[22]. Doc. and Cov. Sec. xiii.
[23]. Doc. and Cov. lxxxviii: 78, 92.
[24]. Doc. and Cov. lxv.
CHAPTER XXVI.
TESTIMONY TO THE INSPIRATION AND DIVINE CALLING OF JOSEPH SMITH DERIVED FROM THE COMPREHENSIVENESS OF THE WORK HE INTRODUCED—CONTINUED.
At once intimately connected with the coming of the Lord Jesus, and fatal to all claims of a divine commission on the part of Joseph Smith had he omitted it from the New Dispensation, is the mission of Elijah. This, too, is the subject of one of Malachi's prophecies. "Behold," that prophet represents the Lord as saying, "I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: and he will turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse."[[1]] According to the testimony of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, on the 3rd of April, 1836, Elijah appeared to them in the Kirtland Temple and fulfilled this prophecy. "Therefore," said he, on that occasion, "the keys of this dispensation are committed into your hands, and by this ye may know that the great and dreadful day of the Lord is near, even at the doors."[[2]]
The nature of Elijah's mission, the manner in which the hearts of the fathers would be turned to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers, has been and is a mystery to Christendom; and only by a revelation from God could it be made plain. The mission of Elijah related to the salvation of the dead; and the introduction of that doctrine was the beginning of a revolution in the theology of Christendom. Up to that time—1836—I may say it was universally believed by Christians that the souls of men who died without conversion to the Christian religion were everlastingly lost. As I have said elsewhere,[[3]] it was believed that the application of the gospel of Jesus Christ was limited to this life; and those who failed, through whatever cause, to obtain the benefits of the means of salvation it affords, are forever barred from such benefits. "If the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be;"[[4]] and they argued from this that in whatever state a man died so he remained. If he died in a state of justification his salvation was assured; but if not, then justification, and consequently salvation, were forever beyond his hope.
This sectarian doctrine which does so much violence to the justice of God—since it closes the door of salvation against so many millions of God's children through no other circumstance than that they never so much as heard of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and therefore could not either believe or obey it—arose, first, through a misconception of the doctrine of eternal punishment with which the wicked are threatened in the scriptures; and, second, through a very narrow conception of the sure mercies of God.
Christians believed that to receive eternal punishment was to be punished eternally. This popular error was corrected in a revelation to Martin Harris through Joseph Smith, even before the church was organized.[[5]] In that revelation it is explained that God is "Endless," that is one of his names; as also is "Eternal," one of his names. "Wherefore eternal punishment is God's punishment." In other words the punishment that will overtake the wicked is Eternal's punishment; Endless' punishment. But Christians mistaking the name of the punishment for the sign of its duration, taught that men were punished eternally for the sins committed in this life. God's punishment is eternal; that is, it always exists; it is eternal as God is, but the transgressor receives only so much of it, endures it only so long as may be necessary to satisfy the reasonable claims of justice, tempered with mercy. Then, when the insulted law is vindicated, the offender is released from the punishment. But as "the bars survive the captive they enthrall," as the prison remains after the transgressor has served his time in it; so in God's government, the punishment eternally remains after transgressors have satisfied the claims of justice, and are relieved from its pains and penalties. It remains to vindicate the law of God whenever it shall be broken.