John Taylor (1808-1887), third president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, wrote a hymn, "Go ye messengers of glory." In the fourth stanza, we read:
Bearing seed of heav'nly virtue,
Scatter it o'er all the earth.
Go! Jehovah will support you;
Gather all the sheaves of worth.
Then, with Jesus, Then, with Jesus
Reign in glory on the earth.
What is interesting is that Taylor, in this stanza, seemingly uses "Jehovah," not of the Son, but of the Father (cf. D&C 109:34, 42, 56, 68 where Joseph Smith uses “Jehovah” of the Father). Furthermore, this was not the only time he would use the name-title "Jehovah" of God the Father and distinguish "Jehovah" from Jesus Christ. In his masterful An Examination Into and an Elucidation of the Great Principle of the Mediation and Atonement of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (1882), we read the following on p.149-50:
Again, there is another phase of this subject that must not be forgotten. From the commencement of the offering of sacrifices the inferior creature had to suffer for the superior. Although it had taken no part in the act of disobedience, yet was its blood shed and its life sacrificed, thus prefiguring the atonement of the Son of God, which should eventually take place. The creature indeed was made subject to vanity not willingly, but by reason of Him who hath subjected the same in hope. Millions of such offerings were made, and hecatombs of these expiatory sacrifices were offered in view of the great event that would be consummated when Jesus should offer up Himself. With man this was simply the obedience to a command and a given law, and with him might be considered simply a pecuniary sacrifice: with the animals it as a sacrifice of life. But what is the reason for all this suffering and bloodshed, and sacrifice? We are told that "without shedding of blood is no remission" of sins. This is beyond our comprehension. Jesus had to take away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, the just for the unjust, but, previous to this grand sacrifice, these animals had to have their blood shed as types, until the great antitype should offer up Himself once for all. And as He in His own person bore the sins of all, and atoned for them by the sacrifice of Himself, so there came upon Him the weight and agony of ages and generations, the indescribable agony consequent upon this great sacrificial atonement wherein He bore the sins of the world, and suffered in His own person the consequences of an eternal law of God broken by man. Hence His profound grief, His indescribable anguish, His overpowering torture, all experienced in the submission to the eternal fiat of Jehovah and the requirements of an inexorable law.
Elsewhere (pp. 150-51), we also read:
Groaning beneath this concentrated load, this intense, incomprehensible pressure, this terrible exaction of Divine justice, from which feeble humanity shrank, and through the agony thus experienced sweating great drops of blood, He was led to exclaim, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." He had wrestled with the superincumbent load in the wilderness, He had struggled against the powers of darkness that had been let loose upon him there; placed below all things, His mind surcharged with agony and pain, lonely and apparently helpless and forsaken, in his agony and the blood oozed from His pores. Thus rejected by His own, attacked by the powers of darkness, and seemingly forsaken by His God, on the cross He bowed beneath the accumulated load, and cried out in anguish, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" When death approached to relieve Him from His horrible position, a ray of hope appeared through the abyss of darkness with which He had been surrounded, and in a spasm of relief, seeing the bright future beyond, He said, "It is finished! Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." As a God, He descended below all things, and made Himself subject to man in man's fallen condition; as a man, He grappled with all the circumstances incident to His sufferings in the world. Anointed, indeed, with the oil of gladness above His fellows, He struggled with and overcame the powers of men and devils, of earth and hell combined; and aided by this superior power of the Godhead, He vanquished death, hell and the grave, and arose triumphant as the Son of God, the very eternal Father, the Messiah, the Prince of peace, the Redeemer, the Savior of the world; having finished and completed the work pertaining to the atonement, which His Father had given Him to do as the Son of God and the Son of man. As the Son of Man, He endured all that it was possible for flesh and blood to endure, as the Son of God He triumphed over all, and forever ascended to the right hand of God, to further carry out the designs of Jehovah pertaining to the world and to the human family.
This notwithstanding, previously, on p. 138, "Jehovah" and the related title of "I Am" was used by Taylor of Jesus. Speaking of the Messianic prophecy in Isa 9:6, he wrote:
"His name shall be called Immanuel," which being interpreted is, God with us. Hence He is not only called the Son of God, the First Begotten of the Father, the Well Beloved, the Head, and Ruler, and Dictator of all things, Jehovah, the I Am, the Alpha and Omega, but He is also called the Very Eternal Father. Does not this mean that in Him were the attributes and power of the Very Eternal Father? For the angel to Adam said that all things should be done in His name. A voice was heard from the heavens, when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," and when the Father and the Son appeared together to the Prophet Joseph Smith they were exactly alike in form, in appearance, in glory; and the Father said, pointing to His Son, "This is my beloved Son; hear Him." There the Father had His apparent tabernacle, and the Son had His apparent tabernacle; but the Son was the agency through which the Father would communicate to man; as it is elsewhere said, "Wherefore, thou shalt do all that thou doest in the name of the Son. And thou shalt repent, and shalt call upon God, in the name of the Son, for evermore."
A very useful recent discussion of “Jehovah” as a name-title in LDS theology and Scripture can be found in D. Charles Pyle, I Have Said Ye Are Gods: Concepts Conducive to the Early Christian Doctrine of Deification in Patristic Literature and the Underlying Strata of the Greek New Testament (Revised and Supplemented), pp163-99. It provides a lot of useful information on a topic that can often be confusing to those unfamiliar with the use of such titles in both the Bible and even uniquely Latter-day Saint scripture and other writings.
