You Have Received the Same Power

This is another installment of the Junior Ganymede’s focus on sections of the D&C that you have already stopped thinking about.

Saturday my daughter introduced us to a pen-and-paper game called Racetrack.  You accelerate out of the starting position but have to brake and turn to navigate curves.  A lot of fun!  If you don’t brake and turn enough, you crash.  The simple rules here.  But make those curves, or else you will crash!

As were were playing, it seemed to me that we were also playing a game about repentance and revelation.

Repentance, because following that strait and narrow path requires course changes continually.  Revelation, because from the perspective of the car  you do not know the the curves ahead.

Sunday morning, I reread Joseph Smith’s account of the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood, and Oliver Cowdery’s.  Oliver said that the reason he and Joseph decided no one around them had authority to administer baptism, the ordinance of repentance, was that everyone around them rejected revelation.

Every gospel of repentance is a gospel of revelation.

• In JSH 1:74, Joseph mentions a flood of scriptural understanding that came after the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood when he and Oliver were reviewing  the scriptures.   Conclusion: after a miracle is the ideal time to seek further light and further progress.  This is like the military maxim of reinforcing success.

•   The entire Restoration is “you can just do things.”  You can just ask God to tell you which church is true.  You can just found the church.  You can just decide to get authority from God to baptize.  You can just ask for miracles.

• D&C 18: 6 talks about iniquity “ripening.”  What does this mean?  Here’s one theory.  A fruit is ripe when its ready for harvest.  The sowing stage is over, the reaping stage has begun.  Iniquity is ripe when its consequences have become apparent, when its at the reaping stage.  That would explain why the Lord says “ripe” iniquity is the time to call to repentance.  What’s your theory?

• D&C 18:12  We often recite in D&C 18 how great the worth of a soul is because the Lord was willing to suffer the atonement to save us.  The  next verse is interesting.  He says that we can also know how great our worth is because he resurrected to save us, i.e., he is willing to perform world-breaking miracles if that is what it takes.

• This famous passage in D&C 18 is much easier to understand if we  understood what the true full-performance level of the human soul was.  We have never seen a fully-operational man or woman.  Fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.  Even a hint of it, in mortal life, and we are in awe and inclined to adulation.  We spend a lot of time on this good blog crilling down into what glory means, but for those who have experienced it it needs no definition.

• At several points in the reading Christ says that after repentance and baptism you need to keep the commandments and endure to the end.  We know from Lehi’s Dream that ‘enduring to the end’ means repeating over and over the joyful experience that brought us to salvation in the first place.  So it seems that the commandments are what allow us to keep returning to the tree.

• D&C 18:21-25 is a long passage about knowing the name by which you are called.  In context, the name is clearly Jesus Christ.  Even so, verse 24-25 make me wonder if there is also an esoteric temple meaning.

• I was very interested in the verse that said that Christ spoke with sharpness, but that is a little longer so I will write on that separately tomorrow.   It really illuminates D&c 121 and the concept of unrighteous dominion.

• My favorite passages to liken.  These apply to you.

You have received the same power, and the same faith, and the same gift, like unto him.

You can testify that you have heard my voice, and know my words.

By your hands I will work a marvelous work.