Sometimes, the best revelation comes when cognitive dissonance sets in.  Each week I listen to at least four Come Follow Me Podcasts while I am exercising and dressing before I open the scriptures and begin my own pondering over and writing about the assigned verses.  Even after Sunday’s discussion of our collective findings and proffered applications in our on-going efforts under the influence of His divine grace and a called teacher, some things just don’t seem to fit together.  So, sometimes when normally I would wake up to a new set of sections and start the process again, I am still chewing on the fiber of last week’s feast. So comes the call for “time and experience and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts”[1] in order to find them out.  For example,

Section twenty-nine is somewhat unique in its seeming variety, even disparity of subjects but then also in its unity of purpose.  A quick scan reveals:

  • :1-3 -I, the great I Am, seek to gather those who hearken, are humble, and pray
  • :4-8 -You are called, given the kingdom and charged to gather the elect
  • :8-13 -The gathering will protect the elect from tribulations preceding and accompanying my coming when they will be judged by my 12 and receive a crown.
  • :14-21 -Events preceding the 2nd Coming, beginning with Sun and Moon changes, are to humble the wicked or they won’t be redeemed; it includes fall of The Great and Abominable.
  • :22-29 -End of Millennium, the judgment, the resurrection, assignments: Eternal Life or Hell-untold details; a new heaven and earth
  • :30-34 -All to be fulfilled in that the first (spiritual) shall be last and the last (temporal) shall be first; though all is spiritual
  • :34-41 -Fall of Adam = he yielded unto temptation = subject to will of Devil whereby man is appointed his probation and Eternal Life by redemption or damnation
    1. Angels preach -> repent -> redeemed -> Eternal Life
    2. love darkness -> deeds evil -> rewarded by master -> not redeemed->damnation
  • :46-48 -Children not tempted; given variably -> great responsibility of fathers
  • :49-50 -All accountable must repent; All who don’t understand will discover, as I do what is written.

Topics included:

  1. The Gathering
  2. We are given the Kingdom
  3. The purpose of the gathering is protection
  4. Second coming tribulations and destructions
  5. End of the Millennium: new heaven and new earth
  6. The first shall be last the last shall be first
  7. All temporal is really spiritual
  8. The Fall of Adam – The devil’s role
  9. Choices and agency
  10. Accountability of children
  11. Responsibility of parents
  12. Need to repent as one discovers through either understanding or fulfillment of the written word

Study questions that guide our study might include:

  1. To what are you chosen? 4,7
  2. Who are the elect we are to gather?? 7
  3. With all the impending dangers, why should we be glad? 5
  4. Why did he give unto us the kingdom? 5
  5. How do we manage the kingdom? 6
  6. What is the decree that has gone forth? And Why? 8
  7. What hour is nigh? 9-11
  8. Why is the 2nd Coming a Judgment? 12, 13
  9. How will we know it is begun? 14-21
  10. What are the two reasons these destructions happen…? 17
  11. What is the long-term plan for us and this earth? 22-25
  12. Because God loves all his children how will he save them? 26-28,7
  13. Since the eating of the fruit only brought physical death, what caused spiritual death at Adam’s fall ? 32-41
  14. Why can’t children sin before age eight? 46-48
  15. What are the parental ramifications? 48-50
  16. What two choices remain for all

One might also notice that this is the first time in the Doctrine and Covenants that God uses another unique phrase that could be easily missed,

5…”it is his good will to give you the kingdom.”

Except that it is repeated sixteen times over the next several sections:

the kingdom is yours. DC 35:27
the kingdom is yours DC 38:9.
the kingdom is yours. DC 38:15.
unto you the kingdom DC 42:69.
the kingdom has been given. DC 45:1.
the kingdom is given you DC 50:35.
the kingdom is yours. DC 62:9.
I have given unto you the kingdom. DC 64:4.
keys of the kingdom of God are committed DC 65:2.
to whom the kingdom and power have been given. DC 72:1.
The kingdom is yours DC 78:18.
I have given the keys of the kingdom DC 81:2.
the kingdom is yours DC 82:24
to whom the kingdom has been given DC 84:76
the keys of the kingdom given unto you DC90:2

I was once invited to have lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen or communicated with for years.  As we ate, he finally unveiled his purpose.  “I have grown up around many of the Brethren, (he named several) and so I have watched them and talked with them in personal moments.”  He then began to give examples of how they mourned over mistakes they had made, or policies that didn’t turn out to work well.  Then he, almost bitterly verbalized his conclusions with a question, “How do you account for that, in a Church supposedly run by revelation?”  Fortunately, the Lord had prepared me with section 29.  I pointed out to him the God had begun in section 29 informing the prophet that He was giving us the kingdom and then repeating it fifteen more times through section ninety.  I asked him what he thought that God meant by that.  We discussed some options including that God wasn’t training puppets needing divine strings to be pulled with each management decision, but rather was training kings and queens who needed to learn from experience those important management skills and decision-making consequences if they were to ever govern in crescendoing stewardships in eternity.

So, we have seen that revelations come as a result of questions, so the restoration is in part dependent on asking the right questions.  Then, answers seem to come more as principles than recipes, so they require that people search out and find good applications.  Understanding them is most often experiential as opposed to informational.  But were His chosen servants to place the purposes of God at risk, He would intervene, for His work cannot be frustrated as He governs from omniscience and perfect love.

1 The works, and the designs, and the purposes of God cannot be frustrated, neither can they come to naught.

3 Remember, remember that it is not the work of God that is frustrated, but the work of men; DC 3

“So be kind regarding human frailty—your own as well as that of those who serve with you in a Church led by volunteer, mortal men and women. Except in the case of His only perfect Begotten Son, imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with.” Jeffery R. Holland, Conference April 2013, “I Believe”

As the questions above indicate, there is rich doctrinal material in the rest of the section but, at the end of the section study, one is left to wonder things like, why does this treatment of the second coming contain such unique and gruesome descriptions?

18 Wherefore, I the Lord God will send forth flies upon the face of the earth, which shall take hold of the inhabitants thereof, and shall eat their flesh, and shall cause maggots to come in upon them;

19 And their tongues shall be stayed that they shall not utter against me; and their flesh shall fall from off their bones, and their eyes from their sockets;

20 And it shall come to pass that the beasts of the forest and the fowls of the air shall devour them up.

Or, why after all that gathering, fall of Adam, and second coming doctrine, does God finish by putting parents, especially fathers, on notice?

46 But behold, I say unto you, that little children are redeemed from the foundation of the world through mine Only Begotten;

47 Wherefore, they cannot sin, for power is not given unto Satan to tempt little children, until they begin to become accountable before me;

48 For it is given unto them even as I will, according to mine own pleasure, that great things may be required at the hand of their fathers.

Perhaps, there is a clue that answers this and other questions that leave us scratching our heads over the seeming unrelated variety of this powerful section.  In the approximate middle of the section are these words that may recommend a study pattern that could reveal God’s organizational pattern for this section.

“the first shall be last, and that the last shall be first in all things whatsoever I have created” DC 29:30

Were we to take this literally and out of context, the chiastic pattern of ancient Hebrew poetry could be taken as God’s repeated organizational pattern throughout all creation? (see this possible pattern for the history of the earth.)  But here He seems to be speaking of prophecy and its fulfillment; prophecy first – fulfillment last. However, the statement “in all things whatsoever I have created,” seems more expansive.  Chiasms are usually discovered by matching repeated words, synonyms, or antonyms, but could ideas or concepts be organized chiastically, too?  Yes, but with no guarantee that it was author intended.  Yet juxtaposing concepts during study is often the catalyst needed for the Spirit to help us make connections. For example, the history of all creation could be arranged as such:

A diagram showing a chiastic structure of Earth’s spiritual and temporal history, centered on Jesus Christ and His Atonement, based on Doctrine and Covenants 29. The chart illustrates mirrored phases of apostasy, restoration, judgment, and exaltation, reinforcing the spiritual symmetry in God’s eternal plan.

For study purposes, to see if any of our questions concerning the randomness and variety of subject matter in this section is explained by matching chiastic sets, the chiasm might look like this:

POSSIBLE CONCEPT CHIASM FOR DC 29

A chiastic analysis of Doctrine and Covenants Section 29, mapping doctrinal themes like the Fall of Adam, the Second Coming, redemption, and parental responsibility. The visual shows mirrored pairs of gospel concepts leading to the center focus: God as the source of power and fulfillment of all His words.

INSIGHTS and CONCLUSIONS:

  1. Despite latter-day disasters and fearsome destruction, Jesus Christ, who is speaking to all including those who can’t or won’t understand, is the completely qualified redeemer. Nothing more reassuring than that can or will be said at this time. Elements A & a
  2. The consequential gathering is not only the most important world-wide work taking place under the direction of the Kingdom-priesthood-key-holders so as to protect the elect from coming latter-day disasters, but the chiastic pair connects the individual work of parents for their own children, especially during pre-accountability years, to this important work of the gathering, preparing and protecting. Elements B & b
  3. The spiritual death resulting from following satan will be likened to the revolting consequences of the latter-day disasters on those who fail to hearken to Christ. These rotting eyes and devouring maggots are the physical images of spiritual death. Elements C & c
  4. The prophesied temporal end of the world given first, has spiritual ramifications in the end. Elements D & d
  1. The center and most important element in the section is found in the center, with the beginning and ending elements secondary. God is the only source of power through which His children, if they will listen, will be redeemed through the gathering by parents and priesthood. Element E

[1] Both the title and this quote are from: Joseph Smith papers History 1838-56; Vol C-1 p. 904[b]