Out of the Wilderness

 Very early on in the Restoration the Lord made this comment about the church He was establishing: “This the beginning of the rising up and the coming forth of my church out of the wilderness” (Doctrine and Covenants 5:14). In another revelation the next year He used similar language: “And verily, verily, I say unto you, that this church have I established and called forth out of the wilderness” (Doctrine and Covenants 33:5). In the dedicatory prayer for the Kirtland Temple we find this similar petition: “That thy church may come forth out of the wilderness of darkness” (Doctrine and Covenants 109:73). Each of these suggest that the church was existing in some form when Joseph was called as the prophet; his role was to bring it “out of the wilderness.” Another revelation confirms that indeed the church that Christ established in the meridian of time was not totally destroyed; rather, it went into the wilderness. “And after they have fallen asleep the great persecutor of the church, the apostate, the whore, even Babylon, that maketh all nations to drink of her cup, in whose hearts the enemy, even Satan, sitteth to reign—behold he soweth the tares; wherefore, the tares choke the wheat and drive the church into the wilderness” (Doctrine and Covenants 86:3). Satan drove the church into the wilderness, but again this language implies that the church was still present in some form; it was not totally lost but it was lost from view and hidden in the wilderness.

               So how do we understand this language? Knowing what happened to the apostle John, I believe it makes sense. Though the New Testament doesn’t specifically say it, surely it was John who ultimately became the prophet and leader of the church after Peter died. Eventually all of the other apostles were killed, but he was not and he held the keys. As the Savior told Peter, James, and John: “Unto you three I will give this power and the keys of this ministry until I come.” Peter and James died; John did not. The keys were never taken from the earth; John held them and led the church from some time in the 1^st century up until the time of Joseph Smith. Ultimately he was “driven into the wilderness” meaning that he was no longer publicly present and there were no active meetings or other members of the church, but his work as the prophet of the church did not stop in those nearly two millennia. He did “prophesy before nations, kindreds, tongues and people” and “minister for those who shall be heirs of salvation who dwell on the earth” (Doctrine and Covenants 7:6-7). So to say that the church was taken from the earth in the apostasy would not totally be true; it was driven into the wilderness and hid. It is interesting that when the Prophet Joseph mentioned the visit of the three ancient apostles to him, he used the term wilderness to describe it: “The voice of Peter, James, and John in the wilderness between Harmony, Susquehanna county, and Colesville, Broome county, on the Susquehanna river, declaring themselves as possessing the keys of the kingdom, and of the dispensation of the fulness of times!” (Doctrine and Covenants 128:20). Joseph met them and received priesthood keys from them “in the wilderness” from John as well as the resurrected Peter and James. And our role today is still to work to bring the church out of the wilderness figurately speaking, or “out of obscurity and out of darkness” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:30).