Doctrine and Covenants 5:19

For a desolating scourge shall go forth among the inhabitants of the earth, and shall continue to be poured out from time to time, if they repent not, until the earth is empty, and the inhabitants thereof are consumed away and utterly destroyed by the brightness of my coming.

Twenty years ago when I read this I was embarrassed.    I didn’t believe that there was any likelihood of a Black Death level plague, let alone one that ‘utterly destroyed.’  For sound biological reasons, there are usually biological limits on how deadly a plague can be if it is going to spread.  Plus the advance of medicine and so on.  I could come up with pretty implausible and far fetched scenarios where you get a very destructive plague, but even then I had a hard time imagining one that recurred every time people were wicked.

I know better now.

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Section 7. The Come, Follow Me manual skirts around it other than to note:

Notice how many times words like “desire” or “desires” appear in sections 6 and 7. What do you learn from these sections about the importance God places on your desires? Ask yourself the Lord’s question in Doctrine and Covenants 7:1: “What desirest thou?”

For Joseph and Oliver in April 1829, the desire of their hearts was to debate the meaning of an unclear and not particularly important snippet of scripture. Was John the Beloved still alive? Or not? Unlike you and your buddies, they had Urim and Thummim handy and got to use company equipment for their own little side job. They were allowed a revealed answer given in the first-person voice of the Beloved himself. And to keep up for others after them the supply of puzzlers to wonder about, they were shown the parchment on which John wrote this otherwise unknown account.

As one who sometimes likes to muse on extraneous spiritual matters that no, are not strictly necessary for salvation, I feel catered to with Section 7 by a loving Heavenly Father who is willing to indulge unnecessary banter.

“Bertie old boy,” sayeth the Elon, “I bet you and a couple of boys at the Drones can’t take over the DoD’s computer systems for me?”

“It’s a wager, my dear old African,” quoth I.  “There is no technology, no matter how quaintly old-fashioned, that can pull a fast one on me.”

So here I am esconced, as it were, in the bowels of the quaintly old-fashioned, wondering for the everloving life of yours truly what the dashed procedure is for operating an abacus.  If any of the readers to which these presents shall come know the d.p. for operating an abacus, please contact Bertram eftsoons and right quickly.

D&C 4

Therefore, if ye have desires to serve God ye are called to the work;

For behold the field is white already to harvest; and lo, he that thrusteth in his sickle with his might, the same layeth up in store that he perisheth not, but bringeth salvation to his soul;

And faith, hope, charity and love, with an eye single to the glory of God, qualify him for the work.

Remember faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, diligence.

Ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Amen.

D&C 6

Yea, whosoever will thrust in his sickle and reap, the same is called of God.

To be called by God to do a divine work, all you have to do is want to.  All you have to do to be called to do it is to do it.

The qualifications are not skills or competencies or connections.  They are just (1) doing it and (2) trying to be virtuous and (3) asking for help in prayer.

Missionary work is the divine work par excellence but so is anything, even wealth or learning or, whatever, building a dam, if you hearken unto God and have a holy purpose in doing it.

You can literally just do things.

Most people wanted to talk about the lost 116 pages so that is what we discussed.  It was strong and went like this.

No matter how badly you screwed up, you probably haven’t permanently lost over a hundred pages of scripture.

God makes it possible to have meaningful choices but also to not do unrecoverable damage.  He has route-arounds.  This is how he can give us meaningful choices but also not have us be damned, which is what our unfettered choice would leave to.

It is better to ask amiss than not to ask at all!

The small plates were Plan A, not Plan B.  (This felt very right to me on many levels.)  Repentance is the plan.  Repentance is why his purposes cannot be frustrated.

Because of the lost 116 pages Joseph grew as a prophet–it  may be part of why he was so forgiving throughout the rest of his life, even to a fault.  At a profound level, Joseph did not come to restore a set of doctrines and practices but to make us all into Josephs.  It is extremely significant that part of our foundational story is that there is truth we could know but don’t, that there is more out there.

For, behold, you should not have feared man more than God. Although men set at naught the counsels of God, and despise his words—

Yet you should have been faithful; and he would have extended his arm and supported you against all the fiery darts of the adversary; and he would have been with you in every time of trouble.

This assurance is to you also.

The  mothers in Zion are away ahead of me on this, but there are a couple of aspects to Joseph Smith History that strike me as very authentic teenager, not something made up later by a grown up  maen  (BTW, some people say the ‘teenager’ was invented in the 20th Century.  No.)

The first is Joseph coming home after his vision and not telling anyone.  Then his Mom asks him if he’s ok and he says he’s fine, and then informs her that her church is false.  That is the very beating heart of authentic 14-year old boyness.

The second is Joseph just going about being a teenage boy for several years, then abruptly deciding its time to have another vision, which he blithely assumes he will get (accurately, as it turns out).

There was a kind of bird and a kind of beast that lived together.  It was a region of grassy plains and great sickness, but these beasts rarely got sick because the birds assiduously picked off all parasites and biting insects from the beast.  In turn, the bird was nourished this way and had protection, because what fox or plains cat would risk getting trampled and gored?

But of course the beasts were beasts and sometimes would stampede down into a river and in the thrashing muddy ruck birds would die who hadn’t flown off in time.  Even on the plains in the great jostling and the dust occasionally birds would die or have their wings broken.  So the birds began to remonstrate with the beasts.

The birds explained to the beasts that they were killing and hurting birds.  The beasts did not want this so they tried to be more careful.

The birds complained again, though.  The birds were not dying now, mostly, but it was still unpleasant to have to take wing while the beasts ploughed through a river or while they galloped in the dust, and even then get a bit dirty or muddy or wet.  This was still beastly behavior, the birds explained.

the beasts replied that they were beasts.  But the birds explained that beastliness was toxic.  The point of beastliness was to make bird existence better, that was the only good kind of beastliness, and the river stuff and the dust clouds and all that, even if they didn’t kill or injure any birds were still a  hassle and a nuisance and had no justification other than the beasts ideology that they were supposed to be “beastly.”  So the beasts mostly stopped.  A few sympathetic birds encouraged their beasts to still go through rivers, sedately, or occasionally take a solitary light  jog, but regardless over the time the beasts became dirty and weak and mostly died.  The birds who relied on them mostly died with them.

Oddly enough, we sometimes seem more likely to liken ourselves to Nephi or Peter or one of the ancient apostles than to Joseph Smith.

Last week we read from Joseph Smith History where he has a flighty teenager for awhile, prayed, and had three no four visions from the angel Moroni.

How do you liken that to you?

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CS Lewis described being subject to the temptation of the “inner ring.”  Not being in academic circles that isn’t a temptation for me very often.

But there is a temptation I run into from time to time, and its the temptation to get away with something.  You might think I’m describing the temptation to do some sin, facilitated by being able to get away with it.  But that is not what I’m describing.  There have been times when I did something I had no real desire to do just because I was in a position where I could get away with something and I wanted to get away with something.    I’m not saying any great or malignant sin, but things like laziness or gluttony, done without any real pleasure just for the temptation of getting away with something.

The only real antidote I have found is to actually desire something.  So instead of ‘getting away with it’ it doesn’t even occur to me that I could get away with something, because I have real goals.  This is the difference between actual power and pretend power.

They say in the last days that every secret will be shouted from the rooftops.  This is not just a warning to the ‘get away with it’ men, but a blessing to the rest of us.  All the good you do will be made known.

My stock of incandescent lightbulbs outlasted the Biden administration.

Sunday School yesterday was easily one of the top 5 spiritual Gospel Doctrine classes I have ever been in and about all we did was read Joseph Smith History verses 10-26.

I have found that the Holy Ghost is very present and the veil is thin.

A Navajo sister broke down part way through reading one of the verses about persecution and after that it was a struggle not to sob.

I dreamed I was walking down a covered walkway.  On the one side was an older house from the 60s.  On the other side was a cinderblock building with cheap doors in it, like a storage unit where someone had cheaped out and used interior doors.  I opened one of them.  the doorway was full, top to bottom, with soil.  I scraped at the soil and it fell off, revealing that it was just an inch layer of dirt held in place by floor to ceiling chicken wire.  But the rooms behind the other doors were not like that, they were just dirt.

I dreamed that there was a mid-century bungalow style house on the side of a hill, one story high on the upward slope and two-stories high on the downward.  The downward slope had a balcony on the second story.  I and a brown-haired young woman and a mild old man with a trim and mostly grey beard were standing on a balcony looking up at the stars in the deep twilight.  We were looking because something peculiar had happened.  The stars had white names and degrees listed next to them in the sky.  One was labeled “Kishkumen’s star.”  On the upslope side of the house some neighbors pulled in to our driveway in their station wagon.  They were coming to see if we had an explanation for the phenomenon, seeing as we three were all LDS.

There’s something Faulkner says that I always associate with Shelby Foote, who I heard it from first.

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory.

I wish I could find a clip of Foote reciting it.  There’s a tight analogy here with the social justice left.  Many of them are quite well meaning.  Their problem is (the well-meaning ones) that they are lost in the past.  For them, its always 1965 and they are marching in Selma and this time, this time, we’ll achieve perfect justice.

That shouldn’t be our attitude towards the Doctrine and Covenants.  If you really let yourself–and you should–you can feel that sense of magic.  A time and place where the heavens opened, where God spoke, where Jehovah stood in the air and thundered, and revelations poured down like dew from heaven.  But you shouldn’t stop there.  If you don’t long for Nauvoo or the plains or the early Valley you are kinda broken as a Saint.  But if you stop there, you are stagnant as a Saint.  You have to move on to living your own age of miracles.  If the heavens are quieter with you than they were with Joseph, don’t descend into an elegiac mood.  Prepare yourself. This is the calm before the storm.

At one point in the New Testament, Peter tries to give the Savior a pep talk, telling him he didn’t need to die on the cross. Perhaps he just didn’t want Jesus to be so pessimistic. The Good Shepherd replied with,

23 But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.
24 ¶ Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.
26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Matt 16:22-26

Now, why am I posting this? I was angry when I last posted about Brandon Sanderson and his apostacy. Stages of Grief, perhaps. If the pattern of LDS artists who make it big holds, he will dwindle into obscurity and become a footnote. But I should be less contentious… while still speaking the truth boldly.

But this has given me much to ponder. One person pointed out, it may be he has a child who is struggling with this. There are many members who throw their beliefs and covenants away at the first sign of LGBTQ+ struggle or questioning in their children.

This is a level of Niceness that is Abhorrent Sin. As CS Lewis said, The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men.
In coming days, we are going to need both charity and faith guiding hardness. If we are this soft and weak, we will merely be puppets for any man or devil to manipulate. So easy to manipulate. We can not be a light to the world, if we are shaken by every wind. We need to be kind like the Savior and CS Lewis, not the World.

One of the talks in the most recent General Conference, talked about flying a kite. A child wished to see the kite fly higher, so he suggested they cut the string. But the Father saw the folly in that, because it was only that string that held it up. Our difficulties are not our enemies.

I remember a story from Conference not long ago, about a man who drove into the mountains to get firewood, but his truck got stuck in the snow. Since he was already there, he cut wood and loaded his truck. Then he tried again to drive in the snow, and was successful. The weight of the truck made him able to get through the snow he could not have otherwise. We do ourselves and others a grave disservice if we deny others their struggles and weights.

Abraham could not have become the Father of the Faithful, without first sacrificing Isaac. That seems a bit paradoxical, but it is no less true. Nor could Jesus have sat down next to the Father, without first undergoing Gethsemane and Golgotha. Our desire to follow Jesus must also include bearing our crosses, and not stealing them from others. It is taking the Atonement away from people. They need the power of the Savior in their lives.

The Savior said he can make our burdens light. Do we believe in Jesus? Do we believe Jesus? It is easy to believe Him when nothing is on the line. When things are difficult, is when the rubber meets the road, and we learn what we really think.

Of course, we should comfort the afflicted, but we dare not deny them the Cross they so desperately need. There are some who are too nice and too comforting, to where they will deny all crosses, to make things easier. They are damned souls who do such things. Utah in particular, is especially vulnerable to this kind of apostacy.

In the climax of one of Sanderson’s Stormlight books, Dalinar (a repentant Warlord) is offered to have all his pain and guilt taken away by a demigod Odium (Divine hatred, without context or restraint). Dalinar replies with a defiant shout, “You can not have my pain!”.

May we all understand this, and bear our crosses, and not take them from others.