Out of Obscurity and Out of Darkness
Rethinking the Great Apostasy and the Foundations of the Church
The Doctrine and Covenants, modern scripture, enhances our understanding of the doctrine, principles, and prophecies contained in ancient scripture such as the Bible and the Book of Mormon.
For example, the Lord’s revelations to the Prophet Joseph Smith enhance the clarity of Nephi’s vision and the simplicity of his articulation of truth. From Nephi (and other ancient prophets such as Isaiah) we learn many things about conditions in the world in the last days, but the Lord speaks with even greater clarity and simplicity (and relevance to our time) through His latter-day servant the Prophet Joseph Smith:
They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall.” (D&C 1:16)
Isn’t this the perfect description of the world in which we now live? Who truly seeks the Lord to establish His righteousness? Anyone? Who truly worships God and His Son Jesus Christ and not the idols of Babylon?
We moderns are much worse idolators than even Ignacio of Nacho Libre fame whom the lovely Encarnaciòn warned against the ungodliness of wrestling.
In His preface to the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord warns that calamity comes upon the inhabitants of the earth, and He explains why he called upon His servant Joseph Smith, Jr., spake unto him from heaven, and gave him commandments. (Isn’t the calamity already upon us? Only five years ago, the world was shaken and reeling because of the so-called pandemic. The fires 🔥 in California seem to remind us that the trouble is just beginning.) The Lord explains why He gave power to His servants to lay the foundation of this church, and to bring it forth out of obscurity and out of darkness.
Why was the Lord’s Church in obscurity and darkness? What does this mean? These phrases suggest to me that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may need to rethink the traditional narrative regarding what we call the “Great Apostasy.” Eric Dursteler’s excellent article “Inheriting the ‘Great Apostasy’: The Evolution of Latter-day Saint Views on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,” (a chapter in the book Early Christians in Disarray: Contemporary Lds Perspectives on the Christian Apostasy) is helpful in this regard.
The Lord’s Church, as I understand it, did not completely disappear from the earth after Christ’s Resurrection and the death of the apostles. Rather, it was hidden. It was hidden and nourished in the wilderness. (see D&C 33:5-6, Rev. 12:1-6) John the Beloved saw and wrote about all of this in his Revelation. It is interesting that John describes the Church as a woman who fled into the wilderness to a place that God prepared for her to be fed for a specific amount of time. The implications of John the Beloved’s descriptions of the hidden Church are fascinating to consider.
Until more about the hidden Church of Jesus Christ is revealed, we know that the Lord called His Church that He restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth,” and that He commended the Church as a whole while calling upon individual members of the Church to repent and do the commandments to receive forgiveness. The Lord restored the foundations of this Church by calling His servant Joseph Smith, Jr. and the early saints to follow Him just as He had done in the Holy Land with His disciples of old.
The Lord’s preface to the Doctrine and Covenants is a powerful warning and invitation. The Lord reveals much about Himself and His work in this preface, and He also reveals more about the great latter-day division of which Nephi prophesied in the Book of Mormon:
For I am no respecter of persons, and will that all men shall know that the day speedily cometh; the hour is not yet, but is nigh at hand, when peace shall be taken from the earth, and the devil shall have power over his own dominion.
And also the Lord shall have power over his saints, and shall reign in their midst, and shall come down in judgment upon Idumea, or the world. (D&C 1:35-36)
The Lord, in His preface, then instructs us on how to approach our study of the Doctrine and Covenants:
Search these commandments, for they are true and faithful, and the prophecies and promises which are in them shall all be fulfilled.
What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.
For behold, and lo, the Lord is God, and the Spirit beareth record, and the record is true, and the truth abideth forever and ever. Amen. (D&C 1:37-39)
In our study of the Doctrine and Covenants thus far we’ve reviewed the First Vision and First Vision accounts, the angel Moroni’s early interactions with Joseph Smith, the loss of the 116 pages (the Book of Lehi), the revelation to Joseph Smith, Sr. regarding valiant service, developing Godly attributes, and seeking for the things of God, the calling of the three witnesses, the Lord’s interactions with Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, and the revelation concerning the fate of John the Beloved. This week we are also learning more about Oliver Cowdery and the process of the translation of the Book of Mormon in D&C 8-9.
I am grateful for the opportunity to study the foundations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the early Restoration, and I hope that my notes on my study of the Doctrine and Covenants this year will be helpful to fellow truth-seekers.