“Mysterious truths” were believed to require special or specific guidance to understand, and different churches claimed their own superior or more accurate understanding. For example, Catholic pastor Demetrius Gallitzin wrote that Protestants, like individual Catholic pastors, needed the Catholic Church as an “unerring guide” to understand the “true sense of Holy Writ” and its “mysterious truths” and that without it, readers of the Bible would “stumble at every step.” Similarly, Anglican priest Thomas Jee wrote that God had established a standing ministry with his apostles and had sent forth ministers to publish his “mysterious truths” to his children. By contrast, JS sought to make complex spiritual truths plain to others. Brigham Young later recounted: “When I first heard him preach, he brought heaven and earth together; and all the priests of the day could not tell me anything correct about heaven, hell, God, angels, or devils. . . . When I saw Joseph Smith, he took heaven, figuratively speaking, and brought it down to earth . . . and that is the beauty of his mission.” (Gallitzin, Defence of Catholic Principles, 40–41; Jee, Sermons on Some of the Doctrines and Duties of the Christian Religion, 3; Brigham Young, in Journal of Discourses, 5:332.)

Gallitzin, Demetrius A. A Defence of Catholic Principles, in a Letter to a Protestant Clergyman. To Which Is Added, an Appeal to the Protestant Public. 4th ed. New York: Catholic Publication Society, 1837.

Jee, Thomas. Sermons on Some of the Doctrines and Duties of the Christian Religion, Addressed Particularly to Political Economists and Guardians of the Poor. London: R. B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1837.

Journal of Discourses. 26 vols. Liverpool: F. D. Richards, 1855–1886.

See Revelation 21:6; 22:1.

See Stepney, “Horace, Book IV. Ode IX.,” 2:128.

Stepney, George. “Horace, Book IV. Ode IX.” In Supplement to the British Poets, edited by Thomas Park, vol. 2, pp. 126–128. London: Stanhope Press, 1808.