World and the New World that required correction by the Restoration in these last days.

When Lehi spoke of the coming of the Messiah that was to be in the “fulness of time,” his language may have been reflecting a concept he encountered in the brass plates having a version of Genesis closely related to our modern Book of Moses. The four passages there about the coming of Christ in “the meridian of time” may be reflected in Lehi’s related statements in 2 Nephi 2 associating the birth of Christ with “the fullness of time,” where “fullness” has connections to figurative meanings of “meridian,” possibly forming a parallel between the Book of Mormon and the Book of Moses, one of many. Given similar language in the New Testament and the conceptual nature of the parallel, this parallel may be one of the weakest among the 162 proposed so far, but may still be worth considering.

The English translation with “the fullness of time” may reflect word choices by Lehi from his speech, by Nephi in his written record, and by the translation process that gave us the English. When faced with the complex relationships between these inspired and miraculously translated texts, we generally cannot say exactly who intended what and why.

Nevertheless, much can be learned by exploring how similar words and concepts are used elsewhere and considering what that might suggest about the intent of authors or translators, or the depth of meaning in the texts. The word choices in the scriptures are often worth pondering.

Readers of Meridian Magazine may wish to reflect upon the meaning of “meridian” and related concepts in the scriptures, as well as the welcome role this publication plays in bringing more light into these troubled times before the Millennium.

The Importance of Discerning Authorized Messengers

This article was originally published by Public Squre Magazine. To read more from them, CLICK HERE.

Never before have knowledge and information been so accessible, and yet harmful. Like a flash flood, information, opinions, and facts have breached boundaries once built to maintain order and safety. Just as water can be both life-saving and life-threatening, the flood of information now inundating us can either save or destroy our souls.

In his first public address at Brigham Young University (BYU) as President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, President Dallin H. Oaks commented on this rising threat and on the “abundance of speculation and false information in podcasts and on social media.” He reemphasized the necessity of the Holy Ghost in discerning truth, adding soberly: “You live in a season where the adversary has become so effective at disguising truth that if you don’t have the Holy Ghost, you will be deceived.”

With recent advancements in AI, manipulative algorithms, fake news, and the rise of social relativism, his warning feels especially relevant. What a paradox! We live in the greatest age of advancement and knowledge and yet feel so confused and unsure about what is true. Jesus put it best in Doctrine and Covenants 95 when he said that some “are walking in darkness at noon-day.”

Yet this deception is not new. It has been employed from the very beginning by Satan, “that being who beguiled our first parents, who transformeth himself nigh unto an angel of light.” In the Garden of Eden, Satan disguised his true identity and convinced Eve to partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, in violation of God’s commands. We know from modern prophets and scriptures that the Fall was ultimately part of God’s plan. It ushered in mortality, the ability to have children, and enabled Adam and Eve to progress and become like God. President Oaks even taught that we should “celebrate Eve’s act and honor her wisdom and courage.”

So what was the problem? The problem was the messenger: Satan offered what he did not have the authority to give, obscured its consequences, and enticed Eve to disobey God. Gratefully, God’s plan cannot be frustrated, even by Satan’s most cunning deception, and God provided a way forward in Christ. But Adam and Eve never forgot the sobering lesson they learned: by following an unauthorized messenger, they almost lost everything.

Learning from their mistakes, Adam and Eve were determined to listen only to true messengers from God once they arrived in the lone and dreary world. But how could they know who was a messenger from God and who wasn’t, especially knowing that Satan can disguise himself? Ironically, by giving Eve the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, Satan gave Eve power to detect him. Further, the temple teaches that God also provided Adam and Eve with certain means, which Satan cannot imitate, to identify true messengers so that Adam and Eve could know of a surety who was an authorized messenger from God and who was not.

Like Adam and Eve, Joseph Smith had personal experience with the importance of discerning authorized messengers. Although the details are sparse, we learn in Doctrine and Covenants 128 that the voice of Michael was heard on the banks of the Susquehanna River “detecting the devil when he appeared as an angel of light” and that “the voice of Peter, James, and John” was also heard near the Susquehanna “declaring themselves as possessing the keys of the kingdom, and of the dispensation of the fulness of times!” Little was recorded about the details of the restoration of the Melchizedek Priesthood, except that it was restored somewhere near the Susquehanna River by Peter, James, and John. It may be that this noted appearance of Satan near the Susquehanna was an attempt by Satan to once again give that which he did not have authority to give: this time, presumably the Melchizedek Priesthood. But instead, the Lord entrusted authorized messengers to restore the priesthood power. As the Restoration could not move forward without this higher priesthood, it is likely that Satan would, again, at a key crossroad, seek to deceive.

It also does not feel coincidental that Section 129 of the Doctrine and Covenants immediately follows this account with instructions on how to detect ministering angels, or authorized messengers, from false spirits, revealing the “grand keys whereby you may know whether any administration is from God.”

The Apostle John taught early Christians to “believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” But how do we “try the spirits” to know whether they are of God? John tells us: “We”—meaning the apostles—“are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.”

We are blessed to live in a day when ordained prophets and apostles serve as authorized servants of God. They are called of God, and although they are not perfect, we can trust them. Jesus Christ Himself admonished as much when He came to the Americas, called twelve servants, and then declared, “Blessed are ye if ye shall give heed unto the words of these twelve whom I have chosen from among you to minister unto you, and to be your servants; and unto them I have given power …”

The scriptures, likewise, are filled with the words and teachings of past authorized messengers. They are a powerful, authorized source of truth. Elder Richard G. Scott taught that, “Because scriptures are generated from inspired communication through the Holy Ghost, they are pure truth. We need not be concerned about the validity of concepts contained in the scriptures.” President Ezra Taft Benson further testified, “The scriptures are the key to holding on to that iron rod. If we want to taste for ourselves the pure love of God, we must learn to cling to the power that is our scriptures. … The Book of Mormon is the instrument God designed to bring us to Christ.”

If we approach these authorized sources—living prophets and scriptures—first when seeking revelation, rather than podcasts or AI bots, light and truth will flow more abundantly into our minds and hearts. Although there is much truth to be found throughout the world, like water, it is better to drink upstream at the head of the fountain, where it is less likely to be contaminated with impurities. Truth found downstream from unauthorized messengers may, as the temple narrative teaches, contain the philosophies of men, mingled with scriptures. And just like water, it takes a filter to separate the impurities from the truth. Gratefully, the Lord has given us another authorized servant who can be with us at all times to help us filter out and discern between the alluring philosophies of men and eternal truths—namely, the Holy Ghost.

Before Christ’s death, He prepared His apostles for His separation from them by explaining that He would give them “the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name.” Thus, the Holy Ghost is an authorized messenger of God. Christ taught His apostles that they can trust the Holy Ghost because He will “guide [them] into all truth” for “he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear [from the Lord], that shall he speak.” This is an essential qualifier of authorized messengers. They do not speak for themselves–only what God gives them.

In President Oaks’ recent remarks at BYU, he reemphasized the need for the Holy Ghost, quoting the prophetic warning of his predecessor President Russel M. Nelson, that “In coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.”

From the Garden of Eden to the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times, Satan seeks to deceive and frustrate God’s plan. And while Satan’s tactics are becoming more sophisticated, the solution to deception is the same as the one God first gave to Adam and Eve: learn how to recognize and follow authorized messengers.

The temple narrative clearly shows that one of the primary struggles of living in a fallen world, separated from God, is discerning whom to follow. If we consider ourselves like Adam and Eve, we must be as vigilant as they were in distinguishing between authorized messengers from God and unauthorized ones.

I find it significant that multiple times a year, during General Conference and in local Stake and Ward Conferences, God declares who His authorized messengers are. Their names are read publicly. Nothing is done in secret. And we are given the opportunity to either sustain or oppose them. God makes it very clear who we should follow and accept as reliable sources of truth. (D&C 43:2-7; D&C 28:12-13.)

Raising our hands to the square to sustain the Lord’s servants in these meetings is a sign of ancient origin. A square is a tool used in building or drafting to draw straight lines. This tool has been used since the beginning of time to navigate the stars and build sure foundations. The square is also used as a sign to spiritually draw a straight line to God and to reveal the order and foundation of God’s kingdom. Each time we raise our hand to the square to sustain prophets, apostles, or any church leaders, God is making it clear to us who His authorized servants are. We can trust this sign. It points a straight line back to God.

So, while deception abounds in our AI age and the deluge of information drowns many, the Lord has continued his pattern of sending authorized messengers to teach His children truth. Satan continues his efforts to deceive, but prophets and the Holy Ghost are authorized messengers, and we, like Adam and Eve, must be vigilant in hearing their voices above others. Jesus Christ again said it best in Doctrine and Covenants 1:

Wherefore, I the Lord, knowing the calamity which should come upon the inhabitants of the earth, called upon my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., and spake unto him from heaven, and gave him commandments … And also gave commandments to others, that they should proclaim these things unto the world … that man should not counsel his fellow man, neither trust in the arm of flesh … But that every man might speak in the name of God the Lord, even the Savior of the world … What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself … whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same. For behold, and lo, the Lord is God, and the Spirit beareth record, and the record is true, and the truth abideth forever and ever. Amen.

The Memory of Heaven and the Amnesiac King

The Amnesiac King

G.K. Chesterton, that great defender of the sanity of wonder, once remarked, “The most ignorant of humanity know by the very look of earth that they have forgotten heaven.”¹ It is a haunting accusation. It suggests that our modern disease is not ignorance but amnesia. The ache in the human chest is not a craving for novelty, but a homesickness for something impossibly old. We do not suffer from knowing too little about the world; we suffer from having forgotten that the world was once a wedding, not a warehouse.

Imagine a man who wakes in the middle of a vast, roaring factory. The air is thick with oil and iron. Pistons hammer the air into noise. To a visiting angel, the place would not have looked like ‘industry,’ but like a great idol that ate hours and exhaled smoke. A foreman strides up, presses a wrench into his hand, and tells him his story:

You are a cog. You are a biological accident — a machine made of meat — thrown up by the random collisions of atoms over billions of years. Your purpose is to tighten this bolt until you rust and fall back into the silence you came from.

The man nods. He takes the wrench. He eats, he works, he sleeps. He accepts the foreman’s gray, utilitarian tale as the whole of reality. And yet, in the thin stillness between the pounding of the gears, he hears a melody he cannot explain. It is only a fragment, like a song from a country he does not remember visiting, the fragrance of a garden he cannot recall seeing. He looks at his grease-blackened hands and feels, absurdly, that they were meant to hold a scepter, not a tool.

The modern world — the world of material reductionism and secular disenchantment — asserts that we are that factory worker. It tells us the universe is a machine and we are only its temporary ghosts. Our loves are chemical flares. Our prayers are private monologues. Our existence is a statistical fluke in an indifferent void.

But the Gospel of Jesus Christ, particularly as restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith, dares to tell us the terrifying and beautiful truth: we are the amnesiac King. The scandal of the Restoration is not that it tells us we are worse than we feared, but that it tells us we are older and higher than we dared to hope.

This is not a comforting metaphor we have invented; it is an ontological claim. As President Russell M. Nelson has repeatedly taught, before any other label — before we are employees, Americans, introverts, or even “sinners” — we are children of God, children of the covenant, and disciples of Jesus Christ.² That title is not greeting-card fluff; it is a royal name. It says that the irrational dignity we sometimes feel is, in fact, the most rational thing about us. We are not trying to survive a cosmic accident. We are trying to remember a royal lineage. The world tells us we are accidents pretending to be royalty; the Gospel insists we are royalty passing through a world that only looks like an accident.

In this light, “re-enchantment” is not pretending that the world is magical. It is the rigorous discipline of anamnesis — the work of un-forgetting. It is the refusal to let the factory’s din drown out the music of home. It is the decision to trust the half-remembered melody more than the clamor of the pistons. In other words, re‑enchantment in the Restoration is not about inventing a fantasy, but about remembering reality as it truly is.

The Disenchanted Universe

C. S. Lewis, describing the medieval imagination, wrote of a cosmos that was alive and musical. For the ancients, the space above us was not a cold vacuum called “space” but the Heavens — layered, luminous, and ordered by intelligence. The stars were not mere flaming stones; they were signs and singers (see Moses 2:14).

We have traded this vision, Lewis says, for a joyless cosmology. We have emptied the sky. We have silenced the music. We still speak of the “heavens,” but only as a place where rockets go to feel lonely. We now treat the universe as silent, empty, and dead.

The tragedy is not merely that the secular world believes this. The tragedy is that we, as Latter-day Saints, have sometimes sprinkled this disenchantment with left-over Sacrament water. We possess a theology of thunderous glory, yet we frequently flatten it into a flowchart.

We handle the Plan of Salvation — a cosmic drama of risk, valor, and deification — as though it were a business plan or a legal contract. We speak of “checking boxes” and “enduring to the end” with the weary tone of accountants closing the books. We take the wild, prodigal love of the Father and reduce it to a tidy transaction. It is as if we were handed a thunderstorm and asked for it to be explained on a spreadsheet.

We see this drift in the way we compartmentalize a “spiritual life” alongside the other quadrants of growing physically, mentally, and socially, as though the “stature” of Luke 2:52 were just a slice of a self-improvement pie chart. Spirituality becomes one more metric to optimize, one more tool in the kit. We start asking, “Does it work?” as if the Atonement were a wrench or a software update. As my friend and scholar Dr. S. Brett Savage has observed, when we reduce the Gospel to utility, we clear the stage for “counterfeit explanations” of our own being. We begin to believe the world when it tells us we are “things to be acted upon” — by trauma, by genetics, by environment.

But the prophet Lehi, standing on the edge of a wilderness twenty-six centuries ago, shattered that machine. He divided all reality into two grand categories: “things to act and things to be acted upon” (2 Nephi 2:14). The disenchanted world contends that you belong to the second class — a thing buffeted by biology, driven by chemistry. The Gospel claims you bear the burden and glory of being among the first.

When we forget this, we adopt a mechanized imagination. We strip the Ghost from the machine. We construct a flattened anthropology where there is no spirit, only firing neurons; no agency, only stimulus and response. We risk becoming Chesterton’s “madman”: not the man who has lost his reason, but the man who has lost everything except his reason.³ We preserve our diagrams, policies, and handbooks — and misplace the poetry.

When that happens, we commit a kind of spiritual suicide. We become people who, at least in practice, risk becoming functional atheists who attend church. We keep God in our vocabulary the way some people keep old family portraits: politely dusted, carefully hung, and never consulted. God remains on our forms, but not in our fears. We assent to a Deity who once wound up the cosmic factory, but who does not kneel beside us in the dark. We forget that the universe is not a locked room; it is a cathedral. We forget that we are not employees of the Almighty but His kin.

Olam and the Ancient Self

Into this silent, mechanistic void, the Restoration speaks a word that alters the very being of the human person: co-eternal.

Traditional Christianity, for all its profound beauty, has often been constrained by the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo — creation out of nothing. If God summoned us from absolute nothingness, then we are fundamentally unlike Him. He is the necessary Artist; we are the fragile artifacts. He is the Potter; we are the pot. The pot may adore the Potter, but it can never grow up to be of His kind. In that world, we are strangers in a universe built, finally, not for our joy but for His glory alone.

Joseph Smith, by revelation, tore open the sky and showed us a more ancient truth. In May 1833 the Lord declared: “Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be” (D&C 93:29).

That single sentence explodes the factory. If you were there “in the beginning,” then your life is not a brief accident in God’s afternoon; it is a chapter in a story that began before clocks. If you were “in the beginning,” you are not a product rolling off an assembly line. You are not a manufactured good. You stand as old as the story itself. Put simply: you did not begin when your birth certificate says you did.

As Terryl Givens has argued, the Restoration recovers the pre-mortal life not as a quaint prologue but as the guarantee of our identity. We are not objects fabricated by God; we are intelligences co-eternal with Him. We were not conjured from the void; we were tutored from the beginning. In the King Follett discourse, Joseph Smith used the image of a ring—a circle without beginning or end. If the soul had a beginning, he reasoned, it must also have an end. But because it has no end, it could have had no absolute beginning.⁴

Jeremiah hears the Lord say, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee” (Jeremiah 1:5). The Hebrew term for that kind of “before” is olam — a time beyond the vanishing point, a depth of past our minds cannot sound. The Restoration takes William Wordsworth’s poetry and engraves it into doctrine:

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.”⁵

Wordsworth guessed what Joseph saw. The poet felt that we were homesick; the prophet remembered the home. If we lived before, then this world is not an alien warehouse. It is the Father’s house.

The beauty of a mountain range, the hush of a sealing room, the sudden spear of joy at the sight of a child — these are not brand-new experiences. They are recognitions. We are not learning a foreign tongue; we are recovering our mother language. Conversion, in this light, is not the invention of a new self but the courtesy of finally introducing yourself to the one you have always been.

This doctrine annihilates the “joyless cosmology.” It insists that you are not “a machine made of meat.” You are a being of immense age and dignity. You once stood among the “noble and great ones” (Abraham 3:22). You shouted for joy when the foundations of this world were laid (see Job 38:7). The stubborn melody you hear in the factory — the one the foreman calls a hallucination — is the echo of your own history.

Re-enchantment, then, is the choice to trust that echo. It is the refusal to bow under the “iron yokes” of the world’s definitions (D&C 123:8). The world says you are your job, your bank account, your diagnosis, your wound. The memory of heaven says you are an eternal intelligence, uncreated and indestructible, presently enrolled in a harrowing and holy tutorial called mortality.

Living with “Double Vision”

How, then, do we live as amnesiac kings and queens in a world that keeps shoving a wrench into our hands? We must cultivate what Richard Williams calls “a turning of things upside down.”⁶ We must learn to live with double vision. If this is who we truly are, then our way of seeing the world must be turned inside out. That is the work of double vision.

We must begin to see the physical world not merely as matter, but as witness. In the Pearl of Great Price, the Lord tells Moses: “And behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal, and things which are spiritual” (Moses 6:63). The world calls this superstition. Heaven calls it accurate eyesight.

Here is the key to the re-enchanted eye. To the materialist, a tree is only a photosynthetic machine scrambling for light. He is right about the scrambling and wrong about the light. To the baptized imagination, the tree is a sermon in bark and branch, reaching for the light as we are commanded to do. To the materialist, a neighbor is a competitor, a resource, or a nuisance. To the enchanted eye, that neighbor is a brother or sister whose future glory, as C. S. Lewis warns, would tempt us to worship if we saw it unveiled. “There are no ordinary people,” Lewis writes. “You have never talked to a mere mortal.”⁷

This shift — from managing behavior to awakening awe — changes everything. It transfigures our boredom. It reinterprets our pain. It turns religion from a list of demands into a romance of redemption.

Consider the Sacrament, the quiet center of our weekly worship. To the factory-trained eye, it is frankly dull: a crumb of bread and a plastic thimble of water, passed by a teenager with a crooked tie, consumed in a room full of people checking their watches or their phones. It is “nothing but” carbohydrates and hydration. It is, as modern charity might put it, ‘the bare minimum’ — and so we naturally do it with the bare minimum of attention.

Now bring the Restoration’s lens. Bring the memory of heaven. Suddenly that bread is the torn flesh of the God who wept (see Moses 7:28-37). That water is the blood of the Innocent who bought our freedom at infinite cost. The carpeted chapel falls away, and we are back in the Upper Room; deeper still, we are back in the Grand Council, once again choosing the Lamb over the accuser.

When the priest kneels to pray, he asks that we may “always have his Spirit to be with [us]” (Moroni 4:3). What is that if not a plea for permanent re-enchantment? He is asking that the Holy Ghost overlay our ordinary vision with divine sight — not for ten reverent minutes, but always. He is asking that we carry this double vision from the chapel into the parking lot, the office, the kitchen, and the hospital corridor.

Under such a gaze, the “ordinary” world begins to burn with meaning. The family dinner becomes a faint rehearsal for the marriage supper of the Lamb. The fragile act of forgiveness becomes a small participation in the Atonement itself. The awkward, faltering ward member reveals himself as a “noble and great one” in disguise. Our tragedy is not that we sit beside saints in disguise, but that we insist on treating the disguises as the most interesting part.

The Submerged Sunrise

We are called to “dig for the submerged sunrise of wonder.”⁸

We inhabit a world fiercely determined to keep that sun under the waterline. The forces of disenchantment are tireless. Despair has all the advantages of laziness; hope is the stubborn decision to keep swimming when the statistics say you should sink. They will chant at you, day after day, that you are broken beyond hope, that you are merely a victim, that you are a complicated machine in slow decay. They will press the wrench back into your hand and bark at you to get on with your shift.

But we know better. We have records. We have prophets. The world offers us data; God, in His untidy way, insists on sending us witnesses. From Abraham to Joseph Smith to Dallin H. Oaks, they testify that we are strangers here only because we belong to a better country.

Re-enchantment is the choice to swim toward that light. It is the refusal to live as a cog. It is the daily, defiant decision to remember that we are royalty in exile, and that the King is coming back for His household. It is to look at mountains and stars and the faces around our dinner table and say, with a jolt of recognition: I know you. I know this place. This is not merely a factory. This is a school for gods, and the bell has already rung.

Let us, then, handle the doctrines of the Restoration not as tools in a toolbox, but as windows thrown open to glory. Let us refuse the ghastly simplicity that wants the function but will not endure the living organ. Let us marry our clear doctrine to a baptized imagination, so that when we speak of the gospel of Jesus Christ we are not only offering a lecture on ethics, but singing the song of redeeming love—a song which, if we listen closely, we will recognize as the first language of our hearts, learned long before the world began.

Lace Made of Words – The Old Testament as a Poetry Collection

Our study of the Old Testament this year is exciting from several standpoints. It’s the “Superhero book” of the Standard Works. It features the dramatic stories of Noah’s Ark, David and Goliath, Samson and Delilah, Daniel in the Lion’s Den, Joseph being sold into Egypt, Moses parting the Red Sea, Jonah and the Whale, and many other bigger-than-life accounts that have fueled many a blockbuster movie. 

But it’s much more than that. It’s the foundation—the first book to tell of the Creation, the point of life, God’ plan of Salvation, the importance of eternal families, covenants, and how we can return to live with Him again. (Don’t miss The Pearl of Great Price.)

It’s the book that prepares Israel for the promised Messiah. Sister Tracy Y. Browing said that the law of Moses was meant to help Israel “focus on the Savior by practicing faith in Him, His sacrifice, and His laws and commandments in their lives…”

It brings us closer to the Lord. Jesus is Jehovah. Every story, every covenant, every detail relates to the Savior. Just as sacrificing the unblemished lamb, and Abraham sacrificing Isaac are types of Christ, we also learn of Him through every bit of symbolism in this book.

It foretells the Restoration: “And that seer will I bless… and his name shall be called Joseph, and it shall be after the name of his father…” (Genesis JST 50:33)

The power and majesty of the Old Testament is undisputed by millions of Christians. But many saints approach it with a bit of trepidation. 

So, what I want to write about today is the amazing, incredible poetry we find there. As a lover of language, I find myself staring in amazement at some of the passages that were preserved for us. And, after 20 years of Adult Institute classes, I cannot adequately express my gratitude for the teachers who have shared these dazzling insights.    

Why does poetry even matter? Because it penetrates our souls. Like our hymns, poetry seems to open another chamber in our hearts. Didn’t you gasp when you learned about chiasmus?

We tend to think of ancient people as being less learned (no cars, planes, TVs, cell phones—boy were they behind, right? Wrong). They had phenomenal, sophisticated literary devices for nearly three thousand years. Isaiah, standing in the city square, would recite truths three times—not to be redundant, but to help non-readers memorize what he was teaching. And, even better than Shakespeare, he knew exactly how to pull his audience in and teach them unforgettable truths.

But back to chiasmus. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s an ancient Hebraic literary style of creating art with words. A story is told, then in perfect symmetry, re-told in reverse, in an ABBA pattern. Like a beautiful mirror image of the original phrase or sentence, it stands in perfect balance. (Its rhythm also aids in memorization, a deliberate sculpture of verbal gymnastics.) Here’s a short example from Psalms 3:7–8:

Save me

O my God,

     For thou hast smitten

        All my enemies

           On the cheek-bone

              The teeth

           Of the wicked 

        Thou hast broken.

To Yahweh

The salvation.

Hundreds of examples of this parallelism are found in the Old Testament, especially in Isaiah. But it’s also found in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Daniel, Amos, Zechariah, and others.

Sidenote: This style was completely unknown to the unlearned Joseph Smith. Then, in 1967, John W. Welch was serving a South German mission, attended a lecture on the New Testament, and learned of chiasmus. He thought he’d see if he could find any examples in the Book of Mormon. After all, it had ancient semitic origins. Whammo—it’s in 1st Nephi, Mosiah, 3rd Nephi, Enos, Helaman, and the entire chapter of Alma 36 is a chiasmus.

But let’s look at some of the poetic imagery offered by the Old Testament. Like pulling a warm blanket around us and closing our eyes, these passages hold us snugly in a timeless indulgence of wisdom and beauty. 

The Norwegians have a word for those cozy moments by a fire with loved ones, when we relax and rejuvenate, bundle up and sip some hot cocoa: koselig, pronounced kooshly. Danes have a similar description for this: hygge, pronounced hoo-guh.

And this is the delicious encounter with Old Testament language that can leave us all feeling at home, at peace, and cared for by the many who recorded its scriptures eons ago.

The entire book of Isaiah is worth deep study—Joseph Smith quoted it often—but here are just a few of its beautiful phrasings:

Ch 1 v.18: Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. (And this is a Doctrinal Mastery verse for Seminary students this semester.)

Ch 3 v. 16: …daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet… 

These are easy to visualize, right?  Let’s continue. 

Victor Ludlow spotted Isaiah’s wordplay in Chapter 5. He deliberately used similar-sounding words with opposite meanings: He speaks of justice (mishpat) and then bloodshed (mispach). We read “Instead of righteousness (tzedakah), the people bring forth a riotous cry (tse’akah). Ludlow said translators tried to preserve this literary device in English with “The Lord looked for true measures, But behold, massacres: the right, but behold riots.”  Ludlow said, “This wording profoundly impacted the Hebrews; they felt there was inherent power in words that are mysteriously linked by similarity and contrast.”

And then Isaiah 9 contains, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” Sound familiar? Can’t you just hear the music of Handel as you read it?

“A marvelous work and a wonder” comes from Isaiah 29. And earlier in that 29:11-12 is where Isaiah predicts a book that is sealed, “which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed”…

Have you ever heard the song, “Turn! Turn! Turn!”?  The lyrics come from the third chapter of Ecclesiastes. “To everything there is a season…”

But let’s move on to Ezekiel, who prophesied, “And join them on to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand” (37:15-17) This has particular meaning to members of the restored gospel.

Earlier Ezekiel quotes the Lord as saying, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh…and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.” If that isn’t beautiful poetry, I don’t know what is.

Remember the hymn, “The Lord is My Shepherd?” It comes from Psalm 23. In fact, the entire Book of Psalms is loaded with figurative imagery and breathtaking descriptions, including, “The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.” (Psalms 18:2)  Can’t you just imagine sitting with these words and contemplating how the Lord is all of these things for you as well?

It ends with Psalm 150, a gorgeous doxology praising God’s power and glory.

Then comes Proverbs, with “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths.” (Ch. 3, v.5-6) This should be familiar to all of us, right? It’s also another Seminary Doctrinal Mastery passage.

Just start reading Job 38-41 and you will hear the voice of the Lord in some of the most jaw-dropping poetry you’ll ever encounter.

We could go on and on. This is just a fraction of what awaits. But, this year, I hope we’ll all take an extra moment to appreciate the masterful wording, the bold murals of sweeping color and imagery that ancient prophets used to imprint such glorious truths upon our hearts. The Old Testament is absolutely stunning.

Joni Hilton teaches Seminary, and is the author of dozens of best-selling LDS books. She was a script writer for Music and the Spoken Word for 30 years, and has hundreds of life hacks on her Youtube Mom channel.

Dews of Heaven Podcast: Enter Into Your Exaltation

We end this year’s study of the Doctrine and Covenants and the temple with this episode, bringing us back full circle to the main point of the Restoration: to bring us all to the veil and into the presence of our Heavenly Father.

It is Not Doctrinal Clarity that Will Save Us

In the course of a faith journey, questions arise. Some are minor—like a word, phrase, or name in the Book of Mormon or a spiteful story in the Old Testament. Others are more consequential. How did racial discrimination survive decades of prophetic leadership? Where does polygamy fit into God’s plan? Why are women relegated to less prominent roles in the Church?

Believers have offered reasonable answers to such questions. But discomfort can remain. And new questions can arise. A seeker can become befuddled in a cloud of questions.

For those who seek peace in matters religious, I recommend that we NOT start by trying to resolve all discontents. I recommend that we start with Jesus.

When have you felt soul-filling awe for the goodness of the Redeemer? When have you felt flooded with His love? When have you felt immense joy in singing hymns of praise for Him? When have you seen His hand in your life? When have you felt profoundly grateful for experiencing His counsel and guidance?

That is the foundation on which a good life can be built. He is the Rock.

Some might suggest that soul-filling affirmations come only after deep study, earnest prayer, and worthy living. That may be true for some. But often Jesus comes quite unexpectedly to places we never imagined and to us when we were hardly ready.

Rather than immerse ourselves in doubts, we can ground ourselves in our relationship with Him.

While we may well ponder and study any spiritual uncertainties and questions we have in our hearts, we need to remember our own human limitations in the face of those that discomfort us. We may demand answers on our own terms. We filter information through our own bias. We might expect that every spiritual question deserves a clear resolution. We forget that God has His purposes and timetable and might not choose to reveal all things to us according to our preferences.  He reminds us, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.” (Isaiah 55:8) God may withhold answers to allow us to grow our faith and prioritize our connection with Him.

God instructs us on what we should do during times of doctrinal discomfort. At a time when many confusing reports about the church were being circulated, the Lord offered this guidance:

“Hearken, O ye people of my church, to whom the kingdom has been given; hearken ye and give ear to him who laid the foundation of the earth, who made the heavens and all the hosts thereof, and by whom all things were made which live, and move, and have a being.” (D&C 45:1)

God directs us to turn to Jesus. Think about that. The Master of the universe comes to us, half-hearted and self-serving mortals, and offers a spiritual treat as an invitation to a relationship. He offers His trademark gifts of love, graciousness, goodness, and joy. He comes with outstretched hands, asking us to join Him in friendship and discipleship. In that relationship, we will find reassurance and peace even in the face of questions for which we don’t have comforting answers.

For those trying to find a path forward through confusion, let’s switch out one word in an encouraging scripture: “And ye cannot [understand] all things now; nevertheless, be of good cheer, for I will lead you along.” (D&C 78:18)

I am not recommending careless ignorance. Faith-filled study can enrich us. Apologetics have their essential place. We should invest real intelligence and study to understand difficult issues. But we don’t need answers to all questions (or any questions!) to be encircled in the arms of His love. Jesus never demands theological sophistication as a prerequisite to His embrace. In fact, He warns against any kind of self-sufficiency:

And whoso knocketh, to him will he open; and the wise, and the learned, and they that are rich, who are puffed up because of their learning, and their wisdom, and their riches–yea, they are they whom he despiseth; and save they shall cast these things away, and consider themselves fools before God, and come down in the depths of humility, he will not open unto them. (2 Nephi 9:42)

If we have come to know Him and experienced His love here in the Restoration, we continue to seek that experience. We trust Him. We allow Him to heal, enlighten, and renew us. He is the Way. He is the Truth. He is our Life. He is the one who will carry us to Father. Rather than fussing and pulling at doctrinal loose threads, we should fill ourselves with Him!

To add some perspective, when we receive a trillion-dollar gift from heaven delivered to our doors, will we quibble over imperfections in the packaging? When Jesus has called us into a loving and redemptive relationship with Him, will we depart because of unanswered questions?

When we are evaluating our beliefs, we should privilege the great experiences with Jesus over any frustrations, uncertainties, confusion, or doubt about this doctrine or that practice.

When we let ourselves be embraced by Jesus, we will not have instant closure and clarity on every religious question—but we are not supposed to! Jesus is the answer to all the questions that matter most. We focus on Him, His goodness, His way of living and giving. All things will be resolved in due time. In the meantime, we will grow in faith and rejoice in His embrace.

It is not doctrinal clarity that will save us. It is Jesus.

Invitation: For decades, I have collected inspirational quotes and reflections on life and gospel topics. On our weekly podcast, Transformative Truths for Learning, Growing, and Becoming, Sarah Waldron Brinton and I discuss the best of those quotes and reflections, along with how you can apply them to make your life better. Subscribe and listen on your favorite podcast platform.

Thanks to Barbara Keil for her substantive contributions to this article.

Why Meridian Matters (and Why We Hope You’ll Join Us This Year)

A Voluntary Subscription Invitation for 2026

Every morning for nearly 27 years, before most people turn on a light or pour a cup of cocoa, Meridian has quietly appeared in inboxes around the world.

With stories that steady.
Thoughts that lift.
Perspectives that clarify.
And daily reminders that God is in His heaven and all is not lost.

And then—as if by a small miracle—it happens again the next day.

We cannot tell you what it means to us that you keep opening those emails. In a world that shouts, scrolls, distracts, divides, and exhausts, you choose to make space for something different—something faithful, hopeful, and rooted in the Restoration.

You let Meridian into your life.
And we never take that for granted.

And we need your help again to keep us going for another year—your voluntary subscriptions make all the difference.

Click here to subscriber and support Meridian’s mission.

A Miracle That Outgrew Its Beginnings

When Meridian began in early 1999, we imagined a modest Latter-day Saint magazine that might publish six times a year. We could never have pictured this:

• Nearly 27 years online
• Almost 7,000 weekday editions
• More than 1,400 writers and contributors
• Tens of thousands of devoted daily readers
• Millions reached each year through articles, photography, and our weekly Come, Follow Me podcast
• Tours, firesides, books, and a global community we absolutely cherish

We still shake our heads sometimes. Meridian shouldn’t exist—not by the logic of the world.
As some of you many remember: Years ago, we traveled to New York City to meet with major Madison Avenue advertisers—people who bought ad space for Cheerios, Jell-O, Pampers, Suburbans, and every product our readers actually use. We thought, naïvely, “If they see our demographic, surely they’ll want to advertise.”

We watched the focus group from behind a two-way mirror.
It took only minutes to understand: they had no interest in supporting a Latter-day Saint publication—none.

Their misconceptions about our faith were painful. Their dismissiveness was clear.
And decades later, that attitude hasn’t changed.

If anything, support for religious media has shrunk even more.

Which means something else is miraculously true:

Meridian exists only because of you.
Your generosity.
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Your notes of encouragement.
Your determination to support a faithful daily voice in the world.

Please become a generous voluntary subscriber today. Click here.

Meridian Is More Than an Email

We hear this every time we travel:

“Meridian gives me my morning lift.”
“You say what I’m already feeling but haven’t put into words.”
“I listen to your podcast on my walk every week—it’s part of my spiritual rhythm.”
“Your articles help me teach my children, my seminary class, my Relief Society sisters.”
“When the world feels upside-down, Meridian helps me breathe again.”
You may not think of Meridian every day, but Meridian is there—
steady, consistent, early, and faithful.

Like a ministering brother who actually shows up at your door.
Like a friend who knows how to lift without lecturing.
Like a quiet lantern on a shelf, always lit.

Please join in this year’s Voluntary Subscription Campaign. Subscribe now.

Why a Voluntary Subscription Campaign?

Every year, we invite our readers to help keep Meridian going. And every year, less than 1% respond.

Just imagine—99 readers enjoy Meridian for every 1 who helps sustain it.

We don’t resent that.
We understand it.
Life is busy. Budgets are tight. Some simply can’t give.

But if you can—even a little—we are asking with full, grateful hearts:

Will you be one of the ones who keeps Meridian publishing this year?

A voluntary subscription of $40 for the entire year—
about 11 cents a day—
makes a real difference.

And many of you subscribe at a much higher amount, just because you are generous, you have the means, you believe in the mission of Meridian and you want to see it all keep going.

Your generous subscription does a great deal:

It keeps the servers running in Michigan, Amsterdam, and Singapore.
It keeps our world-class email systems functioning so your summary arrives every morning.
It pays a small staff who do the work of a newsroom ten times their size.
It supports our weekly podcast, which has now reached millions.
It makes possible the photography, editing, hosting, writing, news curation, and spiritual steadiness you enjoy every single day.

You are not “buying content.”
You are building a place—
a gathering place for covenant keepers in a noisy world.

Please become a voluntary subscriber now. Click here.

A World Turned Upside Down Still Needs a Clarion Voice

Twenty-seven years ago, we wrote Meridian’s publishing standards, and we have never deviated from them. Not once.

We promised ourselves—and the Lord—that Meridian would always:

• Affirm that Jesus is the Christ
• Proclaim that His Church has been restored
• Strengthen testimonies
• Defend the family
• Teach truth with clarity and joy
• Push back gently but firmly against the philosophies of the world
• Help the Saints articulate their faith with confidence

In 2026, this mission matters more than ever.

The world is loud.
Confusion spreads fast.
Truth is contested.
Faith is mocked.
Young people are hungry for spiritual clarity.
Adults are weary from cultural crosswinds.

Light has never been more needed—
and never been more attacked.

Could there be a more important time to send into your inbox, every morning, words that steady your heart and strengthen your discipleship?

Will you join in our campaign and subscribe today? Subscribe here.

What Your $40 Actually Means

We often ask ourselves:

What would be lost if Meridian disappeared?
Who would lose their daily lift?
What spiritual nourishment would go missing in homes around the world?

Then we ask a more important question:

What would be gained—by you, by others, by the Lord’s work—if you became part of the circle that keeps Meridian alive?
Your $40 (or much more if you can):

• Sustains a daily light for hundreds of thousands
• Strengthens faith in ways you may never see
• Helps Meridian remain freely available to everyone, everywhere
• Supports a small, dedicated team doing the work of many
• Builds a refuge of truth in a cultural storm
• Makes you a partner in something bigger than any one of us

Your voluntary subscription is not a transaction.
It is participation—in a mission, a ministry, and a miracle.

Subscribe today by clicking here.

We Humbly Invite You to Join Us

If Meridian has blessed you—
If it has steadied you—
If it has helped you teach, study, ponder, or pray—
Would you consider helping us keep this mission alive?

CLICK HERE to become a voluntary subscriber for 2026.

It takes 30 seconds.
Its impact lasts all year.

And to those who have subscribed before—
to those who give more than we ask (and that is most of you)—
to those who send notes that lift our spirits when we are tired—
please know:

We feel your love.
We depend on your generosity.
We thank you with all our hearts.

You are Meridian’s sustaining miracle.

Thank you for helping us continue to shine.

With love and deep gratitude,
Scot & Maurine Proctor
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief
Meridian Magazine

If you feel more comfortable sending a check in the mail, we welcome this. Please make checks to Meridian Magazine and send to:

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A Great Question: What DO We Believe? The Articles of Faith and Official Declarations 1 and 2

Scot
We know that the Prophet Joseph Smith wrote the Articles of Faith as part of a larger request from Mr. John Wentworth, editor and proprietor of the Chicago Democrat, a brand-new newspaper in the young, bustling city of Chicago. The Democrat would be published for just seven years, from 1842 to 1849. Mr. Wentworth wanted a concise history of the fledgling Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and he wanted it written by its founder, Joseph Smith. The piece was also to be a part of the history of New Hampshire, being compiled by a Mr. George Barstow, a friend of John Wentworth. Joseph agreed to write the piece with this agreement: “As Mr. Barstow has taken the proper steps to obtain correct information, all that I shall ask at his hands is that he publish the account entire, ungarnished, and without misrepresentation.” Joseph carefully compiled the letter but it was never published in the newspaper or any history of New Hampshire. But this letter has become one of the great treasures of Church History.

Maurine

Welcome to Meridian Magazine’s Come Follow Me Podcast. We are Scot and Maurine Proctor and we are delighted to be with you again this week. We’ve entitled this lesson: A Great Question: What DO we believe? and this covers the Articles of Faith and Official Declarations 1 and 2.

One of the ways we support this podcast is through the yearly sale of Come Follow Me calendars. They are simply beautiful and the one for this coming Old Testament year truly sends you back to that ancient world where the Old Testament happens. These feature Scot’s remarkable photography with the Come Follow Me lessons for each week listed so you can help yourself keep track. They are a great gift for all those many people you’d like to give a meaningful gift to, but you don’t know what to do. Order as many as you’d like at flat rate shipping. Now that’s a deal. Go to latterdaysaintmag.com/2026. That’s latterdaysaintmag.com/2026.

Scot

I’ve always loved the Articles of Faith. Haven’t you? Those of you who grew up in the Church, didn’t you memorize all 13 of them in primary? I had the wonderful privilege of having my angel mother, Martha Proctor, teach me these amazing lines of doctrinal teaching. I want us to explore a little background about the Articles of Faith and then talk about some of the doctrines they underline. I remember once, Maurine, when some of my classmates in Rolla, Missouri, during lunch time, questioned what I believed as a Mormon (as we called ourselves in those bygone days). You have to understand that in our little town of 11,320 people, there were fifty-four different religious denominations. Four or five of my evangelical friends asked me what we really believed—but it wasn’t in a “I’d really like to understand you and your religion better” kind of way. It was like, “You are bizarre and freaky and who are you anyway” sort of way—a complete view of ignorance. I said, “Well, first of all, We believe in God the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.” That kind of got their attention. They said, “Yeah, well we believe in them too.” I said, “I know you do and We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression.” They started staring at me, a little dumbfounded. I don’t think they really expected me to actually answer the question they had posed. They just wanted to create some contention. I continued, “We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.” Okay, they stopped questioning me and made body language like they were done. I caught them in their motions to move and said, “We also believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.” I wish you could have seen their faces at this point. I understood for the first time what the words confounded and dumbfounded meant. They were speechless and started to leave, I told them I had plenty more to tell them, but they said, “thanks, but we understand now,” and they left. And they never questioned me again. These statements of pure truth and doctrine are powerful.

Maurine

I love that story because these truly are salient, concise, perfect truths combined into powerful sentences and statements that teach our doctrines perfectly. And, if you look carefully at these 13 Articles of Faith, we see that Joseph covered these doctrines and teachings:

1. The Godhead
2. The Fall
3. The Atonement
4. The Saving Ordinances
5. Priesthood Authority
6. The Divine Organization of the Church
7. Spiritual Gifts
8. The Holy Canon of Scripture
9. Continuing Revelation
10. The Covenants made with Israel
11. Religious Freedom
12. Submission to Law
13. The Godly Attributes

This is a lot of heavy material to put in just 411 words! And I think it’s interesting to understand that some articles of faith had been worked on and compiled by other leaders of the Church for eight years before Joseph published his. Oliver Cowdery made an attempt in 1834 and published them in the Messenger and Advocate. Oliver was known for his beautiful prose and eloquent language. Listen to Oliver’s approach to the doctrine of the Godhead:

“[1] We believe in God, and his Son Jesus Christ. We believe that God, from the beginning, revealed himself to man; and that whenever he has had a people on earth, he always has revealed himself to them by the Holy Ghost, the ministering of angels, or his own voice.

Of course, all of that is true and beautiful. But when Joseph was asked to give a short history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and to talk about its beliefs, he had to be more concise and right to the point in all areas.

Scot

Well, and Maurine, that point is well taken when we read Orson Pratt’s article of faith on the Atonement in 1840. Listen to this and think about Primary children memorizing this one:

“[3] We believe, that through the sufferings, death, and atonement of Jesus Christ, all mankind, without one exception, are to be completely, and fully redeemed, both body and spirit from the endless banishment and curse, to which they were consigned, by Adam’s transgression. … After this full, complete, and universal redemption, restoration, and salvation of the whole of Adam’s race, through the atonement of Jesus Christ, without faith, repentance, baptism, or any other works, then, all and every one of them, will enjoy eternal life and happiness, never more to be banished from the presence of God, if they themselves have committed no sin. …” (Orson Pratt, Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions and of the Late Discovery of Ancient American Record, 1840) Try putting that one to primary music! Of course, if Janice Kapp Perry is listening, knowing her, I’m sure she could and it would become a favorite.

I think Elder B.H. Roberts (by the way, B.H. stands for Brigham Henry) summed it up wonderfully when he wrote about the Prophet Joseph’s Wentworth letter, of which the Articles of Faith were the final words: “The letter is one of the choicest documents in our church literature; as also it is the earliest published document by the Prophet personally, making any pretension to consecutive narrative of those events in which the great Latter-day work had its origin. … For combining conciseness of statement with comprehensiveness of treatment of the subject with which it deals, it has few equals among historical documents, and certainly none that excel it in our church literature.” (History of the Church, 4:535–41)

Maurine

Elder Dallin H. Oaks, then of the Quorum of the Twelve, spoke at the Harvard Law School on February 26, 2010, said that “our Articles of Faith,” found at the end of the Wentworth Letter, remain today as “our only formal declaration of belief.”

“The impact of this sacred document lingers today.”

“President Thomas S. Monson wrote in the June 2011 Friend magazine about a man named Sharman Hummel, whom he worked with in the printing business.

“Mr. Hummel learned of the Church when he sat next to a girl on a bus and posed the question “What do you Mormons believe?” The girl recited the Articles of Faith.

“Mr. Hummel got off the bus, looked up the Church, and requested the missionaries come and teach him more. He joined the Church and now claims a large posterity of Latter-day Saints (Monson, Thomas S., “All Because a Child Knew the Articles of Faith,” The Friend, June 2011.)

Elder L. Tom Perry taught in his April 1998 general conference address that if members will use the Articles of Faith as a guide to direct their studies of the Savior’s doctrine, they will find themselves prepared to declare their witness of the restored, true Church of the Lord.

“The Articles of Faith were not the work of a team of scholars but were authored by a single, inspired man who declared comprehensively and concisely the essential doctrines of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” Elder Perry said. “They contain direct and simple statements of the principles of our religion, and they constitute strong evidence of the divine inspiration that rested upon the Prophet Joseph Smith.

“I encourage each of you to study the Articles of Faith and the doctrines they teach. … If you will use them as a guide to direct your studies of the Savior’s doctrine, you will find yourselves prepared to declare your witness of the restored, true church of the Lord. You will be able to declare with conviction: ‘We believe these things’” (Perry, L. Tom, “The Articles of Faith,” General Conference, April 1998).

Scot

I just have to say one other thing about these amazing Articles of Faith. Over the years I interviewed hundreds of BYU kids for their Ecclesiastical Endorsement to be at BYU. The interview had a number of questions and was committing the students to live and act in exacting ways. Of course, I agreed with everything in the BYU Code of Honor. As I very prayerfully considered how I was to interview those precious students I received a wonderful answer. And this is how I did it:

I would first ask a little bit about them and about their background and a little bit about their family if I didn’t yet know them well. And then I said, “Could you please recite for me the 13^th Article of Faith?” “The 13^th?”, they would ask. “Yes, it starts with ‘We believe…” They would laugh nervously and then would say. “That’s the long one, right? I think I can. Let’s see, “We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men;” then they would usually pause here and say, “Uhhh, indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report (and I usually had to prompt them to remember this last thing) or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.” I would say, “Well done! Now, do you believe what you have just recited?” “Yes, I do.” “If you will live your life based on what you have just recited, this amazing 13^th Article of Faith, I have no need to ask any more questions.” They would say, “I will.” And that was the interview. And we always felt the Spirit confirming this meeting. And you know, in all the years I did that I only had two students who needed help because they were converts in their late teens and didn’t memorize the Articles of Faith in their primary years. This was so inspiring to me!

Maurine

We could certainly gladly talk about the Articles of Faith all day, but let’s use the 9^th Article of Faith as a seg way into the next section of this podcast: “We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.” This is the definition of what President Russell M. Nelson calls “the ongoing Restoration.” Remember what President Nelson said, ““We’re witnesses to a process of restoration. If you think the Church has been fully restored, you’re just seeing the beginning. There is much more to come. … Wait till next year. And then the next year. Eat your vitamin pills. Get your rest. It’s going to be exciting.” I remember standing outside the White House with President Gordon B. Hinckley when he received the Medal of Freedom from then President George W. Bush. He was asked by the press something like, “Is this a great day for the Church, is this a pinnacle of achievement?” And he said, “Oh, we have only just begun to scratch the surface of this great work.”

Scot

Which reminds me of the context of the placement of the Articles of Faith in the Wentworth Letter, by the way. Do you want to know what comes immediately before the Articles of Faith? Listen:

“[T]he Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear; till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.” (Wentworth Letter, March 1, 1842, Times and Seasons, Nauvoo) And then the next sentence is:

We believe in God the Eternal Father, and in His Son Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost!

That is so great to see that placement and to think about the ongoing and unfolding Restoration. If you are a little rusty on the Articles of Faith from Primary days, or you have never memorized them, well, take it upon yourself to memorize all 13 of them, a total of 411 words. It will bless your life forever, I promise. I have a personal witness of the power of the Articles of Faith.

Maurine

So, in the process of ongoing revelation let’s go back to the mid 1800’s and explore ever so briefly the growing Church in Utah in those early days and the importance of continuing revelation. Plural marriage was in full bloom. Many of the sisters and brethren in the Church were living “the principle.” One of them that we all know well, and whom Scot and I know especially well, was Parley Parker Pratt. Parley had 11 wives, ten of whom were living. Parley fathered 31 children. Now, all of us take a little Nephite pride in the number of our grandchildren, right? We see it all the time on the Church History tour. It’s kind of a badge of honor or something—at least it feels that way. We are swamped all the time by people who say they have 47 grandchildren and one recently said to us, “My mother had 11 children just like you guys and she had 78 grandchildren.” Sheesh. Well, sit down for a moment, because Parley P. Pratt had 264 grandchildren. And he was martyred before he even got to meet the very first one! That’s a lot of posterity! AND a tremendous loss for him to not get to know his grandchildren on this side of the veil.

Scot

It certainly is! And there were many others, George Q. Cannon had 43 children. Heber C. Kimball had 66 children. Brigham Young had 57. Wilford Woodruff had 34. Joseph F. Smith had 48. John Taylor 34. My own 2^nd Great Grandfather, George Facer, had six wives and 29 children (and two of his wives bore no children!). This all makes sense from the Book of Mormon where the Lord said, “For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things.” (Jacob 2:30) And the antecedent to “these things” is one man with one wife. (See Jacob 2:25-30)

Now, the Saints had been practicing plural marriage for almost 50 years. They were fairly isolated from the rest of the country as they lived in the Great Basin amongst the Rocky Mountains. And remember Deseret or Utah was a territory and had not obtained statehood yet. The Church of Jesus Christ was gaining converts and was growing in numbers and gaining national attention.

Maurine

And in the meantime, laws were being enacted in the United States, including the Edmunds Anti-Polygamy Act of 1882. Signed into law on March 23, 1882 by President Chester A. Arthur, the law declared polygamy a felony in all the federal territories of the United States, which included the Utah Territory. Enforcement of the act started as early as 1882 and in all, more than 1,300 men in Utah were imprisoned, including George Q. Cannon of the First Presidency and apostles Lorenzo Snow and Rudger Clawson. Elected officials in Utah vacated their offices because of their declared belief in polygamy.

In 1887 an amendment was passed, unsigned by the President, to the Edmunds Act to form the Edmunds-Tucker Act, specifically aimed at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Scot

The act:

• Disincorporated The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Perpetual Emigrating Fund Company, with assets to be used for public schools in the Territory.
• Required an anti-polygamy oath for prospective voters, jurors and public officials.
• Annulled territorial laws allowing illegitimate children to inherit.
• Required civil marriage licenses (to aid in the prosecution of polygamy).
• Abrogated the common law spousal privilege for polygamists, thus requiring wives to testify against their husbands.
• The act disenfranchised women (who had been enfranchised by the Territorial legislature in 1870), and also a number of other things.

This, of course, caused Church President Wilford Woodruff to be extremely prayerful about what to do. Would the Lord require the dismantling of the Kingdom by continuing to live plural marriage?  President Woodruff issued the Official Manifesto in General Conference, read by President Lorenzo Snow, on September 24^th, 1890. Polygamy, or plural marriage, by revelation, officially came to an end.

President Woodruff later stated in November 1891:

The question is this: Which is the wisest course for the Latter-day Saints to pursue—to continue to attempt to practice plural marriage, with the laws of the nation against it and the opposition of sixty millions of people, and at the cost of the confiscation and loss of all the Temples, and the stopping of all the ordinances therein, both for the living and the dead, and the imprisonment of the First Presidency and Twelve and the heads of families in the Church, and the confiscation of personal property of the people (all of which of themselves would stop the practice); or, after doing and suffering what we have through our adherence to this principle to cease the practice and submit to the law, and through doing so leave the Prophets, Apostles and fathers at home, so that they can instruct the people and attend to the duties of the Church, and also leave the Temples in the hands of the Saints, so that they can attend to the ordinances of the Gospel, both for the living and the dead?

Maurine

President Woodruff continued:

“The Lord showed me by vision and revelation exactly what would take place if we did not stop this practice. If we had not stopped it, you would have had no use for … any of the men in this temple at Logan; for all ordinances would be stopped throughout the land of Zion. Confusion would reign throughout Israel, and many men would be made prisoners. This trouble would have come upon the whole Church, and we should have been compelled to stop the practice. Now, the question is, whether it should be stopped in this manner, or in the way the Lord has manifested to us, and leave our Prophets and Apostles and fathers free men, and the temples in the hands of the people, so that the dead may be redeemed. A large number has already been delivered from the prison house in the spirit world by this people, and shall the work go on or stop? This is the question I lay before the Latter-day Saints. You have to judge for yourselves. I want you to answer it for yourselves. I shall not answer it; but I say to you that that is exactly the condition we as a people would have been in had we not taken the course we have.

“… I saw exactly what would come to pass if there was not something done. I have had this spirit upon me for a long time. But I want to say this: I should have let all the temples go out of our hands; I should have gone to prison myself, and let every other man go there, had not the God of heaven commanded me to do what I did do; and when the hour came that I was commanded to do that, it was all clear to me. I went before the Lord, and I wrote what the Lord told me to write. …

“I leave this with you, for you to contemplate and consider. The Lord is at work with us. (Cache Stake Conference, Logan, Utah, Sunday, November 1, 1891. Reported in Deseret Weekly, November 14, 1891.)

Scot

And Maurine, this law that had been introduced quietly in Nauvoo in the early 1840’s and then publicly in Utah in 1850, was extremely hard to live, but the people had been living it for 50 years. These were husbands and wives and children who loved each other and were striving to keep the Lord’s commandments. And in those days, because this practice was in place, the Spirit of the Lord would testify to anyone who was asked to live it, that the practice was true and sanctioned by the God of Heaven. But when the Manifesto was issued in that fall General Conference of 1890, many of the Saints openly wept at this change. They loved their families. This would be a hard change for everyone and yet, it was what the Lord now required of His people. This is the Kingdom of God on the earth and there is continual and continuing revelation. The Lord had spoken and His people obeyed.

Maurine

Now, let’s talk about how Official Declaration number 2 came about. This change brought universal joy and happiness in the Church. But it was slow, by our standards, in coming. We want to talk about it in some detail, mainly so you can see the careful process of revelation to the Prophet of God.

If you had already been born and were a member of the Church, June 9, 1978, you remember in vivid detail exactly where you were the minute you heard that President Spencer W. Kimball had received a revelation extending the priesthood to all worthy males.

Elder Marion D. Hanks, an emeritus General Authority who was there said, “Hallelujah. I thank God I lived long enough to see this day.”

Scot

Church historian, Leonard Arrington, said that within five minutes “my son Carl Wayne telephoned from New York City to say he had heard the news.  I was in the midst of sobbing with gratitude for this answer to our prayers and could hardly speak with him.  I was thrilled and electrified. I felt like the Prophet Joseph Smith said we should feel about the gospel: “A voice of gladness!  A voice of mercy from heaven; and a voice of truth out of the earth; glad tidings for the dead; a voice of gladness for the living and the dead; glad tidings of great joy.” (Doctrine and Covenants 128:19)

Rarely has news of an event spread faster than this one, taken the breath away of a people, most of whom had been long pained by the denial of the priesthood to those of African descent.

Maurine

Newspapers delayed their editions to add the announcement. Time and Newsweek stopped their presses on their weekend editions.  The New York Times made it a front-page story, and newspapers that had been neutral or hostile to the Church carried laudatory editorials. U.S. President Jimmy Carter commended President Spencer W. Kimball for “compassionate prayerfulness and courage.”

“All of us had the sense of discomfort at the continuing policy that kept good and honorable people from the blessings of their possibilities,” said Elder Hanks. “For 39 years I was a General Authority and had to find ways to respond to what was a troubling reality that there were those worthy and wonderful people who were not yet permitted to hold the priesthood.  You can’t respond to questions about this for years, and know that the Lord tells us that he “esteemeth all flesh in one” (1 Nephi 17:35) and not look forward to a change.”

He remembers being on the top of a hill in Vietnam, long before the revelation, talking to a young black member of the Church who had just had his legs blown off, holding his hand and weeping.  “All I could say to him is that one day there will be additional information on this subject, and when that happens the Lord will give it to the president of the Church.”

Scot

President Kimball had long been sensitive to this issue.  For instance, in March 1976, he was present for the laying of the cornerstone of the Sao Paulo, Brazil temple and met Ruda and Helvecio Martins, devoted black members, converted in 1972.  They had donated money and time to the temple, knowing full well that as things stood, they would not be receiving its blessings. The bank account, which they had carefully saved for their son’s mission, went to another young man who would be able to serve. Seeing their devotion–and many others like them–moved and grieved President Kimball.

President Kimball wasn’t the first prophet to ponder and pray over the exclusion policy of the priesthood.  Other prophets had made pronouncements to the effect that someday the priesthood would be made available to all worthy male members.

President Kimball had a long record of reaching out to people of many ethnicities.  In his early years as an apostle, his assignment had been to the Indian nations, adding to his sensitivity.

Maurine

Beginning in 1976 as the prophet, he began a systematic routine of praying, fasting and supplicating the Lord on this matter.

It was, then, with both keen desire, and awe and reverence for God, that he began his heart-felt petitions, not believing for a moment that the matter was merely in his hands to make a change.

Scot

The spring of 1978 found the First Presidency and the Twelve discussing the subject often in the upper rooms of the temple at their Thursday meetings.

According to Joseph Fielding McConkie, “President Kimball did not act in isolation on the matter. He freely sought the feelings of his counselors and the Quorum of the Twelve. In March of 1978 he invited any of the Twelve who desired to do so to make any expressions they desired to him in writing so that he could carefully consider them. Three members of that Quorum responded to this invitation, Elders Monson, Packer, and McConkie. Elder McConkie’s memo centered on the doctrinal basis for conferring the Melchizedek Priesthood on the Blacks. After the revelation was received, he freely shared with his family the scriptural chain of thought that he had suggested to President Kimball. The power of it was in its simplicity. He simply saw things in passages of scriptures that the rest of us had conditioned ourselves not to see.

Maurine

Joseph McConkie continued:  “Dad reasoned that inherent in any passage of scripture that promised that the gospel would go to all mankind was the promise that it–with all its blessings-must go to the Blacks. The Third Article of Faith, for instance, states that we believe that through the atonement of Christ ‘all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel’ (italics added.) The word saved as used in this text, he said, meant to be exalted or obtain all the blessings of the celestial kingdom. To illustrate this point he quoted D&C 6:13, ‘If thou wilt do good, yea, and hold out faithful to the end, thou shalt be saved in the kingdom of God, which is the greatest of all the gifts of God; for there is no gift greater than the gift of salvation,’ and Joseph Smith’s statement that ‘Salvation consists in the glory, authority, majesty power and dominion which Jehovah possesses and in nothing else.’ (Lectures on Faith, 7:9; Italics added.)

“He also reminded us that all those who accept the gospel become the seed of the family of Abraham and are entitled to all of the blessings of the gospel. Jehovah told Abraham that his seed would take the gospel and the ‘Priesthood unto all nations,’ and that ‘as many as receive this Gospel shall be called after thy name, and shall be accounted thy seed, and shall rise up and bless thee, as their father.’ This, of course, is the matter of being adopted into the house of Israel.

“Jehovah also promised Abraham that when his literal seed took the message of salvation to ‘all nations,’ that then ‘shall all the families of the earth be blessed, even with the blessings of the Gospel, which are the blessings of salvation, even of life eternal.’ (Abraham. 2:9-11.)

“In his funeral address for Elder McConkie, Elder Packer observed that ‘President Kimball has spoken in public of his gratitude to Elder McConkie for some special support he received in the days leading up to the revelation on the Priesthood.’ It would be hard to suppose that that ‘special help’ did not include the assurance of his gospel understanding as found in the doctrinal analysis just reviewed.

Scot

“President Kimball described his own process of seeking revelation this way: “I remember very vividly that day after day I walked to the temple and ascended to the fourth floor where we have our solemn assemblies and where we have our meetings of the Twelve and the First Presidency. After everybody had gone out of the temple, I knelt and prayed. I prayed with much fervency. I knew that something was before us that was extremely important to many of the children of God. I knew that we could receive the revelations of the Lord only by being worthy and ready for them and ready to accept them and put them into place. Day after day I went alone and with great solemnity and seriousness in the upper rooms of the temple, and there I offered my soul and offered my efforts to go forward with the program. I wanted to do what he wanted. I talked about it to him and said, “Lord, I want only what is right. We are not making any plans to be spectacularly moving. We want only the thing that thou dost want, and we want it when you want it and not until.”

President Gordon B. Hinckley said in an October 1988 Ensign, “I was not present when John the Baptist conferred the Aaronic Priesthood. I was not present when Peter, James, and John conferred the Melchizedek Priesthood. But I was present and was a participant and a witness to what occurred on Thursday, June 1, 1978. My memory is clear concerning the events of that day.

“Each first Thursday of the month is a day for fasting and the bearing of testimony by the General Authorities of the Church. So many of the Brethren are absent from home on the first Sunday of the month because of assignments to stake conferences that we hold our monthly testimony meeting in an upper room of the Salt Lake Temple the first Thursday of the month. The Thursday of which I speak was June 1, 1978. We heard testimonies from some of the brethren, and we partook of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.

“It was a wonderfully spiritual meeting, as are all such meetings in these holy precincts and under these circumstances. Then the members of the First Quorum of the Seventy and the Presiding Bishopric were excused, while there remained the president of the Church, his two Counselors, and ten members of the Council of the Twelve-two being absent, one in South America and the other in the hospital.

Maurine

President Hinckley continued: “The question of extending the blessings of the priesthood to blacks had been on the minds of many of the Brethren over a period of years. It had repeatedly been brought up by Presidents of the Church. It had become a matter of particular concern to President Spencer W. Kimball.

“Over a considerable period of time he had prayed concerning this serious and difficult question. He had spent many hours in that upper room in the temple by himself in prayer and meditation.

“On this occasion he raised the question before his Brethren—his Counselors and the Apostles. Following this discussion, we joined in prayer in the most sacred of circumstances. President Kimball himself was voice in that prayer. I do not recall the exact words that he spoke. But I do recall my own feelings and the nature of the expressions of my Brethren. There was a hallowed and sanctified atmosphere in the room. For me, it felt as if a conduit opened between the heavenly throne and the kneeling, pleading prophet of God who was joined by his Brethren. The Spirit of God was there. And by the power of the Holy Ghost there came to that prophet an assurance that the thing for which he prayed was right, that the time had come, and that now the wondrous blessings of the priesthood should be extended to worthy men everywhere regardless of lineage.

Scot

“Every man in that circle, by the power of the Holy Ghost, knew the same thing.

“It was a quiet and sublime occasion.

“There was not the sound “as of a rushing mighty wind,” there were not “cloven tongues like as of fire” (Acts 2:2-3) as there had been on the Day of Pentecost. But there was a Pentecostal spirit, for the Holy Ghost was there.

“No voice audible to our physical ears was heard. But the voice of the Spirit whispered with certainty into our minds and our very souls.

“It was for us, at least for me personally, as I imagine it was with Enos, who said concerning his remarkable experience, “And while I was thus struggling in the spirit, behold, the voice of the Lord came into my mind.” (Enos 1:10.)

“So it was on that memorable June 1, 1978. We left that meeting subdued and reverent and joyful. Not one of us who was present on that occasion was ever quite the same after that. Nor has the Church been quite the same.”

Leonard Arrington, who interviewed many of those present said, “At the end of the heavenly manifestation [President] Kimball, weeping for joy, confronted the church members, many of them also sobbing, and asked if they sustained this heavenly instruction.  Embracing, all nodded vigorously and jubilantly their sanction.  There had been a startling and commanding revelation from God-an ineffable experience.”

Maurine

Those Arrington interviewed said, “the gathering, incredible and without compare, was the greatest singular event of their lives.  Those I talked with wept as they spoke of it.  All were certain they had witnessed a revelation from God.”

An official announcement of the revelation, dated June 8, 1978, was announced to the press the next day, on June 9. Arrington wrote, “Here was indisputable evidence of God’s presence and direction in these latter days-divine reaffirmation of the faith and values of our church.”  It read:

To all general and local priesthood officers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout the world:

As we have witnessed the expansion of the work of the Lord over the earth, we have been grateful that people of many nations have responded to the message of the restored gospel, and have joined the Church in ever-increasing numbers. This, in turn, has inspired us with a desire to extend to every worthy member of the Church all of the privileges and blessings which the gospel affords.

Aware of the promises made by the prophets and presidents of the Church who have preceded us that at some time, in God’s eternal plan, all of our brethren who are worthy may receive the priesthood, and witnessing the faithfulness of those from whom the priesthood has been withheld, we have pleaded long and earnestly in behalf of these, our faithful brethren, spending many hours in the Upper Room of the Temple supplicating the Lord for divine guidance.

Scot

He has heard our prayers, and by revelation has confirmed that the long-promised day has come when every faithful, worthy man in the Church may receive the holy priesthood, with power to exercise its divine authority, and enjoy with his loved ones every blessing that flows therefrom, including the blessings of the temple. Accordingly, all worthy male members of the Church may be ordained to the priesthood without regard for race or color. Priesthood leaders are instructed to follow the policy of carefully interviewing all candidates for ordination to either the Aaronic or the Melchizedek Priesthood to ensure that they meet the established standards for worthiness.

We declare with soberness that the Lord has now made known his will for the blessing of all his children throughout the earth who will hearken to the voice of his authorized servants, and prepare themselves to receive every blessing of the gospel.

Sincerely yours,

Spencer W. Kimball
N. Eldon Tanner
Marion G. Romney
The First Presidency

Maurine

In an interesting note, Scot, when I interviewed Camilla Kimball for a video on her life, as you know, she explained her experience of the event.  She said she had known that Spencer had been troubled and concerned for some time over a matter that absorbed him.  She remembered that one day as they were returning from the Salt Lake airport, he had asked to be let off at the temple because he wanted to spend some time in meditation and prayer.  She did not know about the revelation on the priesthood until after her daughter, who had heard the announcement on television, called her on the morning of June 9. President Kimball was a man who could keep confidences.

Scot

I love this intimate view of the process of revelation in the Church at the highest level.  Now, I remember when we interviewed William (Billy) Johnson in Ghana, a man who heard about the Church in 1964 and had 10 congregations of faithful Ghanaians ready for baptism as soon as they could get missionaries. He told us, “We used to sing Come, Come Ye Saints in our meetings and with tears in our eyes we would cry, “When will our brothers from the West come for us?” They finally did come!

These congregations and others have grown exponentially. Ghana now has 113,470 members in 387 congregations in 31 stakes. Nigeria has 250,341 members in 840 congregations in 80 stakes. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has 102,862 members in 269 congregations in 42 stakes. The list goes on and on—and this is just the growth since the Church officially came into West Africa in late 1978!

Maurine

When I stood next to William (Billy) Johnson going into the Temple dedication in Accra, he told me he had spent all night prostrate upon the floor in a prayer of gratitude to the Lord for bringing the Temple to them. What faith and humility and gratitude! But even more impressive was when I walked out of the Temple with Brother Johnson, one of the most amazing people we have ever met in all the world, he told me that during the singing of The Spirit of God he was given to see a vision of the hosts of the Ghanaian dead. “They were all there, led by their tribal chiefs in all their full royal dress and they had come to have their work done for them!”

This is the faith of a people who had waited so long to have the full blessings of the Gospel and now these blessings are freely extended to all on both sides of the veil.

Scot

That’s all for today. These are marvelous truths and a perfect view of continuing revelation in this, The Church of Jesus Christ.  We’ve loved being with you. Next week our lesson will be on: The Family: A Proclamation to the World. We’re grateful to Jenny Oaks Baker for the music and to our daughter, Michaela Proctor Hutchins for producing this show. Have a wonderful, joyous week and see you next time.

“Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” Performed by Jenny Oaks Baker. Used with permission © 2003 Shadow Mountain Records