Gospel, Priesthood, and Covenants — Three Claims, Three Refutations
The critic appealed to Greek. Let us read it together.
The Attack — Stated Fairly
A confident Protestant-style critic offers a three-pronged attack on the Restoration:
The Objection
1. “The gospel — euangelion — did not need to be restored.”
2. “There is no priesthood to restore. The Aaronic priesthood was made obsolete with the coming of Christ, and only Christ was a priest after the order of Melchizedek.”
3. “Mormon ‘covenants’ are not scriptural and have no power. The real covenants are the Abrahamic, the Old, and the New.”
And the appeal to authority: apokatastasis (Acts 3:21) “has nothing to do with the organization of some 19th-century religion.”
That is the strongest version of the critic’s case. Each claim has a clear Greek pivot. So let us take the Greek seriously, one claim at a time, and see what it actually says.
Claim One — “The Gospel Did Not Need Restoration”
Yes — the Greek euangelion (ευαγγέλιον) means “good news.” The critic correctly notes that the message of the gospel did not change. But this misses the point Paul actually makes about what constitutes the gospel’s authoritative delivery:
“And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God…”
Read it slowly. Christ gave to His Church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Five named offices — not a book, not a tradition, not private interpretation. And how long are these offices to remain? “Till we all come in the unity of the faith.” Look around. Has Christendom come into “the unity of the faith”? The condition has plainly not been met. By Paul’s own grammar, the offices must still exist.
Paul is even more pointed in Galatians:
“But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.”
Notice what Paul does not say. He does not say “any gospel not in scripture is accursed.” He says “any gospel other than that which we have preached” — meaning the apostolic gospel, transmitted with apostolic authority. The standard Paul defends is the apostolic deposit, not Scripture alone (which did not yet exist as a New Testament canon when he wrote).
What the Restoration restored was therefore not a new message. The gospel was always God’s. What had been lost — and what was returned — was the apostolic and prophetic delivery system Paul names in Ephesians 4. Once the apostles died and were not replaced, the system Paul commanded had collapsed in fact, no matter how clearly the message remained in surviving texts. The Restoration brought back the men with the keys, not a new gospel. The critic’s “euangelion never needed restoring” defeats only a position no Latter-day Saint holds.
Claim Two — “Only Christ Was a Priest After Melchizedek”
This is the load-bearing claim. The critic appeals to Hebrews 7, where the author contrasts Christ’s eternal priesthood with the Levitical succession. Yes — Christ’s priesthood is unchangeable, eternal, passed on from Him by no other, and supreme. None of that is denied by anyone who reads scripture honestly.
But the critic’s leap is from Christ’s priesthood is unique to no other person can be a priest after the order of Melchizedek. That second sentence is not in Hebrews 7. And it is contradicted by the rest of the New Testament:
“Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood… But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people…”
“And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever.”
“And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.”
If only Christ could be a priest after Melchizedek, then Peter, John, and the entire host of the redeemed singing in Revelation are committing a category error. They are not. The New Testament repeatedly calls believers priests — not as an honorary metaphor, but as a designation Christ Himself bestowed by ordination and laying on of hands.
The clincher is the working priesthood inside the apostolic Church:
“Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save the sick…”
James names a specific class — elders of the church — who anoint the sick with oil in the name of the Lord. That is sacramental priesthood function. It is not metaphor; it is operating in the early Church the moment the New Testament begins. If only Christ held priesthood, who ordained these elders? Who baptized after Pentecost? Who broke bread? Who laid hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost (Acts 8:17; 19:6)? Each of those is priesthood operating in NT-named offices, performed by men Christ ordained, who in turn ordained others (Acts 6:6; 13:3; 1 Timothy 4:14; 2 Timothy 1:6).
Hebrews 7 says Christ is the High Priest — the supreme, eternal, unchangeable one. It does not say He is the only one. It says His priesthood does not transfer in the way the Levitical line did (by mortal succession). It does say that He confers priesthood by ordination on those He chooses, as the NT then shows Him doing — first to the Twelve, then through them.
The critic’s “only Christ” reading is a leap the text does not authorize and which the rest of the NT directly contradicts. Strip priesthood out of the apostolic Church and you must explain how anyone after Pentecost did anything sacramental at all. There is no honest answer that does not concede ordained priesthood in the early Church — which means a real priesthood was active, was lost, and could be restored.
Claim Three — “Mormon Covenants Are Not Scriptural”
The critic concedes that the Abrahamic, the Old, and the New covenants “have real power” and asserts that “Mormon covenants” are something else — an extra-biblical category invented in the 19th century. This is precisely backwards.
Examine LDS covenants one at a time, and ask which is not in the Bible:
LDS Covenants — Find the One That Is Not Biblical
- Baptism — Matthew 28:19; Acts 2:38. Directly commanded.
- The Sacrament (Lord’s Supper) — Luke 22:19–20: “This cup is the new testament [diathēkē] in my blood.” Christ’s own institution of the New Covenant.
- Gift of the Holy Ghost by laying on of hands — Acts 8:17; 19:6.
- Ordination by laying on of hands — Acts 6:6; 1 Timothy 4:14.
- Anointing the sick with oil — James 5:14.
- Marriage sealed by God — Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:5–6: “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”
- Binding and sealing authority — Matthew 16:19: “Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.”
- Vicarious work for the dead — 1 Corinthians 15:29: Paul argues for resurrection from the existence of baptism for the dead — the early Church plainly did this.
Every one of those covenants is in the Bible — named, commanded, or practiced. LDS “covenants” are not a separate category from the Abrahamic and the New. They are the personal application of those covenants to individual believers, sealed by the authority Christ granted in Matthew 16:19 and never withdrew from heaven.
The critic’s assertion that “Mormon covenants have no power” therefore requires him to deny that Matthew 16:19 means what it says, that James 5:14 describes what it describes, and that 1 Corinthians 15:29 mentions what it openly mentions. The position is not faithful to the Bible. It is a tradition about the Bible — the post-Reformation tradition that quietly read most of the early Church’s practice out of the text.
The Apokatastasis Pivot
The critic invoked the Greek word apokatastasis (αποκατ´αστασις) and claimed it “has nothing to do with the organization of some 19th-century religion.” That is a confident claim. Read where the word actually occurs in the New Testament:
“And he shall send Jesus Christ… whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution [apokatastasis] of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.”
Three things are unmissable in Peter’s words. First, the apokatastasis is something that happens. The heavens must receive Christ until it occurs. This is a future event tied to the timing of Christ’s return. Second, it is the “restitution of all things” — not personal salvation in private, but a comprehensive restoration of an order that existed before. Third, it is tied to “the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began” — the prophetic line, plural, going back to the beginning.
If apokatastasis has nothing to do with restoring the prophetic and apostolic order, then what exactly does Peter mean by “all things” spoken “by the mouth of all his holy prophets”? The word means restitution to a former condition — bringing back what was. The grammar tightly links it to the order God established through His prophets — the very order that included priesthood, ordinances, and apostolic authority.
The critic invoked Greek to disprove the Restoration. The Greek is the Restoration’s strongest scriptural anchor. Acts 3:21 is precisely the passage Latter-day Saints have always cited — not because we read it into the text, but because Peter himself put it there.
The Verdict
Three claims; three refutations.
On the gospel: Yes, the message of euangelion never changed. What changed was the apostolic delivery system Paul names in Ephesians 4 and Galatians 1. The Restoration restored the system, not the message. The critic refutes a claim no Saint has made.
On priesthood: Hebrews 7 affirms Christ’s eternal high priesthood and does not say He is the only person who can hold any priesthood. 1 Peter 2, Revelation 1 and 5 directly name believers as priests. James 5 puts priesthood operating inside the apostolic Church. The critic must read those passages out of his Bible to defend his position. He cannot.
On covenants: Every covenant Latter-day Saints make is named, commanded, or practiced in the Bible. Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, gift of the Holy Ghost, laying on of hands, anointing with oil, marriage sealed by God, binding and loosing in heaven, vicarious work for the dead — every one of those is in the New Testament. The position that “Mormon covenants are not scriptural” survives only by denying what scripture openly contains.
On apokatastasis: The Greek word the critic appealed to in his closing is the single strongest scriptural evidence for a future restoration of the order God established through His prophets. Peter put it there. The critic did not.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ teaches that Christ is the eternal High Priest. He also delegated, by ordination and laying on of hands, an apostolic and prophetic priesthood that operated visibly in the early Church and that, when that line was lost, He restored — apokatastasis, exactly as Peter foretold. The covenants the Restoration administers are not new covenants competing with the New Covenant. They are the New Covenant, applied personally, by the authority Christ established and never repealed.
The critic asked us to read the Greek. We read it. It does not say what he claims it says. And once it is read, the three-pronged attack collapses on its own footings — refuted by Paul, by Peter, by James, by John, and by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.