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“The Prophecy of This Book”

“The Prophecy of This Book”

Last updated on: February 18, 2015 at 8:01 am by joespencer

“The Prophecy of This Book” 2015-02-16T03:03:36+00:00 joespencer

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Believers in the Book of Mormon are inevitably acquainted with Revelation 22:18-19:

For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

For as long as the Book of Mormon has been in circulation, this passage has been presented to defenders of the book as biblical warrant for its wholesale rejection. In the very last words of the Christian Bible, a warning sounds: Don’t add anything to God’s word—especially a whole volume!

Of course, entirely adequate responses to this objection have been in circulation for a long time. Defenders of the Book of Mormon point out that the author of Revelation clearly had reference, in context, just to his own prophecy, not to the Christian Bible as a whole; that Revelation was likely not the last book written among those included in the New Testament, such that the objection would work against other parts of the biblical canon as much as against the Book of Mormon; that a similar passage can be found in the Hebrew Bible (see Deuteronomy 4:2), so that Jews might make the very same criticism of the whole of the New Testament; and so on.

Both the objection and these responses are old news. But I think there’s new news for readers of the Book of Mormon regarding Revelation 22:18-19, news that’s passed unnoticed for ridiculously too long. Close inspection suggests that this passage from Revelation plays a central role in the self-understanding of the Book of Mormon. I want to bring together a few guiding thoughts on this point.

About the time the Church of Christ—as Mormonism was first officially known—was organized by Joseph Smith, the prophet produced a document that early adherents referred to as the “Articles and Covenants of the Church.” (It is now canonized as section 20 of the Latter-day Saint Doctrine and Covenants, and as section 17 of the Community of Christ Doctrine and Covenants.) Early in that document, something not unlike a creed is presented, a basic outline of what Mormons “know” in light of their scriptures (both the Bible and the Book of Mormon) and the founding events of the Restoration (the prophet’s visions and the translation of the Book of Mormon). As this creed of sorts comes to a conclusion, the following is to be found (quoting not from the now-canonical text but from the earliest extant copy, available in the first Documents volume of the Joseph Smith Papers):

And we know that these things are true and agreeable to the revelations of Jesus Christ which was signified by his angel unto John, neither adding nor diminishing to the prophecy of his book; neither to the holy scriptures; neither to the revelations of God which shall come hereafter by the gift and power of the Holy Ghost, neither by the voice of God, neither by the ministering of angels. And the Lord God hath spoken it—and honor, power, and glory be rendered to his holy name both now and ever.—Amen.

This is a complicated passage, but its reference to Revelation 22:18-19 is unmistakable. Apparently, no skeptical outsider is needed to raise the potential objection that the Book of Mormon—or, in fact, Mormonism in general—runs into trouble with John’s concluding warning. The founding document of the several Mormon churches itself notes the potential objection and offers a preliminary response to it. The nature of that preliminary response is, as I’ve just suggested, somewhat unclear. (Subsequent revisions to the text before its canonization smooth out the text, but the intentions of its original formulation remain unclear.) This much, however, does seem clear: that the scope of Revelation 22:18-19 is to be limited to “the prophecy of his [John’s] book.”

That might sound at first like one of the responses I mentioned above—that John had reference only to his own book. In a way, I think that’s clearly right. But I hear something more at work here than just that, myself. I’m struck by the way that the words of the “Articles and Covenants” pick up on the language employed in Revelation 22:18-19 itself: “the prophecy of this book.” It’s to be noted that two such formulations appear in the original text of Revelation 22:18-19. In verse 18, one finds “the prophecy of this book” (one is not to add to “the words of the prophecy of this book”). In verse 19, one finds “the book of this prophecy” (one is not to take away from “the words of the book of this prophecy”). The reference in the “Articles and Covenants,” however, focuses uniquely on the first formulation, “the prophecy of this book.” This suggests that, from the perspective of Mormonism’s foundations, what’s essential and therefore unrevisable isn’t the biblical text (whether generally or specifically), but rather a specific prophecy the biblical text aims at promulgating.

Behind the Bible, there lies a prophecy—a specific or specifiable prophecy, especially connected to the Revelation to Saint John. This, it seems, is supposed to be a founding conviction of Mormonism. I want to suggest that it’s clearly a founding conviction of the Book of Mormon, in fact an essential point of orientation for the Book of Mormon and its interpretation.

Readers of the Book of Mormon have long recognized that the Revelation to Saint John lies behind a most remarkable vision to be found early in the book. After the volume’s inaugural prophet, Lehi, recounts to his family a dream in which he famously saw a life-giving tree, his son Nephi—the authorial voice behind the first two books within the Book of Mormon—seeks from God his own apocalyptic vision. He’s granted the vision, but he seems to see a good deal more than his father. A sweeping historical panorama passes before him, stretching from the events surrounding the Messiah’s appearance in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, through the slow dissolution of Christianities in both the Old World and the New, to the final redemption of Israel that occurs alongside major judgments for the nations. At the end of what he records of the vision, Nephi learns that his own vision is entangled with the Revelation to Saint John, at that point still to be both received and recorded some centuries later. Nephi’s angelic guide directs his visionary attention to “one of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (1 Nephi 14:20), explaining that this person—whose “name . . . was John” (1 Nephi 14:27)—would witness the same vision, but that he would be “ordained” to write out a full account of the experience (1 Nephi 14:25). Nephi was only allowed to write up a part of it. (I should note that I’m using Royal Skousen’s Earliest Text here, and that I’m using standard LDS references for passages in the Book of Mormon.)

But Nephi learns more about John’s written prophecy. The angel tells him this also regarding John and his Book of Revelation:

The things which he shall write are just and true. And behold, they are written in the book which thou beheld proceeding out of the mouth of the Jew. And at the time they proceeded out of the mouth of the Jew, or at the time the book proceeded out of the mouth of the Jew, the things which were written were plain and pure and most precious and easy to the understanding of all men. (1 Nephi 14:23.)

This is crucial. The angel’s words here make reference to an earlier sequence in Nephi’s apocalyptic vision, a sequence that describes a book “proceeding out of the mouth of the Jew,” as it’s put in the passage just quoted. That earlier sequence presents the book in question—unmistakably to be identified with the Christian Bible—as originally containing “the fullness of the gospel of the Lamb, of whom the twelve apostles bare record” (1 Nephi 13:24), originally appearing “in purity” (1 Nephi 13:25), but it then presents the same book as having had removed from it (or, more strictly, from “the gospel” it contains) “many parts which are plain and most precious; and also many covenants of the Lord” (1 Nephi 13:26). The phrase the angel uses in describing this perversion of the text is this: “they have taken away from” (1 Nephi 13:26).

If these several pieces are put together, a rather clear picture emerges. (1) According to Nephi’s vision, the Revelation to Saint John lies at the heart of the Christian Bible. (2) The Book of Revelation above all else is what in that Bible goes forth originally in purity—exhibiting the plain and the precious of the covenantal gospel. (3) The same Book of Revelation above all else is what in that Bible ends up transformed by whatever process is involved in removing the plain, the precious, and the covenantal. (4) The process by which that transformation is accomplished is apparently to be described as a taking-away-from.

Assembled into a single picture, we have this: The Book of Revelation as it has come down to modern Christianity is already the product of the very taking-away-from proscribed within that same book. That proscription is tragically ironic, first because it serves to warn only against what’s already happened to the book it’s meant to protect, and second because it now problematically seems to warn against restoring to the book what has already devastatingly been removed from it. From the very outset, the Book of Mormon seems not only to be aware of the warning in Revelation 22:18-19; it makes an accusation against certain of the transmitters of the book in which that passage appears—namely that they have already transgressed the book’s warning!

It’s essential, then, to recognize that the same apocalyptic vision of Nephi goes on to claim that the very purpose of the Book of Mormon’s emergence is to restore what’s been compromised in the Christian Bible’s concluding book. Unfortunately, “because of the many plain and precious things which have been taken out of the book, . . . an exceeding great many do stumble” (1 Nephi 13:29). But, the angel tells Nephi, God won’t allow people to “forever remain in that state of awful wickedness which . . . they are in because of the plain and most precious parts of the gospel of the Lamb which hath been kept back” (1 Nephi 13:32). And God will overcome the situation by manifesting himself directly to Nephi’s children, “that they shall write many things which I shall minister unto them, which shall be plain and precious” (1 Nephi 13:35). The Book of Mormon, by its own account, was prepared in order to bring the prophecy lying behind the Book of Revelation quite fully—and quite purely—to the attention of the world.

Except that—here’s the twist—the Book of Mormon doesn’t actually contain the prophecy in question. It contains only dark hints, scattered fragments that can’t be reassembled into a complete prophetic picture. And it’s explicit and emphatic about this point. Explaining his own apocalyptic vision later in his writings, Nephi states that the most important part of the promised supplementary record—“a revelation from God from the beginning of the world to the ending thereof” (2 Nephi 27:7)—would be “sealed,” unable to “be delivered in the day of the wickedness and abominations of the people” (2 Nephi 27:8). Mormon, the chief editor and compiler of the book, later demurs when he has a chance to include in his record the whole revelation, which was apparently delivered to Nephi’s descendants by the visiting resurrected Christ: “I were about the write them all . . . , but the Lord forbid it, saying: I will try the faith of my people” (3 Nephi 26:11). Moroni, Mormon’s son, later actually claims to have written the whole revelation into the record, but then he seals it up in accordance with Nephi’s vision, explaining: “They shall not go forth . . . [until] that day that [the book’s latter-day readers] shall exercise faith in me” (Ether 4:6-7).

The Book of Mormon, it seems, is meant to restore faith in what Revelation calls “the prophecy of this book.” But it does so by insisting that no one as yet even has that prophecy in hand. The Book of Mormon contains the promise that that prophecy can be had, but only when what is-but-isn’t in the Book of Mormon is finally given to the world. Only when the Book of Mormon’s readers reconstitute their relationship to God in a way that they can gain access to that prophecy will they be able to make any sense of Revelation. Moroni himself, further along in the passage I’ve quoted just above states this explicitly. He quotes God as saying that only when modern readers of the Book of Mormon “rend that veil of unbelief” that blinds them “shall my revelations which I have caused to be written by my servant John be unfolded in the eyes of all the people” (Ether 4:16).

The Book of Mormon presents itself—explicitly—as anything but an addition to the prophecy of John’s book. It’d be much more appropriate to say that it presents itself as a kind of veil over that prophecy. It claims that we’re not as yet in possession of John’s real prophecy (at least in its plainness and purity, and especially as regards its covenantal import), and yet it presents what it claims are the steps necessary to coming into possession of that real prophecy. To that prophecy, as yet unglimpsed, nothing should be added. From that prophecy, as yet unenvisaged, nothing should be taken away. But we’re so far barely if at all acquainted with that prophecy.

Such is the Book of Mormon’s testimony regarding its own relationship to the Book of Revelation. And that testimony, it seems to me, is far more audacious than what’s often assumed regarding the Book of Mormon’s relationship to Revelation 22:18-19. It’s not simply that the Book of Mormon dares to add to the biblical canon. It’s much rather that the Book of Mormon attempts, quite radically, to revise the status and trustworthiness of the biblical canon as such.

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