In Daughters in My Kingdom, an LDS Church publication about the history of Relief Society, it talks about the founding of Relief Society and about Joseph Smith teaching the sisters it says, "The Prophet's teachings in this setting guided the work of the Relief Society sisters and the priesthood leaders who served them. Those teachings continue to influence the work of the Church today." (Daughters in My Kingdom, p. 17) The purpose of this part is to analyze the truthfulness of this claim and see just how much Joseph Smith's teachings really influence us today.
Gifts of the Spirit
We saw in Part 2 Joseph Smith teaching about the gifts of the Spirit coming straight from 1 Corinthians 12, and then expounding on it teaching all believers would manifest one or more of these gifts and the women were included. And the gifts were tongues, the interpretation of tongues, prophesy, knowledge, wisdom, healing, and being healed. But what are we taught in General Conference about spiritual gifts?
In "Life's Lessons Learned" by Joseph Wirthlin, he talks briefly in passing about the gifts of the Spirit, "We all possess spiritual gifts. Some are
blessed with the gift of faith, others the gift of healing. In the body
of the Church, all of the spiritual gifts are present. In my case,
perhaps one of the spiritual gifts for which I am most grateful is that I
have been blessed with an obedient spirit. When I heard wise counsel
from my parents or Church leaders, I listened and tried to make it part
of my thoughts and actions.
"Brethren of the priesthood, I urge you to cultivate the gift of an obedient spirit."An obedient spirit has never been referenced in the scriptures as a spiritual gift. Obedience is a personal choice, and more of a character attribute than it is a gift of the Spirit.
In his talk "Eyes to See and Ears to Hear" Kim Clark talks about spiritual gifts and even the day of Pentecost in the New Testament. "Just before His suffering in Gethsemane
and on Calvary, Jesus made His disciples this remarkable promise: 'He
that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater
works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.'
"Jesus
fulfilled that promise: beginning with the day of Pentecost, the
disciples were blessed with the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost. Through their faith in Christ, repentance, and obedience, the Holy
Ghost became their companion, changed their hearts, and blessed them
with an abiding witness of the truth.
"These
gifts and blessings strengthened the Lord’s disciples. Although the
times they lived in were dangerous and confusing, they received the
spiritual gift of eyes to see and ears to hear." In actuality the day of Pentecost was accompanied by much more than "eyes to see and ears to hear." It was an outpouring of the Spirit in which the apostles saw visions, and spoke in tongues and those listening through the interpretation of tongues each heard them in their own language. Yes, in one sense this can be called "eyes to see and ears to hear" as the things they saw and heard were spiritual and only able to be seen and heard if one had the necessary gifts of the Spirit to do so. As he continues it is obvious he doesn't mean for us to think we can receive the same visions and tongues and the interpretations, no he only thinks, "We need eyes to see more clearly the Savior working in our lives and ears to hear His voice more deeply in our hearts." And while I agree with this statement I don't consider it to be the same in any way as the gifts of the Spirit and certainly not on par with or greater than the works of Christ as He promised His apostles.Really it's hard to find many sources in modern teachings about spiritual gifts. Some talks mention them in passing saying to seek them, but really not much if anything about what they are, or how to use them, or what each one should be used for. The spiritual gifts found in the scriptures is just not expounded on because it is such a rare occurrence in the LDS Church for someone to actually have any of them, so if we talked about them and brought them to attention we would have to face the reality these gifts Christ promised to those who believe in Him are for the most part absent among us. I would think that within each ward there would be at least one holding each gift so we could benefit one from another, but in all the several wards I've been in I have never heard of even one person who had and openly exercised their gift to benefit the ward. Healing blessings I would receive would really be prayers for the doctor to do a good job.
Keys and Guarding Against Corruption in the Church
To quickly recap, Joseph Smith taught the sisters that both the Relief Society and the Church had the keys and that there were aspiring elders who had already led to corruption within the Church and warned them to guard against such things within their Society. While a search for Spiritual Gifts conference talks generates about two and a half pages of results, a search for keys generates ten pages of talk titles to sort through.
Spencer Kimball in his talk, "We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet" declared the comfort we should receive from this quote from Wilford Woodruff, "I say to Israel, the Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as president of this Church to lead you astray. It is not in the program. It is not in the mind of God. If I were to attempt that the Lord would remove me out of my place, and so he will any other man who attempts to lead the children of men astray from his oracles of God and from their duty." So not only is there no possibility of corruption but once someone gains the position of leading the Church they lose their agency and are incapable of leading the Church astray. Many other bloggers have written about this topic so I will recommend you to them.
Searching for general conference talks about corruption results in talks referencing the evils and corruption that is in the world, never within the church or even warning to watch for it. It simply isn't considered a possibility, or at least not one they want us to be aware of. But they are more than happy to preach about the keys, and the fact that they are the only ones who have them.
Seeking the Presence of God
Joseph Smith taught the sisters that as they would be faithful they would receive angels, Christ and ultimately come to the presence of the Father all in this life. It was clear he was talking about now and not some hypothetical or distant future. Jörg Klebingat in his talk, "Approaching the Throne of God with Confidence" (I actually had hope reading the title.) expounds much more on how to have confidence than he does about approaching the throne of God. In fact the only time he really talks about being in the presence of Christ or God is as a hypothetical question in his introduction and in his testimony at the end saying, "I testify of a loving Savior who is anxious for your 'confidence [to] wax strong in the presence of God.'" Instead the body of his talk was about things like taking spiritual responsibility, exercise and eating right, embracing obedience, getting good at repenting and forgiving, and accepting trials as a part of mortality. All of these things are great, but he neglected to tell us how they will aid us in approaching the throne of God, aside from having more confidence. All other references I found were either about being in God's presence after the resurrection, or leaving it because of the Fall of Adam. We no longer teach it as a possibility within this life.
So all these topics taught by Joseph Smith are largely ignored, set aside, or outright contradicted in the LDS Church's current teachings. I could have done more research to collect more sources, but I found no joy, or light in the things I found and prefer going back to sources of light. So Part 4 will resume teachings of Joseph Smith to the Relief Society in Navoo.
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