Daily Inspiration Quote by Joseph Smith, Jr.

Smith is doing something audaciously efficient here: he turns personal authority into prehistory. By relocating his legitimacy to a "Grand Council of heaven" held "before this world was", he sidesteps the messy, earthly questions that dog any new religious movement - Who appointed you? By what right? - and answers them with a cosmology. The claim isn't merely that he feels called; it's that his calling predates criticism, politics, even time itself.

The rhetorical move is also pastoral, not just imperial. "Every man" widens the net, framing vocation as a divine assignment rather than a social accident. That universalizing gesture softens the sharper edge of his follow-up: "I suppose I was ordained to this very office". The "I suppose" reads like modesty, but it functions as a pressure valve. He can sound humble while still asserting inevitability. If heaven already voted, dissent becomes less disagreement than resistance to the structure of the universe.

Context matters: early 19th-century America was crowded with revivals, prophets, and competing churches, all arguing over who could speak for God. Smith's emerging movement needed a theory of authority strong enough to withstand both Protestant skepticism of hierarchy and public suspicion of self-made prophets. Pre-mortal ordination supplies that. It also anticipates a distinctive Latter-day Saint emphasis on premortal existence and foreordination, giving followers not just a leader but a map of meaning: your life isn't random, your labor isn't merely economic, and your obedience participates in an ancient plan.

The subtext is control, but also comfort. If the world is chaotic, the idea that your minister was commissioned before creation makes chaos feel managed.