Seer Stones and The Contemporary LDS Church
After finishing the Book of Mormon translation, Smith gave his brown seer stone to Oliver Cowdery, but he occasionally used his white stone to gain revelations, including his translation of what later became known as the "Book of Abraham." There is no evidence that Smith used the stone to dictate any more of the Doctrine and Covenants revelations after November 1830; and during his work on his Bible translation, Smith told Orson Pratt he had stopped using the stone because he had become acquainted with "the Spirit of Prophecy and Revelation" and no longer needed it. Nevertheless, in 1855, Brigham Young told the apostles that Smith had had five seer stones; and Young made it clear that Smith "did not regard his seer stones simply as relics of his youth" but had found others while church president.
According to Joseph Fielding Smith, tenth president, the LDS church continues to own one of Joseph Smith's seer stones. Michael Quinn claims that the church holds three. Nevertheless, since the nineteenth century, no President of the Church has openly used such a stone in his role as "prophet, seer, and revelator."
Read more about this topic: Seer Stone (Latter Day Saints)
Famous quotes containing the words seer, stones, contemporary and/or church:
“Always the seer is a sayer. Somehow his dream is told: somehow he publishes it with solemn joy: sometimes with pencil on canvas: sometimes with chisel on stone; sometimes in towers and aisles of granite, his soul’s worship is builded; sometimes in anthems of indefinite music; but clearest and most permanent, in words.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Man is made of the same atoms the world is, he shares the same impressions, predispositions, and destiny. When his mind is illuminated, when his heart is kind, he throws himself joyfully into the sublime order, and does, with knowledge, what the stones do by structure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn’t make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.”
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“... no young colored person in the United States today can truthfully offer as an excuse for lack of ambition or aspiration that members of his race have accomplished so little, he is discouraged from attempting anything himself. For there is scarcely a field of human endeavor which colored people have been allowed to enter in which there is not at least one worthy representative.”
—Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954)