D&C 136 and the Exodus

Brigham Young has been called the American Moses, and there are very good reasons for this, as his revelation recorded as Doctrine and Covenants 136 shows.

A striking similarity is the amount of organization. In Exodus, after his father-in-law suggests it, Moses separates the people into groups, giving each their own leader, with leaders of leaders and so on. This made it so he didn't have to deal with each little piece of dispute or question that came up. In D&C 136, God institutes a similar scheme, with captains of 10 and of 50, etc. As I've said before, God is a god of order - he knows how to set things up.

The fact that there is one clear head of the whole move is another thing that is similar. As Moses led the people out of Egypt into the desert, so did Brigham bring Israel of a new time period out of a land of plenty into the desert. Prophets are how God works.

In many ways, D&C 136 and the biblical account of the Exodus are similar.

Crandall printing museum

This last week, we all went to the Crandall printing museum in Provo, UT. It's a really small place, but it has some very impressive displays, including a working Gutenberg press.

Members of the LDS church often look back at the invention of printing (and other technological advances) and God preparing the world for the Restoration of the Gospel. Assuming what we believe is true (as I do, of course) this makes sense as God would want to make it so the truth He was bringing back would be able to spread quickly and correctly - and since the main witness that what Joseph Smith was saying was true was the Book of Mormon - a 500+ page book - it makes sense for Him to worry about an efficient way to make books.

In any case, the tour starts with a replica of Gutenberg's original press (based on an olive press). Apparently, it's the only press where the type is the actual individual pieces of type set in the text of the bible. It's pretty cool. They even made a page to show us how. And they showed us his REAL most important invention - how to make the special type used to set the text of the Bible.

The next room was an American revolution room, where they had the text of the Declaration of Independence set, if I remember correctly. Another thing commonly believed to be divinely inspired, by the way, since it helped set up this country as a land of religious freedom where a new religion could expect at least SOME protection of the law. The press was essentially the same, just smaller... Technology, till this century, really didn't progress all that fast.

Anyway, the last room was the Book of Mormon printing room. The story of the publication of the Book of Mormon is really a miracle. Apparently, in order to print it in the amount of time that it did, they would have had to print 2 pages a minute - for 10-12 hours a day for 7 months straight. Now, 2 a minute is possible - some volunteers they had one time were able to do it... for 10 minutes... Awesome, eh?

Anyway, great museum, great tour, you should go. That is all.

Another section of the Joseph Smith Papers

This week, I'm supposed to write about the minutes recorded in Revelation Book 2, dealing with the setting up of a quorum of high priests, and how they were to be run. The same minutes are recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants, so again I'm stuck in the hard spot of trying to find extra meaning in something already recorded in a very similar form.

I guess the only thing I'm going to remark on this time is how God is a God of order. Those who run his church aren't arbitrary. Joseph Smith was not a supreme ruler who ruled by whim. He set up a system that could run by itself, and that even the rest of the world could see was logically set up. Even the order of speaking was chosen before hand. This is how God works.

The BYU Museum of Art

For class this last week, we went to visit the Museum of Art's exhibit Types and Shadows: Intimations of Divinity. As a little background, art in general doesn't do much for me. It's not all that touching. While there is some I like, I don't care for a lot of it, and I especially dislike the ridiculous amount of thought and interpretation that someone who does it will do. If I don't like the painting at first glance, I don't want to study it usually.

That said, there were two of the paintings there I remember and that I really liked. The first was a still life painting in triptych form. It was a about the prodigal son. It was very clearly supposed to be incredibly indirect and symbolic, and my one complaint is in regards to that. There were pigs in the middle part, but since the middle part was blurry, I at first thought them grapes or apples or something else since they didn't stick out. So, good symbolism. But on the last part, there was a very clear cow, a reference to the slaughtered calf. Because that frame is clearly painted, it sticks out, and is too different from the rest of the painting to really add to it. It instead detracts. Other than that, I loved it. There is a blue cloth hanging over the entire thing, representing the spirit of God, and the best part was that while the entire picture was blurry in the second frame, the cloth was not, representing God's constant care over us, no matter what we do.

The other is a painting of Christ carrying his own cross. The painting is so photorealistic, it's amazing. The grain of the wood is clear and real. Christ's anatomy is perfectly correct and everything. It's quite stunning, partly because it is NOT a photo. But there is something that I at first didn't like about it. For how heavy a cross that size would have to be, he is standing far too straight. But after I thought about it, I figured that that could represent how Christ is all powerful. Or how, despite the cross, he was unbeaten at that point. Or, how, since he is unhurt, though he should be at this point in the narrative, that his spirit was unhurt and strong at this point. In any case, a stunning painting.

Over all, I enjoyed it, though there were certainly a number of them I didn't care for, including most of the ones the guide decided to stop at.

The Joseph Smith Papers: Revelations and Translations

For this post, Dr. Holzapfel assigned us to read The Joseph Smith Papers Revelations and Translations book, specifically, the Revelations on the 27th & 28th of December 1832, and the 3rd of January 1833, pages 293-310. Honestly, I don't know what he expected us to get out of this. It is a copy of the original revelation given to Joseph Smith, and recorded as the 88th section of the Doctrine and Covenants. It is a primary document, which is great and all, but I don't know what I'm supposed to get out of it that isn't already in the D&C. None of the revisions were very interesting, and the only verse that I found was substantially different was where the two revelations in the original were smushed together, but even there, the changes are uninteresting. Maybe I'm just unskilled in this whole textual analysis thing, but without training it seems impossible to see the interesting parts of this. Maybe if he had assigned a revelation we don't already know... Oh well, sorry, that's all the more I can really say...

How Liberty Jail Affected Joseph Smith

Just as a little forenote. To anyone who reads this, these posts are on assignment from my professor at BYU, but to be honest, they would make no sense to anyone who is not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and so, don't even worry about it. This is not where you should start... Go to lds.org or mormon.org. Those are the places to be.

Anyway, on with my prompt for the week. The time Joseph Smith spent in Liberty Jail was a defining time for both him and the church as a whole. During his incarceration, the saints were virtually all expelled from Missouri under the auspices of the Extermination Order, and went to Illinois, where a new temple was eventually built, and the final pieces of the temple ordinances were restored. Joseph's time in Liberty changed him, for the better, but it was very difficult for him.

Joseph was not a short man. He was 6'2'' if I remember correctly. The jail cell (really a basement) he and his companions were kept in was not that tall. He and his equally tall brother could not stand up straight for the many months they were kept locked up. There was only a bucket for a bathroom, and dirty straw to sleep on. A far cry from modern American prisons, for sure. Cut off from their families and friends for the most part, it was a lonely, depressing time for Smith.

He had plenty of time to think, ponder and pray. He had little else to do, in that tiny hole of a prison. No room to get out and walk, even. And so he pondered, and prayed, and thought about the gospel, and his commitment to it. He despaired at some points, leading to one of the most poignant passages of scripture. "Oh God, where is the pavilion of thy hiding place?" Joseph Smith felt alone, and perhaps betrayed. But God reassured him. "Peace be unto thy soul, Joseph." Joseph, in perhaps his hardest time, was comforted and was blessed to know that God was always with him, even when it was hard. This confidence would serve him well in the coming months.

Perhaps it was this confidence that changed his preaching style. Before, others would take the most prominent speaking roles: Oliver Cowdry, Parly Pratt, Sidney Rigdon and others. But after this transformative experience, Joseph became a powerful public speaker. Before, we have many recorded revelations. After, we have records of his mighty sermons. This was one of the biggest changes in him - he became a more powerful speaker.

D&C 137 and the Doctrine of Salvation of the Dead

In my not-so-humble opinion, the doctrines found in section 137 are among the most important in the Gospel. In fact, just last night, I was talking to a roommate of mine about this idea. One of the axioms of Christian religion is that God is perfect, i.e. fair and just and merciful. All of our beliefs must measure up to that standard, or need to be very closely examined. God's fairness is an incredibly base belief of Christianity.

However, many, or even most, mainstream Christian belief systems present beliefs that deny this basic principle. For instance, Calvanism, though not a large church in America, teaches that some are predestined to be saved or damned. How is this fair? Was it based on something we did or did not do in the pre-existence, which they deny the existence of in any case? No, it's just essentially random, with nothing we can do about it. Many other religions, in official doctrine, such as the Catholic church, Anglican Church, and many other protestant denominations, claim that without baptism, one will be damned. Ok, fine, but what about all those that never had a chance to be baptized, especially if not into your church? Well... According to official doctrine, they are damned too. That just doesn't seem fair to me. Is one person cast off simply because he was born in the wrong place? Am I to be lost for something that was no one's choice? This a conflict in these religions. How to reconcile?

However, most, or at least many, members of these churches don't believe the official dogma of their religions. They will instead say that there are many paths to heaven. It seems they do this in response to the feeling they have that God must be fair, that if he wasn't, he wouldn't be God. And in the absence of doctrine teaching about a chance after this life, and vicarious baptism, they must accept this. There is a spectrum of this attitude, from evangelical "just believe in Christ," to an even more open "all religions lead to God." But all try to reconcile God's fairness with a need for judgement. But few, if any, other than the LDS church, has a doctrinal stance that allows the church to be both authoritative and have a fair God.

The answer is that all will have a chance to repent, in this life or the next. Black, white, red, yellow or other, everyone will be given this chance. And baptism is still vital. You must be baptized. But, at the same time, if you never had a chance, you can be baptized after this life, vicariously. God can be both fair, and demand justice. Amazing, isn't it? The Gordian Knot has been unraveled.