On D&C 5:14, 18 (cf. D&C 10:53):
The word choice found in the earlier revelation is worth
noting. It alludes to both the Song of Solomon—which describes the author’s
love as “she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the
sun, and terrible as an army with banners” (Song of Solomon 6:10)—and the
Revelation of St. John the Divine, which speaks of seeing “a woman clothed with
the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars”
who “fled into the wilderness” after “she brought forth a man child” and was persecuted
by the dragon (See Revelation 12). Those same texts were brought together and
used by the Scottish minister Alexander Fraser in his popular work, Key to
the Prophecies (1795).
Fraser gives us a way to understand the invisible church
in his text. He interpreted the women in Revelation to be “the Church of
Christ, considered as a community or collective body,” and her fleeing into the
wilderness as representing a time when “the visible church declined from the doctrines
and precepts of Christianity, the true Church of Christ gradually retired from
the view of men, till at length . . . the true church of Christ, considered as
a community, wholly disappeared.” While the church of God lost the outward ties
of “government, doctrine and ordinances,” an invisible church, or the church in
the wilderness, still existed among those who were tied together by “the Spirit
of God, which animates the great Head of the church, and every read member of
his mystical body.” This church, he wrote, is “visible in that state as a
community, only to the eyes of . . . God.” Fraser believed that this invisible
or universal church would eventually be brought back into a visible church
community when the time of the prophesied years of exile ended. At that time, “the
universal church shall against become visible as a community, extended over the
whole earth, ‘clear as the sun, fair as the moon, and terrible as an army with
banners.’” (Alexander Fraser, Key to the Prophecies
of the Old and New Testaments, Which Are Not Yet Accomplished, 2nd ed.
[Philadelphia: John Bioren, 1802], 156-164) While I’m not sure whether or not Joseph
Smith was familiar with Fraser's work, it seems possible that he shared its
language as he communicated that the Restoration would accomplish the work of
re-establishing the visible Church of God, with the proper government,
doctrine, and ordinances.
In any case, Fraser’s invisible church or church in the
wilderness seems to be a useful way of understanding the other church mentioned
in section 10. In the revelation, the Lord says that he will not establish His
church “to destroy my church . . . to built up my church; therefore whosoever
belongeth to my church need not fear, for such shall inherit the kingdom of
heaven” (D&C 10:54-55). The church referenced in this quote seems to be separate
from the church that will be established, since the soon-to-be established
institutional church is spoken of in terms of a relationship to this other
church, building it up rather than destroying it. Later on in the section, the
Lord defines the church as “whosoever repeneth and cometh unto me” (D&C
10:68). This can be understood as both broadening and constricting the membership
of the Lord’s church to include individuals outside of the institutional church
who repent and come unto Him while also excluding members of the institutional
church who do not. Thus, the second church referenced in section 10 seems to be
more similar to Fraser’s invisible church than an institutional Church of
Christ. (Chad Nielsen, Fragments of Revelation: Exploring the Book of
Doctrine and Covenants [Draper, Utah: By Common Consent Press, 2024], 51-52)
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