D& 107:21-100

107:21-52 - There’s a lot of technical information here and I’m really short on time, so I’m just going to go through the parts that I find profitable for me personally at this time. The Lord lists the characteristics of those who are to make decisions over the church, “the decisions of these quorums, or either of them, are to be made in all righteousness, in holiness, and lowliness of heart, meekness and long-suffering, and in faith, and virtue, and knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness and charity; Because the promise is, if these things abound in them the shall not be unfruitful in the knowledge of the Lord.” If these attributes are needed for the leaders to make proper decisions, then surely they would be helpful for us to make our decisions with the Holy Ghost. The Lord goes through the ancient priesthood lineage, who ordained who and when, it’s really interesting in verse 43 which says, “Because he (Seth) was a perfect man, and his likeness was the express likeness of his father, insomuch that he seemed to be like unto his father in all things, and could be distinguished from him only by his age.” Very interesting.

107:53-57 - Three years before Adam died, “he called Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, and Methuselah, who were all high priests, with the residue of his posterity who were righteous, into the valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman, and there bestowed unto them his last blessing. And the Lord appeared unto them, and they rose up and blessed Adam, and called him Michael, the prince, the archangel. And the Lord administered comfort unto Adam, and said unto him: I have set thee to be at the head; a multitude of nations shall come of thee, and thou art a prince over them forever.”  And Adam stood up and “predicted whatsoever should befall his posterity unto the latest generation. These things were all written in the book of Enoch, and are to be testified of in due time.” The IM teaches, “One of the greatest meetings ever held was the meeting Adam called of his righteous posterity. Sometimes priot to the Second Coming of the Savior, a similar meeting will again be held in the valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman. Verses 53 through 55 of section 107 came from a blessing given by Joseph Smith Jr. to his father on 18 December 1833.”

107:58-100 – There is a lot of technical instructions in the rest of the section and I’m just going to not touch on it, I feel like I’m getting too caught up in it so I’m going to move on to the next section tomorrow, but I do want to briefly touch on verse 85 which says, “And again, verily I say unto you, the duty of a president over the office of a deacon is to preside over twelve deacons, to sit in council with them, and to teach them their duty, edifying one another, as it is given according to the covenants.” What I want to add here is that the president isn’t chosen because he’s the most faithful or righteous, it’s because they are chosen to be in that leadership position by the Lord and then when their turn is done it will be someone else’s turn. It’s not “be super righteous so you can be the president,” this system allows all people to learn and grow both by being in the leadership positions and by being a follower of those who are called by the Lord to be in authority.