I hope you enjoy some insights from my Come, Follow Me for Doctrine and Covenants 58-59. If you missed last week’s insight, Doctrine and Covenants 51-57 click here for it. Please share this with your friends or use this picture to save this pin to read later:
Trusting In The Lord’s Timing.
“Who am I, saith the Lord, that have promised and have not fulfilled?”
Doctrine and Covenants 58:31
It is easy to trust in The Lord and His redeeming powers, when we feel His grace our trust is validated, it is easy to trust in His Master plan as we can look at His hand in our life, and it is easy to trust in His promises when we see them being fulfilled when we think it should happen when His timing matches our timing trust is normal and natural.
It is a lot harder to trust the Lord when we think He is delaying a blessing. One of the most important aspects of the Gospel is trusting the Lord’s timing. We know He will be faithful, we’ve proved that time and time again. Faith is no longer required to know God is consistent. Now faith is required to accept His timetables.
“Our faith needs to include faith in the Lord’s timing for us personally, not just in His overall plans and purposes.”
Elder Neal A. Maxwell.
Unto All the World
“For, verily, the sound must go forth from this place into all the world, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth—the gospel must be preached unto every creature, with signs following them that believe.”
Doctrine and Covenants 58:64
I’ve run into a lot of members who think the commandment to take the gospel unto all the world has been fulfilled. They believe that simply because Christ has been preached via technology to every nation that was enough to fulfill this commandment. But the preaching of the gospel to every creature is only half of the equation, President Joseph Fielding Smith taught that we must not only preach the gospel, but we are to build up the Church in every nation!
Is the Sabbath Sunday or Saturday?
“And 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;
For verily this is a day appointed unto you to rest from your labors, and to pay thy devotions unto the Most High;”
Doctrine and Covenants 59:9-10
I love these verses because they remind me of one of my favorite mission stories.
While I was serving in Maine, I was teaching a Seventh Day Adventist minister at his house when He asked, “Why do you worship on Sunday instead of Saturday, the day that the Lord commanded in Exodus?”
My companion replied, “All of Christianity worships him on Sunday.”To which the minister replied, “Yet you claim they are apostate.”
It was the first time I had to really find scripture that flat out backs up the moving of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. I then remembered learning that the Lord’s day was Sunday as it was His day of resurection. I replied to him, “It is because Jehovah asked you to worship him on Saturday that you worship on Saturday, correct?
“Yes” he answered.
I then continued, “And if he told you to worship Him on Sunday, would you tell Him no, or would you follow?”
“Of course I would follow” he replied.
We then turned to D&C 1:37-38 and read,
37 Search these commandments, for they are true and faithful, and the prophecies and promises which are in them shall all be fulfilled.
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.
After which he agreed that it does not matter if it is the Prophet or Jesus it is the same. We then turned to D&C 59:9-10 and read these verses.
I explained Jesus Christ, the Jehovah of the Old Testament on Sunday gave Joseph Smith His Prophet this revelation declaring that we should worship Him on His holy day and that the Lord’s day, was Sunday due to the resurrection. As a second witness, I pointed out that Jesus also said that we were to worship him on “this day” and I told him, this was given on August 7, 1831, which was Sunday. Two witnesses that the Lord was commanding us to worship him on Sunday.
He looked at me and said that was the first time anyone had given him a scripture… He then said He now needs to figure out if Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God because if he was then Sunday is the Sabbath.
This was reaffirmed in the Ensign when Ezra Taft Benson taught:
We believe that in this dispensation of the fulness of times the law of the Sabbath has been revealed and reaffirmed unto the Church.
“And 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”(Doctrine and Covenants 59:9)
By direct revelation authority, the Church teaches that Sunday is the acceptable day for Sabbath observance as the Lord’s day. President Joseph Fielding Smith, commenting on the Lord’s day, said:
“The Lord’s day was, of course, Sunday, and on this day the Latter-day Saints have been commanded to observe the weekly Sabbath. So far as the Latter-day Saints are concerned, the Lord has spoken. This settles the question.”
“Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy.” Ensign, May 1971
