Restored and Restoring ~ The Unfolding Drama of the Restoration ~ Robert L. Millet

Eborn Books: Salt Lake City, Utah, 2014. 275 pages. Brand new hardcover with dust jacket.

The spring of 1820 heralded the dawn of a new day. The Sacred Grove in upstate New York was not to be the location of a complete restoration, a place and a time wherein God would make all things known and correct all the flaws of a faltering world. Rather, the First Vision began the era of restitution, the times of refreshing, the season of cleansing and purification and endowment that would reach a zenith in a millennial dispensation…. The days in which only the chosen few could come unto God, those times when only a priestly hierarchy could perform the sacraments and commune with Deity, were no more. The gospel of God, the new and everlasting covenant, was restored to earth “that every man might speak in the name of God the Lord, even the Savior of the world; that faith also might increase in the earth.” (D&C 1:20-21).

Nephi recorded the words of Jehovah: “Woe unto him that shall say: We have received the word of God, and we need no more word of God, for we have enough! For behold, …. I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little….for unto him that receiveth I will give more” (2 Nephi 28:30). These prophetic words describe accurately the divine system of gospel prerequisites and more particularly how and in what manner the God of heaven would initiate and bring to completion the dispensation of the fulness of times. Young Joseph Smith would not leave the Sacred Grove in the spring of 1820 knowing and understanding all he would know and understand when he went to a martyr’s death some 24 years later. Precious insights into principles & doctrines of the restore gospel would come to him, as they would to all Latter-day Saints, incrementally, a precious piece at a time. The “restitution of all things” (Acts 3:21) is a work in progress, an unfolding and unraveling tapestry of truth. This book contains a series of essays that focus on many of the varied and varying facets of that theological and ecclesiastical revolution we know as the Restoration.

When Joseph stated near the end of his life that he intended to lay a foundation that would indeed revolutionize the whole world, he did not intend to speak in hyperbole; he meant exactly what he said. Through visions, revelations, the delivery of modern scripture, and ordination to divine apostolic power, there would come into being a new Christian culture, a counterculture, and a doctrinal shift that would involve gathering in one all things in Christ. (Ephesians 1:10). By this means God would effect a transformation of human nature, an eventual elevation and renovation of society, and a people prepared for the Second Coming.

See information below about the author, Robert Millet.