This verse requires us to consider the role and value of the Holy Ghost. Does it really have the capacity to reveal all truth? If so, how do we get it? In this Chapter we will compare the simple formula for receiving light and truth by obedience to the Gospel, with the learning, wisdom. and theology of men. Everyone is entitled to receive light and truth if they will connect with God through the Spirit. Acquiring the wisdoms and theologies of men requires something different. The learning of men uses a different set of methods, employs a different vocabulary and requires men to be credentialed.
This short and simple verse describes a conflict that is now before us. Although many Saints are unaware of the struggle, and some do not even know they are combatants in this conflict, they nevertheless, are. Acquiring knowledge of “all things” through the Holy Spirit is not something Latter-day Saint intellectuals defend as a possibility. Only the scriptures and the prophets try to get us to see this message. As we examine this verse, we will discuss and expose the conflict.
In these few words Moroni tells us the way mankind is offered wisdom from God. Through the Holy Ghost, we first receive “power,” and then we acquire truth. Receiving “power,” holds profound implications. Priestly authority allows ordinances to be performed, and sealings to take place, but it is the power of the Holy Ghost which ratifies the ordinances and confirms the sealings. There is no authority of any kind (priestly or otherwise) if there is no corresponding empowerment by the Holy Ghost. The way in which the Historic Christian church resolved the Donatist controversy was wrong. (If you are unacquainted with this it is discussed briefly in the footnote, below.) No man’s ordination to priestly authority is immutable. The restoration of the Gospel was needed because the wickedness of ancient priestly officiators resulted in forfeiture of priestly authority. And, within the ranks of those ordained in this new Dispensation, priestly authority can be and is lost when men do not continually repent and live in conformity with God’s commandments.
Unlike priestly ordination, the great power from the Holy Ghost is available to everyone, old and young, male and female. God does not limit access to the Holy Ghost, the gifts of the Spirit, or ministering of angels to any one class or sex. All are alike unto Him. As Nephi wrote: “[H]e inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile.” (2 Ne. 26: 33.)
The power of the Holy Ghost is the power of intelligence. From it comes revelation and understanding. Men’s minds are quickened and they can know the truth of anything. As Joseph Smith described it: “[T]he Holy Ghost, the same as given on the day of Pentecost, and that all Saints receive after faith, repentance, and baptism. This first Comforter or Holy Ghost has no other effect than pure intelligence. It is more powerful in expanding the mind, enlightening the understanding, and storing the intellect with present knowledge, …” (DHC 3: 380.) Elsewhere Joseph said: “No man can receive the Holy Ghost without receiving revelations. The Holy Ghost is a revelator.” (DHC 6: 58.)
Perhaps Joseph’s greatest comment on the power of the Holy Ghost to make known all truth to a person came at the very end of his ministry. Just a few weeks prior to his death, Joseph made this comment: “I am learned, and know more than all the world put together. The Holy Ghost does, anyhow, and he is within me, and comprehends more than all the world; and I will associate myself with him.” (DHC 6: 308.)
Joseph’s confidence in knowing truth was unlimited. He felt the world, with its long history of study and scholarship, took a back seat to the Holy Ghost and the power of intelligence coming through revelation from the Spirit. Joseph was a believer in the verse written by Moroni we examine in this Chapter.
We are walking along the same path as the Church established by Christ in the New Testament. As we go along, we should expect to encounter the same conflicts and temptations as the Church did when first established. Satan does not generally develop new programs. Instead, he repeats the old ones because they have proven so successful in the past. One of the great triumphs for Satan, and reasons for the apostasy of the Primitive Church, was the Church’s failure to follow the Holy Ghost as their guide. Instead, they determined it was safer to use the learning of men and the arm of flesh. Scholars and theology replaced Saints and the Holy Spirit. The great triumph of the philosophies of men over the Holy Spirit resulted in another replacement faith. Historic Christianity replaced Primitive Christianity, as the philosophies of men were thoroughly mingled with scripture to form a bulwark of theological reasoning to support this new faith.
Latter-day Saints are not part of Historic Christianity. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a return to Primitive Christianity. When Christianity is defined in the limited sense to include only those who are a part of the Historic Christian movement and accept the creeds of Historic Christianity, then the Latter-day Saints are not “Christian” in that sense. When it is expanded to include what went before, or Primitive Christianity, then Latter-day Saints are Christians. But the differences between these two are monumental, and they arise primarily as a result of the words in Moroni 10: 5. Historic Christianity was determined to abandon the guidance from and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Instead of inspired men receiving revelation from God, they switched to councils of gathered bishops. Without actual revelation, Historic Christianity resolved to accept the decisions of councils as the voice of the Holy Ghost. W.C.H. Frend described it in these words: “Christendom was accepting a council of bishops, judicial or otherwise, as the voice of the Holy Spirit.” (Frend, W.C.H. The Rise of Christianity.Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984, p. 528.) The alternative was unthinkable. They had to accept the voice of uninspired bishops as the voice of the Holy Spirit or else admit there had been an apostasy. They were unwilling to do that.
Christianity in the original or “Primitive” form was non-theological. There was no philosophy, nor intricate exegetical subtlety. There were just a series of commandments, which were expected to be obeyed. There was faith, repentance, baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost. Through these principles, men and women became Saints. Their lives were expected to be guided, after baptism, by the Spirit bestowed upon them.
By the second century the gifts of the Spirit began to wane, and the spread of Christianity came to depend upon the persuasiveness of oratory and rhetoric. Instead of obedience, argument and reasoning were expected to justify and buttress “faith” in Christianity. A Hellenized world required translation of Christianity into a different vocabulary which would fit into the learning of the Greeks.
Perhaps the best way to illustrate the profound differences is to contrast the vocabulary of scripture with the vocabulary of the theologians. Below is a list of some key words from scripture, in no particular order, which require little or no definition. They are familiar to any person who has read the scriptures:
All of the foregoing words appear in English scripture. They are used without definition by prophets and apostles from the beginning of Genesis through the Book of Revelation. They are also used in the new scriptures of the Restoration. Farmers, tradesmen, fishermen, merchants, tentmakers, and common men called to Divine responsibilities found these words sufficient to describe the things they saw and heard and understood.
Below is a list of some of the commonly used vocabulary words of the theologians. They are defined, because without a definition their meaning is unclear to all but those who have received training in theology and philosophy. Again, they are in no particular order:
Although none of these words appear in scripture, is it likely most, if not all, of these words would be used in a PhD dissertation for any Theologian or Philosopher. Although they were not necessary for the Primitive Church, nor used in scripture, they are crucial terms to be able to communicate in the language used to define the doctrines and creeds of Historic Christianity.
The simplicity of Primitive Christianity was unappealing to the Hellenized world. They needed a more sophisticated “faith” before they would be willing to show it respect. The Neo-Platonists during the Fourth Century succeeded in creating a new faith, still using the old names, places and deeds of scripture while placing them within this new, theological framework.
Hugh Nibley’s lectures on this process describe it succinctly:
Apparently Augustine is to be respected before all things as that rarest of all humans, a founder and creator. Grabmann says he was “the true creator of the theology of the West, just as Origen was the founder of the speculative theology of the Orient.” Troeltsch also describes Augustine as continuing the work that Clement of Alexandria and Origen had undertaken two centuries before. The names of Origen and Augustine are often linked together, and with good reason. For each devoted his life to the same project, namely, the working out of a Christian theology which he personally could accept. We have already talked about Origen’s allegiance to the schools and how it conditioned and inspired his whole effort to develop a theology that would be intellectually respectable. St. Augustine was, if anything, even more a child of the schools than Origen, who was a far more austere and independent character. For twenty years Augustine absolutely refused to accept the Christianity learned at his mother’s knee, however powerful his sentimental attachments to it, because, as he explains at great length in the Confessions, it simply could not stand up to the arguments of the schoolmen. He tells us how in his youth, after reading Cicero, he would laugh at the prophets, and how from the very first the pagan schools had taught him to abhor any suggestion that God might have a body-it was instruction like that, he says, that convinced him the Christians could not possibly be right. And this is the significant point: Augustine never changed the ideas and attitudes he acquired in the schools. He did not turn away from them back to Christianity; rather he built them firmly and finally into the structure of Christianity before he would accept it. He never came around to accepting on the one hand the naive beliefs with which he charged the Christians, nor on the other hand did he ever swerve in his allegiance to the Platonists. According to Professor Grabmann, the whole explanation of Augustine’s “tremendous influence on the scholasticism and mysticism of the Middle Ages” lay in the single fact of his being “the greatest Christian Neoplatonist,” whose life’s work was “the christianizing of Neo-platonism.” (Nibley, Hugh. The World and the Prophets. Edited by John W. Welch, Gary P. Gillum, and Don E. Norton. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1987, 3 ed., p. 81–82, footnotes omitted.)
Augustine succeeded. However, he only succeeded because those calling themselves Christians wanted him to succeed. They wanted something more ornate than the simple, homely faith handed to them from Christ and His Apostles. Something more appealing to the sophisticated Hellenized mind was desired. Augustine supplied that. A more rational, controlled, predictable theology replaced the unruly and unpredictable faith based on revelation. This substitution was regarded as “necessary” for Christianity to succeed as a world religion. And succeed it did. It took over the Roman Empire and, with the fall of political Rome, emerged as the enduring Holy Roman See. The firm foundation Augustine provided in marrying Christian characters, names and scripture to Greek metaphysics provided a robust Historic Christianity which would wield worldly power and control armies, navies, popes and priests with raw power and rationalizations that could justify persecution, terror and inquisitions. It became, with time, capable of governing mankind with a yoke of iron.
Nibley writes further:
What a comedown from the days of revelation! Let us summarize what Father Combes has told us: (1) Augustine found the Church without a solid doctrinal foundation; (2) he took it upon himself to steady the ark-but who gave him the necessary knowledge or authority to do it? Where did he go for his information? Combes tells us that (3) he went to the pagan schools-he took their theodicy, metaphysics, moral teachings, and politics and worked them into his system. Is that the proper source for Christian doctrine? (4) That question worried Augustine too, but (5) he had to go ahead with his project because the times required it urgently. And what was the world clamoring for? A theology that would appeal on rational grounds alone to a Christian world which was, as Duchesne puts it, Christian in name only, and which had forgotten the meaning of a testimony. The wedding of the sickly philosophy of the fourth century to Christian doctrine could take place only after Christianity had been once and for all definitely divorced from the gift of prophecy and revelation. St. Augustine fully deserves his title of the man who changed the whole course of world history and of church history. He found himself in an intolerable situation, and he made the best of it. It is the situation, not the man, that teaches us what hard necessity and fateful decisions faced the Church once the gifts of revelation and prophecy were withdrawn. (Id., p.87–88, footnotes omitted.)
We know Christ’s reaction to the resulting faith. He described it to Joseph Smith in the First Vision. Joseph recorded: “I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: ‘they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.” (JS-H 1:19.)
We can’t have it both ways. It is not possible to have both an appealing theological construct maintained by scholarship and rhetoric on the one hand, and also have revelation as our guide, on the other. We have to choose between them.
The faith restored through Joseph Smith is “Primitive” in the original sense of that word applied to Christianity. It requires action, obedience, ordinances and faith. It presumes those following it will be converted through their own personal revelatory experience. Then it presumes the ones converted will endure to the end following the same path which brought them aboard in the first place. That is, through continuing revelation and guidance from the Holy Ghost.
There are emerging voices in Mormonism which cry out for development of a theology. One such effort has been undertaken by Sterling McMurrin. His book titled The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2000, is perhaps the most obvious effort to supply a theology for the faith he loved, but like Augustine, could not accept in its primitive form. His famous quip that ‘you don’t get books from angels and translate them by miracles; it is just that simple’ underlies his skepticism of the whole revelatory process.
It isn’t just fringe, progressive Mormons, however, who are seeking to employ the language of theology to redefine the faith. Before McMurrin, B.H. Roberts’ Seventies Course on Theology is an effort at showing Mormonism through a traditional theological lens. (Roberts, Brigham H. Seventies Course on Theology. Dallas: S.K. Taylor Publishing, 1976.) It uses the vocabulary of theology, is strained through the arguments of theologians, and attempts to add a theological construct through which the Restoration might be viewed. It comes from a time when the faith was still newly founded, with some first generation members who personally knew Joseph Smith when he was still alive. The persecutions of the early days were still remembered, and some were still being suffered. The work seems in hindsight an awkward effort to show to the larger Christian world Mormonism could be viewed (to them) in the more familiar theological vocabulary of Historic Christianity. The effort to put new wine in these old bottles is at best a strain. At worst it is a reflection of insecurity and a desire to have greater acceptance from a hostile and larger Christian world. Foreign philosophical vocabulary and strained arguments are uneasily accommodated in the Restored Gospel. But this work was from a General Authority of the Church.
Beyond McMurrin and Elder Roberts, other Mormon intellectuals have been and are attempting in either hostile or friendly criticism to bring about a more sophisticated Mormon theology and vocabulary. D. Michael Quinn’s book Early Mormonism and the Magic World View. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1987, is a flawed historical reinterpretation while suggesting a way to dismiss the authentically miraculous from Mormonism’s foundation. While not suggesting a wholesale theological alternate way to view the faith, it chops at the foundation as an aid to others who want to be freed from any obligation to accept the Restoration as God’s hand moving dramatically in the affairs of men once again. The recent effort of Grant H. Palmer to account for Joseph Smith’s work, divorced from the genuinely miraculous, relies heavily on Quinn’s work. However, Palmer seems captivated by any rationalizations, even contradictory ones, which dismiss the Lord’s actual involvement in Joseph’s prophetic ministry.
A more friendly treatment of Joseph Smith comes from Richard L. Bushman, who writes as a faithful Latter-day Saint historian. However, Bushman’s works are affected by the need to keep the scholar’s tools intact as he ventures into a retelling of Joseph Smith’s life. Bushman provides an overall explanation of how history can be viewed differently in his paper delivered in the Joseph Smith Symposium at the Library of Congress. His paper titled Joseph Smith’s Many Histories discusses the varying ways in which Joseph is viewed by his biographers, and therefore the varying ways in which his life is described. He writes: “our histories are detachable. Every nation, every institution, every person can be extricated from one history and attached to another, often with perfect plausibility. Each of us has many histories. The histories I refer to are not the events of our lives, but the various cultural contexts that produce us and explain who we are—our many different pasts.” (Id., p. 3.) He continues: “the context in which he is placed profoundly affects how people see the Prophet, since the history selected for a subject colors everything about it. Is he a money-digger like hundreds of other superstitious Yankees in his day, a religious fanatic like Muhammad was thought to be in Joseph’s time, a prophet like Moses, a religious revolutionary like Jesus? To a large extent, Joseph Smith assumes the character of the history selected for him.” (Id., p. 4.) He goes on to discuss the varying histories which have attempted to account for Joseph, from the narrowly focused and highly critical, to the larger, friendlier settings which make Joseph a more important historical figure.
Bushman is, by any definition, a friendly historian for Joseph. He admits to his faith in Joseph’s divine calling. Yet when it came time to account for Joseph in his most ambitious work to date, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, supra, Bushman places Joseph within a cultural historical setting for the biography which cannot fully account for the miraculous. It is good history, but not an unfailingly faithful acceptance of Joseph Smith’s own placement of himself within a sacred narrative picking up where the New Testament ended. Although many Saints (myself included) appreciate Bushman’sRough Stone Rolling, it is clearly not an attempt at an inspired treatment of Joseph’s history. The tools of the historical scholar are at work in the book. These tools of man stand, most often, in contrast with the power of the Spirit.
There is an inspired reason behind the program which sends 19-year-old young men into missionary service as the Lord’s authorized agents to proclaim the Gospel. At the age of 19, there is almost no one who possesses anything like the scholarly abilities of a Richard L. Bushman. They do not have anything approaching theological sophistication. Nor is the curriculum they teach modeled on tools of the scholars. They are instructed to teach using the scriptures, and to bear personal testimony to those whom they teach. It is left to the investigators to hear, in the simple message delivered, a communication from God. For the investigators, they are told the Holy Ghost will confirm to their hearts the truthfulness of what is being taught. This process is described in Moroni 10:4; the verse preceding the one being discussed here. It should be self-evident the Lord does not intend to use scholarly tools to convert. His messengers possess precious few of them. Rather, He intends to use something far more subtle, far more personal, to “speak” to His converts. He intends to use what is referred to as the “still, small voice.”He intends to force the issue as well. While for the world we may want to have sophistication, argument, logic and reason to support faith in Him, He forces us to instead rely upon the soft whispering of the Holy Ghost as our lifeline from Him.
Whenever investigators catch a glimpse of His voice through the whispering of the Spirit and submit in humility to baptism, they can feel His presence. They can sense His approval. I have knelt in the cool sand on a North Atlantic beach, following baptism in a cold ocean on a September evening. Although physically cold, I felt warmth within, a palpable presence entered into me as Elders with authority commanded: “Receive the Holy Ghost.” It was a stirring experience, leaving an indelible impression on anyone who “comes to Him” through this process. Words are inadequate to describe it. It is felt. Once felt, any person who has that experience can know Joseph’s prophetic testimony in these words of scripture are true: “Neither is man capable to make them known, for they are only to be seen and understood by the power of the Holy Spirit, which God bestows on those who love him, and purify themselves before him.” (D&C 76: 116.)
In the great mixture of sorts which comprise the Lord’s Saints, the sacred narrative of each life is sometimes lost or not even seen. It is “lost” by those who were fortunate enough to be a convert, who came to the faith through an experience with the Holy Ghost as described in Moroni 10: 4. It is “not even seen” by those who have come to the faith through the tradition of their fathers, without ever having had an experience with the Holy Ghost. But all are invited, no matter how they came to believe in the first instance, to receive the “truth of all things” through “the power of the Holy Ghost.”
Elder Boyd K. Packer has been criticized for his seminal talk on sacred history, The Mantle is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect. The criticism arises out of the mistaken belief that objective, scholarly work can capture sacred history without doing it violence. Elder Packer is altogether right in his explanation. Further, that talk was given to Seminary and Institute teachers employed in the Church Education Service to teach Latter-day Saint youth for the Church as its agents. How foolish it would be to expect those in such a position to fail to advance a faith-promoting view of the Church’s origins and history. The criticism leveled at Elder Packer largely fails to note the audience to which the talk was given. Who would claim any institution, let alone a church, has an obligation to perpetuate skepticism and criticism as a part of its internal curriculum? Yet that is what Elder Packer’s critics are saying as they denounce his talk. They are wrong. Elder Packer was right.
Beyond the specific audience, however, Elder Packer’s position bears careful consideration as a general guideline in considering works of any history. It should never be the goal of someone teaching about God to objectify or neutralize the things of faith. The Gospel writers did not write an objective history of Christ. They attempted to show from specific, selected and limited events included in their narratives that Christ was the Messiah, the Son of God and the Redeemer of mankind. His acts are portrayed in heroic relief. His challengers are cast into a harsh, clearly defined and wicked light. The dynamics of His ministry are orchestrated to show how He fulfilled prophesy, kept the commandments of God, sacrificed Himself for the redemption of mankind and rose from the dead.
Similarly, the Book of Mormon was written in a highly selective way to show through limited recording of events, the story of faith among a scattered people. Nephi said his objective was not to record history. He wrote that the record we were receiving was nothing approaching a complete history: “behold they are not the plates upon which I make a full account of the history of my people.” (1 Ne. 9: 2.) He kept a history, but it was far less valuable. The sacred things, as distinguished from history, were kept as a distinct record. He tells us they are different: “for a more history part are written upon mine other plates.” (2 Ne. 4: 14.) He later adds: “And if my people desire to know the more particular part of the history of my people they must search mine other plates.” (2 Ne. 5: 33.) These subjects, sacred writings and history, are two different things.
Jacob was instructed to do the same thing. The record after Nephi follows the same pattern. He explained: “And [Nephi] gave me, Jacob, a commandment that I should write upon these plates a few of the things which I considered to be most precious; that I should not touch, save it were lightly, concerning the history of this people which are called the people of Nephi. For he said that the history of his people should be engraven upon his other plates, and that I should preserve these plates and hand them down unto my seed, from generation to generation.” (Jacob 1: 2–3.) This pattern continued with later writers.
The Book of Mormon makes clear there is a profound difference between the few things which are “most precious” in the lives of people and “history.” Elder Packer is making the same distinction. And he is perfectly right doing so.
When it comes to our own history, therefore, similar care should be taken. The things of faith deserve to be told in faithful terms. The acts of prophets deserve to be cast into their faithful (and much truer) light. The obligation to refrain from “evil speaking of the Lord’s anointed” is not to protect them. It is to protect your own faith. It is to preserve your own access to the Spirit of Truth.
We do not need to have a full account of the acts of evil. Nor do we need to give equal time for faithlessness. Men’s weaknesses are a given. Contemporaries of Christ, lacking the faith of a disciple, found Him objectionable and offensive. He was “despised and rejected of men” because there was no worldly form or bona fide position which He occupied. (Isa. 53: 2–3.) He did not come clothed in the robes of the Aaronic Presiding High Priest, with jurisdiction over the Temple. He was not a member of the inner schools of the Scribes, Pharisees or Herodians. Nor did He have friends among the Sanhedrin. (The only member of the Sanhedrin who approached Him did so at night, and kept his association secret.) If His hostile contemporary adversaries were given an opportunity to write their account of Christ, it would have given the reasons for rejecting Him. A full history, therefore, must necessarily include all the reasons for rejecting Him. However, we don’t need that. Faithlessness is ubiquitous. The miracle is that there is faith at all. Some few of us do acquire faith. Whenever anyone does, the world tries to stamp it out.
There is nothing brave or noteworthy in skepticism. Everyone is given to skepticism and must wage their inner battle to overcome it. Nobility, bravery and valor are found among those who acquire faith. Those who have the faith to penetrate the veil, receive the ministry of angels, and behold the Son of God, as Joseph Smith did, are examples to us all. We need to inquire as to how they did this in a world of sin and disbelief. Their weaknesses are unworthy of mention. We know weaknesses exist anytime we know they are human. There is no mystery there. What is glorious, worthy of investigation, and sacred are the things which permitted Joseph Smith to acquire his faith. We all share in his failings. Few of us, however, rise to share in his faith.
As Bushman put it, we ought to look most carefully at the history in which Joseph placed himself. How does he fit into the great sacred narrative in which God moves in the affairs of men? More importantly, how can we seize upon the same faith as Joseph had and weave that sacred narrative into the events of our own lives? The answer for that lies in the verse featured in this Chapter.
Just as faith originates through asking to know if the Book of Mormon is true, so also faith develops through seeking the Holy Ghost’s direction in all things. “By the power of the Holy Ghost you may know the truth of all things” means more than merely the incipient faith to accept the Book of Mormon. It means the Holy Ghost is capable of imparting intelligence about the whole breadth and width of all things.
Faith in God, in Him calling a Prophet to restore Christ’s Gospel, and in the scriptures of the Restoration, is all possible. Feelings come into the heart confirming these things are true. When you act on them, the feelings grow stronger. The more eagerly you follow the small feelings, the stronger you allow them to grow. The point will come when they transcend feelings alone and become the whisperings of God’s voice into your mind. When you have become sufficiently sound in your mind, stable in your faith, and obedient in your approach to His commands, you free God to send His angels to minister to you. This process has been discussed at length in my book, The Second Comforter.
This process works. It requires obedience to unlock it. It does not require theological arguments or the vocabulary of the philosopher. In large measure, such things detract from the process. God’s voice was meant to be heard by all who follow Him. But He insists upon us receiving His voice on the conditions He has established. None of us can gain it otherwise. John 10:1: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.” We cannot rob God. Nor can we pretend to any real knowledge about Him when it is gained only through theological argument and Neo-Platonic epistomology. If our hearts do not know Him, then our mind’s arguments and rationalizations are meaningless.
It is only through the power of the Holy Ghost we have a hope of knowing the truth of anything. Abraham, the father of the righteous, is respected for many things, including his knowledge of profound mysteries. He taught the Egyptians about the heavens. He explained how he attained this great knowledge at the outset of the Book of Abraham, where he writes: “having been myself a follower of righteousness, desiring also to be one who possessed great knowledge, and to be a greater follower of righteousness, and to possess a greater knowledge, and to be a father of many nations, a prince of peace, and desiring to receive instructions, and to keep the commandments of God, I became a rightful heir.” (Abr. 1: 2.) Gaining knowledge through the Holy Ghost comes from “following” after righteousness by “keeping the commandments.” This opens up the lines through which the Holy Ghost can whisper in a still, small voice.
Even those who receive angels, part the veil, and have an audience with Christ must rely on the Holy Ghost as the primary source of inspiration. There are limits to how frequently angels can visit. The veil parts only occasionally, even for those for whom it parts at all. However, the Holy Ghost can be a constant companion to anyone who seeks for it. That companionship guides, instructs, clarifies, and imparts pure knowledge to those willing to accept what is offered.