"this shall be a law unto you, that ye receive not the teachings of any that shall come before you as revelations or commandments; And this I give unto you that you may not be deceived, that you may know they are not of me. For verily I say unto you, that he that is ordained of me shall come in at the gate and be ordained as I have told you before, to teach those revelations which you have received and shall receive through him whom I have appointed."
Do you remember 15 Sections ago (5-6 months) when Hiram Page, witness to the Book of Mormon, was deceived into believing he was receiving revelations for the Church? Funny how we seem to need to get taught the same lesson over and over. There is an inherent tension between the concept of unmediated access to our Father's guidance and blessings through the Holy Ghost and the concept of an authoritative hierarchy through which in-scope inspiration can guide beyond the personal level--between personal and institutional revelation. Both are heaven-seeking, both require individual worthiness and faith, and both are encouraged and rewarded by the Lord. But the institution has order, and revelations have scope, and just as a fenced pasture has a gate dividing inside from outside, only authorized leaders, recognized for having entered in the appropriate manner at the appointed place and time can properly protect the membership.
Page's case, if you recall, came from a place of sincerity, from a heart yearning to know more and be more useful. Oliver Cowdery, to whom the revelation was addressed, was also involved, and was invited both to pull Paige aside to explain the deception, but to also feel empowered to teach and interpret scripture by the Spirit, just not by way of "commandment" to the church, and to prophecy, just not in written form.
In the case of the early Kirtland gathering, the saints--several newer members, it seems, who might not have been aware of the Paige case from the year before, seemed to be caught up in a proliferation of pretension to revelation for the Church. As Mantic as the early Restored Christian approach to revelation was, there needed to be limits on the ground-up confusion that could result if there was no top-down structure. So this time, rather than pulling one person aside to confront them with the truth that they had been personally duped by the father of lies, and instead an institutional insistence on the single, powerful metaphor of the shepherd's gate.
Keep in mind that the Lord Himself deployed this metaphor as He taught His disciples about love, oneness, and self-sacrifice. In a sense, the symbol of the gate must be understood on several levels at once: it is the literal entry point for the sheep, the place of identity verification for all visitors, and the locus of avoidance for all ill-intending others. The Redeemer taught in parabolic code, on this occasion, as an on-ramp to their later understanding of His self-sacrificial love, and role in the Plan of Salvation--He was the Good Shepherd, and there are rules of recognition to distinguish between true love and counterfeit control.
The idea that the Holy Ghost offers a chaotic democracy of direction is dangerous. It can produce heterodoxy of such popular influence that many can be deceived, and it can absolve people of the need to submit to the checks and balances of scripture. The idea that only a priest or a prophet can intercede on behalf of the people is also dangerous. It can concentrate an idolatrous devotion to a mortal, and absolve the people of responsibility to earn their own understanding of scripture.
I'm grateful for the balance in the doctrine of a modern-day prophet. We must listen to His voice as if it were the Lord's. But we can also achieve the same closeness with the Spirit He has. His key-holding position doesn't diminish our communication with the Lord, but ensures that we, the Church, not fall prey to every wind of doctrine, and instead come to a unity of the faith, to a measure of the fulness of the stature of Christ.
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