The Prophet Joseph Smith said the Doctrine and Covenants is “the foundation of the Church in these last days, and a benefit to the world, showing that the keys of the mysteries of the kingdom of our Savior are again entrusted to man.”
In 2025, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints study the Doctrine and Covenants, to learn of Him, apply the stories found in its pages to their own lives and explore thematically the invitation the Lord gives to all to come unto Him.
In this episode of the Church News podcast, Church News reporter Mary Richards is joined by Rosalynde Welch, a research fellow and associate director at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. They explore the themes interwoven in this sacred book of scripture, from the role of prophets to the transformative power of repentance and agency.
Listen to this episode of the Church News podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Spotify, bookshelf PLUS, YouTube or wherever you get podcasts.
Transcript:
Rosalynde Welch: Our differences, our collective diversity, are our strength. And the Doctrine and Covenants is a collection of witnesses that the Lord knows us, He speaks to us, and He invites us to join Him in His work. He wants to know and be known to us. He wants to see and be seen by each one of us. He wants to be present with us in the midst of our community. I think now I know Jesus of Nazareth as Emmanuel, “God with us.” The Jesus of history, who was once a part of the ancient world, is now a living presence in my life and the life that I share in community with the Saints. He is in solidarity with our joys and with our sufferings. He abides with us, He abides in us, if we will receive Him.
1:08
Mary Richards: This is Mary Richards, reporter at the Church News. Welcome to the Church News podcast. Today, we are taking you on a journey of connection as we discuss news and events of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Prophet Joseph Smith said that the Doctrine and Covenants is “the foundation of the Church in these last days, and a benefit to the world, showing that the keys of the mysteries of the kingdom of our Savior are again entrusted to man” (Doctrine and Covenants 70, section heading).
Concerning the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord said, “Search these commandments, for they are true and faithful, and the prophecies and promises which are in them shall all be fulfilled” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:37).
On this episode of the Church News podcast, we explore some of the ways the Lord teaches and invites readers to come unto Him through His words in the Doctrine and Covenants. I’m Mary Richards, and joining me is Rosalynde Welch, a research fellow and associate director at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University.
Welcome, Rosalynde, to the Church News podcast.
Rosalynde Welch: Thank you, Mary. It really is a thrill to be with you here today.
2:17
Mary Richards: Tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your background and how you got to BYU.
Rosalynde Welch: Sure. I am a research fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. I’m also the associate director there at the institute. If listeners aren’t aware of what the Maxwell Institute is, it is BYU’s center for religious scholarship. So we have a small group of faculty and a wonderful director. We come from different backgrounds, but all of our work and our research has to do with the gospel in some way. So I get the amazing job of studying the scriptures, Latter-day Saint theology and teachings, and then writing about them in a way we hope that will reach both scholars and everyday members of the Church in language that they can understand and that will strengthen their faith.
So, I’ve had an interesting path that’s taken me to the Maxwell Institute. I grew up in California, and I served a mission in Portugal. I did graduate work at UCSD in English, and then I took a long break from academia as I raised my kids. During that time, I sort of shifted my focus toward Latter-day Saint scripture and theology, and that eventually led me to this job at the Maxwell Institute. I get to do all sorts of really great things there. I love my job. I get to spend my time writing. I’m the author of several books. I get to host the podcast there, the Maxwell Institute podcast.
3:38
Mary Richards: I love how you talked about scholars and everyday members of the Church, because aren’t we all kind of in this together, really, those who can understand things on such a beautiful level to help us understand it better as we study as well?
Rosalynde Welch: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I consider myself both. I have my areas of expertise, but I am a beginner in other areas as well, and I’m learning right along with everybody else.
Mary Richards: I love, too, that you are a mother. You’ve got four children. They’re kind of on their way out the door or out the door, I guess. They’re never out the door, really. Let’s be honest.
4:07
Rosalynde Welch: That’s right. They’re always a part of our life. I’ve got one at home with me, my 16-year-old son. He’s fired up and excited about serving a mission in a couple of years, so it’s been a real thrill to study the Doctrine and Covenants with him this year. He’s excited every night about reading, diving into the revelations. He’s learning about Church history, so he’s been my companion on the adventure of studying the Doctrine and Covenants this year.
4:30
Mary Richards: Yeah, we have at our house everyone from a missionary serving right now to our 8-year-old who was just baptized. And it is really such an adventure of learning together around the table as we study “Come, Follow Me.” And this year, of course, we are studying the Doctrine and Covenants for “Come, Follow Me.”
So, what are some of the things you would like to point out that we could be looking for?
4:50
Rosalynde Welch: Yeah. Well, maybe it’s worth thinking just for a minute about what a theme is. As I mentioned, we just have this book series out. It’s called “Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants.” And some listeners might be wondering, “Well, what is a theme? What does that really mean?” So, in very simple terms, a theme is just an idea or a concept that is present and that shows up throughout the scriptures. And when we spot one of these themes or concepts, we can trace it as we read through the Doctrine and Covenants, maybe then as we dip into the Book of Mormon and the Bible, and we can see this idea coming up again and again.
So, this theme can link different parts of scripture together. It can help us to apply the teaching to the scriptures in our own life. It can help us to understand difficult passages when we can put one hard passage in the context of others that deal with the same theme. It’ll help us to interpret tricky parts; most of all, of course, the goal in tracing themes through the Doctrine and Covenants is the goal with any way of reading scripture, which is to change our hearts and to convert us, to give us experiences where we can feel the Spirit, come to know the Savior better and be changed by that encounter.
So that is what we should be looking for as we look for themes in scripture. There are lots of different ways to read scripture. We might read for story, for the narratives or the characters. We might read for the history. We might read to really master and understand Church history. We might read simply to feel the Spirit and to kind of get insights for our own lives. But reading thematically is one quiver in our arsenal of ways that we can approach the scriptures. And I think it bears real fruit.
We have a great example with this in our President, President Russell M. Nelson, who a couple of years ago in conference worked through and taught us about this idea of “hesed.” This is a Hebrew word which refers to God’s special kind of love, His loving kindness that’s manifest, especially in covenant. So, grabbing onto this theme of hesed, President Nelson walked us through the way that it’s developed in the Old Testament, and then into the modern day in the Doctrine and Covenants. So that’s a great example of how to read for themes in scripture.
Thinking specifically about the Doctrine and Covenants, we could point to a number of different themes. Revelation, of course, is a huge one. The nature of our Savior, Jesus Christ; His is the voice that we hear throughout the revelation. So, we can learn a lot about His character. What Zion is and consecration; this is a really central theme in the Doctrine and Covenants. Agency, the Second Coming and the way that time is shaped toward our Savior. The idea of visionary or spiritual experiences. Ordinances and covenants for the dead. All of these are some central themes that we can find in the Doctrine and Covenants when we look for them.
7:56
Mary Richards: I love how you said that when we see them, we look for them. When I heard those words from President Nelson and I started to look for that, I found it and I saw it. I also love that you’ve brought your scriptures with you. Mine are marked up. I think I’ve been using them since my seminary days and through my BYU religion classes, and there are all the markings in the margins. But there’s a really beautiful thing, too, to maybe have a new set, and then you can mark different things you see in there as you go through with themes. My son is trying that on his mission: “I’m going to mark every time I see this attribute of the Savior,” for example. Just like you said, there are different ways to study and that can all be helpful to us.
8:33
Rosalynde Welch: That’s right. Your son is doing a thematic reading of the Doctrine and Covenants. I think he’s going to discover things and make connections that he had never seen before.
8:42
Mary Richards: Well, let’s dive into some of these themes you mentioned; this theme of revelation. To begin the podcast. I read from Doctrine and Covenants 1:37, and here’s verse 38: “What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.”
What can we learn about this theme of revelation in this book of scripture and the pattern of the Lord speaking to us through His servants and also through His own voice?
9:17
Rosalynde Welch: When I open the scriptures, I come to them with one overriding idea, one certainty and conviction that guides the way that I interpret the verses that I read, and that is that the Savior wants to know and to be known by each one of us. In our weaknesses and in our differences, He wants to know us.
So, with that in mind, I use that as the frame to make sense of everything that I come across, including, for instance, this section 1, verse 38. So the question for me, then, is, “How is it that the Savior can reach every one of His children? How can He be connected with us and communicate with us?” Well, He can do that by means of the Holy Ghost; we know that. He can speak to us through the words of scriptures. He can visit some of us personally. Some people are fortunate enough to have been in His presence and to have been ministered to Him directly.
But another crucial way the Savior reaches out to each one of us in our individuality is through the words of the prophets. And I think what verse 38 here in section 1 is telling us is that whether you were one who was fortunate enough to sit at the feet of the Savior and receive His ministry directly, or whether you are one who receives His words through the prophets, it is the same. The love of the Savior is just as vibrant, it’s just as individualized, it’s just as warm as it would be in other situations.
So, I like to think about this: Picture the scenario, when Joseph Smith Jr. goes into the woods, Sacred Grove, and has the experience of the First Vision. He’s having a one-on-one exchange with the Savior and with our Heavenly Father. And He feels Their love directly, he hears Their voices, and They deliver to him a personalized message.
Now, compare that to the experience that Joseph Smith Sr. has quite a few years later that we now have as Doctrine and Covenants, section 4. Here, Joseph Smith Sr. travels, and he sits there in the presence of his son, the Prophet Joseph Smith, and he’s looking at his son, presumably he’s hearing words that come from the voice of his son, but what his son is telling him is a personalized message that comes to him from the Savior, that knows who Joseph Smith Sr. is individually, that has reassurance for him, direction for him and is filled with love and confidence in him.
It’s very much a similar experience that the father and son had, but Joseph Smith Sr. received those words from the mouth of the Lord’s Prophet, not directly from the Lord’s mouth. But I think what the Savior wants us to know is that either way, it is one and the same. “The love that radiates from me to you through the intermediary of the Prophet is not diminished by coming through him.”
12:20
Mary Richards: And so much of the early sections of the Doctrine and Covenants are coming from early Church history and revelations to specific people, but we liken the scriptures unto ourselves. And so there’s so much to learn from these and not just think, “Oh, He’s only speaking to Martin Harris here. He’s only speaking to one of the Whitmers here.” It’s also to us in our day.
12:39
Rosalynde Welch: Mary, that’s such an important point. So, the Doctrine and Covenants gives us a very particular kind of interpretive challenge. We have to generalize in two different ways: One we’ve just talked about, which is that we hear the voice of the Prophet, and we know these are the words of the Lord coming through him. But the other side of that is these words are directed to a particular individual, yet we know, as the Lord has said, “This is my voice unto all,” as he says to Emma in section 25.
So we have to then be able to listen in through the ears of the individual to whom the revelation is directed. So we receive the words as if from the Lord, and we hear them as if to us. Now, there’s a little bit of translation that has to take place in both of those steps. We know the Lord speaks to His prophets, as He says in section 1, in their weakness and according to their language. So there might have to be a little bit of translation as we move from the mouth of the prophet to the voice of the Lord.
Similarly, there has to be a little bit of translation as we move from the situation of the individual who received the revelation to its application in our own lives. My experience is that this can be a revelatory and spirit-aided process of interpreting or translating, if you will, across these differences to hear what it is that the Lord wants to speak to me. In some ways, it might even be more productive than an unmediated encounter with the Lord, because it makes me stick with the text a little bit longer. It makes me dwell with it and understand and say, “OK, what was it that the Lord was saying to Emma,” for instance, “and how can that be applicable in my life?” That gives me something to hang on to and something that the Spirit can testify to me about as I work to make those connections.
14:38
Mary Richards: You made me think of something that our Sunday School General President Paul V. Johnson said on a recent episode of the Church News podcast, where he was kind of discussing “Come, Follow Me” this year. And in the beginning of that manual, it says, “Conversion is our goal” and “The aim of all gospel teaching and learning is to deepen our conversion and to help us become more like Jesus Christ. For this reason, we study the gospel.” We want to become new creatures. We want to become disciples and more like Jesus Christ, learn more of Him, and I love how you said He wants to know us and be known by us. I see that through that theme of revelation.
Let’s talk about the theme of ordinances and covenants that is throughout the Doctrine and Covenants. One of the scriptures that I read multiple times and referred to when I was a temple preparation teacher in my ward was Doctrine and Covenants 84:20-21: “In the ordinances thereof, the power of godliness is manifest. And without the ordinances thereof, and the authority of the priesthood, the power of godliness is not manifest unto men in the flesh.”
So, tell me more about how the Lord teaches us about ordinances and covenants, this idea of the power of godliness manifest, in this book of scripture.
15:56
Rosalynde Welch: Yeah. Well, there’s so many ways that we could approach this verse. It’s one of my favorites. I’ve meditated on it for a long time. We could talk about power, and we could talk about godliness. I want to think about this idea of manifest, what it means that the power of godliness is manifest in the ordinances. One of the meanings of “manifest” is to make something visible, to make something apparent, to bring something close. It has the root of “man,” which means “hand.” So bring something close at hand.
So the ordinances are one way that the Lord makes Himself visible and present to us. Even when He’s not physically in our midst, we can still be in His presence, see who He is, understand His character. He’s made manifest to us in the ordinances. We can think about, for instance, the ordinance of the sacrament, where in the emblems of the bread and water, we see the sacrificial love of the Savior. So we come to see who He is in that way. In the ordinance of baptism, for instance, we see His Resurrection symbolically enacted in the immersion and rising up from the water. So then we understand Christ’s divine nature. Christ becomes visible or manifest to us in the symbolism of those ordinances.
The temple, I think, is the primary place where the power of godliness — the power of Christ, His character and His love for us — becomes manifest or visible to us. The temple is kind of like a lens that can focus and give us perspective on what really matters, our covenants. Our covenants give shape to our efforts and our vision of where we’re headed. I think the temple is what allows us to “think celestial,” as President Nelson has encouraged us to do this. When we understand the symbolism of ordinances and the rituals that we experience in the temple, then we can symbolically see Christ at work.
18:02
Mary Richards: I just had this rush of gratitude for Joseph Smith just now, when you were talking about that, and all the things that were revealed to him and through him for the Restoration of the gospel in these latter days, that we have the temple, the house of the Lord, and we have those ordinances and covenants there.
And all of this is in the Doctrine and Covenants that we are — it’s so beautiful for us to be able to study that this year, I guess is what I’m trying to say.
18:25
Rosalynde Welch: I agree. Joseph was uniquely gifted as a visionary. He had the capacity of spiritual sight and imagination to be able to receive revelation in the form of visions. But he was generous, and he wanted to share his revelation with all of his people. So he looked for ways that he could share that, maybe even for somebody like me, who’s not especially visionarily gifted.
So, for one thing, the printing of the revelations in the form of the Doctrine and Covenants gives us access to what Joseph saw and what Joseph understood and knew. That’s why it was so important to him to publish these and disseminate them, so that we could experience it as well. And I think that’s why he was inspired by the Lord to think about building the city of Zion to reveal the temple ordinances. These are all ways that all of us can have the same kinds of experiences with the Lord that Joseph did, even for those of us who are not as visionarily or prophetically gifted as Joseph was.
19:32
Mary Richards: Also I think, too, in this discussion about the theme of repentance that we see throughout the Doctrine and Covenants. That word “repentance” appears pretty frequently, especially in the early sections which we’ve been studying so far this year.
And, for example, at the time of this recording, my family had just studied Doctrine and Covenants, section 18, and 15 through 16 reads: “And if it so be that you should labor all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father! And now, if your joy will be great with one soul that you have brought unto me into the kingdom of my Father, how great will be your joy if you should bring many souls unto me!”
So we have here this theme of repentance for ourselves, we must repent, and also this bringing others to Christ as well through repentance.
20:23
Rosalynde Welch: The call to repentance is everywhere throughout the Doctrine and Covenants, starting with section 1, which is basically one emphatic and extended call to repentance. I think it’s to Hyrum in section 11 that the Lord says, “Say nothing but repentance to this generation.” There’s a way in which the entire gospel message is simply a call to turn back to the Lord, and that’s what repentance really is at root; it’s a call to turn back to the Lord to change our mind.
The Doctrine and Covenants — all books of scripture are full of calls to repentance. The Doctrine and Covenants is unique in that we get to see very personalized calls to repentance. We get to see the Lord call particular individuals in the circumstances of their own lives to repentance. This can be really useful for us, because we see how the Lord works with individuals. We see how kind, patient and loving He is with them. But of course, it takes a little bit of that translation work we were talking about earlier, as we figure out how to translate the Lord’s call to say Martin Harris or Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, how do we translate that call into my own life?
One of the things I love about these opening sections of the Doctrine and Covenants as we have two storylines sort of going on for a while: One is the completion of the translation of the Book of Mormon and the loss of the 116 pages, which is the occasion for several rather sharp rebukes, both to Joseph and to Martin Harris. But at the same time, sort of structurally interspersed with these calls to repentance, are sections like section 4 to Joseph Smith Sr. and section 11 to Hyrum that are full of encouragement and full of love.
So we see that the Lord’s calls to repentance are part and parcel. They are one and the same with the love, the encouragement and the aid that He’s giving to us. In fact, He tells that to Joseph specifically in section 3. He says, “Joseph,” He tells him very clearly, “you need to repent of the mistake that you made, but you are still chosen. You are still chosen. You are still cherished and loved by me.”
Another way to understand the call to repentance throughout the Doctrine and Covenants is to see how important our own agency is. And agency is another important theme throughout the Doctrine and Covenants. Agency is the intrinsic ability that we have to cooperate with the Lord to reshape our own natures. This is a profoundly hopeful message that we can change. We can be better than we are, with the Lord’s help. It is possible to overcome the challenge and the mistakes of our past and to move forward into a brighter future. Repentance, seen in that light, is a kind of response. It’s a response to the Lord’s call. And our agency is always cooperative and relational. What do I mean by relational? I mean that agency is best exercised in relationship with other people and primarily, of course, in relationship with our Heavenly Father.
We see in section 93 that we — ordinary human beings — like our Savior were made in the image of God with the potential to receive of His fullness, of His grace, of His intelligence and His glory. And yet we see in section 121 that God will not force us to realize that potential. His power is noncoercive. His dominion flows without compulsory means. So, agency and repentance are the power that we can exercise to realize our divine potential, to repent, to turn back to the Lord and to reciprocate His love. I think this is what President Nelson has in mind when he admonishes us to discover the joys of daily repentance.
24:37
Mary Richards: There was so much that we talked about in my Relief Society council after that talk, that those words are so key. The joy of daily repentance is something so powerful to think about. And this makes me think, too, in section 18, that same section I started out, it talks about the worth of souls. And “remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God,” says verse 10. And now I’m kind of seeing it through that lens of repentance and agency as well.
25:04
Rosalynde Welch: Yeah, absolutely. The worth of souls, the fundamental value of each son and daughter of God, is really, I think, the “why” that underlies everything in the Doctrine and Covenants. And as you say, it’s braided throughout the revelation — section 18, which you just pointed us to, section 19, where we see the Savior suffering. Why? Because of the worth of souls. Section 93, which I just alluded to, where we understand that we existed in the beginning, and that it is God’s work and His glory to help us become all that we can.
One of the real gifts of the Doctrine and Covenants is that it allows us to see how the Lord sees His sons and daughters, and then that can help us to understand how He sees us. I’m thinking in particular of section 25, which is the revelation to Emma Smith, the wife of the Prophet Joseph Smith. This is a spectacular section, and I would echo President Nelson, who several years ago encouraged all of us, men and women, to really ponder and meditate on section 25. But in section 25, we see the Lord calling Emma to several very important callings. She’s called to be a comfort to Joseph, to be a scribe for him when it’s needed, to expound the scriptures and to exhort the Saints, to put together a hymnal.
This shows us that the Lord sees Emma as capable, as strong, as powerful. Some of these duties that He was giving her actually required her to step out of her comfort zone, to step outside even of what was culturally acceptable at the time. At the time, it wasn’t common for women to do things like compile a hymnal or to expound the scriptures. But the Lord saw that Emma had that potential, that she had that gift, and He called her to step into those powers. He saw her in a way that she wasn’t even able to see herself at the time, and through that calling, she was able to develop and grow in those ways.
And I think that’s the case for all of us. The Lord sees us in ways that we can’t even see ourselves. He offers us opportunities. He will never force us to take them, but He will offer us opportunities to step into gifts that have been unrealized so far so that we can begin. I think, of course, in one sense, the idea is that we begin to understand our own worth. But even more important, I think, is that we start to turn that same vision outward towards other people, and we start to see others the way that the Lord sees them.
We understand that, for instance, the salvation of my ancestors is necessary and important to my own salvation. I understand the worth of their souls. That might lead me, for instance, towards the work of redeeming the dead, which is another theme in the Doctrine and Covenants. That might lead me to turn my heart back towards my forefathers and foremothers. Also turn my heart outward towards the brothers and sisters, even the really annoying ones that I encounter either within the walls of my own home or in my ward. It’ll help me to push past the frictions that are normal and a part of every kind of community and instead to see each individual around me as the Lord sees them and to see their worth shining out through their imperfect efforts.
28:38
Mary Richards: This love of our neighbor, really, one of the two great commandments, I saw this in California. I was sent an assignment for the Church News to go to Southern California and meet with some of the members there who had lost their homes. And I was so struck. So many of them that I met and interviewed, they would say “We’re going to be OK, but I’m worried about so-and-so,” or “As soon as we get something, somebody sends us something we might need, I immediately think of my neighbor. ‘Oh, they could use this.‘” They were thinking of others in these beautiful ways.
And to me, I saw — I don’t know if they saw it but I saw — how it was helping them heal, because they were showing love to other people around them, then it helped them in return. This idea of the Savior’s relief that President Camille N. Johnson has spoken beautifully about many times. And we see this, too, like you were saying, in the Doctrine and Covenants too.
29:32
Rosalynde Welch: Yeah, there’s a special quality to divine love. Divine love is love that wants to grow and wants to radiate, and when we have received it, we can’t help but then turn it outward and shine it out toward those around us.
29:46
Mary Richards: Another theme I wanted to pick your brain on is the theme of the Sabbath, and so I thought I’d read this from section 59: “That thou mayest more fully keep thyself unspotted from the world, thou shalt go to the house of prayer and offer up thy sacraments upon my holy day” (verse 9).
How do we see the Lord teaching us about the Sabbath throughout the Doctrine and Covenants?
30:08
Rosalynde Welch: Yeah. Well, this is a special favorite of mine, and you took us right to the correct section, section 59. There’s actually not very much in the Doctrine and Covenants on the Sabbath, and what we have is here in this section, but it is so rich and so concentrated, which is a lesson in itself. There can be so much meaning packed into just a few verses.
I think the message that comes out of these verses in section 59 is that the Lord’s Sabbath is one of simplicity and one of joy. It’s a radical paring down to only the basics of our relationship with God. So we are to worship Him in the meetinghouse and in His house with our brothers and sisters, and then we are to care for our physical bodies, prepare our food in thanksgiving and cheer. This is a pretty rigorous vision of the Sabbath. I am still on my journey of understanding what it means to truly observe the Sabbath, and it’s a really important one. If we think about it, the Sabbath comes one out of every seven days of the week. If we observe it fully every week, that would constitute one-seventh of our lives. That’s a greater share than the one-tenth of our increase that we pay as tithing. It’s an incredible gift of time that we’re giving to the Lord, and we want to make sure that we’re doing it in a way that is pleasing to Him and that is genuinely nourishing to us.
My colleague Phil Barlow wrote about his experience experimenting on the Lord’s promise in section 59 and determining that he was going to live the Sabbath as the Lord directed in this section, and he wondered what would happen. And in fact, he saw a profound change in his life. In particular, he found that he was able to see people differently. When he was in “Sabbath mode,” as he put it, he found that he was able to set aside grievances, he was able to set aside petty concerns. And instead, when he encountered another brother or sister, he was able to see them either as somebody that he could bless, as somebody who needed his help and his ministry, or as somebody who could minister to him.
And he found that that really changed the Sabbath day into something like an invitation. As he approached Sunday, he felt like he was approaching an invitation from the Lord, and that changed the quality of the time that he experienced on the Sabbath. There’s a great Jewish scholar named Abraham Heschel who talks about the Sabbath as a temple in time. Just as the house of the Lord is a kind of temple in space, the Sabbath is a temple in time that’s set apart, that’s sanctified and that is holy and that we can enter into as a kind of invitation to come unto Christ. The Sabbath is indeed a delight.
33:14
Mary Richards: Speaking of things that are a delight, every six months we have general conference. What can we learn from the patterns we see in the Doctrine and Covenants to help us today in how we can hear the words of the Lord through our current Prophet and Apostles?
33:30
Rosalynde Welch: Mary, can I share a story with you?
Mary Richards: Of course.
Rosalynde Welch: My husband is a mountain climber. He does really extreme things, and he’ll invite me along for some of the less-extreme adventures. And several years ago, we were climbing what’s called the Mountaineer’s Route up Mount Whitney, which is the tallest mountain peak in the continental United States. When we arrived there at the trailhead, I looked up to the right of the peak, and there was this white strip of snow going all the way up to the top. And he pointed to that, and he said, “That’s how we’re getting up, is straight up that ribbon of snow.”
So he handed me an ice axe, and he taught me how to use it. And with the ice axes, we were able to carve steps in the ice and step up through this icy snow, step by step by step, as if we were climbing a ladder. And sure enough, just as he had pointed out to me and as he had predicted — and I didn’t believe him — we made it, and we summited Mount Whitney by means of this chute of snow.
Now, I’ll tell you why I share this as we’re approaching general conference. The Lord’s law is a kind of ladder that we can climb to enter His presence. His laws are not given to us to constrain us, to hold us back, to discourage us or condemn us. Joseph Smith called them a ladder in the King Follett Discourse. Joseph Smith said, “We can climb the ladder of the Lord’s law to ascend into His presence.”
General conference is an opportunity to receive more of the Lord’s law. He’s going to reveal to us a new section of the ladder that we can climb. As we climb this ladder, it’s not that we check off more boxes of things that we’ve done. What happens is that our character changes, our nature changes, and we become more like our Savior. We become more able to receive and abide by a celestial law. In section 88, we’re told that’s it. That’s what it means to be saved, is to be able to abide a celestial law.
Christ is our lawgiver. We look forward to the time when He will be in our midst and we will receive His law directly from His mouth. But for the time being, we receive His law through His authorized servants, the prophets, as we’ve been talking about in lots of different ways throughout the Doctrine and Covenants. But general conference, as you said, is like a modern Doctrine and Covenants, where a new section of the ladder is given to us and we have another opportunity to listen, to obey and to climb.
I like to think of general conference as a time to receive. I love the word “receive” because it combines both active and passive elements. To receive something, I have to be willing. I have to open myself to what is being given. On the other hand, there has to be somebody who gives it to me. So in the idea of receiving — whether it be the Lord’s grace, whether it be His law, whether it be the revelations that are pouring down to us, whether it be receiving one another in fellowship — there’s both an active openness to the Lord, and there is a humble surrender in receiving what the Lord wants us to say.
So that’s my challenge to myself this year, whether it be this year, next year, as I approach general conference weekend: Am I in an attitude of receiving? If you want to have a lot of fun, go to section 88 and search “receive,” and look at all the times in section 88 that that word is used. I think that will be a great exercise to get us in the right mindset to approach general conference.
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Mary Richards: This is immediately making different verses pop into my mind, and also different ordinances: “Receive the Holy Ghost,” for example. I’m going to do that. I’m going to go to section 88.
Well, our time has gone so fast, and I have so much now to study from our conversation and more to think about and look at. We always give our guests the last word on the Church News podcast, and it’s always: What do you know now?
So, Rosalynde, after spending time studying these themes and more, what do you know now about the Doctrine and Covenants?
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Rosalynde Welch: Regardless of our personal differences, our own struggles, our own gifts and our experiences, Christ is willing and able to speak to all of us. Our differences, our collective diversity, are our strength. And the Doctrine and Covenants is a collection of witnesses that the Lord knows us, He speaks to us, and He invites us to join Him in His work. He wants to know and be known to us. He wants to see and be seen by each one of us. He wants to be present with us in the midst of our community. I think now I know Jesus of Nazareth as Emmanuel, “God with us.” The Jesus of history, who was once a part of the ancient world, is now a living presence in my life and the life that I share in community with the Saints. Christ is at home in this world. He is in solidarity with our joys and with our sufferings. He abides with us, He abides in us, if we will receive Him. And that’s my testimony.
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Mary Richards: Thank you for listening to the Church News podcast. I’m Church News reporter Mary Richards. I hope you learned something today about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and had your faith in the Savior increase by looking through the Church News window as a living record of the Restoration. Please subscribe, rate and review this podcast so it can be accessible to more people. And if you enjoyed the messages we shared today, please share the podcast with others. Thanks to our guests; to my producer, KellieAnn Halvorsen; and to others who make this podcast possible. Join us every week for a new episode. Find us on your favorite podcasting channels or with other news and updates about the Church on TheChurchNews.com or on the Church News app.
