“An Angel and a Promise,” Revelations in Context (2016)
An Angel and a Promise
The evenings of September 22 and 23, 1823, formed a major turning point in Lucy Mack Smith’s life. On September 22, her son Joseph returned home from working in the field both excited and exhausted. Lucy remembered that “when the family were all together,” Joseph told them that an angel had visited him throughout the previous night. It was not the first time Joseph had received divine direction, but after his first vision three years earlier, Joseph had simply told Lucy about his decision not to join her Presbyterian church or any other denomination. At that time, she’d gone about her life as usual.
It was the angel Moroni’s visits that first made Joseph’s personal spiritual experiences a topic of family discussion. On the morning of September 22, the overnight experience left Joseph so tired that he struggled to finish his chores with his father and brother Alvin, but he still hesitated to say what had happened. Would his father believe him?1 Since Joseph offered no explanation for his tiredness, Joseph Smith Senior assumed his son was sick and sent him home to rest. But before Joseph reached the house, the angel appeared again, instructing Joseph to inform his father and reassuring him that his father would believe him. In the evening, Joseph decided to share the story of the angelic visitation with his whole family.
They took his experience seriously. As Joseph began to relate what had happened, however, his older brother Alvin saw Joseph’s fatigue and suggested that the whole family “go to bed, and rise early in the morning, in order to finish our day’s work” and return home for a “fine long evening” the following night when they could “all sit down for the purpose of listening.”2 Lucy prepared supper early the following day, and the whole family gathered before sundown—father, mother, six sons, and three daughters. Lucy recalled that after warning them that the time had not yet come to share the message he had received with the world, “Joseph commenced telling us the great and glorious things which God had manifested to him.”3
Doctrine and Covenants 2 presents only a few dozen of the thousands of words that would eventually be spoken and written about the angel Moroni’s visits to Joseph Smith. Moroni’s instructions directed him to a nearby hill where he found a sacred history of ancient inhabitants of the Americas recorded on gold plates. In time, he would translate the record by the gift and power of God and publish it as the Book of Mormon. For the Smith family, though, those evenings in September 1823 were a time when their hearts began to turn to ancient promises and the work to be done before Jesus Christ returned to the earth.
By the Hand of Elijah
Joseph wrote or oversaw the writing of at least four accounts of the angel’s visit.4 Those accounts make clear that Moroni’s message involved more than the call to recover the gold plates. In one of his later accounts, Joseph stated that the angel Moroni quoted from Malachi, Isaiah, Acts, and Joel as well as “many other passages of scripture” (Joseph Smith—History 1:36–41); in another, Joseph noted that “he explained many of the prophesies to me.”5 Oliver Cowdery identified more of these passages when he recounted his own experience listening to Joseph describe the visits. Providing almost three times as many words as Joseph’s longest account, Oliver named multiple passages from Deuteronomy, Psalms, Isaiah, and Jeremiah as the basis for a sweeping message about the opening of the heavens, the restoration of divine authority and covenants, the gathering of Israel, and the preparation for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.6 Oliver later observed “that to give a minute rehearsal of a lengthy interview with a heavenly messenger, is very difficult, unless one is assisted immediately with the gift of inspiration.”7
Over time, the passage from Malachi about Elijah’s return took on particular significance for Latter-day Saints. Elijah was a powerful Old Testament prophet who sealed the heavens against rain, called down fire from heaven, multiplied a widow’s food, and raised a young boy from the dead (see 1 Kings 17–18). But it was his dramatic translation without experiencing death (see 2 Kings 2) and his promised return that would profoundly influence Jewish and Christian traditions.8 Jews leave a cup for Elijah at the Passover table, recognizing him as an important precursor to human reconciliation, the restoration of the house of Jacob, and the messianic age. Early Christians likewise watched for Elijah as a forerunner of the Messiah and held him up as a model of prayer.9 The New Testament records one fulfillment of this promise when Elijah appeared with Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration.10
Moroni’s instructions were not the last Joseph heard about Elijah. In a process of ongoing revelation that would come to be a hallmark of the Restoration, Joseph learned more over time, “line up line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little” (2 Nephi 28:30). The Book of Mormon includes a story of Jesus sharing Malachi’s prophecy about Elijah with some of the ancient inhabitants of the Americas (see 3 Nephi 25), and Joseph would revisit the passage as part of his inspired revisions of the Bible.11 One revelation in August 1830 explained that Elijah held “the keys of the power of turning the hearts of the fathers to the children” (D&C 27:9) while another given a few months later referred to Elijah’s eventual coming (see D&C 35:4). Joseph Smith’s journal records that Elijah did appear in the Kirtland Temple in April 1836, declaring that “the time [had] fully come” for his return, both “to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children” and to commit to him “the keys of this dispensation” (D&C 110:14–16). In Nauvoo, the restoration of baptism for the dead turned many Saints’ thoughts toward their ancestors and created a link between past and present generations. Since that time, many Latter-day Saints have associated the spirit of Elijah with temple ordinances and family history work.
The promise of Elijah’s return, however, involves more than temple and family history work. The Restoration itself, as a return of ancient authority to modern generations, was a fulfillment of Malachi’s prophecy, repeated by the angel Moroni in 1823. In the final year of his life, Joseph Smith taught that “the spirit, power and calling of Elijah is, that ye have power to hold the keys of the revelations, ordinances, oracles, powers and endowments of the fulness of the Melchizedek Priesthood and of the kingdom of God on the earth” so as to be able to “perform all the ordinances belonging to the kingdom of God.”12 Or, as Joseph summarized on another occasion, “the covenant which God made with ancient Israel was at hand to be fulfilled.”13
Lucy Smith was one of the first to hear about the angel Moroni’s message and feel how it brought her family closer. At the end of her life, Lucy recalled that those evening visits “caused us greatly to rejoice” and proved that God “would give us a more perfect knowledge of the plan of salvation and the redemption of the human family.”14 The visits from Moroni to her son bore tremendous historical significance, launching the active work of the Restoration, introducing Joseph to the Book of Mormon, and laying the foundation for Elijah’s return and the broader work of linking God’s children together as a family in time and for eternity.