Church History & D&C - Day 1

Part I - Church History

Thought: "The religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in the mysticisms, fancies and falsehoods, have caricatured them into forms so monstrous and inconceivable as to shock reasonable thinkers...Happy is the prospect of a restoration of primitive Christianity, I must leave to younger athletes to encounter and lop off the false branches which have been engrafted into it by the mythologists of the middle and modern ages." (Thomas Jefferson, quoted in Norman Cousins, ed. "In God We Trust"; the Religious Beliefs and Ideas of the American Founding Fathers. p. 157 & 162)

Book of the Week: The Inevitable Apostasy and the Promised Restoration, Tad R. Callister

1. D&C 1:30- "The only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, with which I, the Lord am pleased."       The 1) truths, 2) ordinances, 3) priesthood, thereby making it possible to teach the doctrines with power and perform the ordinances with divine validity. (John 15:16; Heb. 5:4; Ex. 28:1; 40:12-16; Acts 8:14-17; Article of Faith 5; D&C 42:11)

2. Ptolemy in 150 AD   (Earth and sun)- Copernicus in 1543 AD - Joseph Smith in 1820.

3. Christ organized and his apostles established a church. It flourished for a season. There was a spiritual decline (an apostasy, constructed from 2 Greek roots: the verb histemi, which means to stand and the preposition, apo, away from. The word means, rebellion, mutiny, revolt, or revolution, and it is used in ancient contexts with reference to uprisings against established authority. The idea of a gentle drifting that comes to mind with the phrase, a falling away, is not one of its meanings. - Kent Jackson)

4. The cause was neither Judaic nor Roman persecution. It was (Mosiah 27:13) manifest by disobedience and heresy concerning the doctrines. Will Durant, the noted historian said, "Christianity did not destroy paganism, it adopted it... Christianity was the last great creation of the ancient pagan world."

5. Evidences of the Apostasy - A)The apostles were killed and the Quorum of Twelve Apostles was extinguished.  Ecumenical councils replaced the 12. Reason replaced revelation. B)The Bible foretells and witnesses the apostasy; Amos 8:11; Micah 3:6; Matt. 24:5, 9-11; Gal. 1:6; Acts 20:29; 2 Peter 2:1; 2 Tim. 1:15; Rev. 13:7; 2 Thes. 2:3. There are over 70 biblical scriptures describing the apostasy. C) The Bible ends about 100 AD. If the Church had remained, the Bible would have continued, because apostles would have continued to receive revelation to guide a living Church. D) Loss of miracles and gifts of the Spirit. "The real cause why the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost were no longer to be found in the Christian Church was because the Christians were turned Heathens again, and had only a dead form left. (John Wesley-1703-1791- Founder of Methodism) E) The Dark Ages (Is. 60:2; 1 John 1:5-6) F) Many teachings were perverted or lost; a)baptism; b) premortal existence; c) preaching the gospel to the dead; d) eternal marriage; e) the doctrine that man possessed the potential to become like God (I am a child of God); f) multiple heavens; g) the nature of God; combining of scripture with Greek philosophy; h) instead of grace and works being mutually inclusive, they were pitted against each other as though they were some sort of spiritual enemies. G) The ordinances were changes (Is. 24:5) - a) The blessing of babies (Mark 10:16); b) Baptism by immersion ; c) The sacrament (transubstantiation, long prayers and candlesticks); Temple ordinances; H) The simple manner of prayer was altered; I) The scriptures were removed from the hands of the lay members; J) The Church no longer bore the Savior's name (3 Nephi 27:8); K) The priesthood was lost.

7. When was the Church lost? When did my hair turn gray?

8. Why wait 16-1700 years to restore the Church to Earth? The parable of the burning airplane looking for a safe place to land. - a)Magna Charta, Petition of Rights, Bill of Rights, Movable type, Wycliffe in England, Huss in Czechoslovakia, Calvin in France, Zwingli in Switzerland, Luther in Germany, Columbus, (1 Nephi 13:12, 13, 18). The Lord was preparing a receptive atmosphere where His Church could be restored to the earth, never to be taken away again.

9. Before the beginning of something good and great-Satan always works his hardest. (Birth of Jesus, Beginning of ministry, Pre-Atonement)  (Pre-1st vision, 1st vision, after Joseph received plates, false imprisonments, betrayals, martyrdom)

            “The Standard of Truth has been erected. No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing. Persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame. But the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and dependent till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, until the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the Great Jehovah will say, ‘The work is done."

 Part II - Doctrine and Covenants

Book of the Week: "How we got the Doctrine and Covenants" Richard E. Turley Jr. and William W. Slaughter

 Gary's "GREEN VERSES" D&C

 

1-Preface	Vs. 37-38-By mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same!
2-Moroni	Vs. 1-3- Our hearts to turn to our fathers
3-116 pages	Vs. 3 - God and His work do not get frustrated.
4-Call to Work	Vs. 1-7 - Remember faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly...
5-3 witnesses	Vs. 7 - If they don't believe my words, they would not believe if you showed all.
6-Witness from God	Vs. 23 - What greater witness can we receive than peace to our mind?
7-John's parchment	Vs. 8 - We get what we desire. It will not be the same for all.
8-Spirit of Revelation	Vs. 2 - I will tell you in your mind and in your heart
9-Process of Revelation	Vs. 7-9 - We have to do more than just ask. Revelation has a price

 

Thought: The Bible is a great source of knowledge that members and nonmembers may use as a standard against which to measure their actions. The Book of Mormon contains the fullness of the gospel and teaches members and nonmembers alike the principles by which they may come to know the Savior Jesus Christ. But the Doctrine and Covenants contains the lofty principles and ordinances, revealed through the covenant-making process, by which men may become exalted and reign in power and glory in eternity as priests and kings unto the Most High. It is little wonder, then, that Elder Joseph Fielding Smith said, "In my judgement there is no book on earth yet come to man as important as the book known as the Doctrine and Covenants, with all due respect to the Book of Mormon, and the Bible, and the Pearl of Great Price" (Doctrines of Salvation, 3:198) (D&C Instructors Guide p. iv.)

 1. There are 3 kinds of people in the world: God speaks, God can't speak. No God - A.of F. #9

2. Revelation is the making known of divine truth by communication with the heavens and embraces many forms, including visions, dreams, or visitations, as well as individual guidance for every person who seeks for it and follows the prescribed course. (BD-Revelation)

3. The D&C is made up of several types of documents; dictated revelations, words of an angel, epistles, visions, minutes, a dedicatory prayer, a translation. Dictated revelations is the most common. We still have a few of the original manuscript pages. (110,137, 121, 122, 123) originally written on loose sheets or as parts of other documents.

4. The Book of Commandments and Revelations- Scribes and editors, John Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery, W.W. Phelps, Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith.

5.  By the fall of 1831 Joseph had received more than 60 revelations that had been recorded. Joseph called a conference of high priests to gather in Hiram, Ohio, over a 12 day period in the first part of November and they met in several sessions. In the 1st session they decided to publish 10,000 copies of the revelations as "A Book of Commandments" in Zion. (Missouri).            After this meeting Joseph received the revelation known as "The Preface".  Later that same day Joseph asked the brethren to place their testimony in the Book in a similar way as the testimonies of the 3 and 8 witnesses were in the Book of Mormon. Some were hesitant based upon the poor spelling and grammar used in the revelations. They were not being critical of the message, just the messenger. They thought themselves to be better than Joseph. See D&C 67 for the Lord's response.

6. O November 3 an appendix as added. (Today D&C 133). On Nov. 8 Joseph was directed to correct errors he discovered in the written copy of the revelations. Nov. 12, John Whitmer was called to accompany Oliver.  On that same day the "Literary Firm" was organized with 5 members: Joseph, Sidney, Oliver, John and WW Phelps

6. The Book of Commandments -Oliver Cowdery and John Whitmer left for Missouri  on Nov. 20 with the revelations and monies for the Missouri Saints. (D&C 69). When they left, revelations were written in a new manuscript book called, "The Kirtland Revelation Book." Others made their own revelation books, copying the revelations from a variety of sources.

7. W.W. Phelps was placed in charge of the printing which began when Joseph and Sidney arrived with paper from Virginia.  (Apr. 1832) The press was 12 miles from the Mo. western border and 120 miles from the nearest other press. In June. 1832 Phelps began publishing  the "Evening and Morning Star" in which he printed revelations from the Book of Commandments and Revelations until they would be published in book form.  The first issue contained a document called "The Articles and Covenants of the Church of Christ" (D&C 20 & 22). Altogether, during its 14 months of publication in Missouri, the Star printed 26 revelation, 19 in full and 7 in part. This was the first publication of Joseph's revelations.

8. By Dec. of 1832 the Book of Commandments was being typeset on the Church's press in Independence, Mo. In May, the Star predicted it would be finished by the end of the year. But, on Saturday, July 20, 1833,  a mop of Missourians upset at an article in "The Star" destroyed the press, the building and the work. 14 year old Mary Rollins and her 12 year old sister Caroline. The Book of Commandments, which measures approximately 4½ × 3⅛ inches. Fewer than 3 dozen are known to exist. Valued up to a million dollars. (That is more than the 25-50 cents they were going to sell it for)

9. May 6, 1833 - D&C 94:10-

10. Dec. 1833 - The Star was printed in Kirtland until Sept. 1934 when it was re-named, "The Messenger and Advocate.

11. The Doctrine and Covenants

of The Church of the Latter Day Saints:

Carefully Selected

From the Revelations of God, and compiled by

Joseph Smith Junior- Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, Frederick G. Williams,

{Presiding Elders of said Church}

Proprietors

Kirtland, Ohio, Printed by F.G. Williams and Co. for the Proprietors. 1835

Preface,   Section 1-7 Lectures of Faith     Part Second-Covenants and Commandments of the Lord 99 Sections (66 twice), an Appendix, An article on Marriage, and an article on Government and a General Assembly

An Index and Contents (index is a table of contents and the table of contents is an index in our day)

A list of corrections

11. 1844 Edition of the D&C - John Taylor

12. The 1845 Liverpool edition (Wilford Woodruff-Sidney Rigdon) reprinted the text of the 1844 Nauvoo edition, and for the next quarter-century, the Nauvoo text would remain the standard for new printings.

13. Orson Pratt 1876 Edition - 1) Substitute names, 2) Put sections more in chronological order, 3) Standardized smaller verses, 4) New section headings and a detailed table of contents, 5) 26 new sections added, including  2, 13, 87, 109, 110, 121, 122, 123, 132-article on marriage, 136.

14. 1879 - Electrotype plates, matching the Book of Mormon, supervised in England by Orson Pratt - Many reference aids, footnotes.

15. 1921 - George F. Richards (committee chair), Anthony W. Ivins, Joseph Fielding Smith, James E. Talmage, Melvin J. Ballard. Added the 1890 Manifesto and deleted Lectures of Faith, printed in double columns, expanded the headnotes and revised the footnotes. A double-combination, a triple combination and a library edition matching the library edition of the Book of Mormon

16. 1976 - 2 additions to the Pearl of Great Price

1981 Edition, Committee - Thomas S. Monson, Boyd K. Packer, Bruce R. McConkie - Changes; 2 revelations moved from Pearl of Great Price to D&C 137-38, Official Declaration number 2, New Section Headings, Section Summaries, new footnotes, new footnote lettering system, referencing Topical Guide, running heads with verse numbers on each page, index integrated with the Book of Mormon and Pearl of Great Price, New maps, revised Explanatory Introduction, corrections of dates and places, discontinuing unusual names (D&C 78).

17. Guide to the Scriptures.

 Part III - Material on Early Christian figure

Augustine - Taken from "From Apostasy to Restoration" by Kent P. Jackson. - Available on-line
Augustine (A.D. 354-430), bishop of Hippo in North Africa, was Christianity's most significant figure in late antiquity. No one individual has had a greater effect on the beliefs of the Christian faith. His writings helped create the culture of Western Europe in the Middle Ages, provided a doctrinal backdrop for certain aspects of the Protestant Reformation, and set much of the agenda for Christianity to the present day. He was a man of profound importance to our understanding of the Christianity of the churches.
Augustine was born to a devout Christian mother and a non-Christian father. Though his mother reared him to become a Christian, and though he was always quite knowledgeable about Christian beliefs, he did not convert until he was in his early thirties. As a young man he was well educated and was trained as a lawyer and rhetorician. During his studies, at about age twenty, he developed a passion for philosophy that never left him. Despite his mother's pleading that he accept Christianity, he found it shallow and uninteresting compared with the philosophical thought of the Greeks and Romans. And Christianity could not provide answers to the two questions that concerned him most: the question of God's nature, and the question of the origin of evil.
In his early twenties, Augustine converted to Manicheism, a religion with roots in Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Gnosticism. Manicheism held that all of creation was the result of a cosmic battle between light and darkness. Human souls were elements of light trapped in the darkness of physical matter. Because matter was a manifestation of the darkness and souls were not intended to be trapped in flesh, celibacy and asceticism were encouraged as the superior mode of life. Augustine, however, had a mistress during the nine years of his Manichean experience and thus never attained to the highest order of his religion. In time he became disillusioned with Manicheism, primarily because as a philosophical system it was unable to answer his questions. Eventually he became embittered against it and attacked it in his later writings.
As Augustine continued his quest for truth, he accepted a professorship in Milan. There he heard the teaching of Ambrose (ca. 339-97), bishop of Milan and one of the foremost Christian intellectuals of the day. In Ambrose, Augustine found a Christian thinker with deep philosophical roots, whose sermons introduced him to Neoplatonism and the writings of Plotinus, whom Ambrose quoted extensively. In Plotinus and his philosophy, Augustine felt that he at last had found answers to life's questions. He embraced Neoplatonism, and it provided the philosophical perspective for the rest of his life.
But there remained the question of Christianity. Augustine's mother continued to urge her son to convert, and finally he did. He was baptized by Ambrose on Easter in 387. Foremost among his reasons was a spiritual experience in which he read a passage from Paul that encouraged the Saints to overcome their physical lusts ( Rom. 13:14). That experience changed his life by motivating him to set aside the things of the flesh-foregoing marriage forever-and surrender himself to God. But other factors also had an appeal for him and aided in his conversion. In his earlier years he had found the Bible too unsophisticated for his interests, particularly its depiction of God in human form with humanlike characteristics. But in Ambrose's teaching he found a Christian interpretation that was worthy of the best of philosophers. Ambrose rejected a literal reading of the text and developed allegorical interpretations in the tradition of Philo and Origen, both of whose works he knew well and had taken to heart. That method, as questionable as it may seem to Latter-day Saints, gave Augustine an interest in the Bible that he had never felt before.
But perhaps his greatest attraction to the Christian faith was the natural compatibility he perceived between it and his chosen philosophy of Neoplatonism. It was the joining of the two that characterized his theology from that time on. Indeed, Augustine's great contribution to the development of Christianity was the lasting marriage, solemnized under the authority of his pen, between the philosophical school of Plato and what had once been the religion of Christ. As one scholar has written, "his mind was the crucible in which the religion of the New Testament was most completely fused with the Platonic tradition of Greek philosophy." And his writings were the medium through which that synthesis was conveyed through the centuries of Christianity.
Augustine's conversion to Christianity was, to a very large degree, an outgrowth of his conversion to Neoplatonism. Before he found Neoplatonism and learned to see Christianity through its eyes, the religion of Jesus held little appeal for him. Especially attractive to him was Plotinus's concept of Deity-"the One," the absolute, unique essence that has neither attributes nor descriptive qualities. In that transcendent entity, Augustine was able to formulate his understanding of the God of the Bible. According to the Neoplatonic view, an essence called "mind," or "spirit," emanated from "the One." For Augustine it was a logical step to equate that essence with Christ, the Word of God that comes from the Father.
Augustine went on to have a long and brilliant career in which he became known throughout the Roman empire. In his own lifetime he was recognized as the greatest thinker of Christianity, whose views frequently established church doctrine. He was a prolific writer from whom about four hundred sermons and two hundred letters have been preserved. His books include The City of God, a treatise on the conflict between good and evil, and Confessions, a spiritual autobiography. His book On the Trinity, written in response to the Arian controversy, engaged the debate concerning the nature of God and Christ and dealt with issues that would be discussed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. He wrote that the Trinity is "a divine unity of one and the same substance in an indivisible equality; and therefore that they are not three Gods, but one God." Taking issue with the position of Origen on the subject of Jesus' subordination to the Father, he taught that there is a perfect unity of rank in the Trinity, with neither member being greater than any other. Yet in the end, as Augustine conceded, the Trinity is a mystery and cannot be understood. One thing that can be understood, however, is that God is utterly unlike man and unlike anything man in his loftiest imagination can conceive of.
Augustine continued to struggle with his question concerning the origin of evil. He concluded that it came about as the result of Adam's fall. As he examined the Fall in his sermons and writings, he developed doctrine that would stand the test of time and remain forever part of Christian tradition. Indeed, much of the inherited view of Adam and the Fall is a legacy of Augustine, including the general view of the depravity of human nature that set the moral tone for the Middle Ages.
The doctrine of grace, as understood in Christian tradition, is also largely Augustine's contribution. He taught that though humans have agency, that agency is not sufficient to enable them to do good and overcome evil. The capacity to do good can only exist as a gift of grace from God. In that teaching he was opposed publicly by the British theologian Pelagius, who contended that humans, endowed with agency, are indeed capable of choosing good and doing it. Were it not so, Pelagius argued, God's judgments against them could not be just. Implicit in Pelagius' point of view was a rejection of the accepted doctrine of original sin, the inherited guilt of Adam's transgression. Augustine undertook a campaign of sermons and writings to refute the teaching of Pelagius. Its success was apparent in the fact that Pelagius and his doctrine were condemned at the First Council of Ephesus in 431 and also in the fact that Augustine's views prevailed to establish the accepted doctrine of grace. But as Augustine developed that doctrine, some of his ideas became solidified into a position that did not achieve universal acceptance. He taught that God alone determines salvation, independent of human effort, and that it is a mystery why some are chosen and others are not. God elects whom he will for salvation, and no act of ours can affect the choice. In time he developed this teaching into an explicit doctrine of predestination-God's selection in advance of those who would be saved.
Many of Augustine's contemporaries and later Christians found his teachings on predestination to be excessive. Thus in the Catholic Church they never were viewed as official doctrine. But centuries later they reemerged in the teachings of John Calvin, a great admirer of Augustine, who brought them into the mainstream of Protestant thought during the Reformation. Today, Augustine's views on grace and predestination are vital elements in the doctrine of significant portions of Christianity.
Some of Augustine's teachings on the Fall were also not fully accepted into the Christian mainstream but nonetheless had a lasting influence on traditional doctrine. Even before his conversion to Christianity, Augustine wrestled with feelings of guilt for physical instincts that showed the power of his flesh over his spirit. As a Christian, he developed a belief in original sin that had its focus on sexuality as the evidence for the fallen state of humankind. He believed that humans inherit the guilt of Adam's sin through birth, because conception is dependent on sexual passion. And sexual desire and the sexual act are the surrender of the spirit to carnal lusts. All humans are therefore fallen, he believed, because all were brought into life through the victory of the flesh over the spirit. In part as a result of Augustine's teaching, as well as the ascetic beliefs of such of his contemporaries as Jerome (347-420), Medieval Christianity inherited an ambivalent attitude toward sexuality and toward human nature in general.