Following my previous two blog posts, commenting on Pastor Jeff McCullough’s recent videos about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he has just published his latest video, in which he discusses the person of Joseph Smith and his accomplishments, and which I will be commenting on in this post. He begins his comments as follows:
“Hello Saints! For those of you who don’t know who I am, my name is Jeff. I am a Christian pastor exploring everything I can about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And whether at the end of the day I end up agreeing or disagreeing with various aspects of the LDS Church, I want to make the best effort I can to actually understand, and to fight criticism with curiosity; which is why I want to make sure I have a better understanding of the person of Joseph Smith; which is why I read the book, Rough Stone Rolling. If you are an LDS Church member, I am sure you know what this book is. But it is a biography of Joseph Smith that is written by an actual LDS Church member. So I am going to give you my five impressions of Joseph Smith, and my five main takeaways from Rough Stone Rolling. Let’s dive in:”
He divides his commentary into five sections, the first three of which I am going to skip, and jump to the fourth section, where he actually starts discussing and criticizing Joseph Smith’s prophetic claims and ministry. So at around 5:29 minutes into the video he begins his “fourth” observation as follows:
“Number four: In full honesty, I did finish Rough Stone Rolling, and understanding who Joseph Smith was, with less confidence about his claims that he was a prophet. I struggled with why there were so many different versions of the First Vision, and why there seemed to be some inconsistencies there.”
That is because he didn’t look far enough. There are different versions because Joseph Smith at various times in his life related the account to different people with varying degrees of detail. Sometimes he was very brief, and at another time he supplied more detail. The important point is that there are no contradictions in the different accounts, only more or less detail. There is an interesting “harmony” of the various accounts of the First Vision on the Internet, showing that there are no contradictions between them. It can be seen here. If I observed a car accident, and related the story to ten different people at various times over a period of twenty years, all the accounts are not going to be identical. Some will contain more detail than others. That doesn’t mean that they are contradictory, only that some are more detailed. He then continues as follows:
“I believe that the Bible teaches that true prophets are 100% right all the time in the prophecies that they make; and if any of their prophecies don’t come true, then they should be considered a false prophet. There are a lot of things that didn’t come true; for example the building of the temple in Independence; and I am willing to leave the door open for explanations as to why that may be the case.”
Which “lots of things”? All of his prophecies either have come true, or remain to be fulfilled in the future; and what was said by the Lord about the building of the temple at Independence, Missouri, was not a “prophecy,” it was a commandment. Just because the word “shalt” occurs in there, does not make it a prophecy. “Thou shalt not kill,” “Thou shalt not steal” etc. (Exodus 20:13, 15), are not “prophecies,” but commandments. The context of the passage he is referring to likewise proves that it is a commandment, not a prophecy, or a prediction:
Doctrine and Covenants 84:
3 Which city shall be built, beginning at the temple lot, which is appointed by the finger of the Lord, in the western boundaries of the State of Missouri, and dedicated by the hand of Joseph Smith, Jun., and others with whom the Lord was well pleased.
4 Verily this is the word of the Lord, that the city New Jerusalem shall be built by the gathering of the saints, beginning at this place, even the place of the temple, which temple shall be reared in this generation.
That is a commandment to build the city and the temple, not a “prophecy” that it will be. The Saints at that time were not sufficiently faithful, and therefore were not able to fulfill the commandment at that time, and therefore it was postponed for another time:
Doctrine and Covenants 105:
9 Therefore, in consequence of the transgressions of my people, it is expedient in me that mine elders should wait for a little season for the redemption of Zion.
But it was not a “prophecy” that it should have “failed”. A similar event occurs in the history of ancient Israel:
Numbers 13:
1 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
2 Send thou men, that they may search the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel: of every tribe of their fathers shall ye send a man, every one a ruler among them.
The Lord promised the Israelites at that time that he would give them the promised land. But because of their unfaithfulness, that particular generation did not receive the promised blessing (Num. 14:22–24), but it was given to their descendants many years later (Num. 14:33; 32:13). A similar thing happened to the Latter-day Saints in the events described above. It was not a “prophecy” that it should have failed. It was a promised blessing which they failed to realize, as with the Israelites in Num. 14:22–24. I found a good resource on the prophecies of Joseph Smith in an article on Wikipedia which can be seen here. He should consult these before making false accusations about Joseph’s supposed “failed” prophecies. If he is truly honest and sincere in his claim to want to be an impartial observer, in his next video he should apologize to Latter-day Saints for making false statements about Joseph Smith’s supposed “failed” prophecies. Then he continues:
“But even beyond that, his claim to be able to translate scriptures in this role of this prophetic voice, not just with the Book of Mormon, and the methods that he used with the seer stone, and some of these other things; but even what occurred with the Book of Abraham; and how we are able to translate the source material for the Book of Abraham; and it is not consistent with what he translated. I know that the Church has an explanation for this, but if I am going to be honest from a pastor’s perspective, this seems to be a lot of calisthenics that are being done to explain something that seemed very clearly contradictory to what he claimed about himself.”
Unbelievers have always existed in every age and in every dispensation; that is nothing new. But it has always been their loss, not anybody else’s. Paul said it best: “But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness” (1 Cor. 1:23). Likewise we teach that Joseph Smith was a great prophet of the Lord, who translated scripture by the “gift and power of God”—which to the unbelievers is a “stumbling block” and “foolishness”. But that is okay. It is their loss, not ours. They will discover their error on judgment day, when it will be too late to do anything about it—unless they repent of course, before it is too late. He then continues:
“Most of all, I think one of the reasons why I struggle with his claim of being a prophet, because it seems like a lot of the things that he taught contradicts what the Bible teaches: that God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man. I believe that the Bible teaches that God is not a man, that God is God, and that we were created in his image, and that he has always existed as God, eternities past through eternities future; and that has never changed, and that will never change. So this idea that God has been progressing himself, and becoming more of God, is not what I believe the Bible teaches; and makes you really question Joseph Smith’s claim to be a prophet.”
That goes into a lot of deep theology, which would be a bit of a waste of time to try and engage with him. Suffice it to say that I have no problems with Joseph Smith’s teachings on those subjects, and I do not believe they contradict the Bible in any way. He continues:
“One other line that stuck out to me out of the King Follett Sermon, was God himself finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself. So in other words, this is saying that we who are humans can progress into a place of Godhood.”
Same thing here. Suffice it to say that Joseph Smith was not the first to come up with the idea that men can become gods; the early Christians, and all the Early Church Fathers came up with that idea first, long before Joseph Smith. See here for lots of quotes and examples. He continues:
“Now I know that the LDS Church is trying to make sense of these things, and explain them, because they seem to not totally line up with what the Book of Mormon teaches. But to me, they all point to the same question that I have about whether or not Joseph Smith actually was a prophet.”
The prophetic appointment and calling of Joseph Smith can only be known by the witness of the Spirit; through a sincere, honest, impartial, and prayerful study of his revelations, notably the Book of Mormon; without prejudice, and with a sincere desire to know the truth—and with a commitment to follow it through when that truth is revealed. That is how claims of all true prophets can be known. It cannot be known in any other way. He continues:
“And last but not least, my fifth takeaway from Rough Stone Rowling is that it seems that Joseph Smith was a little bit more rigid about his convictions about the LDS Church, and how all of that compares to the rest of Christianity; that all other Christian creeds were an abomination; and that seemed very clear to me the rigidity of those things, the rigidity of that belief in the exclusiveness of the LDS Church having the right belief. Whereas now I get a lot of messages from the LDS Church that seems to say, No, we are actually very similar in a lot of ways, and we are actually more similar than we are different.”
That is incorrect and false on both accounts. He is getting all of that nonsense from anti-Mormon sources, not from legitimate, authoritative Church sources. Joseph Smith was not “rigidly against” other Christian churches, or against historic Christianity in general. He had good things to say about them. Here are a couple of direct quotes from him on that subject:
“The inquiry is frequently made of me. ‘Wherein do you differ from others in your religious views?’ In reality and essence we do not differ so far in our religious views, but that we could all drink into one principle of love. One of the grand fundamental principles of ‘Mormonism’ is to receive truth, let it come from whence it may.” (Teachings, p. 313)
“Have the Presbyterians any truth? Yes. Have the Baptists, Methodists, etc., any truths? Yes. They all have a little truth mixed with error. We should gather all the good and true principles in the world and treasure them up, or we shall not come out true ‘Mormons’.” (Teachings, p. 316)
And the Church that he established is today no more or less conciliatory towards other Christian churches than Joseph Smith was. The Church today has not and does not compromise its “exclusivity” one little bit. It still maintains to be God’s one and only true Church on earth, possessing all the priesthood, prophetic, and Apostolic keys and authority of the original Church—while at the same time respecting many of the beliefs, teachings, traditions, and practises of historical Christianity—as did Joseph Smith. Nothing has changed from that point of view. And as far as the “creeds” are concerned, the Lord made those remarks to Joseph Smith in connection with the revivalist Protestant churches that Joseph Smith had encountered in the experience that he describes, which led him to ask the God which church he should join. It is specifically their “creeds” that were being condemned by the Lord, not the entire creeds of historical Christendom. Then he continues:
“That is a takeaway that I had from Joseph Smith, that really does make me scratch my head, and view the posture and some of the things that are being stated from the LDS Church in a modern day, that seems to be a little bit more open-handed about the cooperation that can take place between the LDS Church and the rest of Christianity.”
He didn’t get those ideas from the biography of Joseph Smith, Rough Stone Rolling, nor from official Church sources. He has picked them up from anti-Mormon sources, which he does not now want to tell us about. In the days of Joseph Smith, both him as well as the fledgling Church that he had established were under constant attack by the traditional Protestant churches of his day, which allowed no room for reconciliation or “cooperation” between them. What has changed since then is that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today has become far more numerous in its membership, and therefor more influential, and a force to be reckoned with, than it was in his day. It is now the fourth largest church in the United States. That obliges other Christian churches to treat it with more respect than they used to do, which in turn makes a greater cooperation between them possible. As an example, see this video of a recent speech given by Elder David A. Bednar at an event hosted by the National Press Club (NPC) on the 26th of May 2022. So what has really changed is not us, but them. He has got it all backwards. The restored Church of Jesus Christ hasn’t changed, or its attitude towards other churches hasn’t changed; they have changed, or their attitude towards us have changed; which makes a greater cooperation between us possible. He continues:
“He seemed like a man of very strong convictions, and he was willing to die for these things. So that main takeaway is something that I am trying to reconcile, even as I interact with current LDS Church members, and how they seem to be more open-handed than Joseph Smith was.”
See above. He continues:
“There were a lot of takeaways I am not talking about, because I want to make other videos about it, which is why you need to like this video, and subscribe and come back for more. …”
So far I haven’t been terribly impressed. He seems to be too ready to dismiss the claims of Joseph Smith based on biased, false, and tendentious claims and accusations of anti-Mormons, and Joseph’s critics, which seems to cast doubt on his claims of fairness and impartiality. He certainly owes Latter-day Saints an apology for falsely accusing Joseph Smith of “failed prophecies,” or of giving contradictory accounts of the “First Vision” etc. The ultimate witness of Joseph Smith’s prophetic claims, however, is the Book of Mormon, which he seems to be scared to death of reading and comprehensively commenting on!
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