February 9, 2009

I have been needing to study my scriptures and haven't been. And I've been feeling that missing. I used to get out my laptop and sit and read and write my thoughts. That was at least a couple years ago. I'd like to do that again.

I remember the Ensign article in the July 2008 issue (Sharing The Gospel Using The Internet) encouraging members to post their thoughts online. Although most scripture study thoughts are private you can't really know if your experiences might help someone else who stumbles on your words. Plus writing my thoughts down will help me to think through them and provide a way for me to go back and relearn from time to time as I re-read them. For those reasons I decided to create a blog from my own scripture study. I will also include thoughts from other gospel sources. Such as from Ensign articles or General Conference talks or books I might read.

So where do I start? I sometimes can't bring myself to start 1 Nephi only because I've read it so many times. Right now is one of those times. I'll get to it later though. I'll start with the Sunday School lessons. I am in Primary and don't get to go to Sunday School. But the manual is online so I can still get something from it. Since I haven't read any yet, while they are into their 6th or 7th week, I'm going to just start from the first lesson.

Lesson 1: Intro to D&C and Church History

Some things about the Doctrine and Covenants: from the Explanatory Introduction
1: It is a collection of modern revelation to establish and regulate the workings of the church
2: messages directed mainly to the members of the Church but also serves as warning, exhortation and invitation to all mankind, speaking for our temporal and eternal well-being.
3: It is a standard work along with the Book of Mormon, Bible and Pearl of Great Price but it differs from these because it is not translated from ancient documents. It is direct revelation in our days.
4: You can hear or sense the tender but firm voice of the Lord in these revelations.
5: These revelations have begun a work that is preparatory to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and are in harmony with the words of all the ancient prophets.
6: The revelations contain such things as the nature of the Godhead, origin of man, nature of Satan, purpose of mortality, necessity for obedience and repentance and many more fundamental principles.
7: In new editions of the D&C, the church may add pertinent new revelation according to their inspiration and approval of conferences of the church. One well known instance of this is the addition of Official Declaration 2 "announcing that all worthy male members of the Church may be ordained to the priesthood without regard for race or color".

I've never read the Explanatory Intro before. I think I knew all these things but it's nice to see it outlined and be reminded of the purpose and importance of the Doctrine and Covenants. There really are a lot of very important things in the D&C but I have never actually taken the time to read through it. One thing above that really touched me is #4. As I typed that out I thought back to times I have read from the D&C. I feel that this statement is true and the firmness of the Lord's voice is very tender and loving and definitely comes out in the words. I can almost hear it in my mind as I think of it. I do hope to feel that more as I read through the D&C.