The early Christian text, the Pastor of Hermas, is wildly out of sync with the doctrine of our loudest critics. Why is that?
Ongoing revelation from God, including revelation given by angels, is implicit in the Pastor of Hermas, contrary to the mainstream view that prophets are no longer needed, that revelation ceased with the Bible, and that the ministry of visible angels to men has ended. The section on discerning between the Spirit of God and other spirits in Command XI of Second Hermas is remarkably similar to Doctrine and Covenants 50??**, and the delcaration that prophets or “whosoever soeaketh by the Spirit of God, speaketh as the Lord will” echoes the Lord’s words in Doctrine and Covenants 64:***. Third Hermas, Similitude V, teaches of the sanctity of the human body that we must keep pure and undefiled for the Holy Spirit to dwell in it. In fact, we are told not to defile our “body and spirit,” For they are companions together, and the one cannot be defiled but the other will be so too. Keep therefore both of them pure, and thous shalt live unto God. (Similitude V, v. 63) This is classic LDS understa
