A New Witness for God: History of the Mormon Church and the Book of Mormon. B. H. Roberts

art thou, Simon Barjona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say unto thee, thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my church," Catholics say that "the words of Christ to Peter, spoken in the vulgar language of the Jews * * * were the same as if he had said in English: "Thou art a rock, and upon this rock will I build my church," so that by plain course of the words, Peter is here declared to be the rock upon which the church was to be built, Christ himself being both the principal foundation and founder of the same."²² But this interpretation strikes wide of the real truth. To say the least it is a far-fetched assumption to hold that Jesus when He addressed Peter on this occasion had any reference to the name He had given him on a former occasion, which, by interpretation, meant a stone. If the Master meant to announce his intention to build his church on Peter, one cannot refrain from asking why he did not explicitly say so? The passage would then doubtless have read: "I say unto thee, Peter, that thou art a stone, and upon thee I will build my church." Unfortunately for the Catholic contention such is not the reading, and it is only by juggling with the words that such a meaning can be read into the passage. The subject under consideration was not Peter, but the principle upon which he had learned that Jesus was the Son of God—revelation, and on that principle, and not on Peter, the Lord promised to build his church.

      But I said the whole genius of the gospel contemplates the continuation of revelation—a statement incumbent upon me to prove. We have seen that the Lord promised to build his church upon revelation. It is the very life and light of it. The means by which it preserves its correspondence with heaven, and learns the will of God under the constantly varying conditions through which it is called to pass.

      The means by which revelation may be communicated to the church or to man are varied. Revelation may be given by direct communication with God, as in the case when the Lord walked with Enoch,²³ or talked face to face with Moses, as a man speaks to his friend.²⁴ Or it may be by the ministrations of angels, of which we have numerous instances, both in the Old and New Testaments; but more generally the communication of God's will to man is through the medium of the Holy Ghost.

      No one can doubt that prophecy is based upon revelation. No man can truthfully predict the future save God reveals it to him. "Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man," writes Peter, "but holy men of God spake as they were moved upon by the Holy Ghost."²⁵ Again, in further proof that the Holy Ghost is the means of revelation and the source of prophecy—"When the Spirit of Truth is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear that he shall speak; and he will show you things to come."²⁶ This Jesus said of the Holy Ghost. If anything were lacking to prove that the Holy Ghost is a medium of revelation, the very spirit of prophecy, it would be found in the following: "When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me."²⁷ To this Paul agrees: "No man speaking by the Spirit of God, calleth Jesus accursed, and no man can say that Jesus is the Christ but by the Holy Ghost."²⁸ It is the Holy Ghost, then, that testifies that Jesus is the Christ. Now mark what follows: An angel appeared to John, the Apostle, on Patmos, "and," says John, "I fell at his feet to worship him, and he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: Worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy."²⁹ This is the sum of my argument: The Holy Ghost testifies that Jesus is the Christ, and that "testimony of Jesus" is the spirit of prophecy; and since prophecy must of necessity be based on revelation, the "testimony of Jesus"—the Holy Ghost must also be the spirit of revelation.

      When Peter on the day of Pentecost preached the famous sermon by which three thousand souls were converted, he made an unqualified promise of the Holy Ghost unto all who would obey the gospel. Replying to the cry of the multitude, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" he said: "Repent and be baptized every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call."³⁰ This simply means that the Holy Ghost is promised to all who will obey the gospel. It was promised to those that were listening to the apostle, to their children, to all that were afar off, not only as to distance, but as to time; to those a hundred years off, five hundred, or five thousand years off; "even to as many as the Lord our God shall call"—that is, called to obedience to the gospel. It is a promise that reaches our own generation as well as the first generation of the Christian era.

      We, then, are promised the Holy Ghost, the spirit of prophecy and of revelation; and indeed we are instructed by the Master himself that except we are born of the Spirit, that is, receive the Holy Ghost, we cannot enter into the kingdom of God.³¹ So clearly is receiving the Holy Ghost a part of the plan of salvation, that, so far as I know, there is not a Christian sect or church, but teaches the necessity and right and duty of the Christian to possess it. But oh, strange inconsistency of apostate Christendom! While teaching that men must be baptized with the Holy Ghost, and must possess it, and walk in the light thereof, they deny to it the chiefest of its powers—revelation and prophecy! Modern Christian teachers have dared, without the warrant of divine authority, to divide the manifestations of the Holy Ghost into "ordinary" and "extraordinary" powers; and then have had the further presumption to tell us that the "ordinary" powers of the Spirit, such as love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance, are to remain with men; but the "extraordinary" powers, such as revelation, prophecy, healing the sick, discernment of spirits, speaking in tongues, interpretation of tongues, etc., these are to be discontinued! Unhesitatingly I pronounce such unwarranted assumption blasphemous!

      Instead of trying to excuse the absence among them of the mighty powers of the Holy Ghost as manifested anciently in revelation and prophecy, by falsely saying it was the design of Almighty God that the Holy Ghost should discontinue the exercise of these "extraordinary" powers, the proper thing for Christendom to do would be to humble itself in the dust, and confess that it has strayed from God's ordinances, transgressed his laws, changed his ordinances, broken the covenant of the gospel, blasphemously denied the powers of the Holy Ghost, because in their apostate state they received not the manifestations thereof. How absurd to contend that part of the powers of the Holy Ghost are to be exercised and not the others! What a denying and splitting up of the powers of God are here! One class of his powers to be exercised in one age, but to lie dormant in another, and man presuming to tell which are necessary to be active and which dormant!

      So far from leading us to believe in the discontinuance of the "extraordinary powers" of the Holy Ghost in the last days, the teachings of scripture on the contrary lead us to expect an increase of them. Peter in the sermon already referred to above, says, quoting the prophet Joel: "And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams: and on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out of my spirit and they shall prophesy; and I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood and fire and vapor of smoke: The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the great and notable day of the Lord come: and it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."³²

      I know that the general understanding among Christians is that this prophecy was fulfilled upon the occasion of the Holy Ghost being poured out upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost; because, in replying to the accusation of the multitude that the apostles who were speaking in tongues were drunk, Peter said: "These are not drunken as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But this is that which was spoken by the Prophet Joel." Then follows the quotation already given. But that Peter meant by this that the prophecy of Joel was completely fulfilled is out of all harmony with the facts of the case. First, Joel's prophecy relates to "the last days"—not to the days in which Peter was living and speaking; second, according to Joel's prophecy, the Spirit of God was to be poured out upon "all flesh;" on the occasion of its outpouring on the day of Pentecost, it was confined to twelve men; third, both the "sons and daughters" of the people are to prophesy, according to Joel's prediction; young men are to see visions; old men to dream dreams;