D&C 39:6-24

39:6-9 - I’ve had a very humbling and revealing weekend and I actually thought about James Covill, and I thought that my answer was similar to his, to be obedient, and I could see how him being obedient would have been the right thing for him to do, but I couldn’t see that being obedient was the right thing for me to do. The Lord tells James that “I have looked upon thy works and I know thee. And verily I say unto thee, thine heart is now right before me at this time; and, behold, I have bestowed great blessings upon thy head; Nevertheless, thou hast seen great sorrow, for thou hast rejected me many times because of pride and the cares of the world.” I feel like I can relate to this so much in my life. I feel like sometimes my heart is right before the Lord and sometimes it’s not. Some of these descriptions that the Lord gives of people, like Hyrum Smith, who the Lord said had integrity, that’s a constant, that’s his natural state of being, but I feel like I am obstinate, difficult, and hostile, like an unbroken horse. It makes me wonder who I was in the preexistence, if I was difficult to be around or if I had difficulty understanding or accepting the gospel then, and that that has carried with me into this life. I feel very much like a wild thing that is trying to let herself become tamed by a patient gentle master but sometimes takes one step forward and two steps back. It’s really disheartening sometimes, actually. I have rejected the Lord so many times and I have seen great sorrow because of it, this really is a verse written just for me, and especially for this time in my life. The IM comments that “Verse 9 indicates that James Covill had rejected the Lord many times because of pride and the cares of the world. Little is known about James Covill, other than what Joseph Smith recorded. It is therefore impossible to say what things he had done that cause the Lord to give him this solemn warning. But Elder Spencer W. Kimball gave modern Saints a similar warning: ‘Frequently, pride gets in our way and becomes our stumbling block. But each of us needs to ask himself the question: ‘Is your pride more important than your peace?’ All too frequently, one who has done many splendid things in life and made an excellent contribution will let pride cause him to lost the rich reward to which he would be entitled otherwise.” I’ve definitely been prideful the last couple of weeks, it’s been terrible and I’m really embarrassed about it and ashamed. When I read “is your pride more important than your peace?” it really hit home because as I was listening to this, I was on fire inside, with rage and anger and hostility, I was out for blood, and I heard that and just had to stop myself, and ask “where is my peace?” I knew that I wanted it badly, but I saw that by holding on to my craziness, it was taking all peace away from me. I think that this was the turning point for me, when I realized that I had given away my peace for hostility. 39:10-20 - The Lord tells James something interesting, “But, behold, the days of thy deliverance are come.” I think that this is saying that the gospel has come to deliver James Covill from “great sorrow” that he has experienced. The gospel delivers us from sorrow, very interesting. The Lord continues, “If thou wilt hearken to my voice, which saith unto thee: Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on my name, and you shall receive my Spirit, and a blessing so great as you never have known. And if thou so this, I have prepared thee for a greater work.” The IM quotes President Harold B. Lee as teaching, “I sat in a Sunday School in my own ward one day, and the teacher was the son of a patriarch. He said he used to take down the blessings of his father, and he noticed that his father gave what he called ‘iffy’ blessings. He would give a blessing, but it was predicated on… ‘if you will cease doing that.’ And he said, ‘I watched these men to whom my father gave the ‘iffy’ blessings, and I saw that many of them did not heed the warning that my father as a patriarch had given, and the blessings were never received because they did not comply.’ You know, this started me things. I went back into the Doctrine and Covenants and began to read the ‘ifffy’ revelations that have been given to the various brethren in the Church. If you want to have an exercise in something that will startle you, read some of the warnings that were given through the Prophet Joseph Smith to Thomas B. Marsh, Martin Harris, some of the Whitmer brothers, William E. McLellin- warnings which, had they heeded, some would not have fallen by the wayside. But because they did not heed, and they didn’t clear up their lives, they fell by the wayside, and some had to be dropped from membership in the Church.” I know that previous sections that we’ve read, when they are addressed to someone who fell away from the Church, the IM gives us the background information and tells us what has happened to them, and I’ve found it pretty interesting. The Lord keeps referencing the incredible “blessings such as is not known among the children of men,” not just for James specifically, but for the whole Church. It’s kind of funny when I hear something like that, because they say “you will receive blessings beyond your wildest imagination,” and I think “what could it possibly be because I can imagine quite a bit.” It’s meant to be funny, but it just makes me wonder what else is out there that I’m not even aware of right now? 39:21-24 – The Lord tells James why being baptized and preaching the gospel is so important, “for the time is at hand; the day or the hour no man knoweth; but it surely shall come.” I see signs on billboards sometimes that says something like “Jesus is coming on April 22, 2016.” And I even saw a meme that had one of those signs and someone spray painted underneath it “No man knoweth the hour” or something like that, it was funny. DJR speculates that “some people can’t seem to accept what the Lord said, in verse 21, above, at face value. For instance, some teach that our living prophets, the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, will know the day and hour, but will just not be allowed to tell us. Elder M. Russell Ballard, of the Twelve, addressed this issue in a BYU devotional on March 12, 1996, as follows: ‘Now with the Lord’s help I would like to speak to you about a subject that is on a lot of people’s minds. My intention is not to alarm or to frighten, but to discuss the significant and interesting times in which we are not living, to consider some of the events and circumstances we can anticipate in the future and to suggest a few things we can all do to fortify ourselves and our families for the challenges and trials that will surely come into all of our lives at one time or another.’ Elder Ballard continues, reading from Matthew 24:3-7, reading and commenting, and then paused, saying, ‘I want to pause here for a moment and suggest to you, if you haven’t been aware, that some of these things seem to be occurring with ever-increasing regularity. If you measured the natural disasters that have occurred in the world during the last 10 years and plotted that year-by-year, you would see an acceleration. The earth is rumbling, and earthquakes are occurring in ‘divers places.’ Human nature being what it is, we don’t normally pay much attention to these natural phenomena until they happen close to where we are living. But when we contemplate what has happened during the past decade, not only with earthquakes but also with regards to hurricanes, floods, tornados, volcanic eruptions, and the like, you would see an accelerating pattern. So, can we use this scientific data to extrapolate that the Second Coming is likely to occur during the new few years, or the next decade, or the next century? Not really. I am called as one of the apostles to be a special witness of Christ in these exciting, trying times, and I do n t know when He is going to come again. As far as I know, none of my brethren in the Council of the Twelve or even in the First Presidency knows. And I would humbly suggest to you, my young brothers and sisters, that if we do not know, then nobody knows, no matter how compelling their arguments or how reasonable their calculations.” I like this a lot, I’ve don’t a lot of “research” on the “end of the world” for various reasons, and now that I’m older, I am more comfortable with just trusting that the Lord will warn us and guide us to be ready for when the time comes, and that will be that. The IM teaches, “In this revelation given in 1831, the Lord revealed some important truths about His Second Coming: 1. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. 2. The servants of God are to prepare the way for His coming. 3. No one knows the day and hour of His coming. 4. Those who receive the Holy Ghost will be looking for His coming and will know Him. 5. He will come quickly. Elder Bruce R. McConkie said: ‘We do not know when the calamities and troubles of the last days will fall upon any of us as individuals or upon bodies of the Saints. The Lord deliberately withholds from us the days and hour of his coming and of the tribulations which shall precede it- all as part of the testing and probationary experience of mortality. He simply tells us to watch and be ready.”