Abide #6: Doctrine and Covenants 88

Joseph Stuart: Three months after receiving Doctrine and Covenants 84, Joseph Smith and nine other high priests prayed for revelation. Each man present was asked to pray that God would reveal his will to us, concerning the building of Zion, and for the benefit of the Saints, and for the duty of the elders. They received the revelation in two parts, most of it in late December 1832, and the remainder in June 1833. Readers can find a lot to engage with in Section 88. The Lord maps out parts of the universe's grandeur and expanse and speaks to the immediate –the individual. Historian Richard Bushman summarized section 88 like this in his biography of Joseph Smith: “It runs from the cosmological to the practical … from a description of angels blowing their trumpets, to instructions for starting a school. Yet, the pieces blend together into a cohesive compound of cosmology and eschatology united by the attempt to link the quotidian world of the now to the world beyond.” The revelation offers sketches of the order of heaven, rises the three degrees of glory, delivers a discourse on divine law, offers a summary of the meta-history of the end-times, and then brings it all to bear on what the Saints should do now. The Lord called upon Joseph Smith to establish a School of the Prophets, but did not set a teacher. The students were meant to instruct one another out of the best books. Everyone who heard the gospel message was instructed to warn their neighbor. Salvation was marked as individual, but the establishment of Zion and the building of the Kingdom of God were set as community projects. No person is an island, and no one can be saved outside of community.

My name is Joseph Stuart I'm the Public Communications Specialist at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. Janiece Johnson is a Willes Center Research Associate at the Institute, and today we will be discussing the block of reading from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Come, Follow me curriculum on Section 88 of the Doctrine and Covenants. We aren't here to present a lesson but rather to hit on a few key themes from the scripture block that we believe will help fulfill the Maxwell Institute's mission to “Inspire and fortify Latter Day Saints in their testimonies of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, and engage the world of religious ideas.”

Janiece Johnson: Now, this section, I think it's interesting that the Joseph Smith papers say that those who wrote about this section and the reception of this revelation to Joseph Smith were more focused on the concrete elements of the revelation. The to-do's. And I think that that's really interesting, considering the weighty theological ideas that we have here in section 88. And I like to think about –in comparison with early Book of Mormon reception. As I have been working on understanding better early Book of Mormon reception, it seems to me that first, the saints are focused on the narrative. They're first focused on just understanding a complicated narrative. And, perhaps if you've grown up in the church, we don't quite remember just how complicated that narrative is. But if you have to take a quiz on it very quickly, you realize how complicated that narrative is. And so they start with things that they can try and understand, and perhaps later begin to think about some of those weighty theological ideas. Section 88 will build on ideas from section 76, section 84, and they'll continue here, and then as we move on to Section 93, considering ideas about the temple and exaltation, which I think is really important.

Stuart: Absolutely. I think that's a really important point. I'm reminded of what President Russell M. Nelson said, that salvation is an individual matter and exaltation is a family matter, but I think could also be extended to mean community matter. Now, moving on to verse three, we learn about the Holy Spirit of promise, which is a phrase that we find in the book of Ephesians. Janiece, could you tell us more about that?

Johnson: So I think that this idea of the Holy Spirit of promise is interesting. A: It's one of the phrases from the New Testament text. Shows up once in the New Testament, and then shows up multiple times in restoration scripture. So we have a reworking and expansion of this idea which is initially presented to us from this letter to the saints found in the book of Ephesians today. So in verse 13, of chapter one, it says, “In whom, also after you believed you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession unto the praise of his glory.” Now, we can talk about, perhaps what is meant here, but I wonder if this idea of earnest -the earnest of our inheritance- that one of the functions of the Holy Ghost is a downpayment. If we think of earnest money, when you're buying a house you may not have that $200,000 to buy that house right at your disposal to just write a check from. So most of us put down some money, put down $500 or $1,000, to say, I'm going to follow through, I'm going to pay the full $200,000 to buy this house. And I wonder if here the Lord is saying the feeling of the Spirit that you experience is the downpayment that I give you. The promise of eternal life, as it says, in verse four of section 88. As President Benson would remind us, the Spirit is the most important thing. And if we are feeling the Spirit on a regular basis, we can be confident that we are doing what the Lord would want us to do to inherit eternal life. If we're not feeling the spirit, then we need to figure out why not. Now, mental health, grief, there are lots of things that sometimes intrude on our ability to feel the Spirit. But when we're considering what we can do, we think about those things that will help us to feel the spirit more. Recently, I had a discussion with a friend who lost her father. And it's been a very difficult process for her and one of the sources of peace that she always found previously was scripture, that she could feel the Spirit through scripture. Yet, reading scripture and trying to understand scripture was also something that reminded her of her dad, and after his death became very difficult for her. And so one of the primary modes in which she felt the Spirit was not available to her. And she had to rely on those previous experiences and that foundation that she had before because she wasn't… the grief was blocking her ability in that moment, to feel the Spirit. Perhaps this idea of the Holy Spirit of promise is related to verse 29, “Ye who are quickened by a portion of the celestial glory shall receive of the same, even a fullness.” That feeling of the Spirit leads us to do something greater.

Stuart: Moving on to verses 14 through 16, it reads, “Verily I say unto you, that through the redemption which is made for you is brought to pass the resurrection from the dead, and the spirit and the body, or the soul of man, and the resurrection from the dead is the redemption of the soul.” Now, this is a really important consideration for us here. As scholars, we will often talk about embodiment, or the idea of what it means to have a body. This can come across in a whole bunch of different forms, but two of the things that are particularly interesting to historians and other scholars right now, are ideas about race and embodiment, and also ability or disability and embodiment. So first, to discuss race. Some in the past have theorized that race was something that would change upon resurrection, or at some other time that would be altered to mend a divine curse. To quote from the LDS Gospel Topics essay on race and the priesthood, quote, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints disavows, the theory is advanced in the past, that black skin or other skin colors is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions and a premortal life. That mixed race marriages are a sin, or that black people, or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism past and present in any form.” Now, to make this a little bit more personal, as I've taught classes, both in Sunday school and at different universities, many of my students who are black, indigenous, Asian or Pacific Islander, they have told me that it hurts when people make jokes that they'll become white before or after the resurrection, or that somehow their skin color is going to change. As if that's something that should be desired. The individual comment is offensive. But hearing the same joke or statement over and over again, only makes the comments hurt more and more. So this is something that psychologists call a microaggression, the idea that something is very small to begin with, in and of itself, but hearing the same sort of thing directed at you over and over and over again, it progressively hurts more until eventually, there's a straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back. Now we can also think about resurrection and disability in similar ways to think about best practices for how we can treat those around us. Disability studies have not been engaged at length in the study of Latter-day Saint history. Although, a special shout-out to former podcast host of the Maxwell Institute, Blair Hodges, whose master's thesis is the best treatment on the history of ideas related to intellectual disabilities that has yet been written. To think about resurrection and disability, we asked our friend Shelby Hintze, for some insight on how to think about disability in relation to the resurrection. Now she was careful not to speculate on matters of theology, but she did give us some best practices on how we can better help disabled people to feel comfortable at church. The first is to seek out disabled voices to better understand the sorts of things that are helpful to engage. And recognizing that disabled people are not a single community. They all have different thoughts and feelings and opinions, we can do a lot on our own to learn more about the challenges that disabled communities face. She also says that disabled Latter-day Saints know that they'll be healed someday, although the definition of quote unquote healing is very personal, and will be very different from person to person. What we can do as Latter-day Saints, those who are what disability studies scholars called abled, able-bodied Latter-day Saints, is to create spaces where disabled people can share how they feel, participate in activities and have their voice heard. Be okay with taking advice on how to approach a topic, ask yourself whether you're saying something to a disabled person to help yourself become comfortable with a topic, or whether you're really trying to help or understand the perspective of a disabled person. Now, I know I'm on my soapbox here, but if you have a joke that you thought was funny at one point about race or disability, just keep it to yourself. Humor often comes from discomfort with a situation. Let's be sure not to cause injury because we are uncomfortable with the situation. Related to race or ability, we can do better listening to marginalized voices. And we can do better to create communities where their voices are easier to hear, and that they feel more comfortable readily sharing their experiences.

Johnson: Thanks for that, Joey. I think that quite often in mortality, we focus on the limitations of our bodies, we focus on what they don't do for us, rather than focusing on presence. If our bodies are an integral part of our soul, then I think that we would be better served on focusing on what we can do and what our bodies do for us, than focusing always on the limitations and what they don't do.

Stuart: In thinking about what our bodies can or cannot do, and thinking about the resurrection, and the hope that comes in the resurrection, the hope that all things will be made perfect one day really helps me to appreciate the Atonement. And thinking about how in verse six, the Lord talks about how He descended below all things, something that He elaborates upon earlier in the Book of Mormon.

Johnson: Here in verse six, when He descended below all things, in that He comprehendeth all things. I see a parallel here with the teachings of Alma recorded in Alma 7, that Christ experienced pains, afflictions and temptations of every kind, that he may know. He doesn't just know about these things, theoretically, but he experienced them to know how to sucker us, how to turn to us. And perhaps those times when the limitations of mortality are weighing heavily upon us, we might know that Christ knows what that experience is. He descended below all things, in that He comprehended all things. For me, I read that…so that He comprehended all things, that descending below all things was a necessary part of Him being able to comprehend all things. There is a lot here in Section 88, about the relationship of light and law and life and power and glory and truth. We talk about different roles of Christ as creator, as redeemer, as judge, but we also talk about ourselves. And there is a considerable discussion here. And as we get to about verse 32, about that which they are willing to receive. Verse 32, is talking about those who receive celestial glory or terrestrial or telestial, “And they shall, returning again to their own place to enjoy that which they are willing to receive.” First, I think we've talked about the essential function of the word receive. We have to choose to receive that gift that is offered. The following verse, “For what does it profit a person if a gift is bestowed upon them, and they receive not the gift? Behold they rejoice not that in which is given unto them, neither rejoice in Him who is the giver of the gift.” Sometimes we try and make either the telestial kingdom, specifically some sort of…that's Mormon hell, perhaps the answer to the Book of Mormon question, what spooky Mormon hell is. Sometimes we try and make the celestial kingdom, some kind of hell, but here, those returning to the celestial kingdom to enjoy that which they are willing to receive. That is the difficult thing for us to get our minds around. If we think that the celestial kingdom is the only place of enjoyment, yet each level here is able to enjoy that which they are able to receive. And we decide what it is that we want to receive. Again, this points to the primacy of agency and us choosing what we want. Verse 44, “For intelligence cleaveth unto intelligence, wisdom receiveth wisdom, truth embraceth truth, virtue loveth virtue, light cleaveth unto light, mercy have compassion on mercy and claimeth her own, light cleaveth unto light.” Cleave is one of the difficult words in the English language, it's got two opposite definitions. It wreaks havoc on non-native English speakers, but hear that idea that light sticks or cleaves to light. President Nelson called this the process of spiritual growth. Elder Stenner, a member of the 70 said, “That by loving the truths, these truths with all our heart, an affinity develops between us and the source of truth itself. As we receive light, we gain more and more. That light groweth until the perfect day.”

Stuart: Now thinking about moving forward towards the perfect day, leads us naturally to think about what scholars call eschatology, or the study of the end of the world. Now, this is something that former Institute scholar Christopher Blythe wrote about at length in his book, Terrible Revolution. And also that Graham Underwood, a BYU history professor has written about as well. But really wants you to come away with two things here. One is that there are different ideas of millennialism. The idea that either things are going to be much, much worse before Jesus Christ returns in the Second Coming, meaning that we should be watching for signs of the times and better understand the calamities that we face, in understanding that it is leading towards Jesus coming back. Another approach called post-millennialism, is the idea that Jesus will return and that he will make everything perfect, they will create a Zion type society. Now, Latter-day Saints are both. We both look for signs of the times and expect for things to get worse before the Savior’s Second Coming. But I also believe that there's a great deal of good that will take place after Jesus returns to the earth. What I would like you to think about is not to be overly preoccupied with when Jesus is going to come back in the Second Coming, but to prepare yourself that whether He comes to the earth, or you die and go to meet Him, that you are prepared to meet Him, whatever it is. So eschatology is ultimately about discipleship. It's about living a life prepared for meeting the Savior.

Johnson: Now, the saints in the 19th century were obsessed with eschatology, and with the millennium, and the advent of Christ's Second Coming. The language of the Doctrine and Covenants certainly reinforces these ideas, which are already very prevalent amongst the Saints. In verse 87, “For not many days hence,” we have lots of sections in the Doctrine and Covenants where the Lord says, "I come quickly.” And these of course, made the saints even more millennialist than they already are. And, as Joey said, we get those competing impulses. I really appreciate the words of Joseph Smith's cousin Almira Mack Covey. She was on Merrimack when she was baptized in 1830. She was baptized when she came to visit her Aunt Lucy in New York, and first heard about her cousin Joseph and the Book of Mormon. And she writes this letter to her sister in the early 1840s, and she's talking about this millennial fervor. It hasn't been too long since the date that William Miller had decided Christ was going to come again, had passed. And so there are lots of people talking about these ideas about when the Savior will come. And she writes and she says, “Great things await this generation. And it is for this reason I feel so anxious for you and the rest of my friends.” Her sister has not joined the church. Her sister has stayed behind in Michigan and is there, and she has a very regular correspondence with her sharing the gospel with her. “This generation will not pass away until he will appear in his Glory, and we ought to be prepared for that day.” Now, she is ready. That the Second Coming will come in her lifetime, maybe in the next few years. But there is a caveat here. “Yet, if we wish to be happy, we must be prepared for it, whether in life or in death, we may abide the day. For when he comes, his saints who have slept in death will arise and come with him and live on earth 1000 years, while the wicked have to remain in their graves until the 1000 years are expired, then they will have to appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” Although not either of us may live to see the day. She says, Okay, maybe it won't happen in my lifetime. But whenever it happens, I need to be prepared. And that is most important, because of this preparation, the way that section 88 is laid out. The Lord says, okay, all of these things are going to happen. In the future tense. This is part of this character of Christ. Therefore, the Lord gives the saints assignments. And this was what those who originally heard this revelation were most focused on: the to-do list that they could easily accomplish. Well, maybe not completely, easily accomplish.

Stuart: This is something that I think about, too, that whenever I get instructions or a new church assignment, I think, what can I do to make sure that the basics are taken care of while I figure everything else out? That's something intensely relatable to me here is, okay, there's a lot of big stuff in here. I have to take it one day at a time. I have to just keep swimming, so to speak. What can I do to establish myself as someone who is doing their best to fulfill that calling, while understanding that there is probably going to be more that I'm going to have to figure out later?

Johnson: Yeah, that's really great. And I think in this kind of laundry list that the Lord gives us, the first one is one of the bigger ones: sanctify yourselves, make yourselves holy. And then we get more specifics, call a solemn assembly, start a school for prophets, teach each other diligently of things both in heaven and earth. Seek out of the best books, seek learning by study and by faith. Now, in the School of the Prophets, they were not just focused on learning spiritual things, but learning things of the world, learning things of history, and those things that could expand their minds and their understanding of truth. Joey, what are some of your favorites? What are some of your best books?

Stuart: When I think about the books that I end up thinking about most in my spiritual life, outside of Latter-day Saints, scriptures and writings of Latter-day Saints leaders, there's a book by Timothy Tyson, a historian at Duke University, who wrote a book called Blood Done Signed My Name about His coming to reckon with his family's history with race and his own place as a follower of Jesus Christ, and what that meant for him in matters of race. I also love Melissa Inouye’s book Crossings, which helped me to think about my own family and also to think about the many different identities that we hold, as we are going through life. Now Melissa's book she wrote while she had cancer and was preparing for her possible death, and thankfully, she's in remission now. But I remember reading that for the first time and feeling the fierce urgency of living a life of faith, and doing the best you can in the many roles that you have. To do what's most important with the time that we have left.

Johnson: That's lovely. Two books that I've been thinking about a lot recently, as I work on understanding how the Book of Mormon became scripture for early Latter-day Saints, one of them is called Darkness Falls on the Land of Light, and it's by Douglas Winiarski, and the other is Sarah Osborne's World by Katherine Brekkus. In Sarah Osborne's world, Katherine Brekkus looks at this woman from early America, as does The Darkness Falls on the Land of Light and look at how scripture functions in their lives. And how scripture becomes part of who they are and how they express themselves. And they have really stuck with me. These are both academic books, looking at religion as a phenomenon, but they have really stuck with me in thinking about how scripture affects me and affects my life. Now, as we're going to continue that list, the Lord says “Magnify your callings, warn your neighbor, organize yourselves. Love one another. Pray always,” and I love the injunction we get between 123 and 125, “See that you love another, above all things, clothe yourselves with the bond of charity as with a mantel, which is the bond of perfectness, and peace.” And I think that, that injunction, more so than any of the others, should stick with us. That, loving people is sometimes the hardest thing that the Lord asks us to do. But it is the most important thing, and that should always come first.

Stuart: I can't think of a better place to stop than that. We're going to leave you with the words of then President Dieter F. Uchtdorf. From his sermon entitled “Your Potential Your Privilege.” Have a blessed week, y'all.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf: Revelation and testimony do not always come with overwhelming force. For many, a testimony comes slowly, a piece at a time. Sometimes it comes so gradually, that it is hard to recall the exact moment we actually knew the gospel was true. The Lord gives us line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, and there a little. In some ways, our testimony is like a snowball that grows larger with every turn, we start out with a small amount of light, even if it is only a desire to believe. Gradually, light cleaveth unto light, and he that receiveth light and continueth in God, receiveth more light, and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day, when in due time, we receive of His fullness. Think of what a glorious thing it is to reach beyond our earthly limitations. To have the eyes of our understanding opened and receive light and knowledge from celestial sources. It is our privilege and opportunity as bearers of the priesthood to seek personal revelation, and to learn how to know the truth for ourselves. Through the sure witness of the Holy Spirit, let us earnestly seek the light of personal inspiration. Let us plead with the Lord to endow our mind and soul with the spark of faith that will enable us to receive and recognize the divine ministering of the Holy Spirit for our specific life situation for our challenges, and our priesthood duties.

Stuart: Thank you for listening to this episode of Abide: A Maxwell Institute Podcast. Head on over to iTunes or your preferred podcast provider to subscribe, rate and leave a review, each of which are worth their weight in podcast gold.