D&C 29 - Come Follow Me with Sam: Ave Apocalyptica

Its the end of the world as we know it and the first apocalytic section in Doctrine and Covenants!

P.S. I ran out of time.. again, but I'll post this now for your pondering. Hopefully I can add some more this coming Sunday

Section 29

A note on dealing with apocalyptic prophecies

a key to understanding future prophecy is given in 29:34 - 'Wherefore, verily I say unto you that all things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal.

In the early church there appeared to be a sense of childlike wonder for early saints that a prophet of God lived among them. They were eager, possibly too eager, to tell their friends signs and wonders of what happened. Some of this seems to have been tempered once the Prophet was martyred, although there was continued wonders, such as when Brigham Young burnt a podium with his cane, or when Joseph F Smith received a vision of the afterlife.

Towards the last half of the twentieth century, a wave of scholarship was filling the church, and many went back to diagram out the path of the last days, corroborating scripture with public statements from various prophets. This certainly added some study and understanding, but the problem is that there simply isn't enough information to chart out what is going to happen, just some general trends with debatable timelines.

Abandoning sign-seeking (good) and scholarly pretense of knowledge (good), it appears to me that the rank and file church member has also abandoned seriously considering these kinds of prophecies (bad). If they aren't there to prove the gospel, and they aren't there to actually help you know what to do in the last days, it makes sense that there were be a growing question mark of how these should be handled.

You can find some general guidance in church manuals that prophecies are meant to assure us that God knows the plan from beginning to end, and that when we see the signs we don't need to fear, which seems good guidance to me. I'd like to expand this out a little more. The root reason of all prophecy is so that we come unto Christ and eventually become like him through faith and baptism for the remission of sins, and through the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. There are three stand-outs where I see this.

1. Prophecy is meant to expand our vision of the works of God. I've mentioned a couple times where God hints at some great design much larger than what Joseph or the church envision. One of these was preaching to the Lamanites. I believe I called out another one with how the lost pages of scripture were handled. A prophecy is like a precious moment between you and God where He shows you things too wonderful 

2. Prophecy is meant to help us understand that the God of the Bible is the God of Life and Death, not Niceness.

3. Prophecy is meant to help us attain the Faith necessary for Salvation.

One danger is to acknowledge this, but instead of letting it fill one's life, members put it metaphorically on a nice display shelf, safe from everyday thoughts and actions, and functional only as a decorative piece of our religion. This is exactly what Satan wants. Why make someone despise a prophecy of God when you can get them to not even acknowledge it? We have come a long way in our journey to God, and using these guides may be your next step in that journey. Job, surprisingly, is a textbook case of how I believe God wishes prophecy to work in life. Here is what he said in the last chapter.

 Then Job replied to the Lord:

2 “I know that you can do all things;
    no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
3 You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
    Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
    things too wonderful for me to know.

4 “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
    I will question you,
    and you shall answer me.’
5 My ears had heard of you
    but now my eyes have seen you.
6 Therefore I despise myself
    and repent in dust and ashes.