Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat (33:12)
You know what? We've got people in our ward who are really struggling with this. We need to have someone speak in sacrament on this. Right? I mean, so even on a local level, some of the curriculum or the doctrine that's taught each week at the church is at least somewhat dictated by what local leaders feel inspired that their members need now take that from a ward level and start extrapolating out. The most shocking aspect of Latter Day Saint theology in its earliest days is not, frankly. I mean, maybe it is for some people, but it is not the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is a pretty shocking thing. Hey, here's additional scripture. What appears to be even more shocking is the rejection of the Protestant idea. Because, look, Methodists and Presbyterians, they can't even agree on, you know, they can't even agree on. On Whether or not LeBron James is on the Lakers, okay? They, they disagree on every aspect of salvation. A Presbyterian believes that the only way you're saved is that God chose to save you before you were ever even created. He chose to save you in eternity's past. You didn't exist. But he knew, because he knows everything, that he would eventually create you and that when he created you, he would give you the gift of faith and therefore you would be saved. And a Methodist believes that salvation, you have to participate in it, that if you don't accept the grace extended to you by God, that you're going to go to hell. So they disagree on everything except one thing, and that is that they both believe that there are no works necessary for salvation. The only thing that saves is grace. Now, that goes all the way back to Martin Luther. Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism. And every, I mean, at least mainline Protestant theologians since then has simply expanded upon what Martin Luther and then John Calvin stated. And then, of course, you know, John Wesley. And that is salvation comes by faith and grace alone. Grace alone, not grace because I was baptized. Not grace because I followed several things and ordinances and I lived a good life, and therefore I have grace. No, they are arguing that salvation is literally nothing of yourself. And that idea of grace, God's sovereign grace, that God gives this gift of grace so that people believe, would be the primary understanding of grace in Joseph Smith's world. So most people would be using the term grace in Joseph Smith's world, would be using it in terms of God choosing to save you, not because of anything that you have done. God choosing to save you not because you studied the Bible, not because you're good, not because you were baptized, not because you, you know, follow the catechisms, but because he did. And so you are wholly dependent. The only mover, the only person who gets to decide anything about salvation is God. And in that sense, for Calvinists especially, grace is a completely free gift. And I know this is tough because for a Latter Day Saint, when you think about having faith, what you think about is this. Well, I read the Book of Mormon in the Bible and then I prayed about it. And then I, you know, I started trying to live the way that the Book of Mormon and Bible told me to live. And I started to gain a testimony and I felt the Holy Spirit tell me that it was true. And that's how I gained a testimony. Right, that's. That's pretty standard. Is that you did something, you participated in your gaining of faith. Faith didn't just. You weren't Just walking down the road, someone winged you with a block that said faith, and you just got up like, I'm saved. That didn't happen. You made decisions and you acted on it. In Joseph Smith's world, the vast majority of Christians he would have been around, do not believe that that is how faith comes. They believe that God has already decided who's going to be saved and that God will at some point, because his will is unstoppable. He will manifest that by giving the gift of faith to somebody. And because they have that gift of faith, they will then be saved by the grace of Jesus. So why do I spend time talking about that? Because your wife wanted, you know, you to know how terrible the podcast was. But second of all, in a world where people are stunned, stunned that someone is claiming that any ordinances are essential for salvation, what would you expect the teaching to be like? We actually have a really good example of this. Samuel Smith. Okay, so Joseph and Oliver they. Samuel Smith, Joseph's brother. Okay, Samuel Smith seems to be a 100% believer in Joseph from the get go. I don't know when he hears about the first vision, but I know he's all on board with Joseph saying that an angel has appeared to him. He is all on board with Joseph saying that that angel has appeared multiple times, that that angel has told him that there are gold plates and that on those gold plates are writings of other prophets. Samuel Smith actually takes Oliver Cowdery down to Harmony to, to serve as the scribe for Joseph. Samuel is all in. Until. Until in 1829. In May of 1829, Joseph and Oliver receive the, the. The. The first priesthood, the lesser priesthood from, from John the Baptist. And the reason why they, they asked about it was because they had just translated Third Nephi, where the Lord not only commands baptism completes the Couplet from Mark 16:16 that said, Whosoever believeth and. And is baptized shall be saved. And whosoever believeth not shall be damned. Well, the Lord completes that in, in Third Nephi. Whosoever believeth and is baptized shall be saved. And whosoever believeth not and is not baptized shall be damned. Well, they, they come to a pretty stark realization as they're translating. And I know this sounds, this, it sounds weird to everyone listening because if you're a Latter Day Saint, there was never a time in your growing up life that you didn't know that baptism was essential for salvation. Baptism is the most familiar thing to you of any of the ordinances of the church. I mean frankly, the Lord's Supper, the sacrament is even more familiar to you, but you don't often think of it as an ordinance. I think when you're a kid, you're just like, hey, bread. But baptism, that it's essential. You hardly ever think about, well, they live in a world where a grand total of nobody who's not a Catholic believes that baptism is essential. And so as they're translating the Book of Mormon and they read off the words where the Lord definitively says it's essential, and then he goes a step further and says, not only is it essential, you have to be baptized in the right way. These are the words that you have to say when you're baptized. And not only do you have to say these right words, it has to be done by someone that I give authority to. It almost feels like panic sets in for Oliver Cowdery. I have not been baptized by proper authority or in the proper way. How can we do that? I have to be baptized. And they go out and they pray, and that's when John the Baptist comes and gives them this authority. Well, so we always think about, you know, that. That story as, you know, what an amazing, you know, experience that was. But a few days later, and it's only a couple days later, after they baptize one another, Samuel Smith, the same Samuel Smith who brought all over Calvary down, he comes back down to Harmony to see how they're doing. And it's such a stark thing. I think I'll actually. I think I'll actually read it. So this is from Joseph Smith's history. And he says, about this time, my brother Samuel Smith came to visit us. So this is right after their baptism. We informed him of what the Lord was about to do for the children of men and to reason with him out of the Bible. We also showed him that part of the work that we had translated. So now, so Samuel comes down and they're like, look what Jesus said that we just translated. He said he appeared to the people in America and this is what he told them and labored to persuade him concerning the gospel of Jesus Christ, which was now about to be revealed in its fullness. He was not, however, very easily persuaded by these things. So Samuel Smith, who has embraced the fact that an angel has repeatedly come to visit his brother, has embraced the fact that his brother has gold plates that contain writings of ancient prophets. So Samuel Smith is already well off of the beaten path of, okay, Protestantism, because he's already admitting that God could have scripture outside of the Bible, that angels are appearing to people that Joseph's receiving revelations. But Samuel Smith, confronted with what they just learned, with the authority that was just restored, he struggles. And to us, that doesn't make any sense at all. But if you were Samuel Smith and every single sermon and every single Gospel doctrine class that they had, it was not called that. But every single Sunday school class they ever went to, every single sermon that you ever heard reiterated that salvation had nothing to do with works and ordinances, that it was by faith alone, it was by grace alone. If that was your life, if every Christian that you ever knew, in fact, the only Christians, the only Christians saying that you needed to be baptized to be saved were those dirty Catholics. And anti Catholicism in the United States during the second Great Awakening is through the charts. In fact, different Protestant churches will attack each other in the media as they're competing for. For followers. Now, I know, I know that comes as a surprise to people that someone would publish a negative story about someone in. In the newspaper in an attempt to hurt the. But back in the 19th century, people were willing to go to any lengths. They were willing to say and do things that we're not willing to say and do today, but they would attack each other regularly. You know, Reverend Brownlee claims that he is a true follower of Reformed theology, but just last week, someone said he quoted from the apocrypha in his sermon. I mean, just. They're looking for any trappings of Catholicism to point out that this person is not truly reformed. So not only is this a world where every Christian does not believe that baptism is essential for salvation, it's actually a world that is swinging with a baseball bat at anything that even resembles Catholic theology that says authority exists and that you have to be baptized. So I don't know exactly what caused Samuel to react the way he did, but I do know that he was 100% on board with Joseph. Joseph has the authority restored. Baptism is restored. And he's told that baptism is essential. And Samuel struggles. He says this. Joseph says he was not very easily persuaded, but after much inquiry and explanation, so apparently they spent hours on this. He retired to the woods in order that by secret and fervent prayer he might obtain of a merciful God wisdom to enable him to judge for himself. The result was that he obtained revelation for himself sufficient to convince him of the truth of our assertions. And then on the 25th day of that same month, he was baptized. So again, I don't know everything behind Samuel having such a virulent reaction, but Joseph says they show him what they had just translated. They tell him about what just happened. And Samuel, who was on board for angels, Samuel, who's on board for gold plates, Samuel, who's on board for Joseph receiving revelations in the name of the Lord, says, I'm not sure I want to be on the train anymore. And I think that is a very good demonstration of just how radical Latter Day Saint theology is.
