Who Receives Revelation for Whom

For years I taught this out of a picture I had drawn wrong. I have been told more than once that I write outside my stewardship, and that is worth taking seriously, so I sat down to work out exactly where the line falls. What I found first was that the shape everybody uses to explain it, myself included, cannot possibly be right. It contradicts itself. And once I understood why, the whole doctrine got simpler instead of harder.

The Picture Everybody Uses

Every corporation has an organizational chart, with the chief executive at the top and the vice presidents beneath him and everybody else spread across the wide base. It is a pyramid with a single point at the top. Now people look at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and they see the very same shape. The prophet with his two counselors, then the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, then the Seventy, then stake presidents and bishops and quorum presidencies, and then families down at the bottom. Two pyramids, and drawn side by side they look identical.

The Question That Broke It

Paul says the Church is built on a foundation, and he tells us who is in it...

"And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone." (Ephesians 2:20)

The foundation. The bottom. And John was shown the same thing when the city was measured for him, and he wrote down what was cut into the stones...

"And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb." (Revelation 21:14)

So which is it? Are the apostles the point at the peak, or are they the stones underneath everything? I had just finished putting them at the top of a pyramid, and I have heard them placed there in lessons my whole life, and both of those cannot be true in one drawing. You can put a man at the top of a triangle or you can put him at the bottom, but you cannot do both.

I was asking one picture to answer two different questions. How wide is a man's assignment is one question. What is the whole Church resting on is another, and a foundation is not a position on an organizational chart. It has no box. It is not a level and it is not a rank. So the apostles can hold the widest assignment in the Church and also be named in the foundation stones, and there is nothing contradictory in that at all. Take the pyramid away and the problem goes with it.

The Map

Stop drawing it as levels and draw it as boundaries instead, seen from above. The Church is the outer boundary. Inside it sit the stakes, side by side, each one with a line around it, and inside a stake sit the wards, each with a line of its own. Inside a ward sit the families. And inside a family sits a person. Nothing is above anything. There is no peak and no downhill, and nothing flows from a point at the top out to the rest of us. There are only boundaries inside boundaries, and one rule that governs the whole picture.

A steward may receive revelation for everyone inside his own boundary, and for no one outside it.

That is the entire doctrine, and you can read it straight off the map without an argument from me.

What Each Steward Can Actually Receive

The prophets and apostles. Only they receive for the whole Church, because the whole Church is what their boundary encloses. The apostles are assigned across the world, they see what needs doing in their areas, 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 at any moment and the Church cannot do all of it at once. The Lord settled that question early, when a man in the Church began receiving what he believed were revelations for everybody...

"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 for anyone inside his stake and for nobody outside it. His work is the Melchizedek Priesthood across that stake and 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 far too many of them and none of them are mine to tell.

A bishop. He can receive for anyone in his ward and for nobody in any other ward. He carries the matters of sin and transgression, and he works with the youth at the point in their lives when their decisions carry the farthest.

An elders quorum president and a Relief Society president. They can receive for anyone in that same ward on anything not sin related. Family matters, counseling, finances, helping somebody move. Bishops used to carry all of it until it became far too much for one man, and I was serving when most of it moved across to the quorum and Relief Society presidencies. I have had that revelation come, and it is an amazing thing to have something pour into your soul, to recognize who it is for, and to know exactly where it came from.

A ministering brother or sister. They receive 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 father. I can receive revelation for my own family. Powerful, specific, unmistakable revelation, and I have had it more than once. But I cannot receive it for Bob's family, because Bob's family is not underneath mine on some ladder. It is a separate line drawn around separate people, sitting beside mine inside the same ward, and I have no assignment that crosses it.

And then you. Every member of this Church receives revelation for himself, and that is the boundary every single person on this map is standing inside. Not the leaders. Everybody. It is the smallest boundary on the whole chart and it belongs to you personally, and nobody on the outer rings can take it from you or receive it in your place. You are not standing outside this map looking in at the people who matter. You are standing in the middle of it with a line of your own.

I have left boxes off that map. Between a stake and the whole Church there are Areas presided over by Seventies who act under the direction of the Twelve (see D&C 107:34), and where stakes are not yet organized there are branches gathered into districts under a mission president. Every one of them carries a boundary and works by the identical rule. And a boundary alone does not settle the question, because a bishop and an elders quorum president stand inside the same ward over the same people and cannot receive for each other's work. There are two conditions rather than one. Who is inside your line, and what matters were assigned to you.

The Limit That Is Not on This Map

Here is what this chart does not do, and getting it wrong is what produces most of the accusations aimed at people who write about prophecy.

The chart bounds who you may receive revelation for. It has never bounded what God may teach you.

Those are two different measurements and only one of them is on the map. What comes to a man in his own study is not governed by whether he holds a calling, and there is no verse anywhere saying a member may learn only as much as his office entitles him to. What the chart tells that man is that he may not receive on your behalf, may not receive for his ward or his stake or the Church, and may not tell one living soul what to do about any of it.

So if stewardship does not limit what a man can be taught, what does? Something else does, and it comes from a different direction entirely. What may be taught as doctrine to the Church is bounded by the scriptures and by the living prophet, and that is not a stewardship boundary at all. It is a different fence around a different field. The living prophet speaks for God, his words take priority over anything I have written, and if the two ever conflict, follow him. I have written a longer answer to that objection in Would God Tell You Before Telling the Prophet?

Gifts Are Not Offices

There is a category confusion underneath most of this, and clearing it up settles the question. Spiritual gifts are handed out 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 in a lesson. Compassion. Charity. Faith. The gift of healing and the gift to be healed. Tongues. Prophecy. Thousands of them, most never written down anywhere, and whoever is reading this has been given at least one. And 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, while an office lets a man direct the people inside his own boundary, and running those two together is where nearly every argument on this subject goes wrong.

Moses settled it himself when two men prophesied out in the camp without ever entering the tabernacle, and Joshua wanted it stopped, and Moses said he wished every one of the Lord's people had the Spirit resting on them. I have written about that exchange and what it establishes.

Where That Leaves Me

I hold no office and I have never claimed one. Nobody is required to believe anything I have written and nobody is required to read it. I published my 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, and you are free to weigh it and just as free to throw it out. The process I went through before publishing any of it, including sitting down across a desk from my own stake president, is laid out in How to Avoid Deception.

And let me say 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. It is in good shape, it is directed by God, and it is doing exactly what the Holy Ghost wants it to do. Anyone who tells you the Church needs correcting is wrong.

Every boundary on that map, from the President of the Church down to the man reading this in his front room, is drawn on ground that none of us laid. Christ is the chief cornerstone, the apostles are named in the foundation stones, and not one of those things is a box on a chart. They are what the chart is sitting on. Take the cornerstone away and there is nothing left to square any of it against, and it would not matter how many boxes we drew.

I say that in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

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Keep Reading

Is Donald Trump in Biblical Prophecy? What Scripture Actually Says The core case, if you have not read it yet.

What the First Presidency Actually Said About the One Mighty and Strong The official statement, and what it rules out.

The Question I Couldn't Walk Away From Where this all started.

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Kelly Smith is the author of The First Horseman, Donald Trump and Biblical Prophecy. Get the book at FirstHorseman.World.