What are some examples, one might ask, of some of these plain and precious matters which have been expurgated from the original biblical records? May we not ask what became of such matters in the Old Testament as the identity of Jesus Christ as Jehovah, the ordinances of salvation (baptism, confirmation, sealings, and eternal marriages) the age of accountability, the premortal existence of man, the nature and functions of the Melchizedek Priesthood, the typology of the Law of Moses, and particulars concerning such doctrines as the Creation, the Fall, and the Atonement?
These and a myriad of others-including such issues in the New Testament as the timeless nature of the Atonement (retroactive and proactive), the doctrine of celestial marriage, and a distinction between the destruction of Jerusalem in a.d. 70 and the signs of the times incident to the Second Coming—were lost to the world until the “times of restitution” began in the spring of 1820.