THE PROPHET OF THE RESTORATION

 

When I went searching for the truth at the ripe old age of 16, I read a lot about the Church.  By the time I sought to be baptised, there was nothing much the missionaries could teach me. I knew all about Joseph Smith and accepted his prophetic calling without question. My real testimony of him, however, came 30 years later when I was working towards my University degree. I decided I would do a history assignment on the Church. This time I read much more about Joseph, as so much more was available online. What I read, however, were things written by the so called ‘intellectuals.

Joseph was told by Moroni, when only a teenager, that his 'name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds, and tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people' (JHS 1:33). The research for my assignment took me down the path that made me sorrow and shed tears. In the end I had to bend my knees and ask the Lord to help me understand the man Joseph Smith. What happened is not something I expected. I don’t know how it COULD happen but it did. During the course of my prayer, I was ‘shown’ Joseph Smith’s heart. I understood that all he did during his prophetic calling was done out of the goodness that lay there. As this understanding flooded over me I could not contain my tears and came to appreciate the great sacrifices he made in fulfilling his earthly purpose. I came to know and understand him in the spiritual sense and my testimony of him became iron clad.

It is my belief that we need to tread lightly when we delve into the past. I heard one of my University professors say once that history is very much subjective. Even though it is supposed to be cold hard facts, they are recorded from someone's perspective, a human perspective. We of this century cannot fully understand the mentality, the challenges and the pattern of how things worked in times past. Equally hard to understand to the people of other time periods would be our dispensation; the liberties we take, the freedoms we have, the technology which affords us the ease with which we perform our daily tasks, the stresses of modern-day living, our sicknesses, our anxieties, our depressions, our battle with forces of evil.  Some things we consider normal now would be considered unacceptable and inappropriate in yesteryear. Times change and with it the mentality of the people.

Joseph Smith is the root of our Church, the Church being an institution and establishment, not the Gospel. The root of the Gospel is and ever will be our Beloved Christ. He is the foundation on which the Church rests. We are blessed with immensely rich heritage as members of the restored Church. We should never be ashamed or reluctant to voice our witness of this heritage. When we tell non-members about our Church, may we always bear witness of the Prophet of the Restoration. I have heard it said, if a person cannot accept Joseph Smith, they can’t accept the Church. I share here a missionary story of the father of President David O. McKay to prove this point:

"He accepted a call to a mission about 1880. When he began preaching in his native land and bore testimony of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ, he noticed that the people turned away from him. They were bitter in their hearts against anything Mormon, and the name of Joseph Smith seemed to arouse antagonism in their hearts. One day he concluded that the best way to get these people would be to preach just the simple principles, the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, the first principles of the gospel, and not bear testimony of the restoration of the gospel. It first came simply, as a passing thought, but yet it influenced his future work. In a month or so he became oppressed with a gloomy, downcast feeling, and he could not enter into the spirit of his work. He did not really know what was the matter, but his mind became obstructed; his spirit became clogged; he was oppressed and hampered, and that feeling of depression continued until it weighed him down with such heaviness that he went to the Lord and said: 'Unless I can get this feeling removed, I shall have to go home. I cannot continue my work with this feeling'.

It continued for some time after that, then one morning before daylight, following a sleepless night, he decided to retire to a cave, near the ocean, where he knew he would be shut off from the world entirely, and there pour out his soul to God and ask why he was oppressed with this feeling, what he had done, and what he could do to throw it off and continue his work....He entered that place and said: 'Oh, Father, what can I do to have this feeling removed? I must have it lifted or I cannot continue in this work'; and he heard a voice, as distinct as the tone I am now uttering, say: 'Testify that Joseph Smith is a Prophet of God'. Remembering, then what he tacitly had decided six weeks or more before and becoming overwhelmed with the thought, the whole thing came to him in a realization that he was there for a special mission, and that he had not given that special mission the attention which it deserved. Then he cried in his heart, 'Lord, it is enough’……... (Gospel Ideals, pp 21-22)

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Joseph Smith at Saviour's Feet by Liz Lemon Swindle)