Rebranding Revelation in the LDS Church
A Response to LDS Discussions: The Charge That Impression-Based Revelation Is a Modern Invention
The Argument Examined
LDS Discussions published a post titled “Rebranding Revelation: Russell M. Nelson and the Word ‘Mormon’” that advances a specific and serious charge: the contemporary LDS Church has quietly abandoned the robust, visionary, directive revelation of Joseph Smith and replaced it with something far humbler—mere impressions on the mind, the kind of thing, as Joseph F. Smith allegedly admitted under oath, that “any good Methodist” might experience. The post uses President Nelson’s 2018 directive regarding the Church’s name as the centerpiece of this argument, contending that what Nelson called revelation was merely a personal preference he had advocated for 28 years prior, and that his predecessor presidents rebuffed it. The implication is damning: if Nelson’s “revelation” is just an impression confirming what he already believed, then the LDS claim to unique prophetic authority is hollow.
This response examines each pillar of that argument and demonstrates that it rests on a fundamental historical error: the claim that impression-based, mind-and-heart revelation is a modern degradation is flatly contradicted by the earliest revelations received by Joseph Smith himself. The theology has not been rebranded; it was always what it is now. The critics have misread their own evidence.
Claim 1: “Impression” Revelation Is a Modern Downgrade from Joseph Smith
This is the article’s central claim, and it is historically inverted. The LDS Discussions post implies a trajectory: Joseph Smith received revelation “at will” through dramatic, visionary, or audible channels, whereas modern prophets have degraded to mere impressions. But this ignores that Joseph Smith himself codified impression-based revelation as the normative, primary channel of divine communication—and did so in 1829, before the Church was even organized.
Doctrine & Covenants 8:2–3
“Yea, behold, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and which shall dwell in your heart. Now, behold, this is the spirit of revelation; behold, this is the spirit by which Moses brought the children of Israel through the Red Sea on dry ground.”
The Lord did not say “this is a lesser substitute for real revelation.” He said, “this is the spirit of revelation”—and then immediately identified it as the same channel by which Moses parted the Red Sea. The use of Moses is deliberate and theologically loaded: Joseph Smith was placing impression-based, mind-and-heart revelation at the very apex of prophetic experience.
Doctrine & Covenants 6:22–23
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, if you desire a further witness, cast your mind upon the night that you cried unto me in your heart, that you might know concerning the truth of these things. Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater witness can you have than from God?”
This was given to Oliver Cowdery in April 1829, before his public baptism, before the Church was organized, and before any of the grand visions that LDS Discussions uses as its benchmark of “real” revelation. The Lord’s question—“What greater witness can you have than from God?”—was itself an answer: speaking peace to the mind is not a lesser form of revelation. It is God’s testimony. Joseph Smith taught this from the beginning.
Joseph Smith also taught in June 1839: “A person may profit by noticing the first intimation of the spirit of revelation; for instance, when you feel pure intelligence flowing into you, it may give you sudden strokes of ideas.” This is not a description of audible voice or physical vision. It is a description of impressions on the mind—in Joseph Smith’s own words, from the foundational years of the Restoration. The entire premise of the LDS Discussions argument collapses at this point.
Claim 2: Nelson’s 28-Year Advocacy Proves His “Revelation” Was Merely Personal Preference
LDS Discussions points out that Elder Nelson gave a talk titled “Thus Shall My Church Be Called” in April 1990, arguing the same position he later declared as prophetic revelation in 2018. The implication is that this prior advocacy disqualifies the 2018 declaration as revelation—that it was simply personal preference finally given executive authority.
But this argument proves too much and misunderstands how LDS revelation theology has always functioned. The LDS framework does not require that revelation be novel in content or previously unknown to the recipient. Revelation confirms, clarifies, and authorizes. The scriptures themselves demonstrate this pattern repeatedly:
Scriptural Pattern: Revelation Confirms Prior Conviction
- Nephi (1 Ne. 3:7) — Already knew God’s commands before receiving the Spirit’s specific direction to follow Laban.
- Paul (Acts 9) — His doctrinal convictions about Christ developed over years; his calling did not erase prior conviction but authorized his mission.
- Joseph Smith (D&C 128) — The revelation on baptism for the dead developed gradually, with Joseph writing in 1842 that the principle had been in his mind for years before the formal revelation.
- Brigham Young — Advocated for moving the Saints west before the official prophetic commission; the prior conviction did not invalidate the authorizing revelation.
More directly: the doctrinal foundation of Nelson’s 2018 declaration was not his 1990 talk. It was D&C 115:4, received by Joseph Smith on April 26, 1838: “For thus shall my church be called in the last days, even The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Nelson’s 1990 talk was an apostolic exposition of that already-existing revelation. His 2018 declaration as president was the authoritative application of what scripture had long established. He was not inventing a new doctrine; he was acting on a canonized one at a time when he had the prophetic authority to do so.
The BYU Studies article “The History of the Name of the Savior’s Church” documents that the Church underwent three official name changes from 1830 to 1838 before arriving at the current name through revelation. The name Nelson acted on in 2018 is the same name given by Joseph Smith in 1838. Nelson’s 28 years of advocacy were 28 years of consistent faithfulness to a revelation already in the standard works—not evidence of personal preference masquerading as prophecy.
Claim 3: Hinckley and Monson “Rebuffed” Nelson, Proving God Was Silent
LDS Discussions argues that because Presidents Hinckley and Monson did not implement the name change—and even actively promoted the “Mormon” nickname through the “I’m a Mormon” campaign and the “Meet the Mormons” film—God must not have considered this a priority. If God were truly telling Nelson to make this change, why did He allow two prior prophets to proceed in the opposite direction?
This objection assumes that revelation to an apostle must override or immediately produce institutional change through the sitting prophet. But this is not the LDS model of prophetic authority. In LDS ecclesiology, revelation for the whole Church belongs to the sitting president, not to members of the Twelve, regardless of how strongly an apostle’s personal conviction is impressed upon his mind. Elder Nelson could receive a witness that the name mattered—and did receive such—without that witness constituting a command to Presidents Hinckley or Monson. Each prophet stewards his own dispensation of institutional revelation.
Hinckley’s “Mormon means more good” position, cited approvingly by LDS Discussions, was not a rejection of the doctrinal importance of the full name. Hinckley was making a pragmatic, pastoral judgment about public communication. He explicitly acknowledged in that same 1990 talk that “we may never convert the world to general use of the full and correct name.” He was not declaring the nickname doctrinally acceptable in perpetuity—he was choosing a pastoral strategy. Monson’s “I’m a Mormon” campaign operated in the same strategic register. Presidential authority includes the right to prioritize and time institutional changes, and the absence of a change under one president does not invalidate its divine legitimacy when made by another.
The argument proves too much in another direction as well: President Spencer W. Kimball extended the priesthood to all worthy male members in 1978, a change his predecessor Harold B. Lee had explicitly refused to pursue and about which President David O. McKay had reportedly received no confirmation. If differing prophetic priorities disprove revelation, the 1978 revelation—one of the most celebrated in modern LDS history—is equally undermined by LDS Discussions’ logic. Critics cannot selectively apply this standard.
Claim 4: Joseph F. Smith Admitted Prophets Only Receive Methodist-Level Impressions
LDS Discussions quotes extensively from Joseph F. Smith’s testimony at the 1904 Reed Smoot hearings, where under senatorial questioning, Smith said he experienced “impressions of the Spirit upon my mind very frequently, but they are not in the sense revelations,” and that he was “susceptible… of the impressions of the spirit of the Lord upon my mind at any time, just as any good Methodist or any other good church member might be.” The article presents this as a candid admission that modern prophets receive only the same impressions available to any believer.
This reading strips the testimony of its legal and contextual meaning. Several points are essential:
Contextual Analysis of the Smoot Hearing Testimony
- Hostile Proceedings — The Smoot hearings were explicitly adversarial, designed to investigate whether the LDS Church was compatible with American civic life. Smith was questioned by senators openly hostile to Mormonism, in a setting legally analogous to a hostile deposition.
- Technical Distinction — Smith’s denial was specifically about formal, canonized revelation submitted to a general conference for a sustaining vote—a very narrow technical category. He explicitly confirmed he did receive “impressions of the Spirit” constantly. He was not denying revelation; he was denying new canonized scripture.
- The “Methodist” Comparison — Smith’s comparison was not a concession that prophetic and lay experience are identical. It was a strategic rhetorical move to defend the legitimacy of spiritual impression in general—to an audience predisposed to dismiss such claims—by referencing a form of spiritual experience they would themselves respect. He was not denying prophetic distinctiveness; he was establishing common spiritual ground.
- Smith’s Own Record — Joseph F. Smith received and published a major doctrinal revelation, now canonized as D&C 138, his Vision of the Redemption of the Dead, in 1918—fourteen years after the Smoot hearings. His testimony before senators did not represent the totality of his revelatory experience.
FAIR Latter-day Saints correctly observes that Smith’s denials were specifically about formally canonized revelation, and that any attempt to judge his complete revelatory experience from that proceeding is “doomed to being incomplete.” LDS Discussions has built a significant portion of its argument on a hostile legal deposition, given by a man who later received a vision now canonized in the Doctrine and Covenants—and presented that testimony as though it were a theological confession.
Claim 5: Joseph Smith’s Revelations Were Uniquely Dramatic and Cannot Be Equated with Modern “Impressions”
LDS Discussions contends that Joseph Smith received revelation “at will” through direct divine communication, and that modern prophets’ impressions represent a decline from this standard. But Joseph Smith himself repeatedly described revelation as coming through impressions, intelligence flowing into the mind, and peace spoken to the heart. Consider his account from the Liberty Jail period, perhaps the most spiritually charged context of his ministry:
Joseph Smith, Liberty Jail, 1839
“When the heart is sufficiently contrite, then the voice of inspiration steals along and whispers, ‘My son, peace be unto thy soul.’”
“Steals along and whispers.” This is Joseph Smith describing his own revelatory experience using language indistinguishable from what modern prophets describe. He also taught: “Those things that were presented unto your minds by the Spirit of God will come to pass; and thus by learning the Spirit of God and understanding it, you may grow into the principle of revelation, until you become perfect in Christ Jesus.” The LDS Discussions article presents the “grand” visions and visitations as the norm for Joseph Smith, but the documentary record shows that Joseph Smith himself considered impression-based, mind-and-heart revelation to be the ongoing, normative form—not the visionary exceptions.
Crucially, this was not a departure from, but a fulfillment of, the pattern described in the Old Testament by Elijah. After all the wind, earthquake, and fire, God was not in any of them. The divine communication came as a still small voice (1 Kings 19:12). This is the consistent biblical and Restoration theology: the normative mode of revelation is quiet, internal, and felt rather than heard. The LDS Discussions critique’s implicit standard—that real revelation must be dramatic, immediate, and visionary—is not the standard Joseph Smith himself established.
Furthermore, Terryl Givens, one of the foremost scholarly voices in Latter-day Saint intellectual history, has documented in Wrestling the Angel (Oxford University Press, 2015) that across LDS theological development, “Smith’s Nauvoo theology was elaboration of rather than rupture with his earliest theology.” The same principle applies to revelation methodology: later developments are elaborations, not reversals. The claim of discontinuity is not supported by the primary sources.
Claim 6: The Use of Surveys and Focus Groups Proves Revelation Is Just Institutional Research
LDS Discussions argues that because the Church uses surveys and member feedback to inform policy decisions—on garments, meeting schedules, ministering—these changes cannot be genuine revelation; they are market research dressed in prophetic language.
This argument commits a category error by treating gathering information and receiving revelation as mutually exclusive. LDS theology has never taught that revelation bypasses human processes of inquiry, research, and deliberation. Joseph Smith himself said that “it is a great thing to inquire at the hands of God”—and “inquire” involves gathering information. The pattern throughout the Doctrine and Covenants is precisely one of question, study, counsel, and then divine confirmation or redirection.
Doctrine & Covenants 9:7–8
“Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me. But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right.”
The Lord explicitly told Oliver Cowdery that waiting passively for revelation without mental engagement was itself a mistake. Studying it out, gathering information, counseling with members—these are not alternatives to revelation; they are the commanded prerequisites. A survey on member experience with two-hour church is precisely the “studying it out in your mind” that D&C 9 requires. The use of surveys does not disprove revelation; it demonstrates institutional obedience to the Lord’s own prescribed process.
The Deeper Issue: What Standard of Evidence Would Satisfy?
The LDS Discussions argument, stripped to its core, is this: if revelation looks like dramatic vision and direct voice, critics will call it fabrication and psychological manipulation; if it looks like a quiet impression on the mind, critics will call it merely human intuition masquerading as prophecy. The implicit standard being applied is unfalsifiable from within the framework—no form of revelation could satisfy it.
But this is not an apologetic failure on the part of the Church; it is an epistemological problem with the critique itself. The existence of a quiet, mind-and-heart mode of divine communication does not preclude the reality of that communication. Brigham Young, quoting an appearance of Joseph Smith in a dream or vision, transmitted this counsel directly applicable to the present discussion:
Brigham Young, Quoting Joseph Smith’s Counsel, 1847
“Tell the people to be humble and faithful, and be sure to keep the spirit of the Lord and it will lead them right. Be careful and not turn away the small still voice; it will teach you what to do and where to go; it will yield the fruits of the kingdom.”
Joseph Smith’s own legacy counsel—from Joseph to Brigham, from the foundational prophet to his successor—was to trust the still small voice. LDS Discussions has constructed its entire “rebranding” thesis on the premise that this counsel represents a decline from Joseph’s revelatory standard. It is, in fact, the heart of it.
Wendy Nelson’s “Unleashed” Quote: Context Matters
LDS Discussions treats Wendy Nelson’s statement—that President Nelson was now “free to do what he came to earth to do”—as a damaging admission that Nelson was simply implementing personal preferences under the cover of revelation. But this reading is selective and uncharitable to the point of caricature.
Wendy Nelson’s comment describes something every LDS president has experienced: the presidency as the fulfillment of a lifelong calling. It is entirely consistent with LDS theology to say that a prophet was prepared for his role—including developing convictions and testimonies—before assuming it. This is not indistinguishable from saying revelation is fake; it is a description of the divine preparation of prophets across the full arc of their lives. That Nelson had a testimony of the Church’s name, grounded in D&C 115:4 and 3 Nephi 27:7–8, for decades before acting on it as president is not evidence that his action was uninspired. It is evidence that God prepares His servants before calling them to act.
The Historical Record: Revelation in the Church Has Always Had Multiple Modes
The BYU Studies article on the history of the Savior’s Church name documents that the very naming of the Church was itself a “collaborative and revelatory process,” involving human deliberation, multiple iterations, and eventual divine confirmation. This is not a bug in the system; it is the system. LDS historical scholarship has articulated that “revelation is the synthesis of a human and divine event. The prophet is an active participant in revelation, conceptualizing and verbalizing God’s message.”
This understanding—revelation as collaborative, gradual, impression-confirmed, and participant-involving—is not a modern redefinition. It describes the process by which D&C 115 itself was received in 1838, the process by which the Book of Mormon was translated in 1829, and the process by which Oliver Cowdery was taught in D&C 8–9. LDS Discussions’ argument rests on a fictional golden-age conception of Josephite revelation that Joseph Smith himself never claimed and never practiced.
Conclusion
The LDS Discussions “Rebranding Revelation” article is not historically dishonest—it accurately cites the 1990 Nelson talk, the Hinckley comparison, the Smoot hearings transcript, and the Wendy Nelson quote. What it does is misread them within a framework that assumes impression-based revelation is a modern downgrade from Joseph Smith’s standard. That assumption is false, and it is false from the earliest documents of the Restoration itself.
D&C 8:2—given in 1829, to Oliver Cowdery, in the very first months of Joseph Smith’s prophetic ministry—declared that speaking to the mind and heart by the Holy Ghost is “the spirit of revelation.” Not a lesser form of it. Not a degraded substitute for it. The spirit of it. That is the standard Joseph Smith established. That is the standard Russell Nelson operated within when the Lord impressed upon his mind the importance of the name He had already revealed in D&C 115 nearly two centuries prior. The definition of revelation has not been rebranded. It has been consistently taught, from the first year of the Restoration to the present, as an interior, confirmatory, mind-and-heart communication from God through the Holy Ghost—available in its fullest institutional expression through the living prophet, and available in its personal expression to every sincere seeker.
The article’s final appeal—that camera phones and modernity have forced the Church to adopt humbler revelatory claims—has the causality backwards. The Church is not retreating to impression-based revelation because visions are harder to fake. It is teaching impression-based revelation because that is what D&C 6, 8, 9, and 128, and the Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, have always taught. The Restoration did not begin with a claim that all divine communication must be spectacular. It began with a boy who prayed and received an answer—and with a God who told Oliver Cowdery that speaking peace to his mind was the greatest witness he could receive.
That has not changed. That was never rebranded. That is the Restoration.