Joseph Smith — "We never can comprehend the things of God and of heaven but by revelation."
We never can comprehend the things of God and of heaven but by revelation.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Human reason and intellect alone cannot access divine truth. Only revelation — direct communication from God — bridges the gap between mortal understanding and heavenly knowledge. This rejects purely philosophical or academic approaches to theology, insisting that spiritual reality operates on a different plane than ordinary experience. To know God, one must receive what God chooses to disclose; it cannot be deduced, reasoned, or discovered through human effort alone.
Relevance to Joseph Smith
Smith's entire prophetic identity depended on revelation. He claimed a First Vision in 1820 where God and Jesus appeared to him, then received golden plates translated into the Book of Mormon, and produced over 130 revelations compiled in Doctrine and Covenants. He wasn't merely an interpreter of existing scripture — he was an active conduit for new divine communication, making this quote the literal charter of his authority and the LDS Church's founding logic.
The era
Smith preached during the Second Great Awakening of the 1820s through 1840s, America's most intense religious revival, when competing denominations fought over scriptural authority and thousands reported spiritual experiences. Simultaneously, Enlightenment rationalism pushed religion toward reason-based theology. Smith's insistence that God reveals new truth to living prophets challenged both Protestant consensus that revelation closed with the Bible and secular rationalism, positioning him as either dangerous heretic or miraculous answer to the era's religious confusion.
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