It has often amused me to note the incredulity of those unfamiliar with the Church when they learn that the founder was a young man of little formal education who arose from obscurity to claim that he was called of God and supported in his ministry by angelic messengers. “How could a credible work come from a nobody?” “How could a divine movement stem from such backward and accidental circumstances?” Such is the essence of their attitude concerning Joseph Smith.
Accident indeed! As Joseph made clear a few weeks before his martyrdom, he believed that his calling was premortal in nature: “Every man who has a calling to minister to the inhabitants of the world was ordained to that very purpose in the Grand Council of heaven before this world was. I suppose that I was ordained to this very office in that Grand Council. It is the testimony that I want that I am God’s servant, and this people His people” (HC, 6:364).
We learn from Joseph of Egypt that the future Prophet, a man who “shall be great like unto Moses” (2 Nephi 3:9), would be called “after the name of his father.” And indeed, there was a Joseph Smith Sr., who was born in 1773, about as many years after the birth of Christ as Joseph of Egypt was born before Christ.
The grand design of heaven came full circle on September 21, 1823, when the young Joseph Smith was retiring for the night in his family’s log home at Manchester, New York. Let us look in on the scene: He prays earnestly for forgiveness of his sins and with patient confidence that his prayer will be answered seeks a divine manifestation to know his standing before the Lord. While yet in prayer he receives a heavenly visitation from a glorious angel, known anciently as Moroni, who informs Joseph that God had a work for him to do, and that his name “should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds, and tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people” (HC, 1:11–12). Moroni tells Joseph of the existence of a book “written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent,” containing “the fulness of the everlasting Gospel” (12). He quotes prophecies of Malachi that are about to be fulfilled and tells Joseph of his role in their fulfillment. Moroni repeats his visitation twice during the night, adding more knowledge each time. After the third visit Joseph hears the cock crow, announcing a new day and confirming the dawning of a new dispensation of the gospel—the dispensation of the fulness of times and the restoration of all things. The following morning Joseph is again visited by Moroni and allowed to see the gold plates for the first time—uncovered from their burial spot in nearby Hill Cumorah. Thus was laid the foundation of the young man’s prophetic calling in bringing forth “a book that is sealed” (Isaiah 29:11), constituting an important part of the Lord’s “marvellous work and a wonder,” long foretold (see Isaiah 29:14). What Joseph of Egypt had foreseen was taking place not by accident, but according to the grand design of heaven established from before the foundations of the earth for the salvation and exaltation of mankind. (Richard J. Allen)