"To every man is given a gift by the Spirit of God." -Doctrine and Covenants 46: 5b.

God can only be known as he is, as he himself makes himself known to us. This means he must reveal himself to us; we cannot discover him ourselves. There have been many systems of human thought which have attempted to "reason" from the known world to the God that is not known by world knowledge. These systems all manifest a fatal weakness. They are the results of the mental efforts of men who began by assuming God could be known as an object of thought. The efforts have been many and sincere. But they assume an impossibility; namely, that the God whom they seek could be known in this way. He cannot. He must declare himself. And when he does, he is found to be, in the measure of his own revelation, quite different from what the philosophers have thought. He, God, is not an object to be defined in a system or a scheme of human dialectic. He is the Great Subject who claims us for himself. "I am that I am" means that he is a great mystery, with whom nothing can be compared. He is incomparable. "Beside me there is no God." No revelation of God can ever be fully enclosed in a "system," because a system is a human mental construct, and revelation is always more than our thought of it. Spiritual things can be compared with natural objects. The truth of revelation may be vivified in human behavior and natural events, but God himself can be compared with nothing. In this connection it is true that "we know in part."

Systematic theology makes use of a few time-honored arguments to "prove" the existence of God. The argument from design, and from morality, and the ontological argument are some of them. They all stem from man's observation of the world and of himself in action. But they are faulty and imperfect because man is sinful. They cannot name God. The name of God is known only to himself and to those to whom he will reveal it. He reveals himself to those who have received the faith of him, and faith is destructive of self-will. The self cannot "will" to know God. The knowledge of God is "bestowed" from above, not "willed" from below. While the philosophies of men give some "idea" of the Supreme Being, the philosophers do not know him truly. They have ideas, but their ideas cannot put men in touch with God; they cannot create communion with him. Only God himself can do that. The revelation of God creates communion with him, and it is the only process by which he can be truly known. Man left to himself and to nature cannot know God as he is, because he makes his thought of God his god, and the created world an idol. Man cannot go from nature to nature's God, because there is an impassable gulf between them-and unless "nature's God" makes himself known, communicates himself, comes to man to bridge the impassable gulf, neither nature nor man nor God can be known right.

What men know and think by their own efforts is always an object of knowledge or thought. It is never personal. Even human persons are never persons to us so long as we merely think about them. We can know other people in part, it is true, because we know they are like us. But God is like nothing else. Man is made in his image, but this is a truth of revelation. Men may think a "personal" God, it is true, but in such thought God does not address man and say "I am." Any "personal" God conceived by man is man-made and an idol. Such an idol does and "says" what is desired by the creator of the idol and is therefore subject to the creature. But the God of revelation is different and other than this. He is in no sense subject to the creature. He breaks up man's thought-world by revealing himself. The only person God is like is himself. He can only be disclosed as he breaks up man's sinfulness and takes man into communion with him. This fact rightly perceived is the ground of man's knowledge of himself and true humility stems from it. Consider what lies at the heart of the commission given to Moses. After the glory of God had left him, he fell to the ground-his strength gone: "Now, for this cause, I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed" (Doctrine and Covenants 22: 7).

The Apostolic Gift

In all true apprehensions of divinity, he takes the initiative. Knowledge of God is according to his will, not ours. His gifts are not of our choosing but of his bestowal. He gives to each "severally as he will." Jesus chose the twelve and they came with full purpose of heart to take his name upon them. They did not choose him. He chose them. He trained them and in fellowship finally bestowed the secret of the great mystery upon them. "Whom do men say that I am," was only leading up to "Whom say ye that I am?" So God addresses each one sooner or later. That question must be answered in every life. The fate of the individual and the fate of nations depend on the answer they give. Eventually God confronts all men in Jesus.

The apostolic answer is given by Peter and it is a gift of the Spirit, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." "No man calleth Jesus Lord but by the Holy Ghost." "To some it is given by the Holy ghost to know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that he was crucified for the sins of the world." This knowledge comes only to those who desire to take upon them the name of the Christ "with full purpose of heart," for this desire is part of the gift-"He gave some apostles." God set in the church "first apostles." Apostleship is a gift-the basic gift-a gift of the Spirit, and upon it the church is built. We have already noted how this apostolic gift came to Peter and the rest. The apostolic gift is not limited to the Council of Twelve. Anyone who has this knowledge is in that sense an apostle. This knowledge requires of those who possess it that they bear witness. With the gift goes the longing to testify-based on the love of Jesus Christ. To know him is to know oneself and all men truly. This revelation of the Spirit unlocks the mystery of man's nature. Today we are beset by many theories of the nature of man and the reasons for his behavior. Freud challenges us with his concept of repression and his theories of human nature based upon psychoanalysis. Jung has delved into the collective unconscious and regaled us with his doctrine of archetypes. Rank asserts that all history is intelligible as man's protest against death-as his striving for immortality. Theories of education based on doctrines of man's nature have gone through their gyrations. We shall ceaselessly search for the true meaning of human nature until Jesus reveals himself to us and then will our search be ended. Man left to himself and to nature cannot, as we have said, know God truly. Left to himself, man does not know himself either, for only in the knowledge of God does man know himself. For "He knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust." This knowledge of God and man is the revelation of Christ as the Son of God-crucified for the sins of the world. A gift, the first gift of the Spirit. How wise was the apostle who wrote: "I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified."

A significant prophetic insight was expressed by Jesus who, when beholding Peter for the first time, said to him: " ‘Thou are Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas,' which is by interpretation, a seer, or a stone." Our Lord was looking toward the great Confession at Caesarea Philippi and beyond, when Peter would be given the apostolic gift and sent out to testify. Thus Peter by this gift was to be likened to the Urim and Thummim, the stone set in Israel through which was revealed the will of God. It was on this rock, the rock of the revelation of God in Christ, that the church was to be built. Peter evidently never forgot this reference made by Jesus himself. Years later he wrote to the church: "Ye also, as lively stones [as stones alive with the will of God], are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood."

Testimony Induces Belief

The apostolic gift bestows knowledge of God and knowledge of man based on it. In Jesus Christ God took human nature to himself and showed forth its perfect frame. This knowledge constrains men who possess it to bear testimony. The very nature of the gift demands expression in word and in life. This does not mean that an apostle must first of all construct a theory of human nature based on his knowledge of God. It means that his utterance, under the Spirit, has the capacity to show Christ to others as Christ really is in himself. In this testimony men see themselves for what they are. No theory of human nature is adequate to reveal human nature. Only the revelation of Christ can do this. Here is no dialectic, no philosophy, no theory. Here life itself is bestowed on those who do not possess it, and they are led to respond, saying: "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" And are led into the waters which initiate in them the life which testimony of the Spirit through apostolic witness has disclosed. The characteristic expression of this primary gift of the Spirit is witness. Preaching is witness, so the apostle to the Gentiles writes: "Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel."

The witness is borne in love. The apostolic gift comes to men with the consciousness that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." And that Son gave commandment that men should "love one another, as I have loved you." It is this love that gives insight to the possibilities in man and leads those possessing it to make the sacrifices necessary to help others to realize their own possibilities. The apostolic gift is really the love of Christ, based on the knowledge of Christ; and that knowledge gives power to see him in other men not aware that he is the author of their lives. The apostolic gift is the vision of true humanity and knowledge as to how that humanity can be made to emerge in history. Peter's testimony at Pentecost shows how this is done. His word created conviction of guilt and gave to his hearers true knowledge of their condition. It created faith-it stimulated repentance.

To know Christ is to believe in his power to save to the uttermost them that believe, and to bear testimony of him as to cause such belief. This kind of belief, born of apostolic witness, is the second gift of the Spirit. It is the natural fruitage of the first. The apostles "set" in the church bear witness; that witness creates believers. Their belief is a gift of the Spirit, just as surely as the knowledge of Christ which brought it forth.

"To some it is given by the Holy Ghost to know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God . . . and to others it is given to believe on their words, that they also might have eternal life, if they continue faithful."

This gift of belief or gift of faith is the same as referred to by Peter-that element of given-ness which constitutes the "exceeding great and precious promises," and which Jude declared was the faith "once delivered unto the Saints." It is true, as Paul said, that no man can call Jesus "Lord," but by the Holy Ghost, but it is equally true that belief in him is also a gift of the Spirit: "To some it is given by the Holy Ghost to know . . .to others it is given to believe." Belief on the revelation of the Lord Jesus is his work and not ours. Such belief does not stand alone, for it entails the emergence of every other gift and sign which signifies the presence in this world of the eternal kingdom. The two gifts just named are like an axis upon which the whole spiritual world revolves and without which such world simply is not disclosed to man. The new world to come which is to replace this present world takes its form and shape as God "speaks" these gifts into human history.

The new world seen in Jesus has its emergent analogy in the story of Genesis. This present visible world came forth at the creative word, which word was the will of God exerting itself upon the void. The word of God addressed itself to the abyss and the universe came forth. So, likewise, God addresses a new and more comprehensive word to us in Jesus Christ, and from the deeps of human nature there emerges a new world, based on a humanity renewed and given life in that revelation. The formulation of this new world which arises out of the old one is through the action of the spiritual gifts, and it finds its axis in the two gifts referred to above.

The Wisdom from on High

It is important again to assert that some things are "of faith." They are not based on the wisdom or philosophy of men. There is no assurance in the history of philosophy that the various Utopias the philosophers construct have any possibility of concrete existence. Their systems have their day and pass away with fashions of thought only to recur later in different language, under different guises, to await the oblivion inevitable in the history of philosophy. "All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass," so it has proved. The philosophy of Aristotle was wedded to the so-called Christian system in the Middle Ages. It has not endured. Hegel was a son of this marriage, and he brought forth Karl Marx-who was clear-headed enough to see that the Hegelian dialectic could very well be applied to history without its so-called Christian metaphysic. The idealism of Kant, of Schiller and Herder has gone. The spiritual horizons of Hegel based on his philosophy of history have faded from view, and his most gifted pupils, Feuerbach and David Strauss, repudiated the idealism in which they were schooled. Marx made history; the others did not. But Marx has helped turn history into a nightmare. He has discovered and endowed with significance the world of proletarian man-"man the worker." He has made possible a vast collective aggregation of man in Russia. He asserts that man lives "by bread alone," and he stands in direct opposition to the One who said, "Man shall not live by bread alone." Idealism based on classical philosophy, the same "wisdom of the world" which Paul said "knew not God," was confined to the intellectuals. It did nothing for the common man. It created no community, because it was conceived by man in man's isolation from God. That is why it could not survive; it had no answers to the problems confronting mankind. Marx saw this and turned to these practical problems with the conviction that the ultimate truth about man lay wholly in man. He saw that man must eat, and knew man was a gregarious animal and must live with his fellows. So collectivist Russia is the result, and therein is the promise of a millennium to be-according to Marxism. Marx believed man was conditioned in his environment, but left God out of the environment.

So today the fiction of H. G. Wells has become a reality. We have a "War of Worlds." This has come about only because men do not know the truth! Jesus said, "If you continue in my word, . . . ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." The world is not free but in bondage, proving that men have not "continued" in the divine word. The divine word is "of faith." It must come from the Divine himself. In the days of Jesus it did, and continued to do so until men tried to combine the truth of God into a system of dogma and theology and tried to take possession of it. The truth of God remains for ever of God. It cannot be of man. This the post-apostolic church failed to realize. Man tried to adapt the truth of God to make it acceptable to the intellectuals who were steeped in Greek philosophy and the life went out of it. The church became the "sole" repository of the truth, and gradually men sought to possess the truth of faith, as they would possess knowledge of the world. But the knowledge which is of faith by the gift of the Spirit can never be possessed by the world. It has a world of its own to which it seeks to raise men. In the apostolic gift man does not possess "knowledge of God" in the same way he possesses knowledge of the world. The knowledge of God is not our possession, but the method by which we become possessed by him. "The truth" to which Jesus referred is beyond man and this world, and so it is neither subjective or objective. It is beyond both. The community which was originally incipient in the apostolic gift and the faith that gift instilled was lost to humanity when the church tried to make the knowledge of God its own possession. It "changed the truth of God" into a lie. It placed the things which are of the Spirit on a par with the knowledge of the world. God-truth became world-truth. Gradually, imperceptibly, as this was done, the apostles "fell asleep" and the gift died out. The results of this apostasy are plainly manifest in the fact that man-poor thing-maddened man, blind material-worshiping man-stands divided within himself, unable to reconcile the forces which he has let loose, bound in bundles, ready for the burning. God does not address him because he will not hear-he is deafened by the noise he himself makes. God cannot reveal himself to heal because man is blinded by the spectacle he himself has created.

But God does not cease to be God because men are unable to hear his voice or unwilling to have their eyes opened to see him. He loves men, and so has restored to the earth, in our day, those same gifts of the Spirit by which men may be "lifted up at the last day."

Gifts and Their Use

The gifts of the Spirit are of faith. Faith is the method by which they are obtained. Every gift is a call to fellowship with God, an invitation and a power to adjust to his will. They come from the "Father of lights," who is himself perfect love and in whom there is perfection of fellowship. So they are given for the benefit of those who love him and who "keep all my commandments, and him that seeketh so to do." It is important to remember this. One may give a detailed analysis of the "mechanics" of the operation of the gifts of the Spirit, but such analysis would be helpful only to those who already possessed them. How shall one exercise this gift of faith, born of apostolic witness? Many answers may be given but none would be as helpful as that given in the divine word itself-for the works of faith are repentance.

 "And the first-fruits of repentance is baptism; and
baptism cometh by faith, unto the fulfilling the commandments;
and the fulfilling the commandments bringeth remission of sins;
and the remission of sins bringeth meekness, and lowliness of heart;
and because of meekness and lowliness of heart, cometh the visitation of the Holy Ghost,
which Comforter filleth with hope and perfect love,
which love endureth by diligence unto prayer,
until the end shall come,
when all the saints shall dwell with God." -Moroni 8: 29

Any gift atrophies if it is not used. There is no profit to God, man, or the people if a gift is bestowed and man "receives not" (uses not) the gift: "behold he rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the giver of the gift" (Doctrine and Covenants 85: 7). The gift to believe must be exercised or it dies. And the exercise of this gift is equally important with the exercise of every other spiritual gift. In this regard, we may well remember an incident in the life of our Lord. Many of us are possessed by a dumb spirit which seems not to permit us to exercise our belief in testimony. We are silent when we should tell others of our belief and the goodness of God who made it possible. So we are not healthy children of the kingdom, but become sick. We need to come to our Lord with the prayer that he might have compassion on us and help us. "Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief." It is in this attitude that the gifts of the Spirit take their rightful place in our lives.

We might, with great profit, expand on this theme of spiritual gifts-wisdom, knowledge, healing, dreams, and the rest-but an exposition of them would fill a volume. Our purpose here is to emphasize the cardinal importance of these two: (1) knowledge of Jesus Christ, and (2) belief-feeling that these need to be emphasized again and again as we move out in community of fellowship and understanding, recognizing that the treasure which we have is from above and not confusing it with the earthen vessels in which it is contained.