Ten Years – A Retrospective

In this retrospective, Denver recounts some of the many ways the Lord has labored in His vineyard over the past ten years, following the Ten Talks. We’re reaching the end of another year, and with New Year’s resolutions coming up that are generally looking out to the future, it occurs to me that we ought to take a moment to think about what has happened over the course of the last 10 years since the completion of the Ten Talks that were given (beginning in Boise and ending in the Phoenix area), which has now been a decade. It was in connection with those talks that the declaration was made that the heavens were open and that the Lord had set His hand again a second time to recover His people, Israel. We tend to look at that in a very narrow lens, as if everything that the Lord has been doing to further His work has occurred within our eyesight or within our area of responsibility. But there are many things that the Lord has done that made possible His work (but wasn't done by us). It was made available to us by the work of other people. For example, in the last 10 years, we have been the beneficiaries of collaborative, technological tools that make it possible for people located in very different geographic locations to work together in order to complete projects. Most notably, the Restoration Scripture Project was only possible because we have collaborative tools that have been made available that didn’t exist just a short while ago. We have new digital technology that has been made available, including instant communications and multiple ways to collect and transcribe and preserve, publish, engrave, share, search, and learn from the material that we have that’s sacred and important for us to be able to dispense and disperse. We have live video conferencing and webinar capabilities that we’ve been able to use to bring people together in ways never before possible and that have enabled conversations to take place about/in the study of the gospel to be achieved in a way that didn’t exist before. We have live video and audio streaming technology that’s made it possible for covenants to be administered worldwide at the same time, in fulfillment of prophecy. We’ve been publishing a great deal of material, including: A restoration of the Testimony of St. John. We’ve got many revelations from the Lord that have been added to the Teachings and Commandments, including some very important replacements for corrupted Doctrine and Covenants sections, as well as further teachings and commandments that are addressed specifically to our generation. We have had canonized by a vote of acceptance the Restoration Edition of the Scriptures, including the Book of Mormon and the fullness of the Scriptures. (The Book of Mormon, in the form that it got published by the LDS Church, was really taken from a version that got published in the British Isles that contained many errors and omissions and problems, and the restoration project attempted to recover, correct, and finish up the Book of Mormon in the most correct way that it had ever been printed before.) Joseph Smith also referred to the fullness of the Scriptures as being both the Book of Mormon and the Bible as he had corrected it. We found out in the Scripture project that the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible had never been accurately published, and so the Restoration Edition of the Scriptures includes the fullness of the Scriptures as Joseph Smith described it, with the most complete and accurate Joseph Smith translation of the Bible that has ever been in print. We have been able to publish the Restoration Edition of the Scriptures worldwide, including print-on-demand versions [and] leather, high-quality forms. There are apps that have been prepared that make the Scriptures available for your handheld or your computer. There are online access to the Scriptures in searchable formats. There are audio and podcast versions. We have greater access to the Restoration Edition of the Scriptures available to us than perhaps any other people have had Scriptures made available to them as quickly as they have come out and become available for us. There’s been a compilation of the Glossary which has the most extensive foundational primer on understanding the Gospel available anywhere. If a person were to take and read the Glossary, just cover to cover, what they would find is that they know more about the Restoration and the Gospel than most people ever achieve in a lifetime of membership in any of the other Restoration churches, from the LDS to the Community of Christ. We have adopted a Statement of Principles that took some doing but managed to reach a form in which there was no opposition to it. The Covenant of Christ has been not only finalized as a plain English version of the Book of Mormon, but it’s been accepted by a body of believers and is now available to help anyone understand the content of that book directed to this generation. It’s now in existence in three different formats: The Restoration Edition, which includes [an] extensive background description in [the] Preface and in the material that’s [in the] Foreword. But there’s a First Nations Edition that has been printed that has none of that material; it has the original text, and it has a brief introduction to the First Nations people. And then there’s a Reader’s Edition that’s intended to be given to other people who are willing to accept the Book of Mormon but don’t need to read anything about the Restoration movement. It’s already having a great effect on children and teens, and it provides greater clarity and power in our own current language than most people are able to achieve by reading the Book of Mormon alone. We were given an inspired prayer, along with an answer to that prayer and a covenant. It’s the first grafting back into the mother tree that has happened since the Restoration began, and it includes specific promises to those who keep the covenant. I don’t think it possible to overstate the importance of the Covenant. In addition, there have been a series of lectures that have been given that really do shed a great deal more light about the understanding of the gospel; talks titled: Religion of the Fathers, Our Divine Parents, Civilization, The Holy Order 1 & 2. All of those are in addition to the Ten Talks that were given previously. We also have a great deal of new information about Joseph Smith and his battle against the sin and corruption that was going on in the city of Nauvoo that he was opposed to, including adultery in the form of polygamy. We’ve received instructions on the priesthood, clarification on authority and performance of public ordinances (including baptism and sacrament), and we’ve been given direction about how to authorize people to perform ordinances outside of their own family, and women’s participation in the disciplinary process. We’ve had 18 general conferences. We’ve had over 50 regional conferences and events, including seven Sawtooth camp-outs. We’ve seen women and adult retreats, youth conferences, and multi-fellowship gatherings. Thousands of fellowship meetings have taken place, including in-person and online fellowships that meet regularly, where people collect and administer their own tithing and uplift each other in faith. There have been countless opportunities for people in need to receive tithes dispensed to them. Unlike an institution that collects and keeps it for themselves, our tithes go to help one another. Outreach efforts have included: Eight talks given to the Christians, A 500-year Refor[m]ation Commemoration website, including biographies of inspired reformers and recognition of the continuing effect that movement has had on us today. There’s a book—The Testimony of Jesus: Past, Present, and Promise—that deals with much of how we’ve benefited from all that. There have been interfaith conferences, and Multiple Joseph Smith conferences have been held. Conferences in various parts of the world, including Europe, the Far East, and of course, throughout the United States. There’s a book, Rescuing the Restoration, that has been put out. Websites are now available to request baptism, to locate fellowships, to hear the Ten Talks, to receive the Covenant, and to connect with believers worldwide. There have been preservation efforts that have taken place: Recording and transcriptions of millions of words of audio and video [of] conference[s] and talks, Publication of numerous works, including books, compilations of talks, podcasts, Scriptures, website[s], blogs, video streams, and audiobooks. Major works have been etched into stainless steel plates for long-term preservation. And websites have been developed to preserve the word of the Lord, including a library of material from Joseph Smith, a library of material from myself, and soon a library will come on board from material published by Hugh Nibley. We have established a physical book vault for preservation of important works until the temple library can take custody of them. There’s digital archives of important works preserved in air-gapped hard drives and computers located around the world. Archived works are saved in Cloud Storage located in redundant data centers worldwide so that we don’t lose the material. In addition to everything else, the Joseph Smith Papers project has been rolling out during this same time period. It’s preserved and made available hundreds of important documents, even if the LDS Church chose to include footnotes written by them and their historians, and headnotes written by them, and historical introductions, many of which are inaccurate and contradict the very papers that they are publishing. Still, the Joseph Smith Papers project has been a gold mine of material that has helped us understand Joseph