[Footnote A: Isaiah 9:6.]

All concede that this is in plain allusion to Jesus Christ, and the scriptures here directly call Him The Mighty God. He is also called God in the testimony of John. Mark this language, for it is a passage around which many ideas center, and to which we shall have occasion to refer several times. In the preface to his Gospel, John says:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. * * * And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth.

There can be no question but direct reference is here made to the Lord Jesus Christ, as being the "Word;" and the "Word," or Jesus being with the Father in the beginning, and the "Word," or Jesus Christ, also being God. The "Word," then, as used here by John, is one of the titles of Jesus in his pre-existent estate. Why called the "Word" I know not, unless it is that by a "word" we make an expression; and since Jesus Christ was to be the expression of God, the revelation of God to the children of men, he was for that reason called the "Word."[A]

[Footnote A: Since the delivery of the above discourse I note the following in a revelation to Joseph Smith: "In the beginning the Word was, for he [Christ] was the Word, even the Messenger of Salvation." (Doc. and Cov. Sec. 93.) That is, it appears that Messiah was called the "Word" because He was the "Messenger"—"the Messenger of Salvation.">[

Jesus Declares Himself to be God—the Son of God:

Jesus was crucified on the charge that he was an impostor—that he, being a man, said that "God was his Father, making himself equal with God" (John 5:18).

And again: "For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy, and because that thou being a man, makest thyself God" (John 10:33).

Again: when accused before Pilate, who declared he could "find no fault in him," the Jews answered him, "We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God." Moreover, the high priest, in the course of his trial before the Sanhedrim of the Jews, directly said to Jesus, "I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus said unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless, I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven" (Matt 27:63, 64).

And finally, when Jesus appeared to the eleven disciples after his resurrection, he said unto them, "All power is given unto me, in heaven and in earth, go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (Matt. 28:18, 19). A clearer proclamation of his divinity could not be made than in the statement, "all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth," especially when it is followed by placing himself on equal footing with the Father and the Holy Ghost, which he does when he commands his disciples to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Nothing can be added to this, except it be the words of God the Father directly addressed to Jesus, when he says, "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever" (Heb. 1:8).