Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Daniel Tyler (May 15, 1893) Recalling Joseph Smith Reconciling Matthew 3:11 and Ephesians 4:4-6 to Teach Baptismal Regeneration

  

Elder Daniel Tyler, who has kindly furnished us several items which he recollects of the Prophet, and which have been published some time since, adds the following to what has previously appeared:

 

"The Prophet Joseph Smith was a great reconciler of discrepancies in passages of scripture which were or seemed to be in conflict with each other. Until the writer heard the great expounder of Bible doctrines explain the following passages he concluded there must be a wrong translation in one verse or the other. The verses read as follows:

 

"'I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shows I am not worthy to bear; he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.'—Matthew iii.11.

 

"Here we have baptism with water, baptism with the Holy Ghost, and baptism with fire, three in number. The question naturally arises, how can this passage be reconciled with the following:

 

"There is one body, and one spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism'—Eph. iv., 4, 5, 6.

 

Had one of these passages been found in the Bible and the other in the Book of Mormon what a howl would have went up from our Christian friends of other denominations.' It would have been pointed to by both press and pulpit as a plain contradiction between the two books, and as a matter of course the latter would have been condemned as false. How different was the case with the great reconciler of one truth with another—the man who always accepted facts and rejected falsehoods no matter whence they came.' He said, while speaking on the subject of baptism in Nauvoo: 'There is but one baptism: it takes the baptism of water, of the Holy Ghost, and of fire to constitute one full baptism.' With this explanation where is the conflict, where the ground of cavil, where the contradiction? There is none. Three abstract truths mentioned by John the Baptist in the first scripture quoted are combined in one great whole by St. Paul in the second.

 

"I recollect a so-called Christian minister once quoting St. Paul to prove that water baptism was not essential to salvation, because the apostle said 'one baptism,' and that was the baptism of the Holy Ghost: but he had forgotten that Christ said, 'Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven,' In fact, many have tried to explain away the seeming contradiction in the two passages of scripture referred to, but Joseph Smith is the only man I ever heard or heard of who ever gave an explanation that was not subject to objection or in conflict with the scriptures." (Daniel Tyler, "Recollections of the Prophet Joseph Smith," The Juvenile Instructor 28, no. 8 [May 15, 1893]: 332)