The School of the Prophets

I absolutely love the month of November!  If this isn't the most wonderful time of the year, I don't know what is!  In addition to being able to celebrate one of the coolest holidays ever invented with Thanksgiving (seriously, a holiday where the purpose is to express gratitude to the Lord for life's blessings, while at the same time enjoying some of the best tasting food ever devised by culinary minds with your family!  What more can you ask for?), radio stations have begun playing Christmas music and there are reminders everywhere you look that the Christmas season is upon us.  I know a lot of people get irked about listening to Christmas music before Thanksgiving, but I'm not one of those people.  Christmas is fully of many of my life's happiest memories and I am more than happy to begin celebrating in early November.  For me, things don't get any better than this!

"The Sacrifice of Isaac," by Domencino Zampieri, 1627-1628

This past week finally started doing a little bit of research for my dissertation.  With the help of a friend, I was able to secure some of the minutes of the Salt Lake School of the Prophets for 1869-1874 and I started going through these minutes looking for things that would be useful for my dissertation.

Most Latter-day Saints probably don't know that there was a School of the Prophets in Salt Lake during these years, so perhaps a little bit of background will be useful.  The School of the Prophets was an institution that Joseph Smith had been commanded to establish in Kirtland in the 1830s.  Remember that the Church was still only a couple of years old in 1832 when the revelation to establish the school was given.  There was no Doctrine and Covenants, there was no Sunday School, and in many ways there really were not any organized quorum meetings for the Priesthood.  Further, most of these brethren had little to no formal schooling.  Yet these brethren were called to spend their summer months between planting and the harvest in preaching the gospel and building the Church.  The School of the Prophets was a way for the Lord to train these early missionaries, teaching them the doctrines of the gospel as well as the principles of grammar, geography, languages, mathematics, etc.  Further, the Lord was trying to train a group of new converts to be prepared for the ordinances of the Temple which He began to reveal at this time, beginning with the ordinance of the washing of feet.

The Prophet's School of the Prophets met during the winter months up through early 1836 and the Dedication of the Kirtland Temple.  By the Fall of 1836 when the School should have begun again, apostasy was beginning to undermine Kirtland and the School was never really reestablished.  In Nauvoo the Prophet relied more on his meetings with the Quorum of the Twelve and other select men and women to reveal the sacred principles of the gospel and the Temple ordinances.  Also, the Church established a university and schools (among other things) to increase the intellectual knowledge of the Saints.  But the School of the Prophets had been a vital organization in the early days of the Church, increasing the spiritual understanding and brotherhood among the early men of the Church.

In 1869, with the coming of the railroad, Brigham Young felt there was a need to reestablish the School of the Prophets.  Although it brought many blessings to Utah, the railroad posed a serious challenge to the Saints.  With it came outside products and outside ideas, many of which were directly aimed at challenging the underpinnings of the Church and the faith of the Saints.  If the Saints spent all of their money on Eastern goods, Utah would be bankrupted and put at the mercy of outside interests.  Even more dangerous was the fear that some of the Saints would abandon their faith for ideas and philosophies that ran contrary to the Gospel.  In order to address some of these concerns and also to increase the spiritual understanding of the Saints, Brigham Young reestablished the School of the Prophets, placing one in Salt Lake, another in Provo, and others in various small communities.

In going through the minutes for the Salt Lake School, I've found a number of things that will be valuable for my dissertation, but I've also found some comments that simply built my faith and I wanted to share a couple of these.  Because these were notes taken, they are unpolished and don't always read the way that they would in a polished talk.  But sometimes there is something nice, something real, about the short and choppy excerpts.

On December 11, 1869, President Young spoke to the School and made a comment that I loved.  He said, "Even a man holding the office of a Deacon may magnify that calling so that he would be more worthy and have a higher exaltation than many High Priests.  It is not so much the office a man holds, as it is the magnifying of that portion of the office he does hold."  When I read this comment, I was struck by its simplicity and the reminder that the Lord rewards us according to our own performance in the callings that we are given with the abilities we have, not according to the performance of some other Saint in the callings he or she is given with the abilities that he or she possesses.  It would be wonderful if we could all be like President Monson or Sister Burton.  And we absolutely should look at and strive to emulate the examples of these wonderful leaders.  But we should not be discouraged if we are unable to care for all of the 84 widows in our ward on our own, for the Lord will judge us and reward us according to the time and circumstances and abilities that we had, rather than against the scale of President Monson's stunning example.

On January 8, 1870, Daniel H. Wells (second counselor to Brigham Young) spoke at the school.  The Brethren had been discussing the principle of sacrifice and President Wells said, "As for Sacrificing, he said, that he expected, for him to obtain eternal salvation, it would cost him not only all that he had, but all that he will ever have, though he did not deem it a sacrifice, for it was simply an exchange for the better...He expected it would be a rough passage when he entered the road to eternal life, and any saint having an idol between him and his God, it will certainly have to be torn from him, before he can enter into the Celestial Kingdom of our God."  Wilford Woodruff added, that "we all stood in need of Faith, especially at the present time, we have had good peace for many years, and he had no doubt but every one would sooner or later be tried to the very core - We should be prepared for every thing that may come along."

Sometimes it is easy to forget that the Gospel comes with an attached price.  It is easy to love the Gospel when everything is going well and when we are not being asked to give very much.  But in order to receive "all that the Father hath" (D&C 84:38), we must sooner or later be willing to place all that we have upon the altar.  And the older I grow, the more I realize that our possessions and our money are the easiest things to let go of.  Far more difficult and far more meaningful is the sacrifice of our heart and our will.  When Abraham and Isaac went to Moriah, they were being asked to give more than perhaps any other mortals (excepting the Savior) have been asked to give.  In a very real sense, they were being asked to sacrifice everything they had and everything they had desired for the future.  Some will say that they were being asked to give far too much.  What a terrible, lonely, and heart breaking journey that must have been.  But what must have been their thoughts as they returned home  and contemplated the ram in the thicket and their vastly expanded faith and understanding of the gift of God's Son?

Yes, the Gospel has a price; it is everything.  And we must be prepared to pay that hefty price.  But as our Hymn reminds us, "The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose, [God] will not, [He] cannot, desert to his foes; That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, [God] will never, no never, no never forsake."  Somehow, someway, when we have thoroughly proved our faith and willingness to give all for the Lord, in time or in eternity there will always be a ram in the thicket preserving those hopes, dreams, and blessings that we desire so deeply.  But before those blessings can come, we must first learn to obey the first great commandment, loving God with all our heart, might, mind, and strength.

Brett