Joseph Smith III and the revelatory process

(About this reflection)

This week I finished reading Joseph Smith III's revelations, CofC D&C 114-131. The revelations span a period from 1861-1914, which is 15 years longer than Joseph Smith Jr.'s entire lifetime. For comparison, it's also 20 years longer than Brigham Young led the LDS Church (a period which was about 5 years shorter than Joseph Smith Jr's lifetime). I'm not quite sure what to make of those statistics, but they struck me, and I put them out there as food for thought.

A couple major themes stood out to me in this reading, which I think I'll handle in two parts. This week's theme is the revelatory process as it's described in CofC D&C 114-131. Next week, I want to reflect on what these texts suggest about the place of democratic governance in the community of Saints.

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Some of JS III's revelations, like his father's, are written as if in the voice of deity—that is, when the revelation says "I," it's clearly not JS who we're supposed to understand is speaking. Others are written in an imperative voice that doesn't have an explicit "I." "Let such-and-such be done," "it is expedient to do this," etc. In these revelations, it's not so clear whether we're supposed to understand God to be speaking directly, or whether the text is JS III speaking for himself in response to promptings he's received.

Unlike his father, JS III tends to ascribe his revelations to "the Spirit" rather than to "the Lord." D&C 127, for example, begins "Thus saith the Spirit unto the Church." Or D&C 129: "The voice of the Spirit to me is..." I shouldn't make too much of that distinction, because it's evident that JS III understands the Spirit and the Lord to be, at least for all practical intents and purposes, the same person. [I'm being cautious in that wording because I don't know exactly what JS III's theology was vis-a-vis the Trinity.] Hence 124:1 opens with "Thus saith the Spirit of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ..."

Still, JS III's preference for attributing his revelations to the Spirit struck me as significant. It creates a different mental picture of how these revelations are being produced. When JS Jr. writes a revelation that begins, "Behold and hearken unto the voice of him who has all power, even Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end" (61:1), the mental image this creates, at least for me, is that of the heavens opening and Jesus Christ appearing in his glory to speak while Joseph Smith furiously takes dictation. When JS III writes, "Thus saith the Spirit," I get a different mental picture. There's no person giving dictation in my mind's eye. There's just a . . . kind of intangible force or presence or impulsion that comes over JS III and inspires him to write. It's an experience, in other words, that I can relate to because it's happened to me, whereas I'm not accustomed to seeing visions.

During the last couple decades in particular, JS III develops the habit of prefacing his revelations with a narrative about how they came to be. (Before that, the norm for him is more like that followed by his father: the revelation just starts out "Thus saith whoever," and, boom, here you go.) Here, then, is how JS III describes his own revelatory process:

122: "I was [on April 15, 1894] in fasting and prayer before the Lord, and being commanded of the Spirit I arose from my praying and wrote..."

125: "I spent a sleepless night. After retiring to my rest, weary as you must know, I engaged in a season of prayer, quietly, as I had been doing all day; and I suddenly found myself very wide awake; and from that on I was in the Spirit, the spirit of inspiration burning in my breast; and by it I was bidden to come to the house of assembly and tell what was given to me of light and instruction."

126: "On the night of April 16 [1902] I made the condition of the church a subject of prayer, intensely desirous of receiving light and information in relation thereto and my duty. I awoke at the hour of three and had in presentation the following vision." (What follows is a dream-like vision in which he sees certain individuals standing in positions of church leadership.)

129: "After constant meditation and prayer, both before and after coming to conference and during the sessions, . . . I was in the Spirit during the nights of the 15th and 16th of the month [April 1909] and the day passing between at such times during the calm that occasionally ensued and the quiet of the night when the burdens of my care forbade sleep."

131: "In agreement with the notice for the general fast of the church . . . [I] spent that day in meditation and prayer upon the work of God and our present duty in the affairs intrusted to our care. Before the hour of breaking the fast came, I was blessed by the presence of the Holy Spirit resting upon me in quiet assurance and power. In the still small voice which giveth light and understanding to the intelligence . . . , exalting the soul and sanctifying the spirit, there came unto me the directing voice of Him whose work we are engaged in. Thus saith the Spirit unto the church . . ."

And I have to record this. When I read it, I thought, "Amen," because they're words I can relate to from my own experience. This is a final comment that JS III appended to the text of section 124.

Brethren of the ministry and members of the church; my soul has been cheered, my spirit and body have been strengthened and my heart made exceeding glad by the blessed and holy influence of the Spirit which was with me, and still is with me as I write, causing me to give praise, honor and glory to God and the Lamb, to whom honor and glory belong, and dominion forever. Amen.

I thought I was going to say more about these passages by way of commentary, but in the moment I feel content that they speak for themselves.

Well, I do feel moved to say this by way of testimony: This is the spirit of revelation. Joseph Smith Jr. tells us so little about the process by which he received his revelations—or when he does, the process is so different from anything I've experienced (e.g., visions)—that I'm not really in a position to make the same affirmation about his revelatory process, though I can and do try to discern the Spirit's voice in the texts he produced that communities of Saints have received as canonical. But with Joseph Smith III, I feel like I'm in a better position to testify: These texts are being produced by a spirit of revelation. How the church should respond to those texts is a separate matter, and I'll take that up next week.