Sunday, July 30, 2023

Excerpts from Martin J. Preece, Learning to Love the Doctrine and Covenants (1988)

 When giving an overview of Rev 14:6-7:

 

This is one of many angels doing work of the restoration. Speculative Mormon tradition suggests that this is Moroni. (Martin J. Preece, Learning to Love the Doctrine and Covenants [Salt Lake City: MJP Publishing, Inc., 1988], 175)

 

Prophecy does not always predestinate. Another prophet, Jonah, predicated under inspiration of the Lord that in forty days the city of Nineveh would be destroyed, and yet it wasn’t (Jonah 3). Does this mean Jonah was a false prophet? No. The people of Nineveh repented. Predictions made through prophets are often conditional. People and circumstances and other factors may contribute to and detract from the fulfillment of prophecy. Read D&C 124:49, 51. (Martin J. Preece, Learning to Love the Doctrine and Covenants [Salt Lake City: MJP Publishing, Inc., 1988], 188)

 

When commenting on D&C 124:49:

 

Here is a vital principle. When a man receives a commandment of the Lord, if he should go with all his might to accomplish it, but is prevented from doing so by factors beyond his control, then the Lord will accept their sacrifice.

 

Now, wait a moment! I thought that we believed what Nephi taught in 1 Nephi 3:7, “I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.”

 

Is there any contradiction between 1 Nephi 3:7 and D&C 124:49? There is a little. We must regard Nephi’s teaching as a truth, but an incomplete truth. D&C 124:49 gives us the complete truth on the matter. Beware of other incomplete truths in the Church. Can you think of any? How about: “Keep the Word of Wisdom, and you will enjoy good health.” “Pay your tithing, and you will become prosperous.” “Train up a child in the way he should go, and later in life he will not depart from it.” (Ibid., 362-63)

 

 

 

Intelligence. Whenever we encounter the term “intelligence,” we ought to think of two possible meanings:

 

1. “Intelligence” or “intelligences” are those eternal and uncreated entities utilized by the Father and the Son in the process of creation. The “intelligence” of a man is his essence—who he really is. Intelligences are capable of exercising their agency and acting for themselves. They have always existed and cannot be destroyed. Each individual, including the Father and the Son, is, at his very center, a single intelligence. In addition, a myriad of lesser accomplished intelligences were embodied with the bodies of plants, animals, or even the inert materials of the earth. The purpose of the existence of each intelligence is to progress toward Godhood which is accomplished through obedience to the laws of God given to them. And there are divine laws or commandments given to each and every category (kingdom) of intelligences (see D&C 88:36-38).

 

2. “Intelligence” also may refer to that amount of light, spiritual progress, or spiritual growth, an individual (an intelligence) has acquired as a result of his obedience to God’s law. Since the light which emanates from each intelligence contains the complete truth about that intelligence, we may say that his light is his intelligence and vice versa. In speaking of an individual intelligence, we may say that he radiates more or less light or intelligence than another because of his pattern of obedience to the laws of God. (Martin J. Preece, Learning to Love the Doctrine and Covenants [Salt Lake City: MJP Publishing, Inc., 1988], 228)

 

On D&C 110:11 and "the leading of the ten tribes from the land of the north":

 

There have been at least two main theories regarding the “lost” ten tribes in this dispensation. Each has had its advocates among the brethren. First, some have suggested that the ten tribes are not really lost but rather are scattered or dispersed among the nations of the earth. They are “lost” in identity but not in person. We know where they are but we don’t know who they are. Also they no longer know who they are. Second, they are thought by some to still be living together as a group in some obscure location. A subterranean location “in the north”—near the north pole has even been suggested. It has even been theorized that they may be living together on some extra-terrestrial sphere, such as another planet. It would seem that the former theory is the more likely and that the “land of the north” is only a figurative allusion.

 

If the ten tribes are scattered throughout the earth, then why is their location so often referred to as “the north” (Jeremiah 3:12), “the land of the north” (Zechariah 2:6), or “the north countries” (Ether 13:11)? There are several possible reasons. One may simply be that the tribes are scattered predominantly, though not exclusively, throughout the northern hemisphere. Another reason is the geography of Israel itself. Even though Assyria, Babylon, Greece, and Rome (the powers most responsible for scattering Israel) were actually located to the east and the west of Palestine, because of the topography of the land, historically their armies approached Palestine from the north to the south and departed from the south to the north. This meant that their captives were always carried away “into the north.”

 

Another reason “the north” had evil connotations in Jewish symbolism was that the northernmost city of Israel, Dan, later became particularly associated with idolatry and apostasy (1 Kings 12:28-30). This may be the reason why Dan, the tribe of the north, was later omitted from John’s list of the twelve tribes in his Revelation (7:4-8). Another reason why the “north” symbolized evil for the ancients was that they oriented themselves on maps and so forth, not to the north, as we do, but to the east toward the rising sun. This put their right hand, which was associated with good things and clean uses, on their south, while the left hand, associated with unclean uses, was to the north. Benjamin, which means “son of the right hand,” was a favorite of Jacob and settled, of course, in the south (or right-hand side) of the promised land. Good things, like the gold of Ophir or the Queen of Sheba, came from the right, or south, while bad things, like the armies of Assyria and Babylon, came from the left, or north. Even today, as every “lefty” knows, the right hand still gets preferential treatment. Anciently, the two hands, and the two directions they represented, were not “right and left” but “right and wrong.” This concept is reflected in the Latin word for “left,” which is sinister. So, anciently, the north was associated symbolically with idolatry, apostasy, and political defeat, and, as the direction of the left hand, with uncleanness. The gathering of Israel will bring the ten tribes back from this figurative north land—even though they are actually scattered in all four directions (3 Nephi 20:13; Psalm 107:3; Isaiah 42:5-6).

 

And yet, part of the gathering of Israel in the latter days will include a literal return of all the twelve tribes of Israel to their ancient inheritances in the Old World. Just as the ten tribes were literally taken out of the Holy Land to the north and thence to all nations, so shall their return, at some future time, be literally from among all nations to re-enter the Holy Land from the north. The children of Ephraim, one of the ten tribes, who have been “wanderers among the nations” (Hosea 9:17), have already begun to be gathered and have begun “to push the people together” (Deuteronomy 33:17). Eventually, that gathering will bring about the restoration of all the tribes of Israel. Besides the establishment of an American Zion, this will include a formal return of representatives from each of the ten northern tribes to their former inheritances in Palestine and also a return of Judah and Benjamin to Jerusalem and their inheritance in the south. The breach between the two kingdoms (Judah and Israel) will be healed, and Israel will be restored—all its twelve tribes—to all of its biblical inheritance in fulfillment of the promises made to their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

 

However, it must be added that not all the descendants of Israel who will be gathered in the latter days could possibly fit into Palestine in the Old World or into Jackson County in the New. These two locations will likely be administrative centers with other stakes or gathering places located throughout the world.

 

People are “gathered” in two separate ways—spiritually and temporally. They are gathered spiritually as they are led out of the captivity of apostasy and accept the Savior and his gospel and are “restored to the true Church and fold of God” (2 Nephi 9:2). They are gathered temporally as they go where the saints of God are congregated. (Martin J. Preece, Learning to Love the Doctrine and Covenants [Salt Lake City: MJP Publishing, Inc., 1988], 294-95)

 

Commenting on D&C 113:7-10 and the interpretation of Isa 52:

 

A word of caution regarding the interpretation of scripture is perhaps appropriate here. As we read the inspired writings of the prophets such as Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, we ought always to keep in mind that more than one interpretation of their revelations may be possible. Fundamentally, these prophets were speaking to the people of their own and addressing the issues and problems that existed then. We may find application in their words to us and to our time, and it may be legitimate and appropriate to do so, but the application to our time may not be what the prophet had primarily in mind. An interesting specific example if our modern interpretation of Ezekiel 37:15-17. Since Orson Pratt pronounced that these verses—which include the concepts of the “stick of Judah” and the “stick of Joseph”—refer to the Bible and the Book of Mormon, that meaning has become thoroughly and irreversibly entrenched in our culture. The question one might ask is, “What did Ezekiel intend by those verses?” When Ezekiel wrote, between 592 and 570 B.C., the people of Judah were held captive by Babylon. Ezekiel lived in a colony of exiles from Jerusalem. He addressed, in his writings, the whole of Israel. In his day Israel was in shambles. The Kingdom of Judah was separated from the Kingdom of Israel (the Kingdom of Israel had been taken captive in 721 B.C. by Assyria), and Judah was in chains living under Babylonian domination. His people doubtless would have petitioned him, “Ezekiel, where is God? Are we not the covenant people? Have we been abandoned by God?” At this time of great anguish it seems likely that Ezekiel would have wanted to reassure them that they had not, in fact, been abandoned by God, but that one day God would take the two parts of Israel broken off from one another and reunite them in their own land and under their own rule, out of bondage. Read verses 21 and 22 of Ezekiel 37. It seems less likely that the captive Israelites would have been comforted to know that there would eventually be a Bible and a Book of Mormon centuries hence. Now, certainly, it may be that God intended Ezekiel 37:15-17 to speak of these of our day and announce that there would be both a Bible and a Book of Mormon, but it is not clear that Ezekiel was aware of this interpretation. (Martin J. Preece, Learning to Love the Doctrine and Covenants [Salt Lake City: MJP Publishing, Inc., 1988], 315, emphasis in bold added)