Endless is His Name
Here’s another installment of the JG series on Learning About Scriptures that Everyone is Done Learning About. Specifically D&C 19-22.
The scriptures about endless punishment and eternal punishment just meaning ‘God’s punishment’ look like cheap lawyering at first glance. Read more deeply and as part of the whole section, D&C 19 is a strong claim to sovereignty, titles, glory, rule. The Lord God Jesus is not trying to get out of scriptural interpretation difficulties here. He is claiming with the deepest of feeling that punishment is His. He bought it. At the greatest price. He owns it entire.
No one has given more than He has. No one is more all-in. No one is more consecrated.
What is worship? I believe it is something like “adoration that leads to emulation.”
Judgment Day–celebration but also relief.
In D&C 20, the section describing the office of Apostles is brief and about half of it is devoted to baptism, confirmation, and the sacrament. These are not normally what we think of when we think of Apostolic rites. But when I checked October’s General Conference, there were 7 speakers that referenced the sacrament and 5 of them were Apostles.
sute
March 17, 2025
To add to your fine observation we can clearly read the Savior himself describing the kind of endless punishment he’s referring to:
For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent;
“But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I;
Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink”
So, ya, he owns it. And we can choose to emulate and follow the savior on one path or another. He’s walked them both in that sense.