Lesson
6
"I Will
Tell You in Your Mind and in Your Heart, by the Holy Ghost"
Doctrine and Covenants
6; 8; 9;11
by Philip A. Allred
"Conduit Revelation"
Several years ago I became acquainted with another view of
revelation that was very different than what I was used to as
a Latter-day Saint. I was attending a well-known theological
institution and felt very excited about a particular course
entitled "Revelation." I eagerly anticipated comparing
notes, so to speak, with other Christians on such a valuable
and significant gospel subject.
The professor began the first day by illustrating the various
forms that God's revelation takes on the chalkboard. He drew
a stick-figure person and proceeded to draw the sun and some
clouds and a few trees, each with an arrow directed to the person.
He then drew many other nature items, including another stick-figure
person. Each of these had arrows pointed to the first person.
The professor noted that everything God has created is imbued
with Godly grace. This grace in every thing is being communicated
to each person and as such constitutes the "revelation"
of God's mystery.
I was thinking that this was not so different than my own LDS
understanding until the professor drew a triangle in the sky
above the other figures, labeling this as God, and then astoundingly
drew a line connecting God to the stickperson. He labeled this
as "conduit revelation" and immediately and decisively
marked an X right through it declaring that direct communication
between God and people does not exist.
I was shocked and dismayed. When I attempted to present biblical
instances of what I thought were personal revelations, these
were deflected neatly by the assertion that these were simply
figurative illustrations – not literal history.
At the time I was the deacons quorum teacher. I decided to
try this revelation idea out on my deacons and see what these
12-13 year old Mormons knew about revelation. I illustrated
the figures just as my professor had done and waited for their
response. It was quick and indignant. They were all sure that
my professor had it wrong.
When I pressed them about why, they immediately gave Joseph
Smith's first vision as evidence to the contrary. At this point
I felt impressed to pursue this subject a little further with
one young man. I asked him why he thought that my professor
refuting direct communication from God was wrong. He hesitated
and I asked again. He responded that his mother talked often
of receiving answers to her prayers. I felt to push a little
more. I asked him why he
knew differently.
He hesitated again and so I asked again-why do you know that there is "conduit revelation?"
Then this wonderful and suddenly humble young man sat a little
straighter and said, "Because He has answered me."
What a thrill to hear a 13-year-old deacon state that all the
book-learning of my venerable professor was false because he
himself knew that the Lord listens to and answers our personal
prayers from his own experience. So too, can I.
Oliver's Own Witness
It is in much this same way
that Oliver Cowdery received confirmation concerning his own
witness of the Lord's revelation. He was told to "cast
your mind back upon the night that you cried unto me in your
heart, that you might know concerning the truth of these things"
(D&C 6:22).
Earlier in the winter of 1828-29, Oliver had been boarding
at the Joseph Smith Sr. home as a New York schoolteacher. He taught the Prophet's younger
brothers and sisters and there heard much about Joseph's strange
and wonderful spiritual experiences. Wanting to know for himself
about the validity of such things, Oliver "called upon
the Lord to know if these things were so" when "the
Lord manifested to him that they were true" (History
of the Church, 1:35).
One of the histories that Joseph Smith kept (1832) also states
that the "Lord appeared unto a young man by the name of
Oliver Cowdery and shewed unto him the plates in a vision and
also the truth of the work" (Personal
Writings of Joseph Smith, 8; cited in Stephen Robinson
and H. Dean Garrett's A Commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants, Vol. 1;
52). Oliver decided to travel to meet the Prophet Joseph Smith
with an eye to become a participant in the work.
It was during the translation of the plates with Oliver serving
as scribe that Section 6 was received through the Urim and Thummim.
Oliver had received "peace" to his mind (D&C 6:23)
about Joseph's work and had "received instructions of [the
Lord's] Spirit" (6:14) and had the Lord "enlighten
[his] mind" (6:15). It was these direct revelatory events
that Oliver was told to remember.
Shortly after Section 6 was received, Oliver also "informed
his close friend David Whitmer of the remarkable witness he
had received. According to Whitmer, Oliver 'wrote me that Joseph
has told him [Oliver's] secret thoughts, and all he had meditated
about going to see him, which no man on earth knew, as he supposed,
but himself, and so he stopped [at Harmony] to write for Joseph’”
(Andrew Jenson, ed. "The Three Witnesses," The
Historical Record, May 1887; Robinson &
Garrett, A Commentary,
56).
Heart and Mind Defined
The Lord's use of the phrase
"peace to your mind" is intriguing. This is reminiscent
of Enos in the Book of Mormon. He had prayed into the night
supplicating the Lord concerning his soul when "there came
a voice unto me, saying: Enos, thy sins are forgiven thee, and
thou shalt be blessed. And I, Enos, knew that God could not
lie; wherefore, my guilt was swept away" (Enos 1:5-6).
What is of further note here is that Enos kept praying, this
time for his Nephite brethren's welfare. "While I was thus
struggling in the spirit, behold, the voice of the Lord came
into my mind again" (Enos 1:10). What Enos
helpfully explains is that he was receiving the Lord's communication
in his mind, in the spiritual voice, if you will, rather than
audibly through his ears.
Joseph Smith indicated that this would be the case when he
wrote, "A person may profit by noticing the first intimation
of the spirit of revelation; for instance when you feel
pure intelligence into you, it may give you sudden strokes of ideas, so that by noticing
it, you may find it fulfilled the same day or soon; (i.e.) those
things that were presented
unto your minds by the Spirit of God, will come
to pass" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 151).
Elder Boyd K. Packer recently noted, "The voice of the
Spirit is a still, small voice-a voice that is felt rather than
heard. It is a spiritual voice that comes into
the mind as a thought into your heart" (Ensign,
May 2000, p. 9). What this means here is that this voice is
internal, not external.
Elder Richard G. Scott helps to define this in what I consider
a landmark address to the Church Educational System in August
of 1998:
