Doctrine • Stewardship • Authority
Who Receives Revelation for Whom
The line of stewardship in the Church, and where a book like mine actually sits
Every corporation has an organizational chart. The CEO sits at the top. Below him are the chief financial officer, the chief operating officer, a row of vice presidents. Below them are the department heads. Production, accounting, sales, shipping. Below them, everyone else. It is a pyramid with a single point at the top and a wide base at the bottom, and in a large company it is enormous.
People look at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and see the same picture.
At the top, the prophet. The First Presidency, which is the prophet and his two counselors. Then the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Then the Quorums of the Seventy. Then regional and local leadership. A stake president presides over somewhere between five and ten wards. Each ward has a bishop and a bishopric. Under the bishopric are the elders quorum presidency and the Relief Society presidency. Under them are ministering brothers and ministering sisters. And then families, where the father presides as head of the family working alongside his wife.
Two pyramids. They look identical on paper.
They are not remotely the same thing, and the differences are the entire subject of this article.
What the Chart Is Standing On
The difference between those two pyramids is not in the boxes. It is underneath them.
A corporate chart stands on the company. Take away the revenue and the chart is a sheet of paper. Every bit of authority on it was borrowed from the enterprise and it disappears when the enterprise does.
There is a direction to it as well. In a corporation everything flows down. Authority, direction, permission, and money all begin at the top and thin out as they descend, and the people at the bottom work with whatever is left by the time it reaches them.
The chart in the Church stands on a person.
"For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." (1 Corinthians 3:11)
Paul is not being poetic there. He says no man can lay any other foundation, which means the one that exists was not laid by a man at all.
"And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation." (Helaman 5:12)
Paul says something else about that foundation, and it is worth reading carefully because it is easy to get backwards.
"And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone." (Ephesians 2:20)
The apostles and prophets are foundational. Paul says it plainly and I am not going to soften it. But look at what a chief cornerstone actually was in ancient building. It was the first stone set. Every other stone in the foundation was positioned, squared, and leveled by reference to it, and every course above the foundation inherited that alignment. Get the cornerstone right and the building is true all the way to the top. Get it wrong and nothing above it can be made right.
So the apostles and prophets are the foundation of the Church, and Christ is the stone that determines where each of them sits. They are foundational because they are set to Him.
That is the load path of the entire structure, and it is not a decorative sentiment to open a talk with. A prophet can do what he does because Christ authorizes it. A bishop can do what he does because the keys he holds trace back through that line to Him. Take the cornerstone away and there is nothing to square any of it against, no matter how many levels the chart has.
It also means the man at the top is not the source of anything. He is the one carrying the most weight, and he is carrying it on a foundation he did not lay.
And it means the flow runs the other direction. Nothing originates at the apex and works its way down to the rest of us. It begins at the foundation and rises through every level of the structure, and the prophet receives it by the same means a father in his own home receives it.
Everything below is a description of how that weight gets distributed.
Nobody Can Be Fired
In a corporation, everyone does what the person above them says. If they don't, they get fired, or demoted, or their pay gets cut. That leverage is what makes the chart work.
In the Church there is none of that. Nobody gets fired. There is no pay to cut. The authority on that chart is not the authority to compel anyone to do anything.
I served in a stake high council once when the stake presidency was being reorganized. A General Authority came and interviewed every member of the high council and every bishopric in the stake, looking for the next stake president. Our outgoing stake president mentioned afterward, with some humor, that a few people had written letters in advance to make sure they got interviewed.
I have laughed about that for years, because anybody who writes a letter asking to be interviewed for stake president does not understand the calling.
It is not a corporate job. There are no benefits. There is no pay. You cannot fire anyone. You deal with the hardest cases in the entire stake, and you do it on top of a full-time job and your own family. The men who want the position want the recognition they imagine comes with it, and the recognition is not there.
The whole structure runs on service. The man at the top of it serves the most people. General Authorities receive a modest living allowance and very few people in the Church are paid at all. Men called to these positions have generally left successful careers behind, and some of them walked away from a great deal of money to do it. That is close to the opposite of the priestcraft and the prosperity preaching of our day, where the size of the following determines the size of the house.
The Checks and Balances Are Different Too
Corporations have checks and balances. I am not saying otherwise. But almost all of them run through one thing, which is the balance sheet. A leader is judged by the numbers, and when the numbers go bad the leader goes.
The Church has nothing like that. Nobody's standing depends on income or on production. Membership rests on a person's desires, his faith, and his obedience to the commandments. A man is not removed from a calling because a ward's numbers dropped.
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That difference matters more than people think, because it changes what the chart is actually for. In a corporation the chart is a command structure. In the Church it is a map of stewardship.
What Each Steward Can Actually Receive
Here is the part almost nobody lays out plainly.
Every position on that chart carries a boundary. Everyone receives revelation, and everyone receives it inside a boundary, and nobody receives it for people outside their own.
The prophets and apostles. Only they receive revelation for the whole Church. The apostles are assigned across the world. They see what is happening in their areas, they see what needs to be done, and they bring recommendations back. The prophet decides which ones move forward and in what order, because there are a dozen regions with serious problems and the Church cannot do everything at once. There has to be a sequence, and he is the one who determines it.
"But, behold, verily, verily, I say unto thee, no one shall be appointed to receive commandments and revelations in this church excepting my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., for he receiveth them even as Moses." (Doctrine and Covenants 28:2)
A stake president. He can receive revelation for anyone in his stake. He cannot receive it for anyone outside it. His primary responsibility is Melchizedek Priesthood work across the stake, and he handles the hardest matters that arise in it. Abuse, neglect, adultery. It is not pleasant work and I am not going to tell stories about it, because there are too many of them.
A bishop. He can receive revelation for anyone in his ward, and for nobody in any other ward. He handles matters of sin and transgression, and he works with the youth, who need close spiritual guidance at a point in life when their decisions carry a long way.
An elders quorum president and a Relief Society president. They can receive revelation for anyone in the ward on anything that is not sin related. Family matters, counseling, finances, helping somebody move, and the whole range of things that come up in a person's life.
This last one is a relatively recent change. Bishops used to carry all of it, and it became too much for one man and too much time. Most of those responsibilities were moved to the quorum and Relief Society presidencies, and it has been an enormous relief to bishops.
I have served in a bishopric and I have served as an elders quorum president, and I watched that transition happen. I have had that revelation come. It is an amazing thing to have something pour into your soul, to recognize who it is for and what it is about, and to know where it came from.
A ministering brother or sister. They can receive revelation for the people assigned to them. And what comes is never a demand. It is never you have to do this. It is here is what I have felt for you and here is what I would recommend. A ministering couple works it out together.
A father. I can receive revelation for my family. Powerful, specific, unmistakable revelation. I cannot receive it for Bob's family. Not unless I have an assignment over Bob, and if I do, it comes as a recommendation and not as a command.
Levels of stewardship. Levels of responsibility. Levels of authority. Levels of revelation. All of them intertwined, and every one of them bounded.
A bishop cannot receive revelation for something the stake president is responsible for. Only the stake president can do that, and only inside his stake. That is not a limitation anyone resents. It is what makes the whole thing trustworthy.
So Where Does a Book Fit?
I have been accused many times, by a number of people, that what I have written about Donald Trump appearing as a prophesied servant in scripture falls outside my stewardship.
In one sense they would be right. If I were going around saying here is what is going to happen and here is what you need to do about it, or here is how the Church needs to change, or here are the new regulations we should be following, then they would be exactly right and I would be far outside my bounds.
I am not doing any of that.
I have no authority over a single person reading this. Nobody is required to believe anything I have written. Nobody is required to read it. I have published a book as my opinion, labeled as my opinion, about what I found when I read Isaiah, Revelation, the Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine and Covenants. You are free to weigh it and free to throw it out.
Gifts Are Not Offices
There is a category confusion underneath most of this argument, and clearing it up settles the question.
The Church teaches that spiritual gifts are distributed across the whole membership.
"For all have not every gift given unto them; for there are many gifts, and to every man is given a gift by the Spirit of God. To some is given one, and to some is given another, that all may be profited thereby." (Doctrine and Covenants 46:11-12)
There are far more gifts than the ones that get listed. Compassion. Charity. Faith. The gift of healing and the gift to be healed. Tongues. Prophecy. Thousands of them, most never written down anywhere, and I am confident that whoever is reading this has experienced at least one.
I claim the gift of prophecy has been given to me. I want to say plainly what that does and does not mean.
"...the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." (Revelation 19:10)
The gift of prophecy is not the office of prophet. It carries no keys, no calling, and no authority over anyone. A gift lets a person see something and say it. An office lets a man direct the people under his stewardship. Those are two different things, and conflating them is where the whole argument goes wrong.
I have no office. I have never claimed one and I never will.
Nobody Announces Himself
There have been many people over the years who have claimed to be the Davidic servant, or the one mighty and strong, or some other figure out of prophecy.
Here is a simple rule that will save you a great deal of time. Anyone who announces himself can be dismissed on the spot. No discussion, no wondering, no pondering. It is a law in the gospel that God does the announcing, and a man who announces himself has disqualified himself by the act of announcing.
"Again I say unto you, that it shall not be given to any one to go forth to preach my gospel, or to build up my church, except he be ordained by some one who has authority, and it is known to the church that he has authority and has been regularly ordained by the heads of the church." (Doctrine and Covenants 42:11)
Known to the Church. Not self-declared.
That rule applies to me exactly as much as it applies to anyone else. I am not proclaiming myself a servant. I have never seen an angel. I have never had a vision. I have never had a near death experience. I have never had a messenger stand in my room and hand me an assignment for the world. What I have had are promptings, over four years, in the ordinary way the Spirit works with ordinary people. I have written about where that came from and how it started.
I have lost count of the people who have told me they were commanded to bring something to the world. I am not going to pretend I have never said something in that neighborhood, because I have. I was told to publish this, and I have said so plainly here and in the book.
So is there a difference, or am I doing the same thing they are?
Here is where I think the line falls. Being told to say something is ordinary. Every missionary who knocks on a door was sent. Every member who feels prompted to bear testimony in a meeting felt something first. Telling people what you were shown has never been a claim of authority, and if it were, half the Church would be out of bounds every fast Sunday.
The difference is in what comes after the telling. The men I am describing do not stop there. They announce who they are. They tell you what you are required to accept. They tell the Church what it needs to change.
I have not done any of those three things and I do not intend to. I hold no office. I am not telling anybody what to do. No one is required to believe a word of this, and no one is required to read it.
If I ever cross into any of the three, stop reading me. You would be right to.
Eldad and Medad
There is a passage in Numbers that settles where the line falls, and it has been used against me and for me in the same week.
"But there remained two of the men in the camp, the name of the one was Eldad, and the name of the other Medad: and the spirit rested upon them; and they were of them that were written, but went not out unto the tabernacle: and they prophesied in the camp. And there ran a young man, and told Moses, and said, Eldad and Medad do prophesy in the camp. And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of Moses, one of his young men, answered and said, My lord Moses, forbid them. And Moses said unto him, Enviest thou for my sake? would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!" (Numbers 11:26-29)
Two men who were not in the tabernacle. Two men outside the circle of authority, prophesying in the camp.
Joshua wanted it stopped, and his motive was good. He was protecting his prophet. Moses would not do it. He asked Joshua why he was envious on his behalf, and then he said he wished every one of the Lord's people had the Spirit resting on them.
That is the whole principle in one exchange. The gift of prophecy can be given at any time to any person. The authority to tell people what to do cannot.
Eldad and Medad prophesied. They did not lead Israel. Nobody had to follow them, and Moses remained the prophet, and none of that was threatened by two men in the camp who had something to say.
The Church Is Not Fallen
I want to state this as clearly as I know how, because people assume the opposite about anyone who writes what I have written.
The Church is not fallen. The Church is in good shape. It is doing what it should be doing, it is directed by God, and it is doing exactly what the Holy Spirit wants it to do. Anyone who tells you the Church needs correcting is wrong, and I would put that person in the same category as the man who announces himself.
Is everything in the Church perfect? Of course not, because people are not perfect and the Church is made of people. There is always work being done on that. But it gets handled through the right channels and the right authority, which is the entire point of everything above.
The living prophet speaks for God. His words take priority over anything in my book, and if the two ever conflict, follow him.
What I Am Actually Doing
For four months I was taught things out of the scriptures that I had never heard, never read, and never seen from anyone. I have hundreds of volumes of commentary in this house and the conclusions in my book are not in any of them. It was the most extraordinary experience of my life and I will carry it for the rest of it.
I have been told that experience came from the devil. All I can say to that is that the person saying it has never had revelation like that, or he would recognize it.
God gave me that information because I was willing to listen and willing to do whatever He asked. Then, not knowing what would come of it, He asked me to publish it to the world.
That is all I am doing. I am publishing it to the world and telling people what happened to me.
Not so anyone will follow me. There is nothing to follow. I am doing it so that when these events happen, you will know that somebody saw them beforehand, and you will have reason to believe it came from God rather than from a coincidence. It was prophesied in the scriptures. It is sitting there in the text, and it is going to change the world.
I say that in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Keep Reading
Would God Tell You Before Telling the Prophet? The question that sits underneath every version of this objection.
What the First Presidency Actually Said About the One Mighty and Strong The official statement, and what it rules out.
How to Avoid Deception The test I run before I accept anything, including my own conclusions.
Kelly Smith is the author of The First Horseman, Donald Trump and Biblical Prophecy. Get the book at FirstHorseman.World.
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