This week I focus on the doctrine surrounding sealing a testimony with one’s blood. There isn’t much about this on the Church site.
I know that having to read dictionary definitions can be really boring. Please be patient with me, for I have a purpose in giving you these definitions. Almost all of the times when we hear, read, or see someone talk about sealings, it is about Temple sealings. This time I want to talk about sealing testimonies. We don’t seal testimonies with an ordinance as we do marriages.
Sealing something
I went to the Websters 1828 dictionary, because that is the dictionary that was in use (the first of its kind in America) during Joseph Smith’s lifetime. These are the definitions of the words people understood during his life. Over time definitions change, dropping some meanings, changing others, and adding even more. It’s great to compare one version of the dictionary to another to see how the meaning of words has changed over the last 200 years. For brevity’s sake I’m just using the 1828 dictionary.
What it means to seal something. (Websters 1828 Dictionary) As you read each of the definitions think about how it might apply to a testimony.
4. Any act of confirmation.
5. That which confirms, ratifies or makes stable; assurance. 2 Timothy 2:19.
6. That which effectually shuts, confines or secures; that which makes fast. Revelation 20:3.
2. To set or affix a seal as a mark of authenticity; as, to seal a deed. Hence,
3. To confirm; to ratify; to establish.
5. To make fast.
So they went and made the sepulcher sure, sealing the stone and setting a watch. Matthew 27:1.
9. To close; to fulfill; to complete; with up.
10. To imprint on the mind; as, to seal instruction.
Our lives
In the average life one’s testimony is something that is sealed by the act of living that life in accordance with what that person knew to be true. When the person dies still living by their code of behavior they have believed and taught all their life we can say that their life was their seal, for it established or made firm what they always said they believed in.
Most of us will never be in a position where we have to seal our testimony with our blood. Apparently there are times when this is a necessary thing according to the justice of God. Jesus was born to die, as the saying goes. Without his death on the cross his work would not have been finished. According to the justice of God Christ had to die to seal his testimony and complete his work. We read about other martyrs in the scriptures where the Lord required them to die to seal their teachings with their blood. They were needed to make the supreme sacrifice in order for the justice of God to be perfect.
Think of Abinadi in the Book of Mormon. He went into King Noah’s palace knowing that he would be killed. And what was his remark about this knowledge? He said that it didn’t matter what happened to him as long as he was saved in the kingdom of God. Abinadi had preached to the people and had been threatened before, but he felt that the truth was more important than anything that people could do to him physically. He was demonstrating his devotion to Christ by putting his own life on the line for Christ and the people’s welfare.
Joseph Smith knew for years that he would have to die for the cause he had adopted. So far, time and time again he managed to be saved from having to die. But this time he seemed to know that going to jail was not going to end well. He had preached the gospel of Christ for the last 15 years. Now he had a work to do that was special. He had to die. But why?
The justice of God
This part is all me. I don’t have a quote from a prophet, nor do I have particular scriptures to give you on this. I have been struggling with this for days, and this is what has come into my mind. I hope it is correct. See how you feel about it.
Doctrine and Covenants 136:39 tells us briefly about how the justice of God works when it comes to punishing a people who have crossed the line.
39 Many have marveled because of his death; but it was needful that he should his with his , that he might be and the wicked might be condemned.
First off, what does it mean to “cross the line”? I used to hear stories about a bully who terrorizes all the children until one day someone brave enough to face him steps up and tells him to stop it once and for all. The bully defies our hero, so our hero gives the bully one last chance. He takes his toe and scrapes a line in the dirt and tells him that if he crosses the line then it won’t end well for him. As long as the bully backs down then no justice will be meted out, but if he persists in his bullying ways and steps across the line then judgment will be swift and sure.
This tale of the bully and the hero is basically what is happening with God and those who seek the destruction of His mouthpiece, the prophet. God turns His eye over and over again to give people a chance to repent, but when they seek the life of His mouthpiece to His children, one holding His priesthood and sent on His errand then the death of that servant becomes the source and justification for God’s wrath when His punishment finally descends upon the people.
Two things happen at the same time. The first thing that happens is that the murdered prophet not only becomes a martyr for the cause he espoused, for he dies in the service of Christ, for Christ, but he also is given a special place of honor in heaven, because of his willingness to give his life in sacrifice for the truth God sent him to teach. The second thing that happens is that God, according to His own laws, is now justified in whatever punishment He meets out to those who killed His prophet. Let’s read this verse one more time.
39 Many have marveled because of his death; but it was needful that he should his with his , that he might be and the wicked might be condemned.
Sealing the testimony
By dying for Christ, because of his own righteous life in serving the cause of Christ, God kept him alive until the people became so wicked, so perverse, and so determined that God’s servant needed to die, and at their hands, that God used the death of that servant to seal their fate by the judgments that were about to be rained down upon their heads.
Joseph F. Smith taught that a testament, a covenant with God for a whole people, requires the death of the one who acts as the testator. This isn’t talking about the average member of the church, but of he whom God sent to be the revelator of the new testament sent by the Lord. This doesn’t affect the righteous who accept it, but it acts as a justification for the punishment for those who reject God’s laws and seek the death of those He sends to bless their lives.
Here is a quote from Joseph F. Smith. I follow this up with another quote from George Albert Smith.
Joseph F. Smith, the sixth President of the Church, taught: “What does the martyrdom [of Joseph and Hyrum Smith] teach us? The great lesson that ‘where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator’ (Heb. 9:16) to make it of force. Moreover, that the blood of martyrs is indeed the seed of the Church. The Lord permitted the sacrifice that the testimony of those virtuous and righteous men should stand as a witness against a perverse and unrighteous world. Then, again, they were examples of the wonderful love of which the Redeemer speaks: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ (John 15:13.) This wonderful love they manifested to the Saints and to the world; for both realized and expressed their conviction, before starting on the journey to Carthage, that they were going to their death. … Their courage, their faith, their love for the people were without bounds, and they gave all that they had for their people. Such devotion and love left no doubt in the minds of those who enjoyed the companionship of the Holy Spirit that these good men and true, were indeed the authorized servants of the Lord.
George Albert Smith, the eighth President of the Church, declared: “Joseph Smith performed his mission; and when the time came that he was face to face with death, he said, ‘I am going like a lamb to the slaughter, but I am calm as a summer morning. I have a conscience void of offense toward God and toward all men. If they take my life, I shall die an innocent man, and my blood shall cry from the ground for vengeance, and it shall yet be said of me, “He was murdered in cold blood.” ‘ [See D&C 135:4.] He was not afraid to stand before the pleasing bar of our Father in heaven and answer for the deeds done in the body. He was not afraid to meet the charge that had been made against him, that he was deceiving the people and dealing unjustly with them. He was not afraid of the result of his life’s mission, and of the final triumph of the work which he knew was of divine origin, and for which he gave his life.”
Testaments are normally, as far as I can tell, only given at the beginning of a dispensation. Even then not all dispensations have a new testament given that the Saints before them didn’t have. Adam, for example, had his own dispensation, and gave the Lord’s testament (covenant) to his children, and still died an old man. Enoch also was translated, instead of murdered. Even Moses, who gave the old testament, the Mosaic law, was translated. But in the New Testament days the line of death that followed the Savior’s death was long and served to justify the punishment God meted out to Israel for the next two thousand years. Every one of the Apostles was murdered, except John the Beloved, and they tried to kill him. You just can’t kill someone who is no longer mortal. It is said that they tried to boil him alive in a vat of oil. But they gave up when he wouldn’t die.
Vengeance
I would like to address this comment made about Joseph Smith by George Albert Smith.
“I shall die an innocent man, and my blood shall cry from the ground for vengeance”
Several times I have had people approach me and ask how we can say that the prophets are righteous men when, instead of forgiving those who killed them they “cry from the ground for vengeance.” It has taken me a while to be able to answer this for myself. I now understand that it isn’t the prophets who are crying for vengeance. It is the blood that was spilt that demands vengeance. Notice in the paragraphs above that it is God who says that the spilling of the prophet’s blood is what cries out for vengeance. This is why their testimony of the gospel seals something. It not only seals their acts of faith during their lifetime as being true and faithful to God, but their death also seals the fate of those who turned against God and sought the death of God’s servant.
According to God’s own justice, such acts cannot go unpunished. You will find multiple references to this kind of event in different places in the Book of Mormon. As long as the people were willing to repent the Lord spared them. It was only when they murdered the prophets and tried to cover up their own sins that God finally brought the Lamanites in upon them or caused famines and pestilence to overtake them. Only repentance on their part could save them. This is a pattern that holds true throughout the Book of Mormon and the Bible. Evidently it holds true today as well.
Final Thoughts
The seal on our life comes with our death, for how we lived and died is what tells others how we really felt about what we said we believed in all our lives. Our righteous endurance till the day we die tells our story. But those, like Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith, who were murdered for what they believed in leave a different kind of seal upon their lives. Their death contributes to the judgment of the wicked at the same time that it secures for themselves a special place beside the Savior. Christ understands betrayal and unjust death. Those willing to live a good life in Christ’s service, who are unfairly judged and killed by the wicked are rewarded for giving their all, including their life itself in Christ’s service.
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