{"id":41364,"date":"2021-01-27T14:40:25","date_gmt":"2021-01-27T19:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timesandseasons.org\/?p=41364"},"modified":"2021-01-27T14:40:25","modified_gmt":"2021-01-27T19:40:25","slug":"you-have-another-gift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2021\/01\/you-have-another-gift\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cYou have another gift\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a land of myth and a time of magic, the destiny of a great kingdom[1]<\/strong><\/a> rests on the shoulders of a young man.\u00a0 His name \u2026 Joseph.<\/em><\/p>\n

If you couldn\u2019t tell from the text above, my wife and I have been watching the TV series Merlin <\/em>lately.\u00a0 We\u2019ve rather enjoyed their take on the Arthurian legends.\u00a0 To me, there is something fascinating about stories that are told and retold time and time again for hundreds of years.\u00a0 Now, I inserted Joseph\u2019s name into the opening sequence of that TV series for this post because while the United States isn\u2019t a land lost in myth and legend like Camelot, the early days of our religion were, for many adherents, a time of magic.<\/p>\n

To be fair to them, they didn\u2019t necessarily see what they were doing as magic\u2014more often they viewed it in religious terms.\u00a0 For example, in this week\u2019s readings for \u201cCome, Follow Me,\u201d we come across an interesting portion of Section 8 that discusses Oliver Cowdery having \u201cthe gift of Aaron.\u201d[2]<\/a>\u00a0 While the nature of this gift is obscured in the text of the Doctrine and Covenants, the earliest extant version of the revelation states that Oliver had \u201cthe gift of working with the sprout,\u201d which was a \u201cthing of Nature\u201d and that it was \u201cthe work of God.\u201d[3]<\/a>\u00a0 A subsequent version of the text rendered this as \u201cthe gift of working with the rod.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0 The Joseph Smith Papers site note about these phrases explains that: \u201cGreen, flexible shoots or rods cut from hazel, peach, or cherry trees were sometimes used as divining rods.\u201d\u00a0 This puts Cowdery\u2019s gift as working with objects that have been called divining rods, dousing rods, or witching rods\u2014rods generally used to locate water or treasure through supernatural means.\u00a0 While most of us aren\u2019t very comfortable claiming the work of rodsmen to be \u201cthe work of God,\u201d the 1829 revelation is very clear in stating that \u201cthere is no other power save God that can cause this thing of Nature to work in your hands for it is the work of God.\u201d[5]<\/a>\u00a0 Section 6 also speaks of Oliver having \u201ca gift\u201d that is \u201csacred and cometh from above\u201d through which he could \u201cinquire [and] know mysteries,\u201d[6]<\/a> which could be another mention of his ability to work with a divining rod.\u00a0 Something that seems like superstition or magic to us today was seen by them as a sacred gift from God.<\/p>\n

The seer stones or scrying stones of which Joseph Smith made frequent use are similar in this regard.\u00a0 Most of the revelations up through 1830 (most notably the Book of Mormon) were received through the use of these stones or the related object that we call the Urim and Thummim. \u00a0For example, Section 7 was an answer to a dispute about the fate of John the Beloved that Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith \u201cmutually agreed to settle \u2026 by the Urim and Thummim, and the [revelation] is the word which we received.\u201d[7]<\/a>\u00a0 The Joseph Smith Papers website places the use of these seer stones in the context of \u201ca European tradition of folk belief reaching back at least into the middle ages,” where “quartz crystals or other stones could be used to find missing objects or to see other things not visible to the natural eye.\u201d[8]<\/a>\u00a0 Referring back to Merlin<\/em>, this means that Joseph Smith was a practitioner of the same tradition of abilities that Morgause and Merlin are depicted as having when they look into certain crystals and are able to see events unfolding in other locations or in the future.<\/p>\n

In many ways, this does seem to be similar to how Joseph Smith used his abilities with the seer stones.\u00a0 For example, Josiah Stowell was willing to hire Joseph Smith in his treasure hunting endeavor because Joseph Smith gave a demonstration where he \u201clooked through stone and described Josiah Stowell\u2019s house\u201d correctly while still in Palmyra.[9]<\/a> \u00a0A record of an 1826 court trial indicates that Joseph Smith claimed to have \u201cfrequently ascertained \u2026 where lost property was of various kinds; that he has occasionally been in the habit of looking through this stone to find lost property for three years.\u201d[10]<\/a> In one example of this, Martin Harris later recalled that Joseph Smith found a pin in a pile of shavings with the aid of a seer stone.[11]<\/a>\u00a0 Later on, Elder B. H. Roberts wrote a description of his own experience with a seer stone that had once been owned by W. W. Phelps in a discussion about how the Urim and Thummim may have worked:<\/p>\n

The bright stones of Urim and Thummim were for the purpose, no doubt, of fixing the gaze of the seer for purposes of concentration of mind. Taking this stone in one\u2019s hand\u2014I did so with the Phelps\u2019 perforated stone\u2014and drawing it toward the eyes until it reaches the right focus, the two holes become, of course, in appearance but one, and this a single bright spot of light, with all else excluded, which becomes the bright field in which the vision of the seer \u2026 appears. A glass of clear water is said to answer at times the same purpose. In a bit of seership in action \u2026 [in one account] Joseph Smith makes use of a glass of water as a Urim, in his vision of, and his description of, the Rocky Mountain valleys\u2014which he had never seen but in vision\u2014as the habitat of the Latter-day Saints.[12]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These accounts involve Joseph Smith looking into the stone and being able to see visions of things that weren\u2019t readily seen otherwise.<\/p>\n

Just like how Cowdery\u2019s ability with divining rods was held as sacred, so too was Joseph Smith\u2019s ability with seer stones.\u00a0 A Book of Mormon passage dictated around the time of the revelations for Oliver Cowdery contains a discussion about a king who \u201ccan translate the records; for he has wherewith that he can look \u2026 and it is a gift from God. … And the things are called interpreters. \u2026 And whosoever is commanded to look in them, the same is called seer. \u2026 A seer is a revelator and a prophet also; and a gift which is greater can no man have.\u201d[13]<\/a>\u00a0 This places Joseph Smith\u2019s work with the seer stones as being a gift from God, and even indicates that his calling as a seer was based primarily on his ability to work with the interpreters or seer stones in translation. \u00a0(Though, if in the course of the obligatory Sunday School discussions where people try to tease apart what the different words mean when we call our Church leaders \u201cprophets, seers, and revelators,\u201d you gave the narrow definition that a seer is someone who sees things in magic rocks, you might quickly end up becoming someone who sees things inside the bishop\u2019s office.)\u00a0 The fact that so many of the early revelations in the Church were received through the medium of these seer stones places their use at the heart of our early sacred history.<\/p>\n

From a scholarly perspective it is easy to place these beliefs in the context of rural folk magic in the early United States and the ways in which those beliefs melded with religion. \u00a0Richard Lyman Bushman made note of this in his biography of Joseph Smith, stating that educated ministers and newspaper editors \u201cscoffed at the superstitions of common people,\u201d but those common folk \u201capparently had no difficulty blending Christianity with magic.\u201d\u00a0 These common beliefs about divining rods and seer stones \u201ccan be read as evidence of their general faith in invisible forces.\u00a0 Christian belief in angels and devils blended with belief in guardian spirits and magic powers.\u201d[14]<\/a>\u00a0 He also points out that these ideas were not unique to Smith and Cowdery\u2014in Joseph Smith\u2019s neighborhood alone, Bushman found references to at least two other families who owned and used scrying stones and noted that one of Cowdery\u2019s childhood neighbors dabbled in using a rod to find treasure.[15]<\/a>\u00a0 Information like this helps to put the use of objects like seer stones and divining rods in context of the times.<\/p>\n

While understanding context is useful for knowing how the early saints came to believe in seer stones and divining rods, we still are faced with the difficulty of how to make sense of them being an integral part of the origins of our faith in a modern culture that scoffs at belief in magic or divinely-powered objects.\u00a0 From my perspective, there are three main approaches that we can make in approaching this subject: rolling with it, minimizing it, and viewing the objects as tools co-opted by God.<\/p>\n

In the \u201crolling with it\u201d approach, we simply accept the claims of early Latter-day Saints at face value.\u00a0 In other words, there really are objects that the Lord works through to provide revelation or administer miracles.\u00a0 We pretty much have to do this with Joseph Smith\u2019s seer stones to be considered orthodox Latter-day Saints, since they\u2019re central to the origin of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith\u2019s initial calling as a prophet, seer, and revelator.\u00a0 And there is a decent amount of support for this approach in the scriptures.\u00a0 In addition to Section 8\u2019s endorsement of Oliver Cowdery\u2019s use of diving rods discussed above, we have the following summary from the Gospel Topics essay on Book of Mormon Translation:<\/p>\n

Some people have balked at this claim of physical instruments used in the divine translation process, but such aids to facilitate the communication of God\u2019s power and inspiration are consistent with accounts in scripture. In addition to the Urim and Thummim, the Bible mentions other physical instruments used to access God\u2019s power: the\u00a0rod of Aaron, a\u00a0brass serpent,\u00a0holy anointing oils, the\u00a0Ark of the Covenant, and even\u00a0dirt\u00a0from the ground mixed with saliva to heal the eyes of a blind man.[16]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The biggest difficulty for taking this approach is that we don\u2019t really see God working through these means today, which raises questions about whether they truly worked in the past.\u00a0 In any case, just rolling with the claims of using objects is one approach we can take, and it is an approach with some scriptural support.<\/p>\n

The second approach is to minimize or dismiss as much as we can of early Latter-day Saint belief in magic as being an interesting cultural artifact, but not central to our religion.\u00a0 While it is difficult to get away with doing this for Joseph Smith\u2019s seer stones, this is the approach that we have historically taken with Oliver Cowdery\u2019s rod-related abilities.\u00a0 The language in the revelation was changed for the first edition of the Doctrine and Covenants to Oliver having \u201cthe gift of Aaron,\u201d which has largely obscured the original meaning of the text to modern Latter-day Saints.\u00a0 For example, the most common interpretation of the \u201cgift of Aaron\u201d in the mid-to-late twentieth century was that it meant Oliver would act as Joseph Smith\u2019s spokesperson, just as Aaron did for Moses.[17]<\/a>\u00a0 (To the Church\u2019s credit, more recent publications have been more transparent about the original context of this \u201cgift of Aaron\u201d.)[18]<\/a>\u00a0 And while we generally accept Joseph Smith\u2019s use of seer stones, we tend to do our best to ignore the fact that other early Latter-day Saints and early Americans also owned and used similar scrying stones.\u00a0 The major exception to that is Hiram Page, since we have another revelation that dismisses his experience with a seer stone: \u201cThose things which he hath written from that stone are not of me and \u2026 Satan deceiveth him.\u201d[19]<\/a>\u00a0 In many ways, that incident provides a template for making the seer stones that are integral to our history unique or different from the broader culture of using similar objects.\u00a0 So, doing our best to minimize or dismiss as much as we can of magic from how we understand the founding story of our religion is another approach we can take.<\/p>\n

A third approach I have mentioned is to view the objects as tools co-opted by God in training early Church leaders.\u00a0 That is, the objects may not have actually had the powers attributed to them, but God knew that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery believed<\/em> they had abilities to learn God\u2019s will through those objects, so He used the objects to reveal His will through them as a metaphorical set of training wheels until these early saints gained a better understanding of how to receive revelation directly through the Holy Spirit.\u00a0 Elder Orson Pratt made some statements that support this idea about the Urim and Thummim.\u00a0 For example, in 1871, he is recorded as stating that:<\/p>\n

As Joseph used the Urim and Thummim in the translation of the Book of Mormon, he [Orson] wondered why he did not use it in the translation of the New Testament. Joseph explained to him that the experience he had acquired while translating the Book of Mormon by the use of the Urim and Thummim had rendered him so well acquainted with the Spirit of Revelation and Prophecy, that in the translating of the New Testament he did not need the aid that was necessary in the 1st instance.[20]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If accurate, this would seem to indicate that Joseph learned to receive revelation through the early seer stones but became less dependent on them as he learned how to work directly with the Spirit.<\/p>\n

To a certain degree, Sections 8 and 9 show a similar pattern taking place with Oliver Cowdery.\u00a0 While I have focused in on one aspect of these revelations, the overriding theme is about learning to receive revelation.\u00a0 Section 8, for example leads by introducing that Oliver Cowdery has \u201cthe gift\u201d of \u201cthe spirit of revelation,\u201d and that the Holy Ghost will give him knowledge about \u201cwhatsoever things you shall ask in faith\u201d before it affirms that he has \u201canother gift, which is the gift of Aaron.\u201d[21]<\/a>\u00a0 While the revelation acknowledges that he has the latter gift, the first gift is the one he is encouraged to \u201capply unto,\u201d or work on.[22]<\/a>\u00a0 These instances seem to offer support for the idea that the objects were used to train early Latter-day Saints to receive revelation.<\/p>\n

Thus, while these early revelations that we are studying this week have roots in a culture of magic that is not shared with the modern, western worldview, there are ways to understand the beliefs our early co-religionists.\u00a0 The three that I have mentioned are to view them as training wheels used by God to teach them about revelation, to dismiss them as cultural beliefs of their time that aren\u2019t important today, or to simply accept that seer stones and divining rods really worked.\u00a0 Whatever the case may be, even though I have written this post focusing on the subject of using seer stones and witching rods, I do believe that the more important parts of the revelations we are studying this week are to focus on learning to receive revelation for ourselves and focusing on being \u201csaved in the kingdom of God, which is the greatest of all the gifts of God.\u201d[23]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Further Reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jeffrey G. Cannon, “Oliver Cowdery’s Gift,” in\u00a0Revelations in Context<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Book of Mormon Central, Resources for D&C 6-9<\/a><\/p>\n

Kent Larson, “Lit Come Follow Me: D&C 6-9,”\u00a0Times and Seasons<\/em>, 25 January 2021<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Footnotes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> The Kingdom of God, that is.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> D&C 8:6.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> “Revelation, April 1829\u2013B [D&C 8],” p. 13, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed January 27, 2021, https:\/\/www.josephsmithpapers.org\/paper-summary\/revelation-april-1829-b-dc-8\/2<\/a><\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> “Book of Commandments, 1833,” p. 19, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed January 27, 2021, https:\/\/www.josephsmithpapers.org\/paper-summary\/book-of-commandments-1833\/23<\/a><\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> “Revelation, April 1829\u2013B [D&C 8],” p. 13, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed January 27, 2021, https:\/\/www.josephsmithpapers.org\/paper-summary\/revelation-april-1829-b-dc-8\/2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> D&C 6:10-12.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> “History, 1838\u20131856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805\u201330 August 1834],” p. 15, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed January 27, 2021, https:\/\/www.josephsmithpapers.org\/paper-summary\/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834\/21<\/a><\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> \u201cSeer stone,\u201d Glossary, The Joseph Smith Papers, https:\/\/www.josephsmithpapers.org\/topic\/seer-stone<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Quoted in Richard Lyman Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling<\/em>, 49.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Cited in Dan Vogel, ed. Early Mormon Documents<\/em>, 5 vols (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1996-2003), 4:250.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Tiffany\u2019s Monthly<\/em>, Aug. 1859, 164.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Roberts, B. H.. Studies of the Book of Mormon (p. 274). Signature Books. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Mosiah 8:13-17.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Richard Lyman Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling<\/em>, 50.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling<\/em>, 49-50.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> \u201cBook of Mormon Translation,\u201d Gospel Topics Essays, https:\/\/www.churchofjesuschrist.org\/study\/manual\/gospel-topics-essays\/book-of-mormon-translation?lang=eng\/<\/a> accessed 27 January 2021.<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> See, for example, the section on \u201cWhat Was the Gift of Aaron?\u201d in the Institute manual on the Doctrine and Covenants. https:\/\/www.churchofjesuschrist.org\/manual\/doctrine-and-covenants-student-manual\/section-8-the-spirit-of-revelation?lang=eng<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[18]<\/a> See Jeffrey G. Cannon, \u201cOliver Cowdery\u2019s Gift,\u201d Revelations in Context<\/em>, https:\/\/www.churchofjesuschrist.org\/study\/manual\/revelations-in-context\/oliver-cowderys-gift?lang=eng<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[19]<\/a> D&C 28:11.<\/p>\n

[20]<\/a> Minutes of the School of the Prophets, Salt\u00a0Lake\u00a0City, 14 January 1871, Church\u00a0History\u00a0Library, quoted in Robert\u00a0J.\u00a0Matthews,\u00a0A Plainer Translation: Joseph Smith\u2019s Translation of the Bible, a History and Commentary\u00a0<\/em>(Provo, UT: Brigham\u00a0Young\u00a0University Press, 1985), 40.<\/p>\n

[21]<\/a> D&C 8:1-6.<\/p>\n

[22]<\/a> D&C 8:4.<\/p>\n

[23]<\/a> D&C 6:13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a land of myth and a time of magic, the destiny of a great kingdom[1] rests on the shoulders of a young man.\u00a0 His name \u2026 Joseph. If you couldn\u2019t tell from the text above, my wife and I have been watching the TV series Merlin lately.\u00a0 We\u2019ve rather enjoyed their take on the Arthurian legends.\u00a0 To me, there is something fascinating about stories that are told and retold time and time again for hundreds of years.\u00a0 Now, I inserted Joseph\u2019s name into the opening sequence of that TV series for this post because while the United States isn\u2019t a land lost in myth and legend like Camelot, the early days of our religion were, for many adherents, a time of magic. To be fair to them, they didn\u2019t necessarily see what they were doing as magic\u2014more often they viewed it in religious terms.\u00a0 For example, in this week\u2019s readings for \u201cCome, Follow Me,\u201d we come across an interesting portion of Section 8 that discusses Oliver Cowdery having \u201cthe gift of Aaron.\u201d[2]\u00a0 While the nature of this gift is obscured in the text of the Doctrine and Covenants, the earliest extant version of the revelation states that Oliver had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10397,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2895,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-history","category-come-follow-me-currculum","category-scriptures"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10397"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41364"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41366,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41364\/revisions\/41366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}