McLellin , Henry William Bigler — , Journal, Feb. Parley P. Pratt, Jr. Andrew F. William E. McLellin, a new convert who may have been present when the revelation was received, recalled a Church service held in the Johnson home the day the revelation was given. He wrote,. This day the brethren and sisters collected at Bro. And the brethren called on me to preach. But it seemed to me as if I could not. Here was the church who had been instructed by the first elders in the church.
And it was not I but the spirit and power of God which was in me and it did seem to me before I finished as though it was not I or that I had got into another region where all was light and glory. It will be by invitation. Elder Packer related an experience he had when he asked one of his senior brethren to help him with a problem.
If you have studied the plan of redemption, you need not fear. Do not take counsel from your fears. The world will soon be blown all apart and come to an end. Everything that I have learned from the revelations and from life convinces me that there is time and to spare for you to carefully prepare for a long life. One day you will cope with teenage children of your own. That will serve you right. Later, you will spoil your grandchildren, and they in turn spoil theirs.
If an earlier end should happen to come to one, that is more reason to do things right. This is great counsel to all of us.
Many today have fears about a great many things. These fears can be overcome through faith in Christ and pressing forward, doing what we are to be doing and being where we are to be. As we move forward, the path ahead will be illuminated just enough for us to continue forward.
This has reference to the Mount of Olives, a mountain just east of Jerusalem where Jesus went to pray before his arrest long ago. This is a direct reference to Zechariah 14 which says:. Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.
Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west , and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.
And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal [21] Azal, an unknown location in this area.
See The Jewish Study Bible, p. The text of the Jewish Study Bible and their translation of the next 3 verses Zechariah In that day, there shall be neither sunlight nor cold moonlight, but there shall be a continuous day- only the Lord knows when- of neither day nor night, and there shall be light at eventide. In that day, fresh water shall flow from Jerusalem, part of it to the Eastern Sea and part to the Western Sea, throughout summer and winter.
To me, this is all associated with the prayer for fertility offered up by the king in the New Year rites annually in the First Israelite Temple period.
All of creation will rejoice as this new living water comes from Jerusalem and gives life to all creation! The Jews will look upon me and say: What are these wounds in thine hands? This is the great day when the Savior will reclaim the outcasts of Judah and accomplish his glorious plan for their redemption. It is his Spirit that now prompts many to gather to their ancient homeland.
And it is the spirit of the devil that inspires the wicked to assemble against Jerusalem to destroy the gathered Jewish remnant. The spirit of messianic anticipation will once again fill the hearts of the persecuted and hopeful nation. In glory and great power the Lord will descend to save them from destruction at the hands of their enemies. Isaiah gloried in the day of Jewish redemption, [24] Wilford Woodruff said They the Jews do not believe in Jesus Christ; there is an unbelief resting upon them, and will until they go home and rebuild Jerusalem and their temple more glorious than at … Continue reading when finally the scales of tradition will fall from their eyes allowing them to be enlightened.
A voice of noise from the city, a voice from the temple, a voice of the Lord that rendereth recompence to his enemies. Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child.
Who hath heard such a thing? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? What then? Then they begin to believe, then the Jews are convinced, I mean that portion of them who formerly despised Jesus of Nazareth, and being convinced they begin to mourn, and they mourn every family apart, and their wives apart.
The family of the house of Levi apart and their wives apart; the family of the house of David and their wives apart, and all their families that remain will mourn, they and their wives apart, and there will be such mourning in Jerusalem as that city never experienced before [see Zech ].
What is the matter? What are they mourning about? They have looked upon him whom their fathers pierced, they behold the wounds, they are now convinced that they and their fathers have been in error some eighteen hundred years, and they repent in dust and ashes. The next step for them will be baptism for the remission of their sins.
They look upon him whom their fathers pierced and they mourn for him as one who mourns for his only son, and, as Zechariah says, they are in bitterness for him.
But repentance alone would not be sufficient, they must obey the ordinances of the Gospel; hence there will be a fountain opened at that time on purpose for baptism. On the other hand, the heathen nations will be redeemed from the devil through Christ and will be resurrected in the first resurrection, their glory being greater than that of those who are assigned to the telestial kingdom.
Robinson, H. The wise virgins have taken the oil, the Holy Spirit for their guide, oil which cannot be purchased. Elder Bruce R.
It comes only to those who keep the commandments and whose souls are filled with the Holy Spirit of God. No man can keep the commandments for and on behalf of another; no one can gain the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit in his life and give or sell that holy oil to another. Every man must light his own lamp with the oil of righteousness which he buys at the market of obedience. Throughout the Doctrine and Covenants there seems to be the warning to the Saints to leave the east and head west.
The civil war, the war between the North and the South, which laid in the dust nearly a million of men and cost the nation many hundred … Continue reading See also:. The Saints of God will work to care for one another in the midst of upheavals. They will be caring for their fellow man.
They will be doing the ordinary things that families do. Lewis put it this way:. They may break our bodies any microbe can do that but they need not dominate our minds. Lewis, The Quotable Lewis , p.
We believe that God is going to revolutionize the earth, to purge it from iniquity of every kind and to introduce righteousness of every kind, until the great millennium is fully introduced. We believe, moreover, that God, having commenced his Work, will continue to reveal and make manifest his will to his Priesthood, to his Church and kingdom on the earth, and that among this people there will be an embodiment of virtue, of truth, of holiness, of integrity, of fidelity, of wisdom and of the knowledge of God….
We believe that we shall rear splendid edifices, magnificent temples and beautiful cities that shall become the pride, praise and glory of the whole earth. We believe that this people will excel in literature, in science and the arts and in manufactures…In fact, if there is anything great, noble, dignified, exalted, anything pure, or holy, or virtuous, or lovely, anything that is calculated to exalt or ennoble the human mind, to dignify and elevate the people, it will be found among the people of the Saints of the Most High God.
This is only a faint outline of some of our views in relation to these things, and hence we talk of returning to Jackson county to build the most magnificent temple that ever was formed on the earth and the most splendid city that was ever erected; yea, cities, if you please…. And the people, from the President down, will all be under the guidance and direction of the Lord in all the pursuits of human life, until eventually they will be enabled to erect cities that will be fit to be caught up—that when Zion descends from above, Zion will also ascend from beneath, and be prepared to associate with those from above.
The people will be so perfected and purified, ennobled, exalted, and dignified in their feelings and so truly humble and most worthy, virtuous and intelligent that they will be fit, when caught up, to associate with that Zion that shall come down from God out of heaven…. In my experience, it is something that, once we have been alerted to its presence, can become a new and illuminating addition to our awareness when studying the scriptures.
Why would there be so much intertextuality in the Doctrine and Covenants? We will consider three related answers to this question. The first reason relates to the nature of God and his perspective on revealing the gospel throughout time. The third reason, which is related to the second, grows out of the historical and cultural setting in which the revelations were given, a time in which biblical language was widely familiar and recognized as authoritative.
These reasons are ultimately interrelated and are not mutually exclusive. While this statement is certainly true in broad terms—the Lord teaches the same truths to all men everywhere—at least in the English-language versions of the scriptures, it is also literally true.
Certainly the Doctrine and Covenants, in its extensive use of language from the Bible, works with the Book of Mormon to fulfill these purposes. Another possible reason for the use of biblical language in modern revelations may grow out of the inherent difficulties of expressing revelation adequately in human language.
The few eyewitness accounts we have of Joseph Smith receiving revelations suggest that it was essentially a process of dictation: Joseph felt or heard the words in his mind and then spoke them aloud to be written down. Parley P. This was the manner in which all his written revelations were dictated and written. There is good reason to believe, however, that for Joseph Smith, the process was not quite so easy.
We know that receiving revelation was, first and foremost, work. While receiving and understanding the whisperings of the Spirit undoubtedly accounted for a large proportion of the work involved, it was also a struggle to find the right words to express that inspiration, and both Joseph and the Lord recognized that there would be a complex and sometimes difficult relationship between revelation—the language of God—and the language of men.
Undoubtedly, as Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon—perhaps the formative experience through which he learned how to receive and record revelation—he had sympathized with Moroni, who spoke poignantly of the difficulties he and his fellow Nephite prophets had encountered in putting their inspired words into writing. Getting from revelation to text, then, was a complex process that involved rendering the still, small voice of the Spirit into English words that would be coherent and meaningful to Joseph and his nineteenth-century American associates.
While it is true that the language of the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants is comprehensible to us as modern English, it is also clear that, in expressing the revelations in modern English, Joseph Smith held definite ideas about what sacred, scriptural language should sound like.
For the Lord, it offered a means of communicating with his people in language that was already familiar and authoritative.
It brought the dispensations together and served as a further witness of his word. For Joseph Smith, struggling to write his way out of that narrow prison of language, the Bible offered both a model and a storehouse of words and phrases that enabled him to express his revelations in meaningful terms.
The early Saints recognized in the revelations a blend of familiar words and new doctrines that mutually illuminated and validated each other. It is probably impossible for us today to fully appreciate just how central and fundamental an element the Bible was in the culture of English-speaking people in the early nineteenth century. People owned and read Bibles, to be sure, but we should remember that the culture was much more organized around face-to-face interaction and that the spoken word sermons, dramatic readings, storytelling provided the most common and fundamental forms of entertainment and education.
Joseph Smith and his contemporaries knew the language of the Bible not only because they read it but because they heard it all around them—directly from the book, but also as part of the deeply embedded idioms of everyday speech. For many of the early Saints, undoubtedly, hearing was a primary means by which they learned the word of the Lord, and it is likely that Joseph and his contemporaries retained an auditory orientation to the scriptures that we have largely lost.
In other words, the revelations sounded familiar to them because they had heard such language repeatedly throughout their lives. It is important to stress, I think, that we cannot know for certain which intertextual expressions in the revelations would have been previously familiar to Joseph Smith himself or to his listeners; certainly we cannot assume that any given person had essentially memorized the Bible.
Therefore, it would be a highly variable matter to account for the biblical resonances in any given verse. Joseph Smith and his contemporaries would have heard not only the words of the modern revelation; but also those words in the context of the biblical passages to which they refer, often expanding or enriching their meaning in ways that we miss if we are not aware of the original.
Moreover, we should also acknowledge that the intertextuality of the Bible with both the Doctrine and Covenants and the Book of Mormon has been cited by some observers as evidence that Joseph Smith simply composed the revelations himself by patching together biblical phrases and pseudoscriptural language.
In my view, this explanation is much too easy. Looking at section 4, for example, we find in just seven short verses a complex and beautiful text that draws on over eight different biblical sources with little self-conscious marking of itself as quotation or allusion. It is a text that simultaneously stands on its own while resonating with the meanings and music of its sources. For those of us who accept the veracity of those revelations, the biblical intertextuality in the Doctrine and Covenants provides yet another witness of their authenticity.
Having considered the why of biblical intertextuality in the Doctrine and Covenants, we can now turn to the how: How does this intertextuality function in the texts of the revelations? We can discuss only a few examples here, but I would like to identify three general patterns. First, biblical intertextuality in the Doctrine and Covenants works to reaffirm and reframe prophecy. Second, it serves to amplify previous scripture, adding new insight or information.
Third, it functions to motivate and help develop the identity of the recipients. Sometimes we find all of these functions simultaneously. This revelation simultaneously places the work of Joseph Smith within that larger framework, affirming and reframing prophecy, and clarifies the older biblical passage, making clear that it would be fulfilled through the Book of Mormon and the work of Joseph Smith.
The intertextuality in this revelation also functioned to powerfully reorient the lives and identities of those who heard it. Joseph Smith Sr. In this simple phrase first found in section 4, we find all three functions of biblical intertextuality in the Doctrine and Covenants: it affirms prophecy, expands the meaning of a previous scripture, and invites actual people, then and now, to identify with and participate in the work of God.
Considering the functions of intertextuality separately, we first find that the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants often invoke biblical language in reference to prophecy. It takes an expression from the Bible that could refer to one particular historical moment and transforms it into a prophecy that applies to all.
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