“Save Kolob”: Church News Says Book of Abraham “Not Central to the Restored Gospel”

High Priests Groups world-wide are still reeling at the Church News’ announcement that questions surrounding the accuracy and authenticity of the Book of Abraham are not as important as critics suggest because the book “is not central to the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ” despite its inclusion in the canonized LDS Standard Works. (Read Church News article here.)

“I’m stunned,” said LaVerl Jensen, High Priest Group leader for the Spanish Fork 87th ward. “If the Book of Abraham isn’t all that important, why did God go to all that effort to make sure the Egyptian papyri containing Abraham’s writings, miraculously preserved for millenia, made it all the way across the ocean and into the Prophet Joseph’s hands so he could translate them through the gift and power of God for our day?”

More progressive-minded Mormons greeted the news enthusiastically, because in establishing that the Book of Abraham falls outside what is “central” to the restored Gospel, the Church News listed six narrow essentials presented by BYU Professor John Gee:

God exists; Jesus Christ is His Son; God talked and still talks with men through the power of the Holy Ghost; Jesus Christ atoned for the sins of the world; the Atonement is available to those who trust Jesus, turn from sin, make and keep sacred covenants, and follow the course throughout their lives; and the Book of Mormon is true, an authentic record of God’s interactions with actual ancient people.

“Now where is the Book of Abraham in this?” Dr. Gee concluded. “It isn’t. The Book of Abraham is not central to the restored gospel of Christ.”

“I’m ecstatic about what this means,” said Rulon Jeffries, a longtime subscriber to Sunstone and Dialogue. “For years I’ve been given grief by my LDS friends and family for having ‘unorthodox” beliefs about a whole range of issues. But now I can cite this article as proof that orthodoxy in the Church has been narrowed to these six ‘central’ points.”

Folks, for those who haven’t been able to figure out what I had thought would be obvious, the Church News article referenced above is real, but the responses are a spoof in the style of The Onion or some other satirical news source. I had hoped to raise, in a humorous way, a number of interesting issues that I think are raised by this Church News article:

1. The Book of Abraham is the key support for the LDS doctrine of the pre-existence, and the pre-existence is treated as a foundational doctrine in official Church curriculum. Indeed, the pre-existence has been and is often the starting-point when we introduce our Restored Gospel to those investigating or newly converted to our faith. It is the “first estate” of our existence as described in our familiar version of the “Plan of Salvation.” For example, in our Gospel Principles manual, elements of the pre-existence are covered in all of the first six lessons. And unsurprisingly, the Book of Abraham is cited in all six of the first six lessons of the GP manual. If the Book of Abraham is “not central” to the Restored Gospel, one wonders why its contents are found in the first six lessons of the official Church manual we use to teach investigators and converts the Restored Gospel.

2. It is interesting that the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon made it into Dr. Gee’s list of six “central” points, but that the historical authenticity of the Book of Abraham did not, and I personally wonder what the justification is for treating them differently. Both were deemed important enough by God to go to the trouble of revealing to Joseph Smith. And both books were represented by Joseph Smith to be genuine and accurate translations of ancient records accomplished by the gift and power of God.

3. Dr. Gee’s list of six “central” points is also interesting for the many core LDS beliefs that it does not include. For example, it does not even include a belief that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, nor does it even mention a belief in the Bible.

4. In determining the Book of Abraham is “not central,” Dr. Gee seems to overlook the close relationship between the Book of Abraham and the temple. So there is an interesting paradox in his list of six “central” points of doctrine: while he includes making and keeping covenants (and presumably temple covenants are included) on the list of six “central” doctrines, by saying the Book of Abraham is “not central to the restored gospel” it seems he downplays the significance of the book of scripture that creates the doctrinal foundation for many aspects of those temple ordinances.

5. Although we have a rich and well-established culture of belief that “the mantle is far, far greater than the intellect,” that “God’s foolishness is wiser than the wisdom of men,” and that we need to rely on the “rock of revelation” rather than leaning on the “arm of the flesh,” it seems that increasingly the statements of past prophets, seers, and revelators are being disregarded by LDS scholars. For example, despite statements by Joseph Smith and others indicating that the Lamanites and Nephites ranged all over the North American continent, LDS scholars are now telling us that all the BOM action was confined to a very small area in southern Mexico and Guatemala. This shift in LDS scholarly consensus, as well as the DNA controversy, preceded the Church’s recent decision to revise the official Introduction to the Book of Mormon (authored by an Apostle who was sustained as a prophet, seer, and revelator) to eliminate the claim that the Lamanites were the “principal” ancestors of the American Indian. When today’s LDS scholars are unable to develop satisfactory answers to challenges posed by critics, it seems the response is, increasingly, to downgrade the earlier revelation-based claims as being “not central”, rather than continuing in the faith that those revelations will ultimately be vindicated by scholarship. I’m not arguing over whether this is right or wrong; I’m just observing that it’s happening.

6. This recent Church News article represents an example of how this displacement of past revelation by modern scholarship is gradually occurring: by quoting LDS scholars in an official church publication like Church News or Ensign magazine. The Church News does not print everything that is said at every scholarly conference, so the fact that Dr. Gee’s statements were published in the Church News, rather than just being covered in the FAIR newsletter, suggests to Church members reading the Church News that Dr. Gee’s statements are endorsed by the Church. This process of allowing modern LDS scholarship to displace past revelation with the quasi-sanction of publishing LDS scholars’ statements in an official Church newspaper or magazine seems to ignore the long-established doctrine that the revelations of past prophets, seers, and revelators can be superseded only by the current President of the Church (but that doctrine didn’t make the list of six “central” points either).

7. Lastly, one wonders, will this evaluation of the Book of Abraham as being “not central” result in it being eventually removed from our Standard Works? Dr. Hugh Nibley once said that without the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham, we would be “just another Church.” By stating the Book of Abraham is “not central to the restored gospel,” have Dr. Gee and Church News brought us one step closer to becoming just that?

PREMISE: Mormons and Mormonism is bad, dangerous and a threat

ARGUMENT: Mitt is a Mormon

CONCLUSION: Mitt is thus "dangerous" and a "threat" and no one should vote for him.

PREMISE: CHRISTians and CHRISTianity is bad, dangerous and a threat

ARGUMENT: Most AMERICANs are CHRISTian.

CONCLUSION: Therefore; the vast majority are CHRISTian and need an enlightened MORMON to lead them.

Questions put to Joseph Smith: "'Do you believe the Bible?' [Smith:]'If we do, we are the only people under heaven that does, for there are none of the religious sects of the day that do'. When asked 'Will everybody be damned, but Mormons'? [Smith replied] 'Yes, and a great portion of them, unless they repent, and work righteousness." (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 119).

Joseph Smith: "for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible" (from Pearl of Great Price 1:12). "What is it that inspires professors of Christianity generally with a hope of salvation? It is that smooth, sophisticated influence of the devil, by which he deceives the whole world" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p.270).

Brigham Young stated this repeatedly: "When the light came to me I saw that all the so-called Christian world was grovelling in darkness" (Journal of Discourses 5:73); "The Christian world, so-called, are heathens as to the knowledge of the salvation of God" (Journal of Discourses 8:171); "With a regard to true theology, a more ignorant people never lived than the present so-called Christian world" (Journal of Discourses 8:199); "And who is there that acknowledges [God's] hand? ...You may wander east, west, north, and south, and you cannot find it in any church or government on the earth, except the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" (Journal of Discourses , vol. 6, p.24); "Should you ask why we differ from other Christians, as they are called, it is simply because they are not Christians as the New Testament defines Christianity" (Journal of Discourses 10:230).

Orson Pratt proclaimed: "Both Catholics and Protestants are nothing less than the 'whore of Babylon' whom the Lord denounces by the mouth of John the Revelator as having corrupted all the earth by their fornications and wickedness. Any person who shall be so corrupt as to receive a holy ordinance of the Gospel from the ministers of any of these apostate churches will be sent down to hell with them, unless they repent" (The Seer, p. 255).

Orson Pratt also said: "This great apostasy commenced about the close of the first century of the Christian era, and it has been waxing worse and worse from then until now" (Journal of Discourses

, vol.18, p.44) and: "But as there has been no Christian Church on the earth for a great many centuries past, until the present century, the people have lost sight of the pattern that God has given according to which the Christian Church should be established, and they have denominated a great variety of people Christian Churches, because they profess to be ...But there has been a long apostasy, during which the nations have been cursed with apostate churches in great abundance" (Journal of Discourses , 18:172).

President John Taylor stated: "Christianity...is a perfect pack of nonsense...the devil could not invent a better engine to spread his work than the Christianity of the nineteenth century." (Journal of Discourses , vol. 6, p.167); "Where shall we look for the true order or authority of God? It cannot be found in any nation of Christendom." (Journal of Discourses , 10:127).

James Talmage said: "A self-suggesting interpretation of history indicates that there has been a great departure from the way of salvation as laid down by the Savior, a universal apostasy from the Church of Christ". (A Study of the Articles of Faith, p.182).

President Joseph Fielding Smith said: "Doctrines were corrupted, authority lost, and a false order of religion took the place of the gospel of Jesus Christ, just as it had been the case in former dispensations, and the people were left in spiritual darkness." (Doctrines of Salvation, p.266). "For hundreds of years the world was wrapped in a veil of spiritual darkness, until there was not one fundamental truth belonging to the place of salvation ...Joseph Smith declared that in the year 1820 the Lord revealed to him that all the 'Christian' churches were in error, teaching for commandments the doctrines of men" (Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 3, p.282).

More recent statements by apostle Bruce McConkie are also very clear: "Apostasy was universal...And this darkness still prevails except among those who have come to a knowledge of the restored gospel" (Doctrines of Salvation, vol 3, p.265); "Thus the signs of the times include the prevailing apostate darkness in the sects of Christendom and in the religious world in general" (The Millennial Messiah, p.403); "a perverted Christianity holds sway among the so-called Christians of apostate Christendom" (Mormon Doctrine, p.132); "virtually all the millions of apostate Christendom have abased themselves before the mythical throne of a mythical Christ whom they vainly suppose to be a spirit essence who is incorporeal uncreated, immaterial and three-in-one with the Father and Holy Spirit" (Mormon Doctrine, p.269); "Gnosticism is one of the great pagan philosophies which antedated Christ and the Christian Era and which was later commingled with pure Christianity to form the apostate religion that has prevailed in the world since the early days of that era." (Mormon Doctrine, p.316).

President George Q. Cannon said: "After the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized, there were only two churches upon the earth. They were known respectively as the Church of the Lamb of God and Babylon. The various organizations which are called churches throughout Christendom, though differing in their creeds and organizations, have one common origin. They all belong to Babylon" (Gospel Truth, p.324).

President Wilford Woodruff stated: "the Gospel of modern Christendom shuts up the Lord, and stops all communication with Him. I want nothing to do with such a Gospel, I would rather prefer the Gospel of the dark ages, so called" (Journal of Discourses , vol. 2, p.196).

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