A few weeks ago, I was cleaning up my back yard in the Seattle suburb where I live when two Mormon missionaries walked up. Of course they wanted to talk.
I didn’t agree with their theology, nor did I want start a discussion of the Mother God and other doctrinal clashes between Trinitarian Christianity and their faith.
How could I, I wondered, engage them as human beings? It was getting on in the evening and they were clearly tired.
An idea occurred to me. I mentioned how the Pentecostal and charismatic movement is the world’s fastest-growing kind of Christianity and how it shares something in common with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Prophecy, I explained, is a current reality with both groups. The missionaries clearly perked up and we had a good talk.
Now, what would this look like in the news?
It was unusual to see Tuesday’s story in the Salt Lake Tribune about how the prophetic gift actually works. Veteran religion reporter Peggy Stack began the piece this way:
By his own account, Russell M. Nelson speaks often to God, or, rather, God speaks often to him.
Nelson, the 94-year-old president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said recently that he was awakened at 2 a.m. with a distinct impression that he should go to the Dominican Republic.
Within days, the Church News reported, the energetic nonagenarian was on a plane to that Caribbean nation.
This is an “era of unprecedented revelation,” Nelson told the missionaries gathered to hear him there Sept. 1.
Indeed, in his first nearly nine months as the Utah-based faith’s top “prophet, seer and revelator," Nelson has used the term “revelation” again and again to describe his motivation for initiatives and changes.
Few of his predecessors were so open –- or blatant –- about claiming that God personally revealed truths to them as Nelson has been ever since he took over headship of the church in January.
And so:
His choice of counselors in the governing First Presidency? The Lord instructed him. New apostles? The Lord inspired him. Emphasizing the church’s full name and eschewing its long-standing “Mormon” nickname? The Lord “impressed” it on his mind… No church president in recent decades has seemed so at ease with the rhetoric of his own revelation.
Being that confident that God is speaking to you and/or you’re hearing Him accurately is an acquired talent.
The article reviews LDS history, starting with Joseph Smith, who inaugurated the church’s expectation that its leader would regularly hear from God. The most striking revelation in modern-day times was then-president Spencer Kimball’s 1978 revelation allowing black men and boys to be ordained to the priesthood and for women and girls to have access to Mormon temples.
Russell Nelson is the 17th of the church’s prophets. As for the others:
“They clearly believed they were inspired by God and willingly assumed the prophetic mantle,” said Patrick Mason, head of Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University. “But they rarely went to the ‘God spoke to me’ rhetoric.” …
Most Latter-day Saint leaders are “a little gun-shy to go to the ‘R’ word,” the scholar said. “Nelson isn’t.”
I wrote the other day about a non-denominational Protestant pastor who calls himself a prophet –- and I got some raised eyebrows from folks wondering why I’d include such a clearly deluded person in my post. But they don’t react the same way to Mormons claiming to be lead by a prophet. That might be because Mormon prophets don’t generally foretell the future. The Protestant pastor claims to do so.
What was unclear from the piece was whether prophecy is the only gift in the charismatic pantheon that Mormons revere.
“There is a real difference between how generally 19th-century people speak about revelation and prophecy (and speaking in tongues, and healing, and other gifts of the Spirit) and how current and recent generations do,” (Mormon historian Ardis) Parshall said. “Prophets have different gifts, different styles. Few of them express their impressions as Joseph Smith did.”
Which brings up another question. Did many Mormons exhibit Pentecostal practices way back? If you accept prophecy, then there’s a bunch of other gifts of the Spirit mentioned in 1Corinthians 12 that come with it, as the Apostle Paul makes clear. But the article doesn’t continue with that line of thought.
I looked about. This link talks about 19th-century religion in America and how the Mormons were the first of many restorationist groups out there that believed in bringing back the miraculous spiritual gifts mentioned in the New Testament.
This article talks about how Mormons view charismatic gifts today, which is that prophecy is akin to heavenly inspiration and the gift of tongues means a facility with handling foreign languages for missionary purposes. This view is definitely not not how Pentecostals would think of them.
However, there’s a lot of emphasis on the Holy Spirit within the Mormon tradition. This member of the Quorum of the 12 (the LDS governing body) talks about hearing “a testimony” from God. A “testimony” is a feelings-based witness to a certain truth and a very personal conviction said to be given by the Holy Spirit.
From (in the Book of Mormon) Moroni 10:4-5 –
4) And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
5) And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.
As this article says, it’s not clear as to just how that truth is manifested, but often it’s an intense feeling that a certain thing is true.
Not that the entire church buys the content of each revelation. One of the more controversial revelations came out in late 2015, early 2016, calling married gay people “apostates” and closing off church rituals, such as baptism, to the children of these couples until they reach 18.
Stack’s article ends with a quote saying that Nelson is preparing his church for Christ’s Second Coming and that all his revelations are geared to that end. Which is quite a statement to make. There aren’t many religious groups in this country that claim their leaders hear directly from God, unless you count papal infallibility into the mix.
I’m guessing that a piece on the nuts and bolts of how church leaders claim divine backing for their decisions was not an easy piece to write and I’m glad Stack tackled it. There’s a lot more I would have liked to have known, such as whether some of the revelations are massaged a bit before being delivered to the public. The article hints that was the case with the recent decision on homosexual couples.
It’s clear that American pentecostals and Mormons share common theological roots in 19th century revivalism although their views have since diverged. I suppose one can’t cover everything, but I would have liked to have seen some reference to prophetic gifts outside the Mormon tradition. Or comments from Pentecostals themselves on whether what Nelson is doing can legitimately be termed prophecy.
Hopefully there will be a second piece.