Episode 32: Doctrine and Covenants 1

Ben and Shiloh are excited to get back into the Come, Follow Me discussion as the new year rolls around in talking about Church history and the Doctrine and Covenants. Whereas the Book of Mormon was written as a basic chronological narrative, the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants are not written and compiled in narrative form. This requires a separate historical conversation to contextualize each Section of the Doctrine and Covenants to really help us understand what is meant and being revealed to the early Saints in their time and place. As a Church, we have a fascinating and exciting opportunity every four years to study — in a modern context — how the Lord brings about a religious movement. We get to see and become a part of the birth of a restored religion. In no small part, we get to see how it is that we record the history of our modern progenitors and how that impacts our daily identities. How we tell the stories of the restored gospel follows the same patterns of the greatest epics of human literature, as we engage and find identity in our own “Hero’s Journey.” Section 1 — as the Lord’s 1831 preface to the Doctrine and Covenants — is a magnificent evidence of the Doctrine and Covenants’ divine authenticity, as it follows the same ancient patterns of Middle Eastern covenant/treaty making as written in 1831 that were not discovered by scholars of the Middle East until the 1950s. Through the next year, we will begin to see how much of Joseph’s personality and fingerprint made it onto the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants (e.g., Section 67), as this will lead us into a broader discussion as to how the Lord reveals His will through His prophets. The Lord speaks to us in our language, our learning, and our weaknesses, and the Lord realizes that “every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god.” Yet, even then, the Lord still comes to us and helps us repent in learning to see Him, ourselves, and each other differently.

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Show Notes:

Discovering the Old Testament Podcast, by Dr. Sheldon Greaves: Episode 8 — Abraham’s Covenant.