Line Upon Line - JS-H 1:45-46, 49, 54

 

From the last post describing Moroni's visit to a repentant, 17 year-old Joseph Smith, we concentrated on how Smith's familiarity with scripture prepared him to received paradigm-shifting earthquakes as new contexts for prophecies became the content of an angelic message. We also noted how little of this content was relayed beyond Smith himself--as third party readers, we are told that the bulk of the message is not recorded here, just important summary details.

As a pedagogue who strives for excellence in teaching, what stuck out to me in the next verses was the mercy and didactic skill evident in Moroni's subsequent visits. With Joseph's mind still reeling from familiar passages given new light, the angel again penetrates the room and speaks: 

"He commenced, and again related the very same things which he had done at his first visit, without the least variation" (1:45)

There is a brief addition to the message this time, but then, after leaving Smith alone to ponder, yet again the messenger emerges from his luminous conduit, and, as Smith relates: 

"what was my surprise when again I beheld the same messenger at my bedside, and heard him rehearse or repeat over again to me the same things as before" (1:46)

After the repetition, without the least variation once more, we must assume, there was again an addition to the communication which built upon what was now already firmly anchored in the memory before the being of light once again departed.

Finally, as the night dissipated and the work day on the farm began without Joseph's ability to contribute much, the angel made one last appearance on that property, which is recorded for us with with the inclusion of: 

"He then again related unto me all that he had related to me the previous night" (1:49)

There's a double effect that this pedagogical method produces. First, repetition is the soul of teaching, and reinforces the message and details at each retelling. But it also structurally sets apart the non-repeated elements as even more memorable. In this case, the core was an exposition of scripture--of prior prophecy and pending fulfillment, all packaged in a new paradigm's arc, and the non-repeated additions align as follows: 1. a new prophecy of impending judgments (implying that Joseph's role would help mitigate them); 2. a warning to hold the plates sacred and avoid material temptation to profit therefrom; 3. a commandment to bring his father into the circle of trust about these visits.

I find these additions significant. They ground Smith in a few important ideas: 1. that God provides mantic manifestations and will continue to do so--He's not limited to speaking only through past prophets; 2. that God wants to prepare his servants against particular temptations and forces seeking to stymy the work; 3. that support in his functions and service as prophet will include not only heavenly sources, but earthly ones that know him best and care for him best--that family hearts were being prepared to accept the paradigm shifts that will come through him.

As we each receive callings to serve in the Church, this seems to me applicable as a pattern: 1. we need to seek His specific word on behalf of those within our influence, and expect that He will guide us; 2. He is interested in our success, which includes arming us with foreknowledge of our adversaries; 3. We have a circle of support He is concurrently priming to bear us up as we commit to serve.

On the fifth visit--the one at the hill Cumorah--we have the only one in this passage for which there is no mention of the actual arrival. We don't know at what point the angel appeared--whether it was before the unearthing of the box, during the course of removing earth, obtaining a lever, and peering under the stone, or at the moment of his first attempt to handle and remove the box's contents, as if in sudden warning. However we imagine the scene, what's clear is that the pedagogy was not complete--that the repetitions would continue, at regular intervals, for years. This would both allow Joseph to mature intellectually, spiritually, physically and socially, and would allow the message itself to have space for growth. 

Finally, a quick note on the reception of revelation. As Smith closes this part of his record, he deploys, for the first time, a suggestive term that hints toward a more mutual interaction than the previous verses. As he describes a prayer for forgiveness becoming an angelic visit, his narrative focus is appropriately on the messenger, the message and its reception. But the Cumorah visit and its subsequent annual visits--his fifth through ninth interactions with Moroni--seem described in a way that might have also applied to the previous 4: as "interviews". Joseph is allowed to question, to ask for clarification, to converse. His learning is active, not passive, and this also forms part of the model we should strive for as students of the Divine nature. Let us bring our curiosity, and allow our humility to show through active engagement with the voice of the Lord, whether it be through text (reading AND writing), through intermediaries, or through more direct representatives like the Holy Ghost. As He teaches us line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little, let us be agents, moving with our minds and our feet ever closer to the higher truths He wants to reveal to us.

Turning Hearts - D&C 2

The following text is repeated in some form in all four of the modern Standard Works of scripture, which, by itself, underscores the importance of the prophecy. Similarly, its placement immediately after the preface in our modern version gives it a place of prominence. Other things could have been inserted there--Joseph Smith's history of the First Vision, his retelling of the Moroni visit in its entirety, or, as it was in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants, the constitution document of the church restoration (current-day D&C 20). But instead, from 1876 on, this portion of the angel Moroni's instructions 4 years prior to Joseph Smith's receipt of the golden plates was what inspired editors placed in this position.

Saints from the original 1831 publication of the "Book of Commandments," which later became the Doctrine and Covenants, all the way until Orson Pratt's 1876 restructuring and properly versified version did not have the following text from the mouth of Moroni, who was paraphrasing Malachi--an old testament prophet his civilization had no direct knowledge of--in visits to Joseph Smith in the 1820s. Saints after 1876 had the benefit of both this prophecy and its fulfillment (in section 110). Since the Moroni paraphrase differs significantly from the King James Malachi with which we are familiar, a study of the differences imposes itself:

"Behold, I will reveal unto you the Priesthood, by the hand of1 Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers2, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers3. If it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming4." - D&C 2:1-3 (Numbering mine)

"Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." - Malachi 4:5-6

1. Elijah is not a magical being. But he's in limited company among prophets who, tradition holds (but not scripture except between the lines), were taken from the earth without tasting death. Book of Mormon believers are aware of conjecture within that book's pages to the effect that Alma the Younger was also "translated" in this way, but only Moses and Elijah among Old Testament prophets, have had the honor, unless we count Enoch and his entire anomalous city of Zion to which all societies should aspire. 

The place left for him in Jewish tradition during the Passover Seder meal is there for the same reason Christians hold this prophecy dear: His return was a prophesied component of the Messiah's coming. Because Jews believe the Messiah has not yet come, they interpret Malachi's passage as unfulfilled. But even Christians who know that Elijah was present on the Mount of Transfiguration and yet will return before the Second Coming have to reckon with transliterations of his name into Greek: Elias. The angel Gabriel told Zecharias, the serving high priest at the temple in 1 BC, that his son should have the given name John, but that this John, later to be surnamed "the Baptist," would go "before" the Lord in the "spirit and power of Elias" which, in the Hebrew, would have been indistinguishable from the name "Elijah." Later, in explaining that the presence of Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration didn't negate the prophecies of Elijah's coming before the Second Coming of Christ, Jesus noted how "Elias" was in fact not just a spirit, or power, but an office or a function which applied equally to John the Baptist as it did to Elijah the Tishbite (The Joseph Smith Translation makes the concept even more explicit). 

Because Saints of the Restored Church believe this title and function to apply to more prophets than Elijah himself, or even John, they are more interested in the function and purpose than they are the person. This is evident in the Moroni text, where the purpose is made explicit. Elijah's presence doesn't augur anything, but a Priesthood restoration--the laying on of hands for the passing of keys of authority after the pattern of ordination--is the substantive reason for the visit.

Elijah's coming restored authorities pertaining to the sealing of families beyond this mortal life.

2. In Malachi's version, the turning of the hearts has no explicit cause. We can infer that Elijah's presence itself touches off the turning and reconciliation it figuratively implies. But Moroni's version inserts a causal instrument: promises made of old planted in the hearts of the young. Prophecies made as early as Adam connect all humans into one great family of God. Orders of Priesthood whose offices serve community members which are organized in parallel for our modern-day benefit, were originally part of a Patriarchal order before Moses, before Abraham whose father tragically could not pass it on, causing Abraham to seek after another pathway to the covenants, and even before Melchizedek to whom Abraham paid tithes though not under his lineage. There were reasons that membership among the covenant people and the authorities attached to the ordinances by which the covenants are contracted was conceived as belonging to the family as an institution, rather than to the nation or the church. 

The old covenants are the same in content as the new--that the Messiah would redeem His people and enable their exaltation. And the familial relationships which the Lord has ordered each of us into can now, because of Elijah's return to convey the keys, be redeemed together as well. Christ saves us as individuals, collectively as a church, and intimately as families. These are the promises to which children can turn their hearts, that the heavenly societies we aspire to and render grace to the Savior for have the same basic unit as they do here: the family.

3. The ordinances pertaining to salvation, of which baptism serves as the first and most clear example, are bound to mortality. You can't baptize a spirit, only a body with a spirit inside. All those who haven't received, during their lifetimes, the individual chance to enter into the covenant relationship Christ requires of us all can only do so by proxy, and that authority is what Elijah restored. Because the promises and the temporal corporality are now ours, our hearts in the now can turn to the fathers in the past. But that direction of the heart-turning is only available in the Moroni paraphrase. The KJV Malachi text may still be accurate--fathers and mothers on the other side of the veil are indeed being taught the doctrines that will allow for their faith, repentance, and acceptance of a proxy baptism once one is performed in their name--and are likely therefore filled with the same joy in connection to the hearts of the children whose work can allow their celestial entry alongside those children. The turning of the hearts does indeed go both directions. But the Moroni version insists on the important direction as coupled with Elijah's purpose: that responsibility is ours as the children because they can't do it without us.

4. Lastly, the undefined and general curse the earth would be under if Elijah weren't to come is disconnected with any explicitly causal reason in Malachi's version. We should all take threats of curses from God seriously, even if they aren't specific, and even if they appear arbitrary. But Moroni's relaying of the same basic information adds purpose and specificity. It's not just that the earth will be smitten, it's that the very purpose of the earth--the place where mortal humans may gain experience in a test to become like their Father in Heaven is missing a critical salvific Priesthood power and function which could render moot the end of its entire creation. If Elijah doesn't restore this sealing power to bind families in a chain of covenant stretching back to Adam, the purpose of creation is wholly frustrated. It is, indeed, a waste.

God's great Plan of Salvation, whose center is His Son, our Redeemer, maps a path to Him far in excess of our limited mortal scope. He loves and is mindful of His children whose bodies have returned to the earth from which they sprang, but whose spirits are immortal and destined, by the power of that same Savior, to rise and inhabit their flesh once more, never to divide again. Those spirits in the waiting space before Resurrection are organized intelligences capable of faith and repentance, of decision, but not action, having no flesh to act upon. This Plan of Happiness fills my soul with hope and awe for a Being that allows us to combine our power with His for the individual reaching of all of His children whose choice is not to reject His saving ordinances and binding covenants.