MEN CALLED OF GOD

Scriptural Examples -- It is not less agreeable to the dictates of human reason than conformable to the plan of perfect organization that characterizes the Church of Jesus Christ, that all who minister in the ordinances of the Gospel should be called and commissioned for their sacred duties by divine authority. The scriptures sustain this view most thoroughly; they present to us an array of men whose divine callings are attested, and whose mighty works declare a power greater than that of unaided human capacity. On the other hand, not an instance is set down in Holy Writ of anyone taking to himself the authority to officiate in sacred ordinances and being acknowledged of the Lord in such administration.

Consider the case of Noah who "found grace in the eyes of the Lord"* in the midst of a wicked world. Unto him the Lord spake, announcing His displeasure with the wicked inhabitants of earth and the divine intention concerning the deluge, and instructed him in the manner of building and stocking the ark. That Noah declared the word of God unto his perverse contemporaries is shown in Peter's declaration of Christ's mission in the spirit world -- that the Savior preached to those who had been disobedient during the period of God's longsuffering in the days of Noah, and who in consequence had endured the privations of the prison house in the interval.* None can question the divine source of Noah's authority, nor the justice of the retributive punishment following the wilful rejection of his teachings, for his words were the words of God.

The apostles of the Lord were called by His own voice in the days of His ministry; and the Savior's authority is beyond question, vindicated as it is by the mighty works of the atonement, wrought through pain and the anguish of death, and by the declarations of the Father. Peter, and Andrew his brother, while casting their nets into the sea were called with the instruction: "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men";* and soon afterward, James and John, sons of Zebedee, were similarly called. So with all of the Twelve who ministered with the Master; and unto the eleven apostles who had remained faithful He appeared after His resurrection, giving them special commissions for the work of the kingdom.* Christ specifically affirms that He had chosen His apostles, and that He had ordained them in their exalted stations.*

In the period immediately following that of Christ's earthly mission, the ministers of the Gospel were all designated and set apart by unquestionable authority. Matthias was chosen, by lot but under invocation of the Lord's direction, to fill the vacancy in the body of the Twelve occasioned by the death of Judas Iscariot. Saul of Tarsus, afterward Paul the apostle, who had been converted with marvelous signs and wondrous manifestations,* had to be formally commissioned for the labor that the Lord desired him to perform; and we are told that the Holy Ghost spake to the prophets and teachers of the Church at Antioch, while they fasted before the Lord, saying: "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them."*