But Why? - Acts 3:20-26

Verse 20 needs verse 19 for context, Peter urges them to repent and be converted “when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; and he shall send Jesus Christ, which was before preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things.” I was confused at first because I was reading it to mean that if they repented, then God would send them Jesus, but that’s not the case. We have to keep in mind here that these people had extenuating circumstances so they weren’t eligible for baptism for the remission on sins because they had personally sought to murder the Savior. We aren’t promised to have Jesus with us when we repent, but when we repent and are baptized for the remission of sins and confirmed, then we have the Holy Ghost with us, which is the most important thing that we can have in the world.

Verse 20 does give us some insight into just what the early Apostles knew and expected. They knew that Jesus would be gone from the earth until there is a “restitution” of all things. How can there be a “restitution” is there isn’t a loss in the first place? Let’s think about that for a minute. As the Apostles were preaching, did they know that any success they had here and now would be distorted later and then have to be brought back before Christ would come again? That’s pretty heavy, if you are engaged in a work that requires your whole soul, knowing that no matter what you do, your efforts will not be that important, can be crushingly frustrating.
But were their efforts important? Jesus Christ and his gospel could have fizzled out upon his death, which is what most people were probably expecting. Because of the efforts of his disciples, knowledge of Jesus and a different type of religion spread all over the earth and even though the Apostles were killed and so were many early Christians, those who survived were truly converted. After Jesus’ gospel was shattered and changed from it’s true form, those ride-or-die believers took what they had to the ends of the earth. I watched a movie about Jesuit priests teaching Christianity in Japan in the 1700s and it helped me realize the extent to which people were willing to go in order to spread the word about the Savior.
So were their efforts important, even if the fullness of the gospel was taken off the earth? This is a question that I’ve asked myself many times. Would it have been better to just have the gospel die with Jesus and then have it “restored” again through Joseph Smith? Clearly the answer is no because that’s not how God did it, but why? I look the evil that has been done in the last 2,000 years in the name of Christianity, and think, wouldn’t it have been better to spare the people that suffering? But then it occurs to me that the evil perpetrated in the name of Christianity would have happened anyway, just under a difference guise. People didn’t commit horrific acts because they loved Jesus, they did it because they loved Satan and themselves and were crazy.
To link violence to Christianity would be to suggest that all periods of human existence outside of Christianity were peaceful and prosperous, and of course that’s not true, even slightly. If anything I would suggest that, at minimum, Christian led violence didn’t exceed that of any other religion or tribe or agenda, and, hopefully, was maybe a little bit less violent, fingers crossed. So the violence would have happened anyway, but under a different title.
If the spread of Christianity didn’t add to or detract from the amount of violence that people perpetrated on each other, then did it do any good, where we can say that their efforts were worth it? I have to look at the individuals here because as the gospel was taught throughout the centuries from the pulpit, people were taught to pray and to obey the commandments, and yes, it was used to manipulate and hurt and control people, but possibly it also gave them hope and happiness. So overall, it didn’t make the situation on earth any worse and did have a positive effect for many people.
Let’s look at the second question posed, would it have been better for the people to “dwindle in unbelief” and have the gospel restored by Joseph Smith? That answer seems a little bit more obvious because we know the events that led up to the restoration of the gospel. Joseph Smith never would have known to pray for an answer on which church to join if there was no Bible or no other churches. The very concept of a Savior would have been lost and distorted even more than it was. It’s like going to a non-Christian country on a mission, like China or Japan or India where most people are Buddhist or Hindu who’s religion doesn’t focus on one Supreme Being, or the concept of repentance or heaven. Trying to convince people who have been raised to believe a completely different concept is very difficult; it requires a complete perspective shift on what the purpose of life is, where we came from and where we are going.
When I lived in Hawaii, they redid the Laie temple visitor’s center, and we went to see it after it reopened and the missionaries there said that at 5 o’clock every evening a bus full of Japanese tourists come for a tour. The renovations to the visitor’s center included a movie that featured an Asian man saying, “satisfaction is increasingly difficult to find.” And one of the missionaries told us that the gospel was a difficult concept for many of these tourists to understand they weren’t familiar with the concept of a Savior or salvation or anything like that. If the Apostles had given up or if the gospel hadn’t been taken throughout the known world throughout the centuries, then no one would have been ready to receive the fullness of the gospel when it was restored. Joseph Smith never would have been ready to receive that information or to do that work. That preparation only came because of generations before him being committed to the scriptures and to Jesus, which wouldn’t have been present if the gospel hadn’t been spread by the early saints.
So I guess that answers my question, the gospel wasn’t taken from the earth because Satan succeeded in killing the Apostles, and the next 2,000 years were a free-for-all blood bath, the people on earth weren’t ready for the full gospel, so they made their choices to accept or reject what they were given and it took 2,000 years for the people to become ready for the fullness of the gospel to return. It’s just like the Melchezidek priesthood wasn’t taken from the Israelites because Satan won and then there was chaos, the Melchezidek priesthood was taken from the Israelites and they were given the Aaronic priesthood because they weren’t ready for the whole thing yet. God gave the people the higher priesthood and then when they rejected it and weren’t prepared, then he took that away and gave them the lesser priesthood to prepare them for when they would be given the higher priesthood back. In this case, God gave the people the fullness of the gospel and many rejected it because they just weren’t ready, so a “lesser” type of gospel was what remained and God used that to prepare the people for them the whole and total truth would be restored.