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How would you answer this question?


consiglieri

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Posted

How could you possibly know?

He obtained his "new things" by revelation, not from books and commentaries. This is also from his Teachings:

"The best way to obtain truth and wisdom is not to ask it from books, but to go to God in prayer, and obtain divine teaching."

Posted

Answer to the OP... Yeah but now we have 36 minutes to talk about it.... or should we just say the lesson is over? I have prepeared a lesson of 40minutes during the past 5 days and I have found may interesting things in creation, and I have thought we could take a look at them. :P

Posted

He obtained his "new things" by revelation, not from books and commentaries. This is also from his Teachings:

"The best way to obtain truth and wisdom is not to ask it from books, but to go to God in prayer, and obtain divine teaching."

Nonsense. He did both. He studied Hebrew, Greek and German. He read things like Travels in the Yucatan and Fox's Book of Martyrs. Take a look at D&C 88:77-80.

Had Joseph obtained everything only through revelation, he would not have grown as much.

He combined revelation with a conscious effort to educate himself by any means available.

Posted

Which explains why he didn't bother learning Hebrew, Greek or German.

Well that is true, he did read and study those things; but there was always a strong element of revelation involved in what he knew, understood, and taught.

Posted

Well that is true, he did read and study those things; but there was always a strong element of revelation involved in what he knew, understood, and taught.

There is also a strong element of revelation in what I know, understand and teach.

What's your point?

Posted

This brings me back to Talmage's Jesus the Christ. In teaching the life and mission of the Saviour, he didn't satisfy himself with the adage the best commentary on the scriptures is the scriptures. He used the very best outside sources at his disposal in order to increase understanding of the Saviour's life and times.

Posted

There is also a strong element of revelation in what I know, understand and teach.

What's your point?

If that is the case then good luck to you, I wish you all the best. I hope your class agrees with that assessment too. :P

Posted

If that is the case then good luck to you, I wish you all the best. I hope your class agrees with that assessment too. :P

Not all the saints agreed with Joseph either.....

Posted

Why didn't it stick to just the scriptures.

The subject of this discussion was teaching the Gospel Doctrine class according to the Church's established curriculum. That is an entirely different ball game from writing Jesus the Christ. The two cases are not comparable.

Posted

Nonsense. He did both. He studied Hebrew, Greek and German. He read things like Travels in the Yucatan and Fox's Book of Martyrs. Take a look at D&C 88:77-80.

Had Joseph obtained everything only through revelation, he would not have grown as much.

He combined revelation with a conscious effort to educate himself by any means available.

That is exactly right. For example, you don't extend your vocabulary through revelation. If Joseph knew only 20 words, he would have had to express everything that flowed from God to his mind (including the translation of the Book of Mormon!) through these 20 words, and much meaning would necessarily be lost. The Book of Mormon prophets explained how awkward they were at expressing themselves (particularly at writing). Their difficulties were not just because of the physical challenge of inscribing metal plates, but because of the difficulty of creating a narrative of what was mostly spiritual material.

It may be that all truth we obtain has a divine origin, but it would be presumptuous and unrealistic to assume that we will get it all first-hand from the Spirit. The Lord expects us to learn from each other, to study, search, expand our knowledge of cultures, history, languages etc. I am fairly confident that, had Joseph Smith translated the book of Mormon at the end of his life, the book would now be even more "correct", plain and simple than it is now, and its spiritual message would be even clearer.

Don't forget also that Joseph was well-known for his ability to reduce, simplify deep doctrines and bring to the level of the common person. It takes learning, education and scholarship to grasp the "whole" sufficiently to be able to reduce it into an accurate, understandable summary. I believe that this type of learning would benefit any gospel doctrine teacher.

Posted

I think your lesson sounded interesting. I will fully admit I thought your answer to the gentleman was way to long and wasted too much time you could have been talking about your lesson. :P

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