I hope you enjoy some insights from my Come, Follow Me for Doctrine and Covenants 12-13 and Joseph Smith History 1:66-75. If you missed last week’s insight, Doctrine and Covenants 10-11 click here for it. Please share this with your friends or use this picture to save this pin to read later.
Being full of love.
“And no one can assist in this work except he shall be humble and full of love, having faith, hope, and charity, being temperate in all things, whatsoever shall be entrusted to his care.” Doctrine and Covenants 12:8
Without love the work of salvation can not be done, the work of salvation is about helping people partake of the greatest act of love namely, the atonement of Jesus Christ.
When our hearts are full of love we build trust with those around us and once they trust us they will come to us when they need help because they won’t fear judgment. Knowing that we won’t judge them allows others to open up to us faster than almost anything else. Let us take advice from Elder Utchdorf, “We simply have to stop judging others and replace judgmental thoughts and feelings with a heart full of love for God and His children.”
The Preparatory Priesthood.
“Upon you my fellow servants, in the name of Messiah I confer the Priesthood of Aaron, which holds the keys of the ministering of angels, and of the gospel of repentance, and of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; and this shall never be taken again from the earth, until the sons of Levi do offer again an offering unto the Lord in righteousness.”
Doctrine and Covenants 13
In D&C section 13 John the Baptist comes and restores the Priesthood keys to the Aaronic Priesthood or preparatory priesthood. The Aaronic Priesthood has many names but perhaps the most important is the Preparatory Priesthood. The reason it has such a name is that the Aaronic Priesthood is an outward Priesthood full of physical ordinances meant to prepare us for the Melchizedek Priesthood including husbands and wives jointly entering into the patriarchal order of the Priesthood, more commonly referred to as Temple Marriage.
The Aaronic Priesthood may be preparatory, but it is by no means not important. In a matter of fact, it is due to the ordinances of the Aaronic Priesthood that we all have hope to return home to heaven, as both Baptism, as well as the Sacrament, are Aaronic Priesthood ordiances! When Wilford Woodruff was called on his first mission he was not an elder, but a Priest in the Aaronic priesthood. He was preaching the gospel and baptizing and then would send for the elders to confirm his converts. The Lord does not judge a man based on his priesthood office, Willford Woodruff taught this when he said, “It does not make any difference whether a man is a priest or an apostle, if he magnifies his calling.”
The role of Maple Trees in the Restoration
“We still continued the work of translation, when, in the ensuing month (May, 1829), we on a certain day went into the woods to pray and inquire of the Lord respecting baptism for the remission of sins, that we found mentioned in the translation of the plates…”
Joseph Smith History 1:68
In a previous post, I went over the role of maple sugar to the smith family and how it is one of the reasons that the Sacred Grove was not cleared when they cleared all the trees for farmland, namely because they were maple trees and they could tap them for sugar. But The Smith family tradition of maple tapping did not end in Palmyra. When Joseph Smith Jr. moved to Harmony Pennsylvania, Joseph located a nearby grove of maple trees. It was in this sugar bush that he often would retreat to pray. On May 15th, 1829 he and Oliver went to this sugar bush and knelt in prayer and John the Baptist appeared to them restoring the Priesthood.
I learned this when I visited the Priesthood Restoration Site right after it was dedicated. I had always thought the Priesthood was restored on the banks of the river. While I was there, I saw a sign at the front of a path stating that this path led to Joseph’s sugar bush. As I went down the path, I found a sign declaring the area for the Priesthood Restoration. Here are some pictures I took.
If you like this story you’ll love this article about the restoration that dives more into it.
The keys of the Priesthood.
“The messenger who visited us on this occasion and conferred this Priesthood upon us, said that his name was John, the same that is called John the Baptist in the New Testament, and that he acted under the direction of Peter, James and John, who held the keys of the Priesthood of Melchizedek, which Priesthood, he said, would in due time be conferred on us…”
Joseph Smith History 1:72
A few short weeks after the events in Joseph Smith History 1:66-73 and Doctrine and Covenants 13, later in May 1829 Peter, James, and John came and restored the Melchizedek Priesthood, and then a few years later once the Kirtland Temple was built, Moses, Noah, and Elijah came and restored further keys upon the Prophet Joseph Smith.
Priesthood keys and authority defines and separates our church from the other Christian Churches. Others may copy our doctrine, buildings, temples, or ordinances, but they can not copy the priesthood authority and keys that are held by the Prophet and Apostles. The priesthood keys the Apostles and Prophet hold are the thread that binds us as a church to Jesus Christ, cut that thread and we have no church.
James E. Faust