Early Latter Day Saint Movement
The first references to the term evangelist in Latter Day Saint theology were mainly consistent with how the term is used by Protestants and Catholics.
In 1833, Joseph Smith, Jr. introduced the new office of Patriarch, to which he ordained his father. The elder Smith was given the "keys of the patriarchal Priesthood over the kingdom of God on earth", the same power said to be held by the Biblical Patriarchs, which included the power to give blessings upon one's posterity. The elder Smith, however, was also called to give Patriarchal blessings to the fatherless within the church, and the church as a whole, a calling he passed onto his eldest surviving son Hyrum Smith prior to his death. Hyrum himself was killed in 1844 along with Joseph, resulting in a Succession crisis that broke the Latter Day Saint movement into several smaller denominations.
It is not known who first identified the term evangelist with the office of patriarch. However, in an 1835 church publication, W. W. Phelps stated,
- "ho is not desirous of receiving a father's or an evangelist's blessing? Who can read the ancient patriarchal blessings, recorded in the bible, for the benefit of the church, without a heart filled with joy…?"
Joseph Smith also identified the term evangelist with the office of patriarch in 1839, stating that "an Evangelist is a Patriarch".
The necessity of an evangelist office in the church organization has been reinforced repeatedly, based on the passage in Ephesians 4:11, which states, "And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers". In 1834, while writing what he called the "principles of salvation", prominent early Mormon co-founder Oliver Cowdery stated that:
- "We do not believe that he ever had a church on earth without revealing himself to that church: consequently, there were apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, in the same."
Joseph Smith echoed Cowdery's statement in 1842, in a letter to a Chicago newspaper editor outlining the church's basic beliefs. Smith said that his religion "believe in the same organization that existed in the primitive church, viz: apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists".
Read more about this topic: Evangelist (Latter Day Saints)
Famous quotes containing the words early, day, saint and/or movement:
“The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Bid her paint till day of doom,
To this favour she must come.
Bid the merchant gather wealth,
The usurer exact by stealth,
The proud man beat it from his thought,
Yet to this shape all must be brought.”
—Francis Beaumont (1584-1616)
“A saint about to fall,
The stained flats of heaven hit and razed
To the kissed kite hems of his shawl....”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“What had really caused the women’s movement was the additional years of human life. At the turn of the century women’s life expectancy was forty-six; now it was nearly eighty. Our groping sense that we couldn’t live all those years in terms of motherhood alone was “the problem that had no name.” Realizing that it was not some freakish personal fault but our common problem as women had enabled us to take the first steps to change our lives.”
—Betty Friedan (20th century)