Prophets and Church leaders/Revelation after Joseph Smith/Joseph F. Smith at Smoot hearings

http://en.fairmormon.org/Revelation_after_Joseph_Smith/Joseph F. Smith at Smoot hearings

Criticism

• Critics claim that at the Smoot hearings, Joseph F. Smith said that he never received revelation.

Source(s) of the criticism

• Jerald and Sandra Tanner, The Changing World of Mormonism (Moody Press, 1979), 433, quoting Reed Smoot Case, Vol. 1, pages 483-484.( Index of claims )

Response

Critics do not disclose that the Smoot hearings were an antagonistic proceeding in which LDS apostle Reed Smoot was being investigated to see if he should be able to take his seat in the U.S. Senate.

During this exchange, then, Joseph F. Smith was essentially being examined as a "hostile witness." President Smith was not likely to "cast pearls before swine," by discussing the revelatory process, and the legal requirements of the situation likely made him reply as little as possible to the questions posed.

Any attempt to judge Joseph F. Smith's complete beliefs and experiences about revelation from these hearings are, then, doomed to being incomplete.

Despite these limitations, the cited material make it absolutely clear that President Smith's reference to revelation was in the sense of revelation "has been submitted by you and the apostles to the body of the church in their semiannual conference, which revelation has been sustained by the conference through the upholding of hands?" (p. 483). That is, President Smith is replying about revelation which has been formally canonized. Although obviously reluctant to speak about the details of other revelation, he insists that he has had that:

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Endnotes

None

Further reading

FAIR wiki articles

• Open canon vs. closed canon

External links

• Spencer W. Kimball, "Gospel Forum: The official revelations to the Church apparently ended with the 1890 Manifesto issued by President Wilford Woodruff. What is the position of the Church on continuous revelation?”," Ensign (February 1971): 20.off-site Note that this article pre-dates the 1978 revelation on priesthood to President Kimball.