Joseph Smith's Vision of the Global Church

"Joseph Smith’s Vision of the Global Church"

Religious Lecture Series

 January 29,2005

Truman G. Madsen

Brothers and sisters we're grateful to be in your midst. Ann and I were counseled years ago by one of our great leaders that there are no great speakers in the Church there are only great audiences. We know that this is a great audience, and the Spirit is here, and we pray that it will be with us through all that occurs today.

A New York newspaper in mid-July of 1844 had a headline announcing the death of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. The article concluded, "Thus ends Mormonism."  The assumption was if you cut off the head, the body dies. So Mormonism was doomed. There have been equal and vehement predictions since then that the Church would wind down and eventually be absorbed.

In contrast, in early 1834 a gathering was held in Kirtland, Ohio. Wilford Woodruff says the building was a log cabin maybe 12 or 14 feet square, and that those who assembled were most of the priesthood brethren who had been ordained in the Church. Among them such names as Orson Pratt and Parley P. Pratt, Wilford Woodruff—a new convert, Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball. Each in turn bore a five minute testimony at the prophet's request. "Please," he said, "brethren, bear your testimony as to what you see as the future of this Church." They did their best and then he arose and said in effect, "I've enjoyed what you've said, but you no more comprehend the destinies of this Church," one version is "than a little child on its mother's lap," and another "than a babe on its mother's arm." If you follow the prophet's teaching children somehow have locked into them great knowledge. But the point he was making was these leaders didn't begin to comprehend the great and fulfilling destiny of the restored Church of Jesus Christ. Then he said, "It will fill, eventually brethren, North and South America, and then eventually the whole earth."  Incredible.

After that, Parley P. Pratt went to Boston and spoke in a gathering like this—including many nay-sayers—and said, in effect, "Do you understand that all dispensations are now gathering together as has been prophesied, and in fulfillment of those who expected that all things will come together in Christ in the last days. Untold millions will yet celebrate the day when this Church was born."  In the same spirit, one of the three witnesses set apart and ordained Heber C. Kimball to the Twelve. He said, "Millions will receive the gospel of Jesus Christ through your instrumentality."

This year we have untold millions who will indeed celebrate. But we are only beginning.

At the time they were given, these and like predictions seemed preposterous. But they are true. And they have begun to be clear even in the minds of statisticians who study the Church and its growth patterns—both conversions and births. So a sociologist named Rodney Stark up in the northwest wrote a study for the one-hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of the Church. He estimated that at the rate then calculated that by 2080 the membership of this Church would exceed 63 million. It would thus constitute the first major religious movement to occur in the world since the rise of Islam. He was attacked in the press. His data, they said, was skewed, his statistics were wrong. Twenty-five years later he acknowledged that he had been mistaken because the Church has grown ten percent faster then he thought. 

The prophet Joseph said often to those close to him that he felt like he was shut up in a peanut shell or in an iron case; that he so much wanted to communicate what the Lord had made known to him, but felt he often fell short and that the Saints did not understand who they were, what they were about, and the outcome.

John Taylor, one of the Twelve, spelled out later some of what he began to comprehend about the huge or vast character of the restoration.

The prophet had said that he intended to "lay a foundation that would revolutionize the whole world"—the whole world!  He also spoke of himself as one of the instruments in the prophecy of Daniel: a church, a kingdom would grow until it was so vast in its influence that all other kingdoms would give way to it. Erastus Snow was corrected by the prophet once after he gave a sermon and spoke of the "stone cut out of a mountain without hands" that would roll forth and fill the earth. His sermon was essentially that it would crush all other kingdoms. The prophet said, "No brother Snow. No. It will not be by sword or gun that this kingdom grows. It will be like a spinning wheel, centrifugal in influence, reaching farther and farther throughout the world." 

John Taylor says that the prophet used superlatives in every category of human growth and development. He said the prophet taught that this Church was not just a set of individual disciples, but a close community. The first generation was gathering, and he prophesied we would have the most magnificent cities, the most beautiful homes, the most suitable gardens; that we would have also the power to be increasingly intelligent, increasingly mastering the world; that we would excel in the sciences and mechanics and manufactures. Elsewhere the same President John Taylor cited the Prophet predicting, "You will see the day when Zion is as far ahead of the world in all matters pertaining to human learning of every kind as we are now ahead in matters religious."  Likewise the saints would become the healthiest people, the most prosperous people, the most blessed in all the creative arts. This people would be admired, envied, and even those who observed at a distance would be in awe of the glory of the movement.

Said President Taylor, "We believe, moreover, that God, having commenced his work, will continue to reveal and make manifest his will to his Priesthood, to his Church and kingdom on the earth, and that among this people there will be an embodiment of virtue, of truth, of holiness, of integrity, of fidelity, of wisdom, and of the knowledge of God." 

His summation was, "All this to prepare this people throughout the whole world for the second coming of Christ. For," said he, "Joseph Smith taught us that Zion from above—those who had gone beyond, those who have fulfilled and come up though affliction the righteous commandments of God, and who constitute what he called the Church of the First Born—Zion from above will come and join the Zion on earth and thus introduce the glorious millennium."

The prophet anticipated more than numbers. Some people left the church because they heard Joseph say things like, "We need numbers, we need growth." But Joseph also said, "It is not the multitude of preachers that will bring about the glorious millennium. It is those who are called, chosen, and faithful." Each of us needs to ask if we are called, and chosen, and faithful in building the kingdom.

Now Joseph envisioned the Church, but also the establishment of the Kingdom of God, which is more inclusive than just the Church. The Church is the nucleus of this last dispensation, but there are good and honorable and faithful people according to the light they have throughout the world. They too are part of his vision. So the Church is more than an ecclesiastical unit. It is—and I name four areas—it is a social, economic, political, and educational kingdom.

Someone said to the prophet, "You know among the critics and in the newspapers the standard view is that the Mormons are all going to hell." Joseph replied, "And if we go to hell, we will turn the devils out of doors and make a heaven of it. Where this people are, there is good society. What do we care where we are, if the society be good?"  So he introduced the pattern of quorums, and auxiliaries, and relief society, and organizational tools. They make possible fellowship, and brotherhood, and love, the bonding that is not found elsewhere in the world. Said he once of that outreaching love,

 

We ought always to be aware of those prejudices which sometimes so strangely present themselves, and are so congenial to human nature, against our friends, neighbors, and brethren of the world, who choose to differ from us in opinion and in matters of faith. Our religion is between us and our God. Their religion is between them and their God. There is a love from God that should be exercised toward those of our faith who walk uprightly, which is peculiar to itself, but it is without prejudice [that is, it is not just that birds of a feather flock together. It is divinely inspired love]. It also gives scope to the mind, which enables us to conduct ourselves with greater liberality towards all that are not of our faith, than what they exercise towards one another. These principles approximate nearer to the mind of God, because it is like God, or Godlike. 

So it is a social organization, a set of quorums. "Where this people is, there is good society."

What about economics? From the beginning he introduced commandments from on high expecting all members to live an economic law called consecration. When we failed at that, and when it foundered on covetousness and greed, he was told in effect, "Start with the law of tithing and let the people consecrate that much in returning to me what I have blessed them with." To the degree that this Church has upheld the law of tithing we have flourished, and in those parts of the world where the people still can't quite bring themselves to pay it, they have not flourished. Pres. Hinckley was recently asked about how it is that we were able to build 100 plus temples (not to mention 1,000 chapels per year), and how it was we could build a majestic Conference center. "Who pays for these? How much is the mortgage?" asked Larry King.

"There is no mortgage."

"Well, then how do you pay?"

"Well, we pay in cash."

"Yes, but where does the money come from?"

His simple answer was, "the saints are generous in living the law of tithing."

A close friend in Boston, a minister of another faith, began to calculate how much the Boston Temple would cost. "How can you do this,?" he asked. The local Bishop replied, "Let me put it to you this way. In your church, as a minister, you are paid. In my church as a bishop, I'm not. In my Church we pay tithing. In your church you do not. Does that help answer your question?" Joseph prophesied that the saints would suffer much affliction and then go west to become "a great and mighty people." That's one version, Anson Call’s. According to Mosiah Hancock, who heard the same prophecy, (and by the way it was uttered many times, as early as 1834) Joseph said they would become a great and wealthy people. Wealthy? Do you consider yourselves wealthy? Compared to the rest of the world you are wealthy, and you have only in recent days under the inspiration of the prophet contributed to others suffering terribly in the world [referring to the tsunami disaster]. The humanitarian effort of the Church today amounts to at least 50 million dollars a year just in clothing and minimal supplies to others. "We believe in doing good to all men," says our Article of Faith. Even those whom we don't even know? Yes. Economically speaking the Church will continue to flourish as we continue to honor the laws of God.

What about political life? It has become Mormon common sense that somehow Latter-day Saints will save the constitution. Several versions of that prophecy have an "if clause": If it is saved, it will be through the people of the restored Church. Here too is the idea of extending and expanding the powers of constitutional government. We are taught by Joseph Smith that the Constitution isn’t just a good document (it can be improved no doubt), but that it is an inspired document, and that the men who composed it were among the wisest of all the Father’s family to establish the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Many sacrificed their lives, not just their fortunes. Seeing it as an inspired document, Joseph set up an organization that would look toward the day when such principles could be extended through the whole world. Whatever others thought of our religion, they would come to cherish freedom. And not just freedom, they would come to cherish the mode of life that preserves it. Because the question is, once you have genuine freedom in the constitutional sense, what do you do with it? The prophet once said, "If I were the emperor of the world and had the control of the whole human family, I would guarantee every man, woman, and child freedom of religion." Yes, he would. And the Nauvoo Charter embodied that principle. You will live to see the expansion and extension of these principles in other countries throughout the world.

What about education? One of the truth-gems of the Prophet is the understanding of intelligence and that "a man has saved no faster than he gains knowledge."The inversion is also true: a man gains knowledge of the kind we’re talking about—intelligence, light, truth—a man gains knowledge no faster than he is saved, no faster than he embraces and honors the Spirit of God. Well, the prophet looked to have a University in Nauvoo. It was barely on paper and started, but look at the educational system that is expanding throughout the world today. How many students are there in the Church of college age or more? More than 2 million and counting. When he was in Harmony, Pennsylvania and almost starving, living with Oliver Cowdery on a barrel of pickerel and using paper that was a gift from the Knight family, how could Joseph have the gall to write (the answer: it is a revelation), "This generation shall have my word through you." This mere boy is told "This generation shall have My word—the Lord Jesus Christ, speaking—through you." Well, that manuscript of the Book of Mormon was put into the hands of the Grandin Press and out came a first edition of 5,000 volumes. How many now have gone out to the world? We are into the second hundred million. This book that confirms the essential truths of the Bible, is filled with the light of Christ, his word. Educationally speaking, you and I have the obligation to reach up for the sources that the Lord has made available.

Now, on to the question of the Zion pattern with temples. This is another of the mind-stretching predictions of the prophet. He told Brigham Young, upon whom all of the keys of the priesthood were transmitted including the keys of sealing, that there would be "hundreds of Temples on this continent." He also anticipated—though he would not live to see the Nauvoo Temple finished, which was one of his great sorrows—that we the Latter-Day Saints would return to Nauvoo. And so we have. He taught that the main purpose of geographical gathering is to gain access to the Temple. He taught that the Temples pull together the truth and the power and the glory of Jesus Christ. We are to come in sacrificial faith to Temples. Therein Jesus Christ will manifest Himself in mercy to His servants. His servants we are, and through the Temple we become His sons and daughters fully, and ultimately His friends in the building of the Kingdom. Well, how many Temples is one question, but another is where? Joseph saw that there would eventually be "Temples to dot the earth."  And through proxy service we would reach out to the whole human family including the dead. Amazing, but it is underway.

Now, I move to another point having to do with the future. One could speak of several causes in the world that seem, at this stage of history, utterly hopeless. What, for example, about the middle-eastern crisis, as we call it? What will be the outcome of the Jewish people who have suffered interminably at the hands of Christians and of others? What of other descendants of Abraham? How can they be redeemed? How can Jerusalem be rebuilt and peace established? Again utterly incredible. Yet in various ways each of those predictions is in process of fulfillment. As early as 1831, when the Church was barely established, the Prophet wrote prophetically: "And they also of the tribe of Judah, after their pain, shall be sanctified in holiness before the Lord, to dwell in his presence day and night, forever."  (I digress to say that historically every man’s hand has been sooner or later raised against them). In the meantime he gave this admonition from the Book of Mormon, Mormon speaking, "Yea, and ye need not any longer hiss, nor spurn, nor make game of the Jews, nor any of the remnant of the house of Israel; for behold, the Lord remembereth his covenant unto them, and he will do unto them according to that which he hath sworn. Therefore ye need not suppose that ye can turn the right hand of the Lord unto the left, that he may not execute judgment unto the fulfilling of the covenant which he hath made unto the house of Israel." 

We are of those in the world who expect that the terrible estrangements between Judah and Ephraim, or between Judah and Ishmael, or between the contemporary representatives of the various faiths in Jerusalem. We are among the number who have been taught by the prophet’s vision that those divisions will ultimately be overcome, that there will be a family reunion, that there will be power through Christ to forget and forgive the agonies of the past and to enjoy the glory of fellowship and brotherhood. Some of the greatest disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ at the end will be those who have hated Christians because Christians hated them.

But what about the huge numbers of people, the heathens so-called, those who have never heard even the name Jesus, what about them? Well, I was once in a gathering where I was told there would not be support for a proposal we made for a kind of multi-faith interchange. We as Mormons would talk sympathetically and in the spirit of understanding to other Christians and they to us. One man said "We won't do that because you people are exclusive in your outlook. You are saying that you are the only true Church, and we can't stand that. We’re not going to support that."

I asked the question "What about those dear people in China who have never heard the name of Jesus, a billion and more of them?"

He said, and he said it vehemently, "They’ll be damned to hell with the other heathens."

I said, "That’s interesting. Our prophet taught us that every man, woman, and child who ever lived will sooner or later, on this side of the veil or the other, hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ in purity and in fullness and have full opportunity to receive it. Is that exclusive or inclusive?"

"We must,"said the prophet Joseph, "gather all the good and true principles in the world and treasure them up or we shall not come out true Mormons."  So, it isn’t just that eventually they will have opportunity to hear the sacred truths we know, but we can learn from them for they have had light and truth over the centuries, and the Lord has been working with them as well as with us. That is the teaching of the Prophet Joseph—they will learn from us and we from them. That’s the only hope, ultimately I am convinced, of attempts to get closer together among the great divisions in Christendom and in other religions. Today they are talking with each other. They have agreed to talk—councils, meetings, symposia—but they have not yet talked to agreement. Someday through the powers of the gospel it will happen.

Well, now what about the billions more who have lived and died. Eighty billion we were told, maybe more, have come and gone on this earth. Well, Joseph Smith’s vision didn't limit itself just to them.

There are other worlds. Are other worlds inhabited? Yes. Worlds without number, we are told, have been created by the Creator of this world, "whose inhabitants too from the first to the last," says the poetic version of section 76, "are saved," [meaning will be] by the very same Savior of ours, and of course, "are begotten God’s daughters and sons by the very same truths and the very same powers."So of every earth of which Christ is the Creator, He is also the Savior. The Lord Jesus Christ said that, "Worlds without number have I created." Is this mind- boggling? Someone said to me, "You know what’s wrong with the whole religious world is that they are earth-bound. What we need is a theology for the space age."

Well, the last book Neal Maxwell wrote touches on that point. The title is Moving in His Majesty and Power. Where did he get the title? From Doctrine and Covenants section 88, which says that the light of Christ quickens us both within and without and "anyone who has seen the sun or the moon or the stars, even the least of these, has seen God moving in His majesty and power." We have not just a global vision through Joseph Smith. We have a galactic vision.

People have inquired of me occasionally as they have noticed how I continue to study Joseph Smith, "You seem to be preoccupied. All questions seem to lead you to say something about Joseph Smith. When are you going to quit?"

Brothers and sisters, my testimony to you is that I have been so taken with, so interested in, and so desirous to master the life and teachings of the prophet for one reason only: that through him, I learn more about Christ and my relationship with Christ than in any other source I can find all the way back to the apostles in His own time. Joseph Smith is a window for me to Christ and the clearest one I have ever found. That’s why.

That leads us to a few applications of what he taught us about the future. I am moved by his insistence that no generation ever has been really exalted, saved, redeemed, or on the other hand, condemned and judged without living testimony. Living. This is why we send out an army of missionaries—one on one, one to group—living witnesses of living testimony. They have been endowed and empowered in their souls by coming to the House of the Lord. These are His witnesses. The name a ‘peculiar people’ as it is used by Peter, and we pick it up in our own language, the name ‘peculiar’ doesn't mean odd or weird. (Although we've heard Steve Young say, for one, that "if you don’t feel weird three times a day, you're not living the gospel.") It means witness. A peculiar people is a witnessing people or a people who have been chosen and selected by God, to give living testimony. It doesn’t come simply by osmosis. It comes into our lives when we change our lives into harmony with Christ and with His will.

Again the prophet’s peanut shell analogy applies when he said, "My greatest sorrow is that the people are living below their privileges." Yes, but privileges only come when we have fulfilled duties, requirements, following a specific path step by step toward Him and into His likeness. So the prophet Joseph manifested by his life what he was also envisioning. We are no longer living in a full sense the law of consecration. We are no longer able to be a separate people building our own community. That's impossible. We do have Stakes throughout the world in over 130 countries and counting. But Joseph the prophet lived all of the requirements through his life, including the law of consecration. He gave his life in two senses. He gave his life by wasting and wearing it out with incredible powers of recovery from endless opposition. But he also gave it as you have heard this morning in the glorious hymn, [A Poor Wayfaring man of Grief] by dying in the cause of Christ and sealing his living testimony with his blood.

When Brigham Young, first heard that Joseph was gone,(I think he was in New Hampshire) his daughter, Vilate, said in effect, "I have never seen my fathers face so distressed, so anguished." He himself said, "I want 30 days to mourn." On his own death bed he said one word three times, "Joseph, Joseph, Joseph." A revelation he received in the aftermath (the saints were being driven again) says toward the end, "Many have marveled because of his (Joseph’s) death, but it was needful that he should seal his testimony with his blood." 

 I don't know if I fully understand that, but I do know that I have marveled because of his life as well as his death. And in that marveling, I have come closer to what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. The Savior begins by asking us to make small sacrifices; He ends, if we are faithful, by asking for our all.

It may seem a strange thing, but the glory of it is that when and only when we come to that point in our lives, He then promises us His all, His all! Glimpses of His all are in the word fulness which recurs over and over in the Doctrine and Covenants. For example, the fulness of the earth, is one of the rewards promised for honoring and keeping the Sabbath. The fulness of truth only comes, He teaches, when we fulfill all of His commandments. The fulness of the Holy Ghost, is promised in connection with the sanctuary (voiced at the Kirtland Temple dedication). The fulness of the Priesthood, is promised again only to those who come together, husband and wife and children, in the sealing and bonding of the Temple. And finally, the fulness—not a part but a fulness—of the glory of the Father, is "a fullness and a continuation of the seeds forever," a specific way of describing the glory of everlasting posterity like unto the Father and the Mother who sired us in the beginning as spirits  .

This is the vision of the modern prophet. This is the promise of the Christ that has come to us through him.

Joseph was told "Your name shall be known among the nations, for the work which the Lord will perform by your hands shall cause the righteous to rejoice and the wicked to rage; with one it shall be had in honor, and with the other in reproach; yet, with these it shall be a terror because of the great and marvelous work which shall follow the coming forth of this fulness of the gospel." 

Just about every name you could think of, every mean and vicious thing you can say about another human being, has been said of him. The foolish, he was told in the Liberty Jail,"shall have thee in derision." So they have. But he was also told his name would also be known for good. Yes, in two senses: for goodness, for all the good and true and beautiful things he reintroduced in the world; but also for the permanent good in the hearts of those who know him truly, and therefore the Master. So we are promised, you and I, that we can be among the noble and the virtuous and the pure in heart who will seek counsel and authority and blessing constantly from under His hand. 

I bear my witness that to do so is to come to Christ. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.