Scriptural Savant

Apocalypse of Abraham 19

Related ancient text — scholarly reference

Extra-canonical text — not LDS scripture and not in the KJV Apocrypha. Provided as scholarly reference for parallel literature of the Second Temple period and the early Christian era. Read with discernment; the Apostle Jude quotes 1 Enoch and Paul knew this material, but inclusion here is for study, not doctrine.

1And a voice came to me out of the midst of the fire saying: “Abraham! Abraham!”, and I answered saying: “Here am I!”

2And he said: “Consider the expanses which are under the firmament on which you are now placed

3and see how on no single expanse is there any other than the One whom you have sought, even the One who loves you!”

4And while he was yet speaking, the expanses opened, and there below me were the heavens,

5and I saw upon the seventh firmament upon which I stood a fire widely extended,

6and the light which is the secret of life, and the dew with which GOD will awaken the dead,

7and the spirits of the departed righteous, the spirits of those souls who have yet to be born,

8judgment and righteousness, peace and blessing, an innumerable company of ange,

9the Living Ones and the Power of the Invisible Glory that sat above the Living Ones.

10And I looked downwards from the mountain on which I stood to the sixth firmament,

11and there I saw a multitude of angels of pure spirit, incorporeal, whose duty was to carry out the commands of the fiery angels who were upon the seventh firmament, as I was standing suspended over them. 13 And behold, upon this sixth firmament there were no other powers of any form, save only the angels of pure spirit. 14 And He commanded that the sixth firmament should be removed from my sight, 14 and I saw there on the fifth firmament the powers of the stars which carry out the commands laid upon them, 15 and the elements of the earth obeyed them.

Public-domain text (R.H. Charles 1913 and equivalents). These works are not canonical, but several were widely read in antiquity and one (1 Enoch) is quoted by name in Jude 1:14–15. Useful for understanding the doctrinal landscape from which the apostles and earliest saints taught.