Between the Lines: Unlocking the Scriptures with Timeless Principles Editors’ Note: This is a serialization of this book. If you missed reading Chapter 1, please click here. Having suggested that the key to scriptural understanding is not found in methodology, that there are no gimmicks or shortcuts to scriptural competence, I now suggest that all scripture is not of equal worth and that some scriptural texts yield greater knowledge and understanding than others. If, for instance, we take two people completely equal in their gospel understanding and set one to the task of studying the books of Leviticus, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon, while the other studies the Gospel of John, 3 Nephi, and Doctrine and Covenants 76, they certainly will not be equal in their understanding when they have completed their courses of study. All books of scripture are not of equal worth any more than all verses are of equal worth. To this simple verity let us now add another. The order in which you learn gospel principles is of utmost importance. It is essential that we learn what has been designated by revelation as the “first” or “foundational” principles before we learn those principles that build on them. In building the house of our understanding we are going to have trouble if we start by building the roof. Joseph Smith as a Pattern What we study makes a significant difference in the level of our understanding. If we were all to start over again in our efforts to learn the gospel and understand scripture, we would do well to follow the pattern that the Lord used in teaching the gospel to Joseph Smith, who in turn laid the theological foundation for our dispensation. His education formally began with the First Vision. It was followed by a Book of Mormon course, which in turn was followed by courses in the Old and New Testaments. For our purposes, I will simplify what was involved with the suggestion that the perfect course in scriptural understanding would begin with the Joseph Smith History as found in the Pearl of Great Price; following that, we would study the Book of Mormon. Having mastered the basic principles taught therein we would then turn to the book of Genesis, and then to other scriptures I will mention below. I am aware that the inclination of most would be to turn to the New Testament, but this is not what the Lord had Joseph Smith do. Joseph Smith began his formal gospel training in the process of translating the Book of Mormon. It misses the point of the whole process of translation when people argue that Joseph Smith read his translation from a seer stone. This does not accord with what we learn from Doctrine and Covenants sections 6 through 9. Here we learn that Joseph had to become familiar with the spirit of revelation and then “study” things out in his own mind. When he had arrived at a clear understanding of what was involved, the Lord would confirm that for him and he could move forward. His failure to arrive at that point was identified by a “stupor of thought” (D&C 9:8). It was not a matter of his reading and repeating what was on the gold plates. It was a matter of his wrestling with the ancient language until he had come to a clear understanding of what was being said. After he had thus come to the knowledge of the doctrines of the Book of Mormon, the Prophet was directed to commence a translation of the Bible, beginning with the book of Genesis. Again the translation process was intended to teach him the doctrines and principles that he was clothing in words. The process of “translating” the Bible did not involve going from one language to another. It involved taking the text from one level to a more perfect or higher level. As he struggled through this text, many questions occurred to him. Repeatedly he found it necessary to inquire of God as to what was involved in a passage, and repeatedly the Lord saw fit to answer him. Most of the great doctrinal revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants record the answers he was given. As we see what is taking place, we realize that it takes the spirit of revelation to understand revelation and that sure answers are found only by inquiring of the heavens. Given that the Church’s story is the story of the Restoration, it could not be expected that we could have any meaningful understanding of what was being restored or why if we do not first understand what was known to the ancients and subsequently lost during periods of apostasy. The Joseph Smith Story For Latter-day Saints, then, the First Vision is the point of beginning of all serious gospel study. If God does indeed speak and if he did in reality appear to the youthful Joseph Smith, then we as Latter-day Saints hold the key of knowledge by which all scriptural understanding must come. The testimony of the events that took place in the Sacred Grove constitutes the key of our understanding. The First Vision establishes the principle of revelation in our dispensation. Not more than a generation or two following the restoration of the gospel in the meridian of time, it was lost again. This spiritual eclipse, which engulfed the earth in darkness, can be dated from the moment that it was declared that the heavens were sealed to all new revelation and the then extant canon was declared closed. Priesthood is the inseparable companion of revelation; since priesthood is the power and authority to speak for God, in the apostasy revelation and priesthood share the same headstone. When the one was taken, the other was lost also. Their date of departure from the earth is one and the same. So it was that the meridian day surrendered its glory and majesty and quietly passed away. All objections to the message of the Restoration reduce themselves to the critics’ refusal to admit the principle of revelation. Every doctrine and principle that we as a people have been commissioned to take to the nations of the earth has been given to us by direct revelation. As a Church and as a people, we must stand independent of the theological rubble from which historical Christianity has been fashioned and refashioned. When our missionaries go out to teach, revelation is the great issue. Experience has taught us that it is as hard for people in this day to accept the principle of revelation that is immediate and direct to our day as it was for people to accept the testimony of Christ and his resurrection in the meridian day. The singular principle that separates Mormonism from historical Christianity is revelation. Simply and directly stated, if we posses that great and divine gift like unto the Saints in all dispensations past, then we hold the key to unlock the meaning of all scripture. If we do not, then the key has surely been lost, and we all must wait until it is found again before scripture can be understood. The message our missionaries go forth to declare can be announced in two words: God speaks! The heavens have been opened and all the puny arguments against the declaration found in James 1:5 fall like rotten apples from the tree as the winter approaches. There is indeed a secret to scriptural understanding, and it is not in methodology. It is in theology. It is found in what took place when a fourteen-year-old boy humbly knelt in a secluded grove of trees near the log home in which his family lived in upstate New York in the year 1820. When he asked which of all the churches he should join, which was tantamount to asking how he should interpret and read the holy book, the heavens were opened, and he was engulfed in light and freed from all the powers of darkness that had gathered to prevent the events of that moment. He spoke and God answered. That answer more than matched the thunder of Sinai, though it was heard by none but one at that moment. But it can and has been and yet will be heard again and again as the honest in heart test the principle and prove the God of heaven to have him reveal to them the reality of that which he revealed to Joseph Smith. “Joseph,” said the God of heaven, turning to his companion in that matchless epiphany, “This is my Beloved Son, Hear Him” (JS-H 1:17). Then came the instruction that Joseph was not to join himself with the churches of that day but that through him the true order of heaven would be established once again on the earth in a final great gospel dispensation. Each of the events that follow in the Joseph Smith-History take a natural and proper place in the unfolding of this story: the coming of Moroni to tell Joseph Smith about the plates from which the Book of Mormon would be translated, the restoration of the preparatory priesthood, and the reinstitution of the sacred ordinance of baptism. Each event requires a belief in the principle of revelation. Surely the ministering of angels in our day is a classic illustration of the principle of revelation. It is an angel who tells Joseph Smith about the plates from which the Book of Mormon will be translated. The process of translation will be by “the gift and power of God” (D&C 135:3), meaning revelation. It will be an angel, John the Baptist, who restores the Aaronic Priesthood and the attendant authority to baptize. Thus both the authority and the ordinances come by way of revelation. The Book of Mormon and the Principle of Doctrinal Order If you were to walk into any classroom in the Church today and give all present a piece of paper with the request that they briefly depict the plan of salvation, the great probability is that what you would get is a circle representing the earth and mortality, and next to it would be another circle divided into two parts denominated paradise and spirit prison. There would then be a diagonal line, which would be identified as the judgment, followed by three circles, one on top of the other; the highest would be marked “celestial,” the middle circle would be marked “terrestrial,” and the bottom one would be labeled “telestial.” For our present purpose, we will avoid discussion as to the correctness of the diagram but simply ask how much of the understanding represented here comes from the Book of Mormon. Other than the fact that there is a place to which the spirit goes after death to await the resurrection, nothing on the diagram traces to Book of Mormon teachings. This is of particular interest because the Book of Mormon is the theological foundation of our faith, and yet it really does not contain the things that we typically think of as constituting the plan of salvation. If we were to go to a Latter-day Saint funeral, we ought to hear some reference made to the plan of salvation as it is associated with the eternal nature of the family unit and the ordinances of the temple. Again, these are not principles we find in the Book of Mormon. And again we ask, how is it that the Book of Mormon lays the foundation of our faith without speaking of such things? With unmatched plainness, power, and clarity, the Book of Mormon teaches what we call the “first principles” of the gospel. It teaches the doctrine of repentance and the importance of our receiving a remission of our sins. It also teaches that we must continue to live gospel standards after having repented in order to retain a remission of sins. It teaches that Christ would come into the world to redeem his people and that he would take upon himself the transgressions of those who believed in his name-and that the wicked would remain as though no redemption had been made. It teaches that our religion is a day-of-this-life religion, a do-it-now religion, a religion constantly reminding us not to procrastinate the day of our repentance. No unclean thing, the Book of Mormon constantly declares, can enter the presence of the Lord; and thus we must put off the natural man and seek the things of the Spirit. What is important here is the order in which we learn the principles that constitute the plan of salvation. It was absolutely imperative that Joseph Smith learn the “first principles” first. It was imperative that he learn the doctrine of salvation for the living before the Lord revealed to him the doctrine of salvation for the dead. Had the order been reversed, he may have been tempted-and certainly many Latter-day Saints are-to think that the living who have the fulness of the gospel can knowingly procrastinate things in this life with the idea that they can make it up in the world of the spirits. The Book of Mormon simply does not justify such an attitude. Again, it was only after Joseph Smith had mastered the understanding that in this life we must leave nothing undone that we can do that he was entrusted with the knowledge of how those who did not hear the gospel in this life could be blessed by it in the spirit world. The doctrine of salvation for the dead is not numbered among the first principles of the gospel. It builds upon the first principles and can properly do so only when they are securely in place. To obtain a proper understanding, it is important that we learn these principles in the same order that they were restored to Joseph Smith. Genesis and the Restoration After Joseph had learned the principles in the Book of Mormon, the Lord then directed him to take up the labor of giving the Saints a new translation of the Bible, beginning with the book of Genesis. After recording the story of the creation, Eden, and the Fall, Genesis reaches out to cover the first 2,500 years of earth’s history. It leaves the other thirty-eight books of the Old Testament to handle the remaining 1,500 years leading up to the birth of Christ. As the Prophet renders it in the Joseph Smith Translation (JST), Genesis contains an account of the dispensations of Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Moses. The meridian dispensation is, of course, covered in the New Testament. Thus, the stories of five out of six of the great gospel dispensations before our own are found in the book of Genesis. JST Genesis also gives us much by way of understanding about Melchizedek and the priesthood that bears his name, all of which is lost to the Bible. This is also the book to which we turn to learn of the covenant that God made with Abraham, which stands at the very heart of our temple ordinances. All of this combines to make an understanding of the book of Genesis essential to understanding of the story of the Restoration. It needs to be clearly understood that the great light that is coming to us through the book of Genesis is ours because of modern revelation. It centers in what the Lord restored to Joseph Smith, primarily in the Joseph Smith Translation. The eight chapters of the book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price come from the JST. These pages give us the first eight chapters of Genesis as they read before the “plain and precious” was taken from them. What these chapters do is restore to us the understanding that Adam, Enoch, Noah, and Moses were all great apostles of Christ, who knew and taught the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They restore to the Old Testament such things as “baptism,” “Holy Ghost,” “Only Begotten Son,” and “Son of God,” along with a number of great revelations on the priesthood. This background gives us and entirely different view of the Old Testament and its peoples than that had by the rest of the Bible-believing world. Revelations to Joseph Smith In our abbreviated study course, we would then add selected revelations given to the Prophet Joseph Smith. These revelations constitute the finest commentary we have on what was really taking place in Old and New Testament times. To understand what has been restored to us by the ancients is to understand the faith of the ancients. They cannot give to us what they did not have. They cannot teach us what they did not know. It rather misses the point, for instance, when someone asks if people in Bible times knew the principle of eternal marriage. We got the authority to perform such marriages from them. Ours is the dispensation of the fulness of times or the fulness of all past dispensations. As far as doctrine is concerned, we make no profession to anything that is new. In embracing the restored gospel, we embrace the “new and everlasting covenant.” That is, we embrace a covenant that is “new” to our day but everlastingly the same. From JST Genesis we learn that Adam had the fulness of the gospel, and from that same source we learn that the same gospel and the same priesthood are to be had in the last days (Moses 6:7). When the Lord introduced the compilation of revelations known to us as the Doctrine and Covenants, he purposely referenced the prophecy of Isaiah about a latter-day prophet to whom the people were to listen in the last days (see Isaiah 49:1-3; D&C 1:1-6). Thus is established a pattern that is repeated a thousand times over in the Doctrine and Covenants: the revelations given to Joseph Smith pick up the words of the ancient prophets to amplify them or to announce their fulfillment. These are the perfect illustrations of how scripture becomes commentary on scripture. The story of the restoration of the priesthood is a matter of singular importance in the greater story that is unfolding before us. The proper place and role of the priesthood is among “the plain and precious things” taken from the ancient texts. Its restoration is profoundly important in the understanding of all scripture and the heavenly order of things. This makes Doctrine and Covenants 20, 84, and 107 foundational as far as scriptural understanding is concerned. Section 20 directs the organization of the Church (vv. 1-4) and notes the importance of the First Vision (v. 5) and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon (vv. 6-28). It then announces the conditions upon which one may obtain membership in the newly formed Church and gives some explanation of the nature of the functioning of the quorums of the priesthood within the Church (vv. 37-84). Doctrine and Covenants 84 and 107 round out our understanding of the nature and place of the priesthood in the Church. Section 76, the revelation on the degrees of glory, and Section 132 give us a panoramic view of the plan of salvation reaching from the preearth life to the time of our exaltation. These revelations constitute the framework of the kingdom. As all principles of the gospel are an appendage to the Atonement of Christ, so all else in the restored gospel is an extension of the principles and doctrines announced in these revelations. We Now Add the Gospels To these revelations we now add the Gospels, which, with the background obtained in that which we have briefly reviewed, will take on a meaning and power that is unknown to all others in the Bible-believing world. From the Gospels we obtain an account of the birth of Christ, some of the events attendant to his mortal ministry, the story of his death and atoning sacrifice, and the story of his resurrection. The Gospel writers will tell us “what” happened, while the revelations reviewed above will give us an understanding of “why” these things happened. As each of these revelations flow together, we get a rounded view of the gospel and system and plan of salvation. The story is then expanded and enriched by adding the knowledge obtained from all other extant scripture. No Comments | Post or read comments FEATURES |
April 26, 2026
April 26, 2026
