Joseph Smith’s Mind—“The Learning and Wisdom of Heaven”

“I am a rough stone. The sound of the hammer and chisel was never heard on me until the Lord took me in hand. I desire the learning and wisdom of heaven alone.”[1]

Preparing the rising generation for the temple. About seven years ago my wife and I adopted a tradition with our twelve-year-old grandchildren that my parents started with their grandchildren (our children) years before—travelling with them to an historic site or national park, including a trip to a nearby temple to do baptisms for the dead. Our first trip with our oldest grandson, Michael, who is now on a mission in Bakersfield, CA, was to the Calgary Alberta Temple and Banff National Park. Trips to the Sao Paulo, Brazil (where we were serving a mission), Palmyra, NY, Nauvoo, IL, and San Jose, Costa Rica temples followed. This summer we took Eliza and Charlie to the Seattle, WA temple and then San Juan Island.

Charlie and Eliza at Seatlle, WA Temple

Why did my parents choose age 12 to inaugurate this tradition? I do not recall them ever explaining why they chose this age. In my mind, I always related it to the milestone that families mark when their children graduate from Primary and enter the young men and women programs of the Church—and, in the case of young men, receive the priesthood and are ordained to an office therein. It is also significant that as youth approach or reach their twelfth year they are authorized, upon recommendation by their bishopric, to officiate in proxy baptisms and confirmations in the temple. (I have mentioned to our granddaughters that they also receive and exercise priesthood power when they act in callings to which they are set apart in the ward, including as young women class officers[2]. Perhaps their appreciation for this truth will grow over time?)

How do we, as Latter-day Saints, communicate the importance of these life milestones? I have greatly admired the tradition our Jewish neighbors and friends observe as summarized by one AI tool:

In the Jewish faith, turning 12 years old holds significant importance as it marks a crucial transition in a young person's spiritual and communal life. This milestone is associated with the ceremony called a Bar Mitzvah for boys and Bat Mitzvah for girls, which means "son [or daughter] of the commandment." This phrase signifies that the individual is now morally and ethically responsible for observing Jewish commandments and participating fully in religious duties. This Rite of Passage reflects their spiritual growth and recognition within the community. In Judaism, a Bar Mitzvah often involves a ceremony where the young person leads parts of the synagogue service, such as reading from the Torah [in Hebrew], symbolizing their newfound role. It fosters a sense of belonging, identity, and duty within the Jewish community. Thus, preparing for the Bar or Bat Mitzvah involves studying Hebrew, Torah scrolls, and Jewish teachings, emphasizing the importance of continuous learning and engagement with Jewish texts and values.”

In recent years, our two sons have begun another tradition with an equally important (but perhaps even less understood) spiritual component for our older teenage grandchildren—a multi-day backpacking trip in the Cascade mountains to enjoy breathtaking vistas of God’s creation. We hope that the devotionals we ask them to lead each evening and the morning and evening prayers of gratitude we offer before and after our strenuous (at least for some of us) hikes will strengthen their faith in Jesus Christ and motivate them to prepare for the blessings of the endowment and sealing ordinances, as well as missions (just as our young men and women leaders pray that every camp, FSY and high adventure trip will do).

Will such activities have this intended effect? In the end, we know that their decisions depend much more on what they bring to this life than what even we, their parents and leaders, can give them. These souls are, after all, according to President Nelson, the Lord’s “finest team,” Heavenly Father’s “most noble spirits.”[3]

Consider, by contrast, how Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ prepared Their chosen servant to inaugurate and lead the culminating and perhaps most important dispensation in human history. Joseph Smith endured physical challenges, to be sure, by virtue of his family’s everyday necessity to labor strenuously long hours for their daily sustenance, challenges he cheerfully met and mastered. Joseph’s nineteenth-century economic circumstances contrast markedly with the relatively minor temporal challenges most of our twenty-first-century Western youth face.

And what about Joseph’s intellectual and spiritual preparation? Certainly, he had less chances for schooling and far fewer resources for Gospel learning than our youth enjoy. God’s tutoring, however, was nothing short of extraordinary. In these areas as well, it seems to me, Joseph brought with him important gifts and abilities.

The Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith’s mind. Considering Joseph’s nature (his native gifts and talents) and nurture (his environment), how do we account for the fruits of the Restoration he brought about, including the crowing ordinances of the temple?

As I have read in recent months one academic piece after another noting inter-textual correlations, ancient literary devices and innumerable temple allusions in the Book of Mormon, they beg the question “could any man have written this book?”[4] The late Truman G. Madson, a BYU professor of religion and philosophy, answers:

We need not apologize at all for the language or structure or form of the Book of Mormon. It is among the great books of the world. . . . There is a transparency, a brilliance, a white light about its most spiritual elements that I do not find anywhere else. It is a masterwork. Joseph Smith did not produce it and could not have produced it.[5]

Decades of Book of Mormon scholarship have yielded volumes of insights about the book’s literary, historical, philosophical and doctrinal depths—including insights about ancient and modern temple practices and doctrine derived from the book.[6] But could Joseph Smith have been cognizant of any of such modern-day scholarly insights about temple doctrine and ordinances in the Book of Mormon from his experiences preparing for and translating it as that brief 60-64 working-day period unfolded? Would anything Joseph learned about Nephite temple practices as he translated the Book of Mormon have aided or influenced him in restoring modern temple ordinances and doctrines?

While it may be impossible to know exactly what Joseph understood about the temple during this early phase of his ministry, for me it is important to keep two important factors in mind.

First, we should ponder the source and substance of Joseph’s unfolding doctrinal understanding of the gospel—his divine tutoring. For example, when Moroni was “conversing” with Joseph “about the plates,” a “vision was opened” to his “mind that [he] could see where the plates were deposited, and that so clearly and distinctly that I knew the place again when I visited it” (JS-History 1:42). Indeed, Oliver Cowdery’s description of Joseph’s first visits with the angel Moroni, presumably received from Joseph and published with his permission, states that during such visits Joseph was “rapt in the visions of heaven during the night, and also seeing and hearing in open day.”[7] Similarly, when Joseph returned home with the plates and the Interpreters, he was particularly stuck by their power to allow him to “see anything,” as he excitedly told Joseph Knight.[8]

In other words, it appears that much of Joseph’s divine tutoring involved being shown—or “seeing” in vision—people and places, past, present and future, as well as being told about them. For example, Lucy Smith, describing the range of things that Moroni showed or explained to Joseph, as shared with his family in “evening conversations” during Moroni’s 22 documented visits[9] during his four years of tutoring, noted:

[Joseph] would describe the ancient inhabitants of this continent, their dress, mode of travelling, and the animals upon which they rode, their cities, their buildings, with every particular; their mode of warfare; and also their religious worship.[10]

What could Joseph have learned about the role of temples in the Nephite’s religious worship—and the gospel of Jesus Christ that informed their temple worship and ordinances—if he saw in vision their temples and what the kings, priests, prophets and people throughout Nephite history did in and in connection with them?

Second, we should not confuse Joseph’s lack of chances for learning with his native intellectual capacities. As Truman Madsen summarized from his extensive study of the Prophet’s life and teachings, Joseph’s was a “remarkable mind.”

As he matured and as the weight of his calling came upon him he became an assiduous, hard-reading student, poring over the scriptures, even being appointed to go over them word by word, line by line, and make inspired changes.[11]

The minutes of the Hebrew school the Prophet set up in Kirtland with the Jewish Hebraist Joshua Seixas recorded that “the two outstanding students in that school were Joseph Smith and Orson Pratt,”[12] the later renowned for his exceptional intellect and learning.[13]

Moreover, as Madsen notes, “intellectual gifts fall into many categories.” Madsen describes Joseph’s exceptional “creativity”—“the ability to picture the concrete pictorially, vividly, in its possibilities and variations.” Joseph also “had a brilliant conceptual ability both to see and understand, to go to the heart of an issue and then to express it so that others would understand.”

Madson also notes that Joseph had a “remarkable memory.” Not only could he remember Moroni’s recitation of Bible verses sufficiently “to recognize differences from the King James version of the Bible,” but when he dictated the long (and legalistic) Section 132 on eternal marriage to his secretary, William Clayton, in 1843 “without a change,” Joseph reported that “he knew the revelation perfectly, and could rewrite it at any time if necessary,” a feat Madsen describes as “staggering.”[14] This is even more remarkable in light of the fact that God first revealed the doctrine in this revelation to Joseph as early as the “mid-1830s,” more than a decade before it was recorded.[15]

Of his spiritual education, the Prophet declared: “I am a rough stone. The sound of the hammer and chisel was never heard on me until the Lord took me in hand. I desire the learning and wisdom of heaven alone.”[16] Being tutored by upwards of 60 heavenly beings, as President Nelson reported, certainly gave Joseph the “learning of heaven.” Joseph would later add: “Could you gaze into heaven five minutes, you would know more than you would by reading all that ever was written on the subject.”[17] Through the entirety of his life, how long did Joseph gaze into heaven and what did he learn? Possibly enough that he would not be surprised by anything modern commentators with all their learning have brought to the subject of the role of temples in the Book of Mormon.

Temples in the Book of Mormon. We will explore in more depth in coming blogs some of the scholarly insights about the role of temples and temple ordinances in the Book of Mormon[18]—and what Joseph Smith might have learned about them leading up to the restoration of such ordinances in their fulness by 1842. In an earlier blog, for example, we reviewed research by Don Bradley suggesting that the Book of Lehi may have included information about the temple Nephi built (2 Nephi 5:16) (and possibly a tabernacle Lehi may have furnished as a predecessor, portable temple)—its “construction” and the “identity and actions of [its] high priests” and the nature of the Nephite’s worship therein[19]—in detail analogous to what we find in the books of Exodus and Leviticus in the Bible.

More will be said in future blogs about the rich temple imagery and lessons in Lehi and Nephi’s visions in 1 Nephi 1, 8 and 11 and Jacob’s sermon in Jacob 5, which Joseph did not translate until June 1829. However, it may not be coincidental that the very first thing that Oliver Cowdery wrote in the original Book of Mormon transcript on April 7 and 8, 1829—King Benjamin’s remarkable sermon at the temple—also has become known as a rich “temple text.”

In fact, it is worth noting even before we tackle King Benjamin’s supernal temple sermon, as the preeminent LDS scholar Hugh Nibley observed, that “temple ordinances . . . are everywhere in the [Book of Mormon] if we know where to look for them. . . . The Book of Mormon [is] replete with temple imagery.”[20] Indeed, as D. John Butler, has commented more recently, “the Book of Mormon is a temple book . . . written by temple worshippers for temple worshippers, in the imagery of the temple, and teaching temple doctrines. Without seeing the temple in it, we can’t fully understand the Book of Mormon.”[21]

It may not be reasonable, I know, to expect any of my grandchildren to appreciate temple themes in the Book of Mormon that have taken scholars years of research to uncover. For now, my prayer is that our efforts to organize activities for our youth will promote the positive memories and personal relationships with each child that we intend through such activities.

Moreover, we pray that each activity will help them internalize the truths that their faith, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, subscribes to—that they each are a “son or daughter of the Covenant” that God established with ancient Israel; and that God restored that covenant relationship through the Prophet Joseph Smith in our day. This means that when they turned 8 and were baptized, and especially when they approached their 12^th birthdays, they and each of us took upon ourselves sacred and vital responsibilities to be loyal to God, to receive and righteously exercise His priesthood authority (including as noted earlier each young women), to keep His commandments and, with the authority thus conferred, to serve Him and our fellow man throughout our lives.

*For more information about these images, see Peggy Fletcher Stack, "At long last, a photo of Mormon founder Joseph Smith emerges," Salt Lake Tribune, July 21, 2022, https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/07/21/long-last-photo-mormon-founder/. 1.Encyclopedia of Joseph Smith's Teachings, “Education,” citing HOC 5:423. 2. General Handbook: Serving in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 3.4 "Priesthood Authority" (“All Church members can exercise delegated [priesthood] authority as they are set apart or assigned to help accomplish God’s work.”). 3. Russell M. Nelson and Wendy W. Nelson, “Hope of Israel,” Worldwide Youth Devotional, June 3, 2018, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/broadcasts/worldwide-devotional-for-young-adults/2018/06/hope-of-israel?lang=eng. 4. Bruce R. McConkie, “What Think Ye of the Book of Mormon?” Ensign, October 1983, 73. 5. Madsen, Joseph Smith the Prophet, 24.

6. See, e.g., Daniel Becerra, Amy A. Easton-Flake, Nicholas J. Frederick, Joseph M. Spencer, Book of Mormon Studies: An Introduction and Guide (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2022).

7. George L. Mitton, “Joseph Smith at the Veil: Significant Ritual, Symbolism, and Temple

Influence at Latter-day Saint Beginnings,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-Day Saint Faith and Scholarship, vol. 58, 2023, 71, quoting Oliver Cowdery, “Letter VIII to W. W. Phelps, Esq.,” Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate 1, no. 10 (July 1835), 197.

8. Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 60.

9. Peterson, “Moroni—Joseph Smith’s Tutor” (“It is impossible to determine the number of ‘interviews’ Joseph had with Moroni, but twenty-two visits are often identified. (See accompanying chart, ‘Moroni’s Known Appearances to Joseph Smith, 1823–1829.’))

10. Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1845, 87, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 1, 2025, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1845/94?. See also Peterson, “Moroni—Joseph Smith’s Tutor” (noting in describing this quotation from Lucy Smith about the information Joseph shared with his family in these Smith “family home evenings” that “the visions Joseph experienced while receiving Moroni’s instructions must have been vivid”).

11. Madsen, 21.

12. Ibid.

13. Compare, Hales, “Joseph Smith’s Education and Intellect,” 19-30 (arguing that “Pratt bested Joseph Smith, at least when learning Hebrew”). While citing William McLellin’s observation that Joseph “had one of <the. Strongest, well balanced, penetrating, and retentive minds of any <man> with which <whom> I ever formed an acquaintance, among the thousands of my observations” (p. 19), among other similar recollections, Hales argues that the documentary evidence does not support the secular theory that Joseph Smith had either the intellectual “ability” or “education” in 1829 to dictate the Book of Mormon.

14. Madsen, 22-23.

15. JSP, “Revelation, 12 July 1843 [D&C 132],” https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-12-july-1843-dc-132/1.

16. Encyclopedia of Joseph Smith's Teachings, “Education,” citing HOC 5:423.

17. Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith, “Chapter 36: Receiving the Ordinances and Blessings of the Temple,” 419, quoting HOC 6:50–5. 18. For a partial list of such scholarship, I quote footnote 23 of Andrew I. Miller’s article, “King Benjamin’s Sermon as a Type of Temple Endowment,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 64 (2024), 34, https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/king-benjamins-sermon-as-a-type-of-temple-endowment/:

John W. Welch, “The Temple in the Book of Mormon: The Temples at the Cities of Nephi, Zarahemla, and Bountiful,” in Temples of the Ancient World, 297–387; LeGrand L. Baker and Stephen D. Ricks, Who Shall Ascend Into the Hill of the Lord?: The Psalms in Israel’s Temple Worship in the Old Testament and in the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2010); Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Temple Themes in the Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood (Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2014); Joseph M. Spencer, The Vision of All: Twenty-five Lectures on Isaiah in Nephi’s Record (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2016), 167–78; Matthew L. Bowen, “‘I Have Done According to My Will’: Reading Jacob 5 as a Temple Text,” in The Temple Ancient and Restored: Proceedings of the Second Interpreter Matthew B. Brown Memorial Conference “The Temple on Mount Zion,” 25 October 2014, ed. Stephen D. Ricks and Donald W. Perry (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation; Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2016), 235–72; Jeffrey M Bradshaw, “What Did Joseph Smith Know about Modern Temple Ordinances by 1836?,” in Temple Ancient and Restored, 1–122; Bruce C. Hafen and Marie K. Hafen, “Adam, Eve, the Book of Moses, and the Temple: The Story of Receiving Christ’s Atonement,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 46 (2021): 157–200, journal.interpreterfoundation.org/adam-eve-the-book-of-moses-and-the-temple-the-story-of-receiving-christs-atonement/; Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, The First Days and The Last Days: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary on the Book of Moses and JS-Matthew in Light of the Temple (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation; Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2021); Matthew L. Bowen, “‘Encircled About Eternally in the Arms of His Love’: The Divine Embrace as a Thematic Symbol of Jesus Christ and His Atonement in the Book of Mormon,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 59 (2023): 109–34, journal.interpreterfoundation.org/encircled-about-eternally-in-the-arms-of-his-love-the-divine-embrace-as-a-thematic-symbol-of-jesus-christ-and-his-atonement-in-the-book-of-mormon/; and Skyler R. Smith, “Heavenly Ascent in Jacob’s Writings in Second Nephi: Addressing the Question of What the Plan of Salvation is in the Book of Mormon,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 60 (2024): 137–82, journal.interpreterfoundation.org/heavenly-ascent-in-jacobs-writings-in-second-nephi-addressing-the-question-of-what-the-plan-of-salvation-is-in-the-book-of-mormon/. 

19. Bradley, The Lost 116 Pages, 206. 20. Hugh Nibley, Approaching Zion (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1989), 567, as quoted by Miller, “King Benjamin’s Sermon as a Type of Temple Endowment,” 4. 21. D. John Butler, The Goodness and the Mysteries: On the Path of the Book of Mormon’s Visionary Men (self-pub., 2012), 1, as quoted by Miller, “King Benjamin’s Sermon as a Type of Temple Endowment,” 4.