By James P. Harris
Following a 1904 meeting of the Quorum of the Twelve during which “[i]t was moved and unanimously carried that ‘the brethren should not write in their journals that which took place in the Council meetings,’ Elder James E. Talmage became quite cautious in his journal regarding meetings of the Twelve. As a result, it is a delightful surprise to find in his Thursday, 31 October 1918 entry much more detail than usual about that day’s meeting of the Quorum:
Attended meeting of the First Presidency and the Twelve. Today President Smith, who is still confined to his home by illness, sent to the Brethren the account of a vision through which, as he states, were revealed to him important facts relating to the work of the disembodied Savior in the realm of departed spirits, and of the missionary work in progress on the other side of the veil. By united action the Council of the Twelve, with the Counselors in the First Presidency, and the Presiding Patriarch accepted and endorsed the revelation as the Word of the Lord. President Smith’s signed statement will be published in the next issue (December) of the Improvement Era, which is the organ of the Priesthood quorums of the Church.
The account Talmage is referring to is the “Vision of the Redemption of the Dead” that had been received by President Joseph F. Smith on 3 October 1918 and then dictated to his son Joseph Fielding Smith. The younger Smith presented the revelation at the 31 October meeting Talmage is discussing. (President Smith would pass away just a few weeks later on 19 November 1918.)
The “Vision” was first printed in the 30 November 1918 edition of the Deseret Evening News and shortly thereafter in the December 1918 Improvement Era. It was later included in Gospel Doctrine: Selections from the Sermons and Writings of Joseph F. Smith.
The Vision took on much greater stature when, during the April 1976 General Conference, President N. Eldon Tanner, First Counselor in the First Presidency stated:
President [Spencer W.] Kimball has asked me to read a very important resolution for your sustaining vote. At a meeting of the Council of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve held in the Salt Lake Temple on March 25, 1976, approval was given to add to the Pearl of Great Price the two following revelations: “First, a vision of the celestial kingdom given to Joseph Smith, the Prophet, in the Kirtland Temple, on January 21, 1836, which deals with the salvation of those who die without a knowledge of the gospel; and second, a vision given to President Joseph F. Smith in Salt Lake City, Utah, on October 3, 1918, showing the visit of the Lord Jesus Christ in the spirit world and setting forth the doctrine of the redemption of the dead.”
The membership of the Church then voted, accepting the revelations which became part of the official Church canon, included as appendices to the Pearl of Great Price. In 1979, when the LDS Church undertook a major revision of its scriptures, the two revelations were removed from the Pearl of Great Price and became sections 137 and 138 of the Doctrine & Covenants.
A n excellent overview of the historical background regarding the “Vision of the Redemption of the Dead” can be found in an article, “‘The Great Word of the Spirits of the Dead’: Death, the Great War, and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic as context for Doctrine and Covenants 138,” by George S. Tate (BYU Studies 46, no. 1 [2007]: 4–40). A condensed version of that study is found in the December 2009 Ensign under the title, “I Saw the Hosts of the Dead.” In these articles, Tate outlines the way that President Smith was influenced toward thoughts of the afterlife by the death of his son Hyrum (age 45), a member of the Quorum of the Twelve who had died on 20 January that year from appendicitis. The “Great War” was also taking place during this time, and an influenza epidemic was sweeping the earth—with Utah one of the areas most devastated. Due to the pandemic, no public gatherings were allowed, which meant there was no public funeral for President Smith. The April 1919 general conference was also postponed until June, during which, because there had been no funeral, several general authorities offered eulogies of President Smith.
My sense is that Talmage’s Jesus the Christ may have also been a factor in the thought processes that helped prepare President Smith for the Vision. For example, in chapter 36 of the book, titled “In the Realm of Disembodied Spirits,” Talmage outlines the Savior’s preaching the gospel to the dead and includes a discussion of the scriptures cited by President Smith in his Vision: 1 Peter 3:18–20 and 4:6. It is thus possible that Talmage helped outline a scriptural blueprint regarding work for the dead, which President Smith was able to build on through his Vision.
