Living Prophets

Last week I taught Relief Society, Lesson #16 in the Joseph Smith manual, and the lesson went pretty well. I didn't have time to cover everything, which quite often happens, but we had a good discussion with the material we did cover.

It was a good lesson for me particularly to give for a few reasons. (I think the Lord does that on purpose.) But one of those reasons has been on my mind both from when I first read the lesson to now a week later--well longer really, but I'll get to that.

The title of the lesson was Revelation and the Living Prophet, and so of course it dealt with modern revelation. It's a great thing. I'm so glad to live during a time when the fullness of the gospel is on the Earth so I can benefit from living prophets. I've tried following their counsel for many, many years.

In fact, I think I've addressed one of these before, at the time Pres. Hinckley passed away. That is, when Pres. Benson was the prophet, he asked us to read the Book of Mormon every day. And so, with very few exceptions, I have been doing that for many, many years. And then in 2000, I remember reading in the R.S./Priesthood manual of that time--(I think it was Joseph F. Smith), that the prophet of focus, encouraged the saints to read from all of the scriptures every day--Bible, Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants. I'll confess I haven't done it every day, but at least a few times a week, I try to read from the other books in the canon. And I love the scriptures more, I think, from becoming familiar with them in this way.

So, you're wondering, where am I going with this? It is good just to bear my testimony, I guess, but there's another point.

In the lesson is this quote that I actually heard some time when I was at BYU from a returned missionary, maybe he was my home teacher, I don't remember. I don't even remember who it was, just that it was an RM. Anyway, we were talking about daily scripture study and he said that he reads general conference talks every day and not from the other scriptures (I don't recall if it was ever or not as much), because of this quote. (Though I'm sure he paraphrased it and didn't have the source, so I've long wondered what the actually quote was--nice to have these manuals now!)

"Brother Brigham took the stand, and he took the Bible, and laid it down; he took the Book of Mormon, and laid it down; and he took the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, and laid it down before him, and he said: ‘There is the written word of God to us, concerning the work of God from the beginning of the world, almost, to our day. And now,’ said he, ‘when compared with the [living] oracles those books are nothing to me; those books do not convey the word of God direct to us now, as do the words of a Prophet or a man bearing the Holy Priesthood in our day and generation. I would rather have the living oracles than all the writing in the books.’"

At the time, it struck me a little funny because I felt like a contradiction. The prophet had told me (us--everyone) to read the Book of Mormon every day, so that's what I was doing, and now this guy was insinuating that I should instead just be reading conference talks every day.

Well, as indicated already, I didn't stop reading the BoM every day because of that, but the conversation has stuck with me and even in teaching the quote in Relief Society last week, I've wondered how I'm supposed to address it, both in the lesson and in my life. What is its significance?

First, I think it's important to recognize that the gospel doesn't ever change. Last Saturday night, before giving the lesson, I ran through the most recent conference addresses just to verify my supposition, which was confirmed--that every single talk, with the exception of Pres. Monson's concluding remarks, incorporated verses from the ancient canon. And even in Pres. Monson's concluding remarks, although verses were not included, the principles he touched on could have been referenced to other scriptures easily enough.

So I came up with a few analogies, hoping to understand. The first I thought of was it's like the difference between canned fruit and fresh fruit. It's the same thing, but one is a little better for you--coming more recently from the vine. But that's not the whole sense of it. I also thought of it being like a snowball vs. a snowman. There are snowballs in the snowman but there's a lot more there and it's applied to your current situation. That's another aspect of it, but still not the whole sense. And then I thought it's like if you could only shop from one store for a whole year, would you shop at a store with vintage clothing or would you shop at Super Wal-Mart where you can get your clothes and food and a variety of other needed items as well? Well of course, you'd take the latter. Even if you don't particularly like Wal-Mart. But that's not the point. I think all of these analogies have some relevance, and of course, no analogy is ever complete and you can always take one too far and it loses its validity.

But I think the last was most helpful for me. The fact is that we're not limited to one store per year. But that's kind of the point Brigham Young was making. "I would rather have"--is a conditional clause. That means that there's an "if" attached to it, even if not uttered. And it seems natural to assume that the "if" here would be "if I had to choose between one and the other." And he also indicates why--because we need the words of the prophet's today for our today's need. But how can he say this and at the same time have a prophet say we need to read the Book of Mormon every day? Because the principles are all the same, and the living prophets are going to be very familiar with the ancient prophets, so for us to have a better understanding of what the living prophets are telling us, we need to understand how the Lord worked yesterday. It helps us understand how He works today and love Him more.

So in the end, who was right? Me or the RM? Well, actually neither one of us. We both should have been reading both the conference addresses and the Book of Mormon. And so, well, I've tried at various times in the past to do better at reading conference talks, but it hasn't stuck like it should. So that was another reason I needed this lesson, to bring that back to me. I've been reading them again this week, and it's been great with every talk I've read. So much amazing stuff! How blessed I am to have these words in my life. I know they're from the Lord, and I write these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

A Realization about Faith

A few days ago I was reading in the book of Ether about when the Brother of Jared saw the Lord. It's one of my favorite stories, as I think it is for many. But something stuck out in particular to me this time when I read that he had faith no longer because he knew. Of course, it would seem natural that seeing the Lord would make it so that a person would know. Seeing is believing? That's probably why I hadn't thought too much about this in particular before. But I have thought about that seeing is believing thing before. We know our eyes can trick us. We know there are people who see things that aren't really there. And we know that some people who have seen things, such as Laman and Lemuel who saw an angel (or two?), and did not believe--let alone "know." How is that?

We know they didn't have faith, but seeing is believing right? Well, they couldn't "know" because this is a different layer or meaning of knowing than book knowledge. At institute awhile ago, a few months ago, the teacher gave a lesson that addressed this layers/meanings of knowing. The way it worked for me to understand was to consider the two verbs in French for "to know": savoir and connaitre. To know things and to know people, or to know more internly.

The brother of Jared at this point came to know his Savior at this point in a completely internal way. (Turn your sick mind off, that's not what I mean.) As the scriptures say, to know Him is to be like Him. The Lord wouldn't have trusted BofJ to see Him and say BofJ knew Him if BofJared hadn't been striving to be like Him--having faith. That is why faith absolutely is not faith without works. Faith is inseparable from works because it's part of the process of becoming like the Savior --the way that we can know Him, in the connaitre way.

Same Sunday School

This morning I slept in and missed the Roanoke 1st ward meetings, which start at 9:00. I guess it's fortunate in a way not to be living near my home ward while I'm in school because it really does mess up my sleeping schedule. I went to the Salem ward at 11:30 without guilty feelings, well not too bad. I did feel bad when the girl I give rides to showed up at 8:45 and I woke up to her knocking. Fortunately she was fine with going at 11:30 too.

Curiously, although the two wards are in the same stake, the Salem ward is a week behind on their Sunday School lesson. So we got the same lesson we had last week. But of course this was fine. It always is, somehow. This teacher didn't cover some of the topics that were covered last week and covered some that weren't. But even in the cases when the same topic was covered, there was a different light that opened in my mind, and such that pertained to my life at the moment. Fascinating how the study of the scriptures can do that, isn't it?

One of those things that pertains to my life at this time actually came up again later this evening when I was talking with my little brother on the phone. I moaned about the possibilities of having to deal with "people's certain freedoms" as pertains to their writing. Maybe I said "freeness" I don't remember. But I was getting at the nuisance that their being too free and easy with their language and situations.

My brother reminded me that people died so we could have those freedoms in this country, and my response was that I just wish they didn't have to subject me to their freedoms. Interestingly this reminded me of the subject of the people in Ammonihah that Alma and Amulek taught who were burned for their beliefs. This was one of the subjects taught both weeks. Why did the Lord allow them to be burned? Because He had to allow the wicked to exercise their free agency.

For some reason, I hadn't put the two together that that might be simply a good enough reason that I have to endure reading through people's profane and blasphemous use of language--and that I feel bad not because I'm being condemned for reading it and need to stop them from doing it, but because sin really does make other people feel bad. That's why it's sin. But God can't take away their agency.

On the other hand, I also know that sometimes people sin--act contrary to the will of God--because they don't know better. And so I don't think it's entirely out of place to let people know they are hurting you. Alma and Amulek did tell the wicked people beforehand that they were being wicked--and some of them even repented--those who were burned, unfortunately. Not everything has a happy earth-life ending. But there does come a certain point when you just have to say like Jacob in another part of the Book of Mormon--well, rearranging the tense effectually--that he's saying or said the things he said to remove the blood from his cloak and once his job is done, it's done--the blood isn't on his cloak any more, and he has to let them do what they'll do.

Though I do feel some kind of torture at times for my religious beliefs--not just putting up with profanity (there's actually more to this story than I'm telling here, so you don't think I'm exaggerating something that doesn't seem like persecution to you, though even if there weren't more--it still is painful to read God's name taken so brutally so often, as well as the other words. I really HATE it--as long as I'm digressing I'll just mention this funny thing I thought of today while I was talking with my new LDS friend that I take to Church. We were both complaining about people's bad language and other use in things we have to read, and she mentioned the offense someone took to her decision not to read their script, and I said, "How funny that the first offender is offended when you told him he was successful--Profanity is meant to offend, and he did it. She laughed. I thought it was funny, too, not to pat my own back. I might have heard from someone else once). Anyway, so as I was listing the persecutions, which isn't entirely unrighteous. In the D&C there's a section where the Lord commands the people to list the offenses. And so, I'll say, it also terribly rankles me when people insinuate that I'm not a Christian because I'm Mormon, and when people make me feel like I'm too goody-goody--they know other Mormons who wouldn't be bothered, or they're Mormons and they're not bothered. I hate that too. And then there's others who think I'm not goody-goody enough. And granted, I'm not perfect in these areas either, so it's helpful to write them out and become mindful of my own bad judgment habits.

In any case, what I was really getting to in this is that it's all really nothing, absolutely NOTHING, compared to the things many others have suffered, such as the martyrs in Alma and Amulek's time, or the early Saints, as I just mentioned who were commanded to write their grievances. I've never been physically beaten or killed for my beliefs. And in fact, I'm very grateful for the Church and the good it does for me. I can't even tell you how nice it felt today to be in Church, among fellow Saints, even if I didn't know them very well. I'm very blessed for the knowledge I do have of my Savior and of the gospel He has re-established on the Earth today through Joseph Smith. What tremendous blessings to have temples on the Earth now, to be able to take the sacrament every week, to have a loving family. Life really is pretty good for me.

Politics, agh!

I'm not a terrible fan of politics, but I have a mild curiosity and do do some research about candidates. In any case, I have a roommate who is very much into politics and since I'd watched about 30 minutes of Fox the night of Clinton's loss to Obama, I had some curiosity questions for her--mostly opinion-based. During the course of the conversation, she not a Clinton fan, said something to the effect that if Obama did take her as VP, she'd likely kill him secretly and then "Woops, I guess I'm President" Bright smile.

It reminded me of a chapter in the Book of Mormon where a certain citizen, Amalickiah, desires power and seeks audience with the king to the this effect. When the king is finally convinced, after long persuasion, to come down from his mountain hide-out and see him, Amalickiah gains his wish and becomes second in command. Not long after that, Am's thugs kill the king and then of course, Am becomes king.

Curiously, I happened upon this chapter in my daily reading this morning. Is it an omen? Hmm.