When it comes to communication from God, or revelation, what is given in the revelation is more important than how revelation comes. Elder Gerald Lund talks at length about this in his book Hearing the Voice of the Lord: Principles and Patterns of Personal Revelation. Discussing the continuum of revelation, that is less direct to more direct, he notes that "It could be said that while Joseph's vision of the Father and the Son opened the Restoration [perhaps the most direct form of revelation], it was angelic ministration that sustained it [a less direct form, but not less important]" p.36.
Studying this idea has been enlightening to me. Elder Oaks taught "The ministering of angels can also be unseen. Angelic messages can be delivered by a voice or merely by thoughts or feelings communicated to the mind...Most angelic communications are felt or heard rather than seen" (The Aaronic Priesthood and the Sacrament, 39).
How much of what we count as our own brilliance, or good ideas, ought rightly to be attributed either to the light of Christ, the Holy Ghost, the ministration of angels, or any other God-directed form of inspiration to us?
Where would we be without revelation, direct or indirect?
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