Isaiah 53:8

Isaiah 53: 8 states:
 
“He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.”
 
The idea of our Messiah emerging from “prison and from judgment” was a bit shocking to his listeners.  There is little wonder at Isaiah’s original question about who would believe the report.  Should not the Messiah emerge from a palace?  From a university (center of learning)?  From a recognized hierarchy?  From a notable family?  From respectable circles?  We would think so, wouldn’t we?
 
Because of the presumptions, we do not look for Him as a prisoner, or one against whom judgment has been rendered.  Nor do we expect His messengers to come, as they have so often in scriptures, from obscure places, bearing obscure names and having no credentials.
 
When Isaiah adds that the Messiah will be “cut off from the land of the living” he made a startling point.  The Messiah will die!  The Redeemer will not avoid death and the grave.  He will lose His life.  What follows adds to the wonder of it all:  “For the transgression of my people” will the Messiah be cut off into death.
 
Now the focus has changed.  Isaiah’s message shifts from the suffering of the Messiah into the transgression of Israel.  It is Israel’s responsibility that their Messiah must suffer so.  They will need a Messiah who will undertake this suffering, for they will not abandon their transgressions and will need a sacrifice made for them.  They will need to confront love so great that it will die to redeem them.  The proof of the Messiah’s devotion to them will be shown by His humiliation, suffering and death.  This is His proof.  This is His credential.  This is the record which will show for all mankind what great lengths God will go to reclaim His beloved people.  They transgress, He atones.  They sin and wander off as lost sheep, He pays to re-gather them with His blood.
 
His suffering may surprise them, but their surprise should be astonishment at the great love He holds for them.

Isaiah 53:7

Isaiah 53: 7 states:
 
“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.”
 
These three references to Him refraining from “opening his mouth” and being “dumb” (meaning silent) are referring to more than His failure to respond to Herod’s inquiries.  (Luke 23: 8-9.)  This is a reference to Christ’s “Word,” which if employed, could have moved mountains, held armies at defiance, and summoned “twelve legions of angels” to His defense.  (Matt. 26: 52-53.)  Pilate was told that he may have been the Roman Procurator, but he had no power over Christ which Christ did not permit.  (John 19: 7-11.)
 
Christ remained silent, choosing to exercise meekness in the face of the threat aimed at Him.  (“Meekness” as explained in Beloved Enos, which is really a great power.)  It was in this sense the Isaiah found His silence to be prophetically remarkable.  One of the great signs of the Messiah.  He would be the One whose words could have exercised power to defy armies, but who refrained from speaking those words.  He would, instead, voluntarily submit to the abuse and scorn of those who hated Him.
 
As to our Lord being shorn, Isaiah also foretells His beard being plucked by those who would smite, abuse and strike Him.  (Isa. 50: 6.)  Surely our Lord was indeed “shorn” as a “sheep” before His sacrifice.

Patience

Christ was prepared eighteen years prior to the time His ministry would begin.  He stood by ready, and “waited upon the Lord for the time of his ministry to come.”  (JST Matt. 3: 24-26.)

Prepared and waiting.

Patience.
Even the Lord, who was “more intelligent than them all,” waited.  (Abr. 3: 19.)
The Lord’s counsel to all is that they must not “run faster than they have strength.”  (Mosiah 4: 27; also D&C 10: 4.)
There is no rush to receiving an audience with the Lord.  When it happens it is always in His own time, His own way, and according to His own will.  (D&C 88: 68.)
We must ask.  Then we wait upon Him.  If He waited, what makes you think you are entitled to rush ahead without paying a similar price to develop the necessary patience in waiting on the Lord.
Abraham was promised children, but waited decades to receive the promise.  Anna and Simeon were promised they would behold the Lord’s Messiah, but were both well stricken in age before He came.  (Luke 2: 25-38.)
Patience.
Recognize the Lord alone will determine the timing.  Our responsibility is to trust in Him and await His will.  We can ask, seek and knock.  He cannot respond unless we ask, seek and knock. But having done so, then we trust in Him to decide when He will make Himself known to us.

Isaiah 53:6

Isaiah 53: 6:

“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

The Savior referred to those who would follow Him as His “sheep.”  (John 10: 27.)  However, Isaiah’s use of “sheep” here is not about those who would follow Him, but rather those who would scatter, find other shepherds, or lose their way altogether. Isaiah’s “sheep” are disorderly and have gone “astray.”
The bookends of these two messages – Isaiah’s sheep, who are astray, and Christ’s, who “hear His voice” – are two sides of the same coin.  Until “ALL” of us have been, or to some degree, have gone “astray,” we are unprepared to “hear His voice” and be gathered by Him.
We have turned away from the True Shepherd and gone into our “own way.”  That errant “way” is appealing to the ego, the mind, the imagination, or the traditions we need to control us because they are safe, tested or handed to us by those whom we trust.  Whatever the reason for choosing our own way, it is nevertheless ours.  We must leave it, respond to the True Shepherd’s “voice” and gather again to Him.  
It is His “voice” whenever He sends a true messenger, empowered with a message from Him.  It is not His “voice” when the messenger has not been sent or empowered with a message from Him.
The “iniquity of us all” in finding ourselves in these strange paths has been laid upon Him.  He has found His way back from every error man can make.  He has solved every dilemma, confronted every error, overcome every false and tempting doctrine the devil has thrown at you.  He can solve your imponderable problems.  He knows the answers.  He has overcome the iniquities of every false, evil or prideful teaching ever given to any man or woman.
He can lead you back to the light, because He has remained true to the light throughout.  Therefore look to Him.

Isaiah 53:5

Isaiah 53: 5 states:
“But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”
Those wounds He suffered were not His, they were ours.  Those iniquities which were laid upon Him were never His to bear. He volunteered to take them. We were relieved of them, and He took them. He purchased our peace by what He suffered to reconcile us to God. His infirmity was to heal us.
Our rejection of Him was the means by which He became fully acceptable to His Father.  He bore our abuse to make His compassion perfect.
What we lacked we put on full display in our anger at Him.
What we held in our hearts we poured out upon Him, shouting to kill Him!  Crucify Him!  Away with Him!
He took it to allow our rejection to become His bridge back to the Father for us all.

When the outcast makes intercession for those who despised Him, there can be no crime which He cannot forgive.  Having suffered the guilt of all, He holds the keys of death and hell.  He suffered both.  It was perfectly unjust for Him to have suffered anything.  Yet He suffered it all.

How can the gates of hell be opened?  It requires someone upon whom death and hell could have no claim to go there.  When justice itself requires Him to be released, then death and hell are conquered.  This is what He would do.  He would suffer the wrath of the guilty and vile, fully assume their punishment and abuse, and bear their penalty of death itself.  When the fury relented, and the wrath ended, He could reclaim life.  His captivity ended the captivity for all.  Having then returned to life, because it was just for Him to do so, He acquired the keys of death and hell.  Now He can open those gates for any and all because it was unjust for Him to have been put through either.  He can now advocate for others by virtue of what He suffered and the injustice of that suffering.  (D&C 45: 3-5.)

Isaiah 53:4

 
“Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.”
 
This Messiah of whom Isaiah testifies will bear “grief” and “sorrow,” but these will belong to us.  They will be ours.  In His suffering will be found our own shortcomings and failures. He will assume them for us.
 
As He suffers, we will think it is His own deserved punishment.  We will think it is God’s doing. God will smite Him. God will afflict Him. After all, He was not truly God’s Son.

We miss the point of Isaiah’s message when we confine it to the Lord alone. His messengers will also come “as a thief in the night” to warn again before His coming.  They, too, may fit the same pattern.  If so, then we should be careful when we think another person’s grief and sorrows are inflicted upon them by a God who has smitten them.  Such an assessment may, like those who lived and rejected the Messiah, put you on the wrong side of the confrontation.
 
The Lord’s doings are ever the same.  The pattern simply does not change.

Isaiah 53:3

Isaiah 53: 3 states:
 
“He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”
 
The Messiah would be both “despised” and “rejected” by the very people who claimed to follow Him.  The astonishing report of Isaiah was unbelievable.  It makes no sense that the people who looked forward to deliverance would reject their Deliverer.  Why expect them to “despise” and “reject” the very one they rely upon for their hope?  It is little wonder that Isaiah’s report would not be believed.
 
Isaiah’s Messiah would be “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.”  He would mingle with the commonest of people, bearing with their infirmities, ministering to them. All the while, He will be a thorn to those who despised His ministry.  Those in good society would “hide their faces from Him,” and refuse to associate with Him.  He had nothing to offer them.  For them to acknowledge Him would require them to condescend.  Better for them to hide their faces. 
 
He warned them that if they were ashamed of Him, He would in turn be ashamed of them.  (Mark 8: 38.)  He also counseled them to be careful about their standard of judgment, because it would be applied to them.  (Matt. 7: 2.)
 
Despite the coming Messiah’s teachings, and Isaiah’s testimony of Him, the chosen people nevertheless “despise” Him, and “esteem Him not.”  It would simply be too difficult a task to confront Him in the flesh and find it possible to recognize Him for what He was.
 
We presume we could have recognized Him.  However, the test He set up was one that He cautioned was coming.  Our unflattering views of Christ’s contemporaries may, in turn, leave us without excuse should He choose as He does so often, to send us a message from an obscure or un-credentialed source.  
 
I wonder how many of us would recognize the truth, if it came only with the power of veracity behind it.  Forgetting all the messenger is lacking, could we be starving ourselves from truth by again rejecting the open hand the Lord extends us?  Whether by His own voice or by the voice of a servant, it will always be the same.  (D&C 1: 38.)

Isaiah 53:2

Isaiah 53: 2 states this about the Messiah:

“For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.”

The first “he” is a reference to the Messiah.  The second “him” is either the Father in Heaven or Israel.

The Messiah will be a “tender plant” or a “root” that arises “out of a dry ground” because the barren, unproductive, rancorous people among whom He will be sent will not be producing redeemed souls when He comes.  They will be racked with religious falsehoods; ambitious and controlling men who have obtained their leadership through political maneuvering, influence peddling and purchase.  

The acquisition of religious status was so normal a thing in that day that the Apostles would later be asked by Simon if he could purchase the priesthood from them.  (Acts 8: 13-24.)  And yet the Messiah will find the way back to opening the heavens, receiving power from on high, and then go about preaching and leading other souls to redemption as well.  For Him the barren, dry ground will be no impediment to salvation.

The Messiah will “have no form nor comeliness,” and have “no beauty.” Not because of His physical appearance, however.  It will be due to the lack of position, absence of credentials, failure to hold a leadership position, and outsider status which makes Him undesirable.  Those who recognize in His message the voice of the Lord will be required to overlook His obscurity and status.  I’ve described this more fully in two chapters in Come, Let Us Adore Him.

This image contradicts the presumptions of the people who hear Isaiah’s report.  They imagine themselves as followers of the true faith.  They presume they would hearken to the voice of God no matter when it came.  But they look for it in barren ground.  Therefore, when the Messiah should come, they will be unable to find anything desirable, beautiful or comely about Him.  Rather they will shout “crucify Him!” because He will have merited the charge of blasphemy.

For those who heard Isaiah’s report, this would seem altogether wrong.  It is incomprehensible for the chosen people to fail to recognize the Lord’s own Son.  And yet they will kill Isaiah, as well.  So when the message of the prophet Isaiah came to pass, the generation in which it was fulfilled was entirely oblivious to how his prophecy was unfolding before their eyes.

This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

Isaiah 53:2

Isaiah 53: 2 states this about the Messiah:

“For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.”

The first “he” is a reference to the Messiah.  The second “him” is either the Father in Heaven or Israel.

The Messiah will be a “tender plant” or a “root” that arises “out of a dry ground” because the barren, unproductive, rancorous people among whom He will be sent will not be producing redeemed souls when He comes.  They will be racked with religious falsehoods; ambitious and controlling men who have obtained their leadership through political maneuvering, influence peddling and purchase.  

The acquisition of religious status was so normal a thing in that day that the Apostles would later be asked by Simon if he could purchase the priesthood from them.  (Acts 8: 13-24.)  And yet the Messiah will find the way back to opening the heavens, receiving power from on high, and then go about preaching and leading other souls to redemption as well.  For Him the barren, dry ground will be no impediment to salvation.

The Messiah will “have no form nor comeliness,” and have “no beauty.” Not because of His physical appearance, however.  It will be due to the lack of position, absence of credentials, failure to hold a leadership position, and outsider status which makes Him undesirable.  Those who recognize in His message the voice of the Lord will be required to overlook His obscurity and status.  I’ve described this more fully in two chapters in Come, Let Us Adore Him.

This image contradicts the presumptions of the people who hear Isaiah’s report.  They imagine themselves as followers of the true faith.  They presume they would hearken to the voice of God no matter when it came.  But they look for it in barren ground.  Therefore, when the Messiah should come, they will be unable to find anything desirable, beautiful or comely about Him.  Rather they will shout “crucify Him!” because He will have merited the charge of blasphemy.

For those who heard Isaiah’s report, this would seem altogether wrong.  It is incomprehensible for the chosen people to fail to recognize the Lord’s own Son.  And yet they will kill Isaiah, as well.  So when the message of the prophet Isaiah came to pass, the generation in which it was fulfilled was entirely oblivious to how his prophecy was unfolding before their eyes.

This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

Isaiah 53:1

Isaiah 53: 1 begins with the questions:
Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?
These two questions remain as timely today as they were when asked 750 years before Christ’s birth.  As to the first question:
The report is Isaiah’s testimony of the coming Messiah.
It is plural, although delivered by a lone prophet, because God Himself authorized the message to be delivered.  Therefore it is not “my” but rather “our” report.
The question concerns the audience’s “belief” in the report, because it contradicts the ideas held by them.  It will tell them something remarkably different from what they though to be true.

As to the second question:

“The arm of the Lord” is a symbol of His strength or might.
To have the strength of the Lord revealed to someone is to have them come into knowledge of Him and His ways.

His ways are not what men presume they are.  They are directed to much higher, much holier ends.  The strength of the Lord as it will unfold in the chapter which follows is based upon the suffering He undertook for us.

The chapter that follows this opening verse is framed in the past tense.  This is called the “prophetic perfect” tense.  To the prophet, the events have been seen. To him, they are in the past. Therefore, future events are framed as if they already occurred.  Prophets to whom things are shown will often frame their message in the past tense, even though they speak of things in the future.  You find it throughout prophecy.

Be careful what you ask for

It was weird, really.  This guy went to visit with God in His House, but when he got there he couldn’t see Him.  I mean he couldn’t “see” Him.  God was there.  They both were there.  But God, as it turned out, the guy was unable to detect His presence.
He went to the optometrist and got his vision checked.  Everything worked.  So he was left to wonder why it was he couldn’t see God.
Some study later he concluded that although God was made of matter (Luke 24: 39), He must be more refined or pure, and therefore not detectable by normal eyesight.  (D&C 131: 7.)  Only “purer” eyes could see him.  So he used Visine, returned to see Him, and still no luck.
Well, he decided to take up the matter in prayer and offered this supplication to the Almighty:  “I’m beginning to doubt your love for me.  Tell you what, you show yourself to me and I’ll know you love me.  But it you stay outside my field of vision then I know you’re avoiding me and therefore don’t love me.”  God loves everyone, see.  And so the request was framed in a way to force God to make Himself visible.  The man thought himself clever.
Well, God decided to take the fellow up on the request, as He always does.  First the man’s house burned down, then his business failed, then he got cancer.  As he was in the hospital his family abandoned him, and his friends all thought he was cursed by God, and stayed away.  So he waited out the final days of his mortality alone, in pain, and without possessions.  
As a charity case the hospital treated him with some neglect, giving him many hours to suffer alone in his bed.  Suffering brought about meditation and prayer.
It was during the last few hours of his life, as he lay fevered and in pain, that his burdens overwhelmed him and he sought in desperate humility for relief from God.  His prayer was:  “Oh Lord, I know I have done less than I should have with the things I have been given.  I long to part this life clean of my failings.  Can you forgive me, a wretched sinner, for my many failings?”  He expected little.  Hoping only to salve his conscious by this prayer.
The Lord, who had been in the room for days, suddenly came into view.  Startled by this appearance, the man asked: “Is it you, Lord?”
“Yes” came the reply.
“Can you forgive me?”
“Oh, I’ve done that long ago.  Yes, you are certainly forgiven.  I’m here for you to see I love you.  You asked for that in your prayer a year ago and I’ve been working so that your eyes could become more refined.  Now, at last they are.”
Now the man could see what great love the Lord truly had for him.  For in the extremity of his dying hour, he had a companion to comfort him.
He died in joy.  The nurse thought it was the morphine.

What lack I yet?

I was asked this question:
 
“Do you know with surety IN ADVANCE of doing some incredibly hard sacrifice that it is the Lord asking it of you, or do you come to know that it is His will AS you do it?”
 
My response:
You will know with absolute certainty that the request came from the Lord.
 
The request will be difficult, or a sacrifice.
HOWEVER, whether the person recognizes at the moment or only in hindsight that it was required for them to develop the faith necessary for redemption is not universal.  Some know at the time, some only know in hindsight.  What is absolutely universal is that when the test has been passed, the faith exists.  When it does, it will be enough for redemption and the promise of eternal life.
Joseph knew he had the promise of eternal life (as recorded in D&C 132: 49) before he went to Carthage to die.  He knew he was going to die.  Death was not his great challenge, but the physical ratification of the faith which already existed in him.  The earlier trials had been enough to prove him and put that power within him.  His death was an extension of existing faith and knowledge.

The order of things is established and can be known.  The details of how it unfolds in individual lives will be specific to the individual.  Whether the person realizes the final great test is underway or not will depend on the person.  I did not.  I only came to realize in hindsight what was underway.

 
One of the parables in Ten Parables shows how the heavens can interact with man, but man be unaware of the full agenda conducted.  I have referred to that tenth parable several times. By the way, that parable is NOT a description of the test required to obtain the faith for redemption.  It is just a parable about how heaven works to provide missing virtue or grace to a life that is lacking something, but still worthy of preservation.

Charge to Twelve

This is really a “comment” in response to a question belonging to the earlier post on Elder Packer’s Testimony.  However, it was too long to put in there as a reply comment, so will be put up here as a blog entry.  It is an interruption.  Sorry.  There is a fellow asking for it, and I delayed for so long that I feel I owe him a response.  I am really writing this to him.

Taken from Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power.  (A good book by Quinn.  He’s written some bad ones, but this is not one of them.  I think he was stinging from criticism and in this book proved he was still a good historian.)

“In 1835 Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdrey emphasized to the newly organized Quorum of the Twelve Apostles that their calling was charismatic, evangelical and also institutional.  Of the three, the charismatic definition of the apostleship was the earliest, going back to 1829.  Cowdrey told the new apostles: ‘It is necessary that you receive a testimony from heaven for yourselves; so that you can bear testimony to the truth of the Book of Mormon, and that you have seen the face of God.’  Then he continued: ‘That is more than the testimony of an angel … Never cease striving until you have seen God, face to face.’  Cowdrey acknowledged that most of the new apostles had depended on visions of others for their faith and suggested that some might even be skeptical of visions.  Thus it was not necessary to see Jesus to be chosen as an apostle.  However, once ordained each man had a lifelong obligation to seek this charismatic experience: a vision of deity.  Some apostles from 1835 onward reported having had such visions before their ordination.  Apostles in the nineteenth century referred publicly to their visionary witness.

“… some LDS apostles, including Orson Pratt and Heber J. Grant, felt inadequate because they had not had such encounters.

“In the twentieth century, charismatic apostleship changed in several ways.  First, the ‘charge’ at ordination no longer obligated apostles to seek visions.  Second, the Presidency and apostles began down-playing the importance of these experiences.  Third, apostles began speaking of a non-visionary ‘special witness of Christ’ by the Holy Ghost in terms which allowed listeners to conclude that the apostles referred to an actual appearance of deity.  Fourth, apostles were reluctant to discuss their visionary experiences publicly.  Fifth, evidence indicates that a decreasing number of apostles experienced visions before or after ordination.
“The change in the apostolic ‘charge’ apparently began with the appointment of Reed Smoot as an apostle in 1900.  General church authorities had long regarded him as ‘reliable in business, but [he] has little or no faith.’  President Lorenzo Snow blessed him to receive ‘the light of the Holy Ghost’ so that he could bear testimony of Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith.  That was an extraordinary departure from the apostolic charge as given since 1835.
“…Twentieth-century apostles began applying this ‘as if’ approach to their spoken testimonies.  Usually this involved wording their ‘special witness’ of Christ in a way that encouraged listeners to assume the leader has had a more dramatic encounter with the divine than actually claimed.”
The full discussion ranges from pages 1 through 6 and would require too much typing to do it here.  But the above, taken only from pages 1-2, gives you some more particulars than my brief reference before.  The whole discussion is documented with references from the Church’s archives where the writer reviewed the transcripts of the actual ordinations, etc.  They are all set out in the footnotes, which are omitted from the quote I have excerpted above.

Why wait?

The question was asked as to whether receiving the Second Comforter is necessary before you die, or if the afterlife supplies an adequate substitute.  This requires the evaluation of two separate concepts.
First, the Second Comforter means a visit or personal appearance to someone by Christ.  However, the appearance is not as important as the ministry of the Lord.  He “comforts” those to whom He appears.  He will “not leave you comfortless, he will come to you.”  (John 14: 18.)  Christ and His Father will “make their abode with you.” (John 14: 23.)  Meaning that the Son will bring you to the Father, and the Father will receive you as His son.  This appearance is not merely “in the heart,” but is an actual appearance or visit.  (D&C 130: 3.)
However, the purpose of the ministry, the reason for the “abode” with you, the “comfort” that is promised by the Lord, involves the promise of eternal life.  The promise of eternal life has been made an equivalency by the Lord in a revelation given in modern times.  That is, the end or result of the ministry of Christ as the Second Comforter is to have the promise of eternal life.  In a modern revelation the word of the Lord was given to a group of Latter-day Saints in which the promise of their exaltation was extended to them, and the Lord made this the equivalent to “another Comforter.”  
Here is what was said:

“Wherefore, I now send upon you another Comforter, even upon you my friends, that it may abide in your hearts, even the Holy Spirit of promise; which other Comforter is the same that I promised unto my disciples, as is recorded in the testimony of John. This Comforter is the promise which I give unto you of eternal life, even the glory of the celestial kingdom; Which glory is that of the church of the Firstborn, even of God, the holiest of all, through Jesus Christ his Son— .”  (D&C 88: 3-5.)

Therefore, as a singular appearance, should the Lord appear to you, you have received the Second Comforter.  However, His ministry is to bring you to the point at which you can receive the promise of eternal life, membership in the Church of the Firstborn, and the promise of the Celestial Kingdom as your eternal inheritance.  In the fullest sense, therefore, the final promise of exaltation in the Celestial Kingdom can also be called the Second Comforter, since that is the result of His taking up His abode with you.

The second concept is really a question: Would it be preferable to have the promise of eternal life now than to die uncertain as to your eternal state?  If so, then why would you waste your life now in hopes that some other opportunity may exist at some other stage?  
If the answer to these questions are “yes” then the original question is simply unimportant. Why wait? The opportunity given to you now should not be forfeited, nor should the work be delayed.  Don’t dismiss the Lord’s offered assistance for what you can achieve in mortality for the possibility of something in the after-life.

“of strong faith and a firm mind”

Consider this:
“[N]either have angels ceased to minister unto the children of men.  For behold, they are subject unto him, to minister according to the word of his command, showing themselves unto them of strong faith and a firm mind in every form of godliness. And the office of their ministry is to call men unto repentance, and to fulfil and to do the work of the covenants of the Father, which he hath made unto the children of men, to prepare the way among the children of men, by declaring the word of Christ unto the chosen vessels of the Lord, that they may bear testimony of him.”  (Moroni 7: 29-31.)
Note that angels show themselves to those “of strong faith and a firm mind.”  Also, that the visit will require them to whom such visits come to “bear testimony of [Christ]” as a result of those visitations.
From Joseph Smith:
“A fanciful and flowery and heated imagination beware of; because the things of God are of deep import; and time, and experience, and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out. Thy mind, O man! if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity—thou must commune with God.”  (TPJS p. 137.)
Note that the “imagination” is not useful in gaining communion with God.  Fanciful, flowery and heated imaginative thoughts will detract, not contribute, to knowing Him.  The only way is to possess the same mental state as Moroni refers to – careful, sober, solemn, deep thoughts are required.  The mind must reach into heaven as well as the darkest abyss.  The opposition of things in this creation and the balance of those opposites will cause you to encounter the worst as you strive to enjoy the best. All is kept in balance throughout the process.
A person can’t imagine they have salvation.  They must “know” they possess it.  The heavens should declare it to them.  When the heavens bestow this knowledge upon a person, it is an anchor to their soul and they will never fall.  But until then, a person needn’t suppose they possess something which God has not declared by His own voice to be theirs.

True teachers will labor to help you understand how real, deliberate, attainable, and necessary this process is to engage in.  They will not ask you to follow them.  They will teach you how to follow God, and obtain from God knowledge of salvation.  False teachers will distract you. They will tell you all is right, that there is enough good being done in your life to merit God’s favor, and that it is not necessary for you to do more than belong to a privileged group.

You cannot possess the knowledge which will save you until you have learned for yourself that God lives, and that He has promised to you eternal life.