Joseph Smith: 'A Choice Seer' | Neal A. Maxwell, Mar 1986

Elder Neal A. Maxwell bears powerful testimony of the choice seer Joseph Smith and his role in revealing essential truth about our Savior Jesus Christ.

This devotional was given on March 30, 1986.

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© Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.

I am aware that my wise and gentle friend Elder David B. Haight spoke about the Prophet Joseph a month ago. Please bear with me, therefore, as I seek to place the spotlight on the Seer in yet a different way on this Easter Sunday, during which our rejoicing is made more resplendent by the revelations and translations concerning Jesus that came to us through Joseph.

My appreciation is expressed to President Jeffrey Holland, Dean Robert Matthews, Professors Hugh Nibley, Jack Welch, Truman Madsen, Richard Anderson, Dean Jessee, and others for sharing knowledge with me that has been so helpful. These men do their part to slow the process of my becoming intellectually arthritic.

The Prophet Joseph Smith

Whenever we talk about the Prophet Joseph Smith, it is important to remember what he said of himself: “I never told you I was perfect; but there is no error in the revelations which I have taught” (Teachings, p. 368). He was a good man, but he was called by a perfect Lord, Jesus of Nazareth! Joseph received his first counsel from God the Father, “This is My Beloved Son.Hear Him!” (JS—H 1:17). Joseph Smith listened carefully to Jesus then and ever after.

Ages ago in the Great Council, Jesus was the prepared but meek volunteer. As the Father described the plan of salvation and the need for a Savior, it was Jesus who stepped forward and said humbly but courageously, “Here am I, send me” (Abraham 3:27; see also Moses 4:2). Never has anyone offered to do so much for so many with so few words!

It is through the Prophet Joseph Smith, whom the resurrected Jesus called, that we learn these things, and so much more, about Jesus—long before Bethlehem and well beyond Calvary. Whenever we speak of the Prophet Joseph Smith, therefore, it should be in reverent appreciation of the Lord who called him and whom Joseph served so well.

From Joseph Smith, one unlearned and untrained in theology, more printed pages of scripture have come down to us than from any other mortal—in fact, as President Holland has pointed out, more than the combined pages, as available at present, from Moses, Paul, Luke, and Mormon.

But it is not only a matter of impressive quantity, it is also a qualitative matter, since dazzling doctrines came through the Prophet, including key doctrines previously lost from the face of the earth, a loss that caused people to “stumble exceedingly” (1 Nephi 13:34). “Plain and precious” things, because of faulty transmission, were “kept back” or “taken away” (see 1 Nephi 13:34, 39–40), and thus do not appear in our treasured Holy Bible.

What came through Joseph Smith was beyond Joseph Smith, and it stretched him! In fact, the doctrines that came through that “choice seer” (2 Nephi 3:6–7) by translation or revelation, are often so light-intensive that, like radioactive materials, they must be handled with great care!

By the way, it appears that in the process of translating the Book of Mormon in the spring of 1829, Joseph was moving along at the rate of seven to ten current printed pages a day. This is but one illustration of how blessed that “choice seer” was. Although Joseph could translate the words of the Book of Mormon, “The learned shall not read them, for they have rejected them” refers to a mind-set that is with us to this day, belonging to more than Professor Anthon (see 2 Nephi 27:20 and JS—H 1:64–65). In contrast, among an increasing number of mortals, Joseph is, as foreseen, “esteemed highly” (2 Nephi 3:7).

In 1833 Joseph was told not only that Jesus was with God premortally, but that:

Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be. [D&C 93:29]

What a stunning parting of the curtains so that man could have a correct view of himself! The silence of centuries was officially broken. As the morning of the Restoration began to break, the shadows of false doctrines began to flee. Man’s view of himself could become clearer, unimpeded by the overhanging of “original sin.” We are accountable to a just God for our actual and individual sins—not for Adam’s original transgression...

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