Restoring the Ancient Church

One of the unique things about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that its members, myself included, believe that it is headed by a prophet.  Most people are familiar with the idea of a prophet through names like Moses, Isaiah, and Noah. Those prophets received revelation — information — from God and then passed it along to others. Joseph Smith did the same. Part of his job was to be the means on Earth used by God to restore the ancient Church.  The concept of a prophet lives on today, with the head of the Church being a prophet who also communes with God and then passes the knowledge acquired on to us to help us navigate the stormy seas of our time and the questions unique to our situations.

 
Restoring the Ancient Church: Joseph Smith and Early Christianity by Barry Robert Bickmore (ISBN: 978-1-893036-16-1) explores the idea that church founded by Joseph Smith was not made up, but actually follows the ancient church as set up by Christ while on the earth.  It starts with a discussion of the apostasy and if a restoration was even necessary.  Once that was established, the author delves into topics such as the nature of God, the organization and structure of the church, the afterlife, and even a little bit about baptism and the temple ordinances.  There are extensive and thorough excerpts from ancient writings, some apocryphal, some simply scholarly and philosophical explanations from the first four centuries after Christ that show that the ancient Christian church believed and practiced many things that align with the modern teachings of the church founded by Joseph Smith.  The idea of a non-trinitarian, non-creedal God consisting of three separate beings united in purpose was quite normal.  An afterlife consisting of more than simple understandings of heaven and hell, but of degrees of inheritance and the possibility for progression was extant.  The ancient church had sacred ordinances not shared with outsiders that focused on the creation and man’s mortal journey as a stepping stone to return to his Heavenly Father.  A case is made that even baptism was regarded as a sacred thing, not necessarily to be shared with everyone, and was more closely guarded than it is today.  The organizational structure of the ancient church, at least as presented, had many similarities.  The overarching point was that Joseph Smith had no access possible access to most of the sources provided, and even if theoretical access existed to others, it wasn’t something a hard-working but poor farmer had the time nor means to deal with.  The evidence points to two things: Joseph Smith had access to revelation and the restored Church is the same Church as the one Christ Himself established.

I found the book to be fascinating, although dry in places.   I found the explanation of the apostasy and the need for a restoration to be kind of bland, although necessary.  The evidence was all very interesting.  Some bits of evidence were strong than others, and some of the more difficult-to-understand passages from ancient theologians sometimes seemed to miss the mark.  It seemed all very thorough, though.  The evidence presented is convincing, but in no way replaces the real way to know if something is true or not, which is to follow Joseph Smith’s example and ask of God.  One final note: The book was clearly published on a budget, and there were enough typos and formatting errors for me to be distracted at times.  Like all modern books, what should be footnotes are endnotes, causing a lot of wasted time flipping between where one is reading and the endnotes (even with a bookmark in the endnotes).

 

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