Evolution of Latter-day Saint Views On The Manifesto
The Manifesto has been canonized by the LDS Church, and its text appears in the Doctrine and Covenants, one of the church's books of scripture. However, when the Manifesto was issued, it was not apparent that Woodruff or the other leaders of the LDS Church viewed it as the result of a divine revelation. Approximately one year after he declared the Manifesto, Woodruff began to claim that he had received instructions from Jesus Christ that formed the basis of what he wrote in the text of the Manifesto. These instructions were reportedly accompanied by a vision of what would occur if the Manifesto were not issued.
Following Woodruff's death in 1898, other church leaders began to teach that the Manifesto was the result of a revelation of God. Since that time, church leaders have consistently taught that the Manifesto was inspired of God. In 1908, the Manifesto was printed in the LDS Church's Doctrine and Covenants for the first time, and it has been included in every edition since. A non-Mormon observer of the church has stated that "here is no question that, from a doctrinal standpoint, President Woodruff's Manifesto now has comparable status with revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants". The Manifesto is currently published as "Official Declaration—1" in the Doctrine and Covenants.
Read more about this topic: 1890 Manifesto
Famous quotes containing the words evolution of, evolution, saint and/or views:
“The evolution of a highly destined society must be moral; it must run in the grooves of the celestial wheels.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The evolution of sense is, in a sense, the evolution of nonsense.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Ce corps qui s’appelait et qui s’appelle encore le saint empire romain n’était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire. This agglomeration which called itself and still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“A foreign minister, I will maintain it, can never be a good man of business if he is not an agreeable man of pleasure too. Half his business is done by the help of his pleasures: his views are carried on, and perhaps best, and most unsuspectedly, at balls, suppers, assemblies, and parties of pleasure; by intrigues with women, and connections insensibly formed with men, at those unguarded hours of amusement.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)