Doctrine and Covenants 24

(September 27, 2015)

                Once again, I am drawn to the old saw where we sometimes believe that temporary success predicts or indicates spiritual capacity or success.  Not only do we not have direct evidence of that from the scriptures, we have Sections such as this where the exact opposite is clearly laid out.  We certainly cannot claim that Joseph Smith didn’t have spiritual strength, but the Lord directly said that he would not have strength in his temporal labors.  If we judged Joseph based upon the prosperity Gospel, we would misjudge him terribly.