When one studies the scriptures there is always this question before us. The scholarship of the Traditional Christian World clergy and letters, with their professors of religion through the ages, have quite well established manners and ways of viewing and interpreting the scriptures often further effected by such traditionally accepted Jewish interpretation. And we likewise have our trained scholars who have gained their degrees from graduating from such as those institutions so built up to and in support of that learning so handed down and developed of them. This has brought the develop perspectives of 'man' into the scriptures of God.
Certainly there ought to be a red flag caution well set out concerning such traditional scholarship of such 'learned' men through the ages. For it is from such as them that gave unto the world the Nicene Creed and the concept of the Holy Trinity and three Gods in but one God. Or is it One God set forth in three Gods? Such a tradition held by Christianity gives men of the scholarship cloth the grounds whereby they do state that Mormons are NOT Christians, for they do not accept their Nicene Creed Doctrine. And that of course is the base foundation of the Christian world concerning the nature and being of God so often enforced by violence against 'fellow Christians' in times past.
Yet we continue to adhere to their commentaries upon the scriptures and allude to them rather than to the study according to our own more enlighthened recently revealed scriptural foundations of the restoration. In this let us consider what the world has so presented concerning Zechariah’s vision recorded in chapter three of that book of the Old Testament. And I will reference it from the perspective of what we teach it to be from our own developed Institute of Religion texts.
Our Institutes of Religion text begins thus: “Most scholars agree that the Joshua referred to here was the high priest of the time. But in typical prophetic fashion, there is dualism in this chapter. Joshua (Hebrew Yeshua, Greek Hee-ay-sous, English Jesus) was a type of Jesus Christ, the great High Priest (see Hebrews 4:14). The chapter is messianic.”
It is well that we have at least come to the conclusion presented by Elder McConkie that the chapter is Messianic. But why are we starting with the concept that ‘most scholars’ who are of the traditional Christian world agree that the Joshua referred to in that chapter is the high priest or the son of the high priest of that time? Why need we start our understanding of the scriptures based upon what ‘they’ purport them to be? Have they proven themselves so worthy of such leadership for we of the revealed restored Gospel of Jesus Christ to follow? And why next must we further support our religion texts upon that vision from God to Zechariah with a worldly commentary upon the subject such as follows?
“From the promises of a
glorious future for the city and people of God, Zechariah turns to the means by
which they are to be achieved. God will raise up a perfect priestly Mediator,
of whom Joshua and his fellow-priests are a foreshadowing.” (Guthrie and Motyer,
New Bible Commentary, p. 790.)
I submit that by such as so premising our belief of what the vision of Zechariah is by beginning with such traditional Christian scholarship understanding, we are but placing false blinders upon our eyes, which myopically train us to align our ‘Christian beliefs’ according to those held by those false apostate religions of the past from which the restoration of the true Gospel of Jesus Christ was meant to free us from.
What Then Ought to Be Seen in Zechariah?
From the restored truth of the Gospel and the revealed truth of the provided scriptures whose purpose is to shed such true light upon the old to bring us to the truth, we have advanced knowledge and understanding upon which we ought to see the scriptures of God, and not to merely see them through the eyes of those traditional scholars of apostate Christianity.
We have come to a great and understanding, which the world does not have concerning the event of the pre-mortal realm. In that preexistent world, our Heavenly Father of the spirit of all men, so took council and did select and anoint Jehovah to be our Anointed King, God, Redeemer, Savior, Advocate, Mediator, Intercessor and Ministering God unto this our Second Estate, he so pertaining unto this estate, even as we his brethren were also. And we have further clarified knowledge and understanding that there was one who did so oppose the Father and his chosen Messiah, and that was Lucifer. He did stand forth to resist and accuse Jehovah. And as that ‘adversary’ he did earn himself the name of Satan.
And we are further given to understand that a war of words and concepts was waged in heaven and that a third part of the host of heaven did follow after Lucifer. And they were cast out of heaven, never to so participate in the blessings of the second estate, and to remain forever as but spirit beings, their eternal progression being forever ended, stopped and damned.
Now with that enlightened perspective, do we not have a more advanced understanding with which to look upon the vision of Zechariah which is beyond that of the men of scholarship of that bygone era of false ‘Christian Traditions’? Is the ‘vision’ of Zechariah merely a ‘type’ and a ‘foreshadowing’, first and foremost given concerning the contemporary Joshua of Zechariah’s day, with only a secondary dualistic reference to the Messiah which was yet to come?
We know and understand that from before the foundation of the world the Messiah was chosen and all was so known and understood. We know that Jehovah was selected to be that JESUS or Joshua [Jehoshua] to come before the world was formed or created by him. We have a more eternal perspective from which to view Zechariah’s vision than just what was to come from a Zechariah era perspective.
Why would Zechariah be given a ‘vision’ from heaven concerning first and foremost that Joshua of his day, which the ‘JOSHUA’ of the eternal perspective would be of far greater concern to the children of men? I propose that from the more eternal perspective that the vision of Zechariah chapter 3 was not concerning that contemporary Joshua, but was in fact concerning Jehovah throughout. And I further propose that from the broader LDS understanding and perspective, that the vision was not one which had its beginning in that contemporary Joshua, but that it had its origin in that all seeing preexistent frame.
Zechariah was given in vision to see the Judgment Council betwixt Jehovah and Lucifer, Jehovah so named there as Jehoshua or JESUS, that is Jehovah in whom salvation, deliverance and/or redemption was, and Lucifer so branded with the name of Satan, he so standing to accuse and oppose as the adversary of the Plan of God’s Salvation. This is the JESUS upon the one hand, on the right hand of God and Satan at Jesus’ right hand and God’s left hand, standing before the angel of God to be so judged prior to his being expelled from heaven.
In this respect the vision of Zechariah is not a type or foreshadowing of Christ in a contemporary Joshua, it is a hiding of the vision of the Judgment Council in heaven betwixt Jehovah and Lucifer, as JESUS and Satan, in the fact that the darkened minds of the Jews and those of Traditional Christianity could only see in it a reference to a conveniently placed priest by the name of Joshua. If it had not so been hidden from their understanding we might not have had it to be so recognized today. And even at that, the learning of men continues to encase us in that same darkness of perception, and it is continuing to hide it from the gaze of our understanding in our prepared texts of religion based upon the learning and scholarship of an apostate and fallen understanding of God.
Ought we not to so see from the perspective of the enlightened truth of the restoration all old scriptures and that darkened understandings of men anew? Or are we to be led by such scholarship of men, which was responsible for developing such concept as the Holy Trinity being but one God revealling himself in three phases of the same single individual entity and the Nicene Creed?
If we can cast off from us such blinding shackles which myopically train our spiritual eyes to see only that which the past traditional scholarship of men have seen, then we are no better off for the coming forth of the restoration of the true gospel of Christ. We ought to so see anew all things in that newness of light, which has been given us to see with. And we do this by first obtaining by our own efforts that which is to be obtained by study of the revealed works of God and then with that study and search and our own work, we ought to be able to enjoy the light of the Spirit to so enlighten us further with understanding and confirmation as to the truth of what we then can see in the scriptures which have been so hidden from such men as who had not such light and understanding granted unto them with which to see with.
And thus I suppose is the question. Which is it to be? Will our own levels of scholarship and wisdom be forever based in and upon that which has prevailed in the dark-ages of traditional Christian apostasy? Or are we to stand forth of ourselves in the revealed light and spirit of the restored Gospel of Christ? Are we forever to place our ‘new wine’ in those ‘old bottles’? Or will we be given ‘new bottles’ in which the ‘new truths’ may prevail and develop from under that traditional societal thumb of false religion? Where is our own scholarship of our own making according to that light, knowledge, understanding and truth of the restored gospel and the truth of the spirit which guides and directs it?
Ought we not have our own 'schools of the prophets' independent from such traditional scholarship if ever God’s people are to so stand as Moses appealed? ‘Would God that all the LORD’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit upon them!’ OR NOT? Will we ever place ourselves to be so highly mis-trained by them, or will we one day stand forth to train ourselves and also that world as to what it is that we truly are from our own perspectives and not according to theirs?