Question: Does Isaiah teach anything about making one’s calling and election sure as the prophet Joseph Smith does, who quotes 2 Peter 1:10–11? What does making sure your calling and election mean?
Answer: Although different gospel dispensations and historical periods reveal different ways prophets and apostles teach theological concepts, the doctrines themselves remain constant throughout time. Isaiah doesn’t use the terms “calling and election,” for example, but he does use covenant language to define the same thing within the framework of God’s relationship to his servants. It devolves on us to figure out how different terminologies are saying the same thing.
Says Peter, “Grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, according as his divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who has called us to glory and virtue. By whom are given to us exceeding great and precious promises, that by them you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity.
“For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that you will neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he who lacks these things is blind and cannot see afar off, and has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure, for if you do these things, you will never fall. For thus an entry will be ministered to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:2–11).
“For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honor and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’ And this voice which came from heaven we heard when we were with him in the holy mount. We have also a more sure word of prophecy, to which you do well that you take heed, as to a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:16–19).
Responds the prophet Joseph Smith, “Though they might hear the voice of God and know that Jesus was the Son of God, this would be no evidence that their election and calling was made sure, that they had part with Christ, and were joint heirs with Him. They then would want that more sure word of prophecy, that they were sealed in the heavens and had the promise of eternal life in the kingdom of God. Then, having this promise sealed unto them, it was an anchor to the soul, sure and steadfast. Though the thunders might roll and lightnings flash, and earthquakes bellow, and war gather thick around, yet this hope and knowledge would support the soul in every hour of trial, trouble and tribulation. Then knowledge through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is the grand key that unlocks the glories and mysteries of the kingdom of heaven” (TPJS, p 298).
Although Peter points to our heavenly goal as “the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” Joseph Smith cites “the kingdom of God.” That is, the kingdom of the Father—the same which Jesus’ three disciples inherited while the nine inherited that of Jesus. Either way, it is “knowledge” of God that is key to attaining it. It would anyway be the height of presumptiveness and betray an awful sense of entitlement to assume one could personally know the Father without first knowing the Son, as the Son is the one who shows us the Father (John 16:15, 25).
Isaiah describes certain covenanters in the land of “Egypt”—a codename of end-time America—who indeed come to “know Jehovah.” As these fall under constraint of oppression and cry to him for deliverance, “Jehovah will make himself known to the Egyptians, and the Egyptians shall know Jehovah in that day. They will worship by sacrifice and offerings, and make vows to Jehovah and fulfill them. Jehovah will smite Egypt, and by smiting heal [it]: they will turn back to Jehovah, and he will respond to their pleas and heal them” (Isaiah 19:21–22; cf. vv 19–20).
Like his end-time servant, these covenanters emulate their divine Savior by taking upon themselves the iniquities of the house of Israel: “He shall see the toil of his soul and be satisfied; because of his knowledge, and by bearing their iniquities, shall my servant, the righteous one, vindicate many” (Isaiah 53:11). That “knowledge”—of the terms of the Davidic Covenant—empowers them to serve as saviors, leading directly into Jehovah’s presence and making their calling and election sure. Only then are they able to restore the house of Israel (see Isaiah 19:23–25).
