Is There a “Pulpit Narrative” that Prevents Us from Understanding the Scriptures? A Response to Avraham Gileadi

 

Avraham Gileadi is an interesting individual. He has a wide array of publications relating to the Book of Isaiah, many of which incorporate unorthodox views and a poor translation of Isaiah. Gileadi had been excommunicated in the early 1990s but had returned to the Church a few years later. To be clear, I do not know why he was excommunicated, but I was pleased when I learned that he had been rebaptized and had returned to full fellowship in the Lord’s Church.

Unfortunately, due to recent comments he has made online, I am worried that he is on a repeat course towards apostasy.

Gileadi appeared on The American Moutsos podcast (which has offered more than a fair share of troublesome and nationalistic ideas) on 25 January 2022. About seven minutes into the interview, Gileadi has this to say regarding his excommunication:

There was a time in the 1990s, where everything changed, and um, many who I call the most zealous Mormons, the zealous Latter-day Saints, were actually excommunicated from the church, between 4 to 5,000 under Elder Packer’s direction, were excommunicated from the LDS church. From then on, everything changed. It’s like the truth of God, of the scriptures, went underground, while the pulpit narrative kind of became dominant. There was a disconnect between the pulpit narrative and the scripture narrative from that point on. However, the scripture narrative I think due to my work anyway, as many people have come to the knowledge of Isaiah, because it was amig, most astounding discovered in Isaiah. It totally unlocked that book from being obscure and sealed book to being open, open to everybody’s vision, the delivery tools that I discovered.

There are many aspects of this statement that are troublesome. For starters, I highly doubt that President Packer oversaw the excommunication of up to 5,000 of the “most zealous” Latter-day Saints. Such a number is clearly exaggerated and must come strictly from Gileadi’s imagination and, apparently, some hard feelings he must harbor towards the late Apostle stemming from his own excommunication.

Second, Gileadi asserts that there is a “scripture narrative” that is entirely at odds with the “pulpit narrative” taught at General Conference and by leaders of the Church. This is fitting for GIleadi, whose unorthodox beliefs about Isaiah have never been taught by Church leaders, to claim that he is “in the know” while they are not. He is following a classic formula for apostate claimants to Church leadership and authority by asserting his “discoveries” in Isaiah to be greater than what is taught by the Prophet of God.  Instead of recognizing the prophet’s authority, he sets himself up as a de facto authority to learn the “true” narrative from.

This claim is repeated later on by Gileadi:

[Many Latter-day Saints are] not willing to discuss the truth, and that situation has arisen over time because they, as the Book of Mormon says, quoting Isaiah, they have subscribed to precepts of men, or the pulpit narrative, or teachings that were written and documented in books that have no scriptural basis. And I believe that’s at the back of all this division right now, and alienation from the church, they have been given a watered-down version of the gospel, calling it the fullness of the gospel and it’s just basic principles, it has not been enough to sustain them through the trying times that we’re in now, with all their diversions and idolatries, and false narratives. They’re unable to distinguish anymore the truth from the falsehoods, and that’s a mess we’re in today. We’ve been actually set up to fail in that respect.

Notice what Gileadi says: not only is the “pulpit narrative” at odds with the scriptures (as GIleadi supposes), they are “precepts of men,” recalling the Lord’s chastisement of an apostate Israel in Isaiah 29 and the Lord’s words to Joseph Smith in the Sacred Grove. By so doing, Gileadi has implied that the Apostles are apostate and leading the Church astray. By following the leaders of the Church, moreover, we have “been set up to fail.”

It is also interesting to note his objection to “books that have no scriptural basis,” which may inclide books authored by the General Authorities of the Church following Gileadi’s description of the “pulpit narrative” earlier, in connection to his later endorsement of a troublesome book Visions of Glory that teaches false doctrine regarding the end times.

It should be obvious to all faithful Latter-day Saints why these views are troubling and why Gileadi should be avoided until he repents. After all, the Prophet Joseph Smith when he declared:

That man who rises up to condemn others & finding fault with the Church saying that they are out of the way while he himself is righteous, then know assuredly that that man is in the high road to apostacy & if he does not repent will apostatize as God live[s].

Of course, this could be easily dismissed by Gileadi, should he simply consider it to be part of the “pulpit narrative” that contradicts his own worldview.

Gileadi’s supposed “pulpit narrative” versus “scripture narrative” fits in with what some argue “Will you follow Christ or follow the prophets?” — the implication being that a “pulpit narrative” drives us away from coming to Christ through the scriptures and other means of revelation. Coincidentally, at the time I began writing the response, a memory of a post I had made on social media appeared on my phone. With some modification, I repeat my sentiments here.

Many suppose that in order to follow Christ, it will occasionally lead you to not follow the prophet, disobey his counsel, and come to your own “revelation” — whether real or imagined.

Let me be blunt in my view. That is false doctrine.

The follow Christ versus follow the Prophet dilemma presented here is a false dichotomy - that means that two options are presented as if they are mutually exclusive, but in all actuality both are capable being true. In this case, both are mutually required to be true at the same time.

Christ calls prophets; prophets point us to Christ by revealing how we are to come to Him and declaring His commandments. This is especially seen in countless sections of the Doctrine and Covenants:

And if my people will hearken unto my voice, and unto the voice of my servants whom I have appointed to lead my people, behold, verily I say unto you, they shall not be moved out of their place. But if they will not hearken to my voice, nor unto the voice of these men whom I have appointed, they shall not be blessed, because they pollute mine holy grounds, and mine holy ordinances, and charters, and my holy words which I give unto them. And it shall come to pass that if you build a house unto my name, and do not do the things that I say, I will not perform the oath which I make unto you, neither fulfill the promises which ye expect at my hands, saith the Lord. For instead of blessings, ye, by your own works, bring cursings, wrath, indignation, and judgments upon your own heads, by your follies, and by all your abominations, which you practice before me, saith the Lord (D&C 124:45-48).

…the day cometh that they who will not hear the voice of the Lord, neither the voice of his servants, neither give heed to the words of the prophets and apostles, shall be cut off from among the people; For they have strayed from mine ordinances, and have broken mine everlasting covenant; They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall (D&C 1:14-16).

Wherefore, meaning the church, thou shalt give heed unto all his words and commandments which he shall give unto you as he receiveth them, walking in all holiness before me; For his word ye shall receive, as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith (D&C 21:4-5).

Recall what own prophet, Russell M. Nelson, has recently declared, “And, finally, we hear Him as we heed the words of prophets, seers, and revelators.”

One of my favorite stories that encapsulates our need to follow the Prophet comes from Brigham Young. He (under the direction of Joseph Smith and agreed upon by Wilford Woodruff years later) once stated that the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Bible weren’t worth “the ashes of a rye straw” if it meant losing the living oracles of God. For Brigham Young, the living prophet was more important than anything, because without such we would be in the same place as the world was before Joseph Smith had his vision. We need to have that same mentality when it comes to listening to the voices of the Prophets and Apostles and constantly seek to follow their urgings and commands, even if it may disagree with some of our own political, social, or private viewpoints and interpretations.

I am reminded of a woman I met who tearfully bore her testimony that when she heard a prophet recommend that women should wear one pair of earrings, she immediately removed one of her two pairs. Her wearing two pairs had no effect on her eternal salvation in the long run, nobody will check our ears at the gate to the Celestial Kingdom, but she knew that following the prophet would lead her to more blessings than she could ever imagine even in some small and minute temporal matter. That is the spirit, I think, we each should have as we listen to the Lord’s counsel for us, today, as delivered through His living oracles.

The Lord has called a Prophet for us today. I bear witness that He is indeed the Prophet – the Spirit spoke strongly to me on the day he was set apart as the prophet as three other missionaries and I watched the announcement on an (oddly snowy) day in Texas. He will not lead us astray, and if we have a humble spirit of following his counsel even when it is not necessarily on something that will lead to our everlasting salvation.