Does Absolute Power Corrupt? See What Joseph Smith Taught

Society is conditioned by Lord Acton’s cynical—and historically accurate—observation that absolute power corrupts. Yet the revelations of Joseph Smith suggest this maxim is a symptom of the Fall rather than a definition of divinity. From the moment he knelt in the Grove and discovered a “form of godliness” devoid of power, the Prophet began a lifelong apprenticeship in a new paradigm. This wasn’t power as the world defines it—domination and control—but power as light, life, and law. From the mind-expanding definitions received in the crucible of Liberty Jail to the crowning ordinances of the Nauvoo Endowment, Joseph’s mission was to teach us that God is not a cosmic gatekeeper, but a Father inviting us to become joint-heirs to all He possesses.

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Absolute Power (Doesn’t) Corrupt: Restoration Light on an Old Maxim

The old maxim is wrong. Absolute power does not corrupt; the only beings who have absolute power are incorruptible. And God invites us to become “equal in power, and in might, and in dominion” with Him (D&C 76:95).

What corrupts is our default instinct to use even a little power unrighteously—to control, dominate, or exploit others. It is the abuse of a little power that prevents us from ever being endowed with all of God’s power.

There is a lot of resistance to this idea. Clichés are stubborn, and many have suffered under unrighteous power. It is an uphill climb to accept that real power—God’s power, all of God’s power—is both desirable and available to everyone who is willing to receive it on His covenant terms.

Yet from the first to the last, the revelations to Joseph Smith insist this truth was missing until Jesus restored it through him.

“A Form of Godliness”: Joseph’s First Lessons on Divine Power

Remember what Joseph learned in the grove. He “went to the stump where I had stuck my axe when I had quit work, and I kneeled down, and prayed, saying ‘O Lord, what Church shall I join?’”¹ (JS–H 1:24).

In answer, he learned that every professing Christian, no matter how sincere, had only “a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof” (JSH 1:19; cf. 2 Timothy 3:5).

He spent the rest of his life learning the answers line upon line.

The power of godliness. What exactly is that? Is it God’s own power? The power to become like Him? And how is it obtained?

Joseph Smith spent the rest of his life learning the answers line upon line, precept upon precept, as God endowed him with power. In turn, he tried desperately to endow others—and sometimes he grew frustrated.

What Was the Kirtland Endowment?

Twenty-four years after the First Vision, living on borrowed time and still pushing against tradition, Joseph tried again with admitted frustration:

The question is frequently asked, can we not be saved without going through with all the ordinances &c? I would answer, No—not the fulness of salvation.
Joseph Smith

The anxious teenager who had stuck his axe in a stump and discovered that the power of godliness was missing had become a thirty-eight-year-old prophet who would not live to see his next birthday.

Joseph used a metaphor they could feel.

He was exasperated that the Saints still did not understand or truly desire what the Lord had been trying to give them. So Joseph used a metaphor they could feel. Teaching them to become endowed with the fulness of God’s power, he said, was like cutting through the knots in a hemlock tree with a corndodger for a wedge and a pumpkin for a hammer.

“I have tried for a number of years,” he vented, “to get the minds of the Saints prepared to receive the things of God,” and to abide by a celestial law and receive their exaltation.²

Joseph Smith compared teaching the saints to understand God’s power to cutting through the knots in a hemlock tree using a pumpkin for a hammer and a “corndodger” for a wedge. Credit: Steven C. Harper.

“Where I Am You Cannot Come”: Foreshadowing the Endowment

The Restoration began as a rescue mission to bring a scattered people back into the presence of God, a process that required a power the Saints did not yet possess.

We can see the pattern unfold in the revelations to Joseph. In September 1830, in the home of Peter and Mary Whitmer in Fayette, New York, the Lord began gathering his people to his covenant.

Put briefly, the covenant goes like this:

We are cut off from God’s presence by the Fall.
We are restored to His presence by covenant faithfulness, mediated by Jesus Christ.
The greatest curse is to be cut off from God’s presence forever.
The greatest blessing is to regain and abide in His presence forever.
Unfaithful Israel was scattered; faithful Israel was gathered and, in sacred ritual and sometimes in actual fact, admitted into God’s presence.

What Is the Dispensation of the Gospel of Abraham?

Joseph received a revelation “from Jesus Christ, your Redeemer, the Great I Am, whose arm of mercy hath atoned for your sins,” in which the Savior foreshadowed the endowment (D&C 29:1–2).

He framed our mortal condition in cosmic terms: we are pre-mortal beings, cast out of God’s presence and subject to Satan as a result of the Fall, embodied here on earth and endowed with agency, making us free to choose whether to receive the Redeemer’s power or not.

“Where I am you cannot come,” He says to those who refuse, “for you have no power” (D&C 29:29).

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“From Grace to Grace” to Fulness: Receiving the Light and Life That Is Power

Understanding “Receive” and “Glory” in the Doctrine and Covenants

A few months later, in D&C 38, the Lord told the Saints to move to Ohio because “there I will give unto you my law; and there you shall be endowed with power from on high” (D&C 38:31–32). In early 1831, in Ohio, He revealed His law—D&C 42—and then added D&C 50, declaring:

That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day.
Doctrine and Covenants 50:24

Let’s Talk About the Law of Consecration

The Key Word: “Receive”

The key word is “receive.” God dispenses light freely to all. If we want it to grow brighter and brighter, we choose to receive it, again and again, continually.

Notice that the same word is repeated in Joseph’s frustrated sermon:

“I have tried for a number of years to get the minds of the Saints prepared to receive the things of God” so that they will be able to “abide a celestial law & go through & receive their exhaltation.”³
Joseph Smith, Discourse, 21 January 1844

The Misunderstood Word: “Glory”

A year after he arrived in Ohio, Joseph was reading his Bible carefully, which led to a series of visions in which he saw degrees of glory. Latter-day Saints may know section 76 is a report of these visions, but that doesn’t mean we know what glory is.

Whatever it is, “glory” is used more than 30 times in that text, often paired with the term “fulness.”

Glory is the power of godliness. Fulness is all of the power of godliness. People who regain God’s presence “received of his fulness” and “he makes them equal in power” (D&C 76:94-95). Meanwhile, people who choose to receive some but not all of God’s power will receive a telestial or terrestrial degree of glory.

Rosalynde Welch on 7 Visions of Christ in the Doctrine and Covenants

Temples: The Lord’s Instrument for Receiving Power

In September 1832, the Lord linked all of this to the temple. He told the saints to build a temple, then explained why: they needed an endowment of His power to regain His presence.

The revelation that explains this—D&C 84:19-24—tells us that the power of godliness is manifest in priesthood ordinances. If we do not receive those ordinances, we can’t be endowed with power, and without that power, we cannot regain God’s presence and “dwell” there.

Moses plainly taught these truths about power.

The Lord goes on to say in D&C 84 that Moses plainly taught these truths about power, ordinances, and regaining God’s presence to the ancient Israelites. They chose not to receive the power of godliness, so God stopped dispensing that much power to them and offered instead a lesser priesthood to administer ordinances that could, if the Israelites so chose, prepare them for an endowment of more divine power (D&C 84:19-28).⁴

Meanwhile, the Lord invoked the covenant curse that ancient Israelites would not return to his presence unless and until they became endowed with His power. Or, in the revealed words of section 84, the Lord “swore that they should not enter into his rest while in the wilderness, which rest is the fulness of his glory” (D&C 84:24).⁵

Joseph clearly worried that the Latter-day Saints might make the same mistake. Would we settle for a form of godliness without the power? Some glory—but not fulness, rest, exaltation?

What Is the Latter-day Saint Temple Endowment?

“Power From on High”: An Expanded Definition

The Lord’s command to build a temple in Kirtland came in D&C 88, which deepens the picture of what “power” really is. Here, the Lord called his power light, life, truth, and law:

Truth shineth. This is the light of Christ… the light which proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space…

… the light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things… even the power of God.
Doctrine and Covenants 88:7-13

How Do I Receive and Recognize the Holy Ghost?

As the revelation continues, the Lord explains that this power is received to the same extent as it is obeyed. He also told the saints that if they would build a holy house and gather in it repentantly, he would unveil his face to them there and they could come into his presence (DC 88:68).

The Lord repeated this promise a few months later:

every soul who forsaketh his sins and cometh unto me and calleth on my name and obeyeth my voice, and keepeth my commandments, shall see my face and know that I am.
Doctrine and Covenants 93:1

He explained that to worship God is to receive his power, truth, light, life, law.

Then he added a couple of other synonyms, “The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth” (D&C 93:36). Jesus Christ received the power of godliness one degree of glory at a time until he had it all, or fulness.

And so can we, he explained, if we become one (or at one) with Him.

Does Atonement Theory Matter to Latter-day Saints?

Lessons From Liberty Jail: The Unstoppable Nature of God’s Power and Purpose

The saints were busy and distracted, and did not begin to build a temple until the Lord repeated what it was for.

He told them that they were “walking in darkness at noon day, and for this cause I gave unto you a commandment that you should . . . . build an house in the which house I design to endow those whom I have chosen with power” (D&C 95:7-8).⁶ After receiving this revelation, the saints went to work and built the Lord a House.

There, Joseph Smith came into the Lord’s presence. And the Lord sent angels to give Joseph keys that commissioned him to perform the ordinances in which the power of godliness would be manifest (D&C 110).

No one can stop God from endowing His people with power.

Then almost everything went wrong—exile, imprisonment, betrayal. Joseph spent months in Liberty Jail pondering the nature of power and its abuse.

Out of that crucible came some of his clearest teachings: no one can stop God from endowing people with His power, but God’s power can only ever be used righteously; when anyone attempts to wield it unrighteously, they lose it (D&C 121).

In some long letters to the saints, Joseph said righteous people have always longed “for the fullness of their glory,” adding that it was always God’s plan to endow his children with power to “enter into his eternal presants and into his imortal rest.”⁷

A Brief History of the Doctrine & Covenants

The Nauvoo Endowment: Ordinances for the Fulness of Glory

On May 4, 1842, on the second floor of his store in Nauvoo, Joseph Smith began giving the ordinances of the endowment of power.⁸ Then, in July 1843, Joseph recorded a revelation that includes the greatest if/then ever. It was the last of his revelations to be included in the Doctrine and Covenants.

In it, the Lord explains:

Pertaining to the new and everlasting covenant, it was instituted for the fulness of my glory; and he that receiveth a fulness thereof must and shall abide the law, or he shall be damned, saith the Lord God.
Doctrine and Covenants 132:6, emphasis added.

I bet you can now see that the line you just read could be written: “to receive a fulness of God’s power you have to receive a fulness of God’s power.”

D&C 132: What Is the Plural Marriage Revelation?

Receiving the fulness of God’s power is done by making and keeping all the covenants, including the new and everlasting covenant of marriage. Everyone who makes and keeps that covenant receives all of God’s power:

Then shall they be gods, because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue; then shall they be above all, because all things are subject unto them.

Then shall they be gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye abide my law ye cannot attain to this glory.
Doctrine and Covenants 132:20-21, emphasis added.

I bet you can now see that the line you just read could be written: “unless you receive my power, you cannot receive my power.”

Everyone who wants to make and keep the new and everlasting covenant of marriage will be able to do so. Our Heavenly Parents will see to that. That’s their plan and their promise.⁹

How Has Temple Worship Evolved Since Joseph Smith’s Time?

A New Paradigm: Becoming Joint Heirs With Jesus Christ

God’s power is divine intelligence, light, law, life, truth, and glory—wrapped in covenant promises and available in the gospel ordinances, culminating in the temple ordinances.

We are not to grasp at power, as the world does, but to receive it—on God’s terms, in His house, through His servants, within His covenant family.

Being endowed with the fulness of God’s power does not make us tyrants. It makes us joint heirs with Jesus Christ (Romans 8:17; D&C 76:94-96, 93:16-20).

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About the Scholar

Steven C. Harper is a covenant son of God who strives to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. His primary work is to teach the restored gospel of Jesus Christ in ways that help students develop resilient faith in the Savior and become His lifelong disciples. He is married to sculptor Jennifer Sebring and is writing a book for Oxford University Press on The Doctrine and Covenants.