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I think a great many of us are comfortable with the idea that inspiration and revelation can be received by anyone inside our outside of the church, prophet or otherwise. Do you feel that a revelation is ever 100% pure truth? I like to think that all truth comes from the same source, but our personal experiences, cultural upbringing, and prejudices bend and distort it as we receive it. Comparing truth to light I think makes for some profound symbolism. We all receive the same light from the sun, but none of us see all of it. In fact, the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that constitutes visible light is a very small slice. There are other creatures that can see things in the infra-red and ultra-violet portions of the spectrum that are completely invisible to us. Also, if we shine light through a colored filter, it changes things. Say if you wrapped some purple cellophane around your light bulb, everything in your room would appear purple. Our cultural programming and prejudices and distort the way we receive inspiration in the same way. It doesn’t bother me in the least anymore that so many different faiths can claim to have received prophesies and revelations and yet be completely contradictory. As I saw in one forum members signature, “we see through a glass darkly”. Any revelation will be an approximation to the truth; just as our eyes are not capable of comprehending all light, our minds are not capable of comprehending all truth. Your example of light is a good one, and that idea years ago led me to select my avatar. I think there can be some truth that is universal…but so many of us experience it differently that it is in the describing it and putting it into language where variation of the truth is wide and incomplete.
I think we will receive eternal, perfect, unchanging and pure revelation when we someday find ourselves in an eternal, perfect, unchanging and pure environment — perhaps if we someday merge completely with God into an unchanging state out of time, at least on some level. Revelation is 1% information and 99% interpretation (meaning). What is data without context?
We live in a changing world. We are 7 billion different consciousnesses, of which no two are the same. We exist in a world of nearly infinite difference and diversity. Revelations are perhaps more universal as they are more vague. If the spirit reveals LOVE to us, that might be universal and applicable to all (most?), but what does it really mean in the infinite variables of human action and living?
The more specific, the less universal. That’s my observation. Nothing in this “kingdom” we experience as human life is permanent or fixed.
On-going revelation doesn’t just reveal totally new things. In fact, it rarely does that. In almost all cases, it merely peels back the veil a bit more than previously. Speaking in very general terms, science is the process of on-going revelation of the factually observable; religion is the process of on-going revelation of the factually un-observable.
I think personal revelation is one of the great gems from the LDS restoration period that I can get on board with. It’s a keeper, amongst many many rotten religious ideas.
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