Continuing Revelation

Continuing revelation is the belief that God continues to communicate with people after scripture has been written, making divine guidance an active force in religious life rather than a closed record. In the history traced here, it is both a central promise of Mormon faith and a persistent problem of authority: if God can speak to followers directly, the prophet’s claim to speak for the Church cannot go unquestioned. Attempts to restrict revelation do not settle that tension; they help set the conditions for rival claims and schism.

Revelation as a foundation of faith

Joseph Smith taught that followers could receive personal communications from God and encouraged them to seek impressions that might guide their lives. The possibility of such direct contact was one of the religion’s defining attractions. It offered believers an intimate relationship with the divine rather than requiring them to depend entirely on established religious institutions as intermediaries.

Revelation also supplied the foundation for new scripture and continuing religious instruction. The Book of Mormon presented a restored account of sacred history, while further commandments to Joseph Smith revised or changed principles as the Church developed. These revelations were collected in The Doctrine and Covenants, a volume that came to rival The Book of Mormon in importance. The Church’s formal title for its supreme leader, President, Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, reflects this continuing expectation that religious truth and ecclesiastical authority can be disclosed through divine guidance.

The doctrine also gave the early movement a particular sense of purpose. Joseph Smith taught that his mission was to restore the true Church and prepare the earth for the Second Coming. Followers were presented as God’s chosen people, with a role to play in the Last Days. The belief that God still guided the community thus connected personal faith to collective identity, scripture, and expectations about the future.

Personal access and institutional limits

The possibility of personal revelation carried an institutional risk. If God could communicate with every member, a follower might receive guidance that contradicted the prophet’s teaching. Joseph Smith recognized that competing revelations could undermine his authority, and in 1830 announced that no one else in the Church was to receive commandments and revelations concerning Church doctrine.

That restriction did not erase the principle that had made personal revelation appealing. Some members continued privately to heed what they understood as divine guidance, including on theological questions. The conflict was not simply between belief and disbelief in revelation; it concerned who could claim it, which claims counted as authoritative, and whether personal spiritual experience could be subordinate to a central leader. In the account’s interpretation, a believer might regard God’s words as carrying greater weight than a prophet’s restriction, leaving the institution with limited power to prevent independent claims.

Rival claims and the growth of schism

The tension became a recurring source of division. Since 1830, the account notes, roughly two hundred Mormon sects had separated from Joseph Smith’s original religion, with new divisions continuing to emerge. Competing revelations could challenge a leader’s right to govern, while established leaders could treat such claims as threats to ecclesiastical order. The doctrine therefore helped make religious authority both charismatic and contestable: a claim to divine direction could strengthen a leader’s standing, but it could also give a dissenter grounds to establish a rival following.

Robert Crossfield’s experience illustrates the process. In 1975, he received a commandment identifying him as Onias, declaring him the true prophet and rightful leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and assigning him the task of setting the Church in order. His claim placed him in opposition to leaders associated with the United Effort Plan. The leader of the Creston community barred him from prayer meetings, and Crossfield was expelled from the UEP. He subsequently moved to Idaho and then to a town near Provo. The revelation gave Crossfield a religious basis for challenging existing authority; the community’s response defined the organizational boundary his claim had crossed.

Revelation as a basis for leadership

The School of the Prophets founded by Crossfield became a setting where revelation could also confer authority within a new organization. The Lafferty brothers helped establish the school by printing, assembling, and mailing more than fifteen thousand pamphlets to Church leaders. Its weekly meetings began in early 1984, usually in the home of their mother, Claudine, above the family chiropractic clinic.

On January 8, Onias received a revelation describing the Lafferty brothers as an elect people chosen before birth. Six weeks later, another revelation directed him to appoint Ron Lafferty bishop of the school’s Provo chapter. The appointment was accepted by the group, whose younger brothers already looked up to Ron. In this setting, revelation did more than assert a prophet’s status: it designated a favored family and translated divine approval into a position within the organization. The example shows how a community’s recognition of a revelation could help turn a claim into practical authority.

Succession, governance, and the unresolved tension

Claims to divine authority also shaped succession struggles. After John Y. Barlow died in 1949, leadership passed to Joseph Musser, whose debilitating strokes made him dependent on Rulon Allred. In 1951 Musser named Allred his second elder and heir apparent, against the objections of those who believed LeRoy Johnson should succeed him as Barlow had specified. The disagreement split the movement into rival groups. After Musser’s death, Johnson led the larger group that remained in Short Creek, while Allred became leader of the Apostolic United Brethren. The dispute shows how the transmission of religious authority could depend on competing understandings of prophetic designation and rightful succession.

The death of LeRoy Johnson in 1986 produced another contest over who could claim his mantle. Rulon Jeffs assumed leadership, but Marion Hammon’s followers rejected the succession and formed a separate congregation called the Second Ward. Each side denounced the other as apostate. In Colorado City under Rulon Jeffs, prophetic authority also reached into daily governance: the account describes restrictions on outside media and contact with people beyond the UEP, including family members who had left. When DeLoy Bateman stopped attending priesthood meetings, Rulon Jeffs ordered that his wives and children be transferred to another man; both wives refused, and most of the family left the community’s religious fold with him. These events show how claims to spiritual authority could have concrete effects on family ties and communal membership.

Continuing revelation therefore functions in the account as more than a doctrine about how scripture is produced. It is a continuing negotiation over who may speak for God, how followers recognize that authority, and what happens when claims conflict. The same belief that promises intimate divine guidance can authorize a central prophet, validate a new leader, or sustain dissent. Efforts to contain it may clarify official boundaries, but the recurring emergence of rival claimants shows why those boundaries remain vulnerable.