  The Choice Seer. A Prenatal Naming.—Let us now take a closer view of this marvelous man, Joseph Smith, the most extraordinary character that has appeared upon our planet in the past two thousand years. His coming into the world fulfilled a prophecy uttered many centuries before his birth—a prophecy concerning "a choice seer," to be raised up "out of the loins" of Joseph who was sold into Egypt. The seer's name was likewise to be Joseph, and this also was to be the name of his father.[ Like great Cyrus, who liberated the Jews from their captivity in Babylon,[ Birth and Parentage.—Joseph the Seer was born at Sharon, Vermont, two days before Christmas, in the year 1805. When only a lad, living with his parents, Joseph and Lucy Smith, honest farm folk in the backwoods of Western New York, his career as a prophet began. In Quest of Wisdom.—Partly from the effects of a religious revival held in his neighborhood, he became much concerned upon the subject of his soul's salvation, but was bewildered and unable to make choice of a church or creed, owing to the diverse and conflicting claims of the various Christian sects. While in this mood, he chanced upon the following passage of scripture: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him."[ The First Vision.—Retiring to a grove near his father's home, he knelt in prayer to the Most High; but had scarcely begun his humble and earnest petition, when he was seized upon by a power that filled his soul with horror and paralyzed his tongue so that he could no longer speak. So terrible was the visitation, that he almost gave way to despair. Yet he continued to pray—in thought, with "the soul's sincere desire"—and just at the moment when he feared he must abandon himself to destruction, he saw, directly over his head, a light more brilliant than the noonday sun. In the midst of a pillar of glory he beheld two beings in human form, one of whom, pointing to the other, said: "This is my beloved Son, hear Him."[ All Churches Astray.—With the appearance of the Light, the boy found himself delivered from the fettering power of the Evil One. As soon as he could again command utterance, he inquired of his heavenly visitants which of all the religious denominations was right—which one was the true Church of Christ? To his astonishment, he was told that none of them was right; that they had all gone out of the way. Their creeds were an abomination, and their professors corrupt. "They draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; they teach for doctrine the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof." So spake the Son of God concerning the churches.[ Such was Joseph Smith's first vision and revelation. It came in the spring of 1820, when he was but a few months over fourteen years of age. The Divine Personality.—The greater part of this wonderful manifestation was the part that did not speak—the silent revealing of the personality of God; a truth plainly taught in the Scriptures, but ignored or denied by modern Christianity. The object worshiped by the sects was defined in their theology as a being "without body, parts or passions."[
These beautiful couplets admirably describe the Spirit of the Lord—that all-pervading energy or essence which proceeds from the Divine Presence, fills the immensity of space, is everywhere present, and is immanent in all creation. But they give no adequate idea of the Great Creator, "the father of the spirits" of men,[ But these teachings were lost upon the modern Christian world. They had turned from the truth "unto fables",[ The True and Living God.—What is meant by that? Who is "the true and living God?" He is the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Adam, of Enoch, of Noah, of the patriarchs and prophets and apostles of old—the God described by Moses in the first chapter of Genesis, where it is written: "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female, created he them." This is equivalent to saying that God is in the form of man, and that we have a Mother as well as a Father in Heaven, in whose image or likeness we are, male and female. Of the divine Three who hold supreme power and preside over the universe—three distinct personalities, yet one God or Godhead, one in will, wisdom, power and authority—of these, the Father and the Son, according to Joseph Smith, are personages of tabernacle. They have bodies "as tangible as man's;" while the Holy Ghost "is a personage of spirit."[ The Idol of the Sects.—Proceeding forth from them, is that all-pervading essence or influence which is immanent in all things—the light of the sun, moon and stars, the light also of the human understanding, quickening and illumining, in greater or less degree, "every man that cometh into the world." In it we live, move and have our being; for it is the principle of life throughout creation. This is what the poet was describing, when he portrayed Deity as a "Soul" that "warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze," etc. And this is what the Christian sects were worshiping at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Not God, but a spirit sent forth from God; not Divinity, but an emanation from Divinity. In a word, they were practicing idolatry—or something dangerously akin to it. What Constitutes Idolatry?—"Idolatry is every worship that stops short of the Supreme."[ Modern Christendom's Position.—The world in Joseph Smith's day—the Christian world at least—did not worship the heavenly bodies; did not deify beasts and reptiles, did not regard the seasons and passions as divine. Yet it had turned from the true God, ignoring or misinterpreting what Moses and the prophets had written concerning him. According to its dictum, the age of miracles was past; prophets were out of date, and angel messengers obsolete; the heavens were sealed, the canon of scripture was full, and God would never again communicate with mortals. Then came the vision of the Father and the Son—two glorious beings in the form of man—and from the hour that the boy Joseph beheld them, there was at least one person upon this planet who knew what kind of a being God is. It was a virtual reassertion of the first commandment in the Decalogue: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." To worship anything that God has made and given, in lieu of the Maker and Giver, is to worship an idol. They who turn from the Creator to the creature, who forsake God and adore a gift or an emanation from God, are idolaters, almost as much as if they worshiped the sun and moon, or bowed down to goats and crocodiles. Like to Elijah.—To restore the acceptable worship of Jehovah, and begin a work that would sweep away idolatry and all things connected therewith, was the mission of Joseph the Seer. Against him, as against Elijah of old, the priests of Baal raged in impotent fury. Despite their tongues of slander and their weapons of violence, he accomplished all that had been given him to do. This time, however, the All-Wise permitted his servant to be sacrificed—to the end, no doubt, that his innocent blood, affixing to his testimony the red seal of martyrdom, might give added power to the great propaganda then and still in progress for Israel's redemption—the gathering of the scattered sheep preparatory to the Shepherd's coming. Footnotes |
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