Scripture Blog

This weblog is my personal online scripture journal. I try to read the scriptures each morning as I exercise on my cross-trainer. It has a great impact on my life and my testimony of the Savior and his restored church. The journal is really for my own benefit but I have set it up as a web log in hopes to benefit anyone else that may be interested. "For he that diligently seeketh shall find; and the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto them, by the power of the Holy Ghost..." 1 Nephi 10:19

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Luke 20

It must have been frustrating for the differing and prideful Jewish religous leaders as the Savior taught "with authority" in the temple for -

"...the chief priests and the scribes the same hour sought to lay hands on him; and they feared the people...And they watched him, and sent forth spies, which should feign themselves just men, that they might take hold of his words, that so they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the governor." (New Testament | Luke 20:19 - 20)

It was the Sadducees that challenged the Savior on His teachings of the resurrection as they plotted with a strategy of Mosaic law that -

"...If any man's brother die, having a wife, and he die without children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother." (New Testament | Luke 20:28)

They then proposed a question where not only a husband did die, but seven husbands died and then asked -

"Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them is she? for seven had her to wife." (New Testament | Luke 20:33)

The Savior recognized their intent that this questioning wasn't about marraige. but if there is a resurrection. So instead of teaching the full doctrine of eternal marraige, in a sense, casting pearls before swine, he summarized that for those of the world -

"...The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage:
35 But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage..." (New Testament | Luke 20:34 - 35)

More investigation in the doctrine of celestial marraige will reveal that -

"...if a man marry a wife by my word, which is my law, and by the new and everlasting covenant, and it is sealed unto them by the Holy Spirit of promise, by him who is anointed, unto whom I have appointed this power and the keys of this priesthood; and it shall be said unto them—Ye shall come forth in the first resurrection; and if it be after the first resurrection, in the next resurrection; and shall inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers, dominions, all heights and depths—then shall it be written in the Lamb's Book of Life, that he shall commit no murder whereby to shed innocent blood, and if ye abide in my covenant, and commit no murder whereby to shed innocent blood, it shall be done unto them in all things whatsoever my servant hath put upon them, in time, and through all eternity; and shall be of full force when they are out of the world; and they shall pass by the angels, and the gods, which are set there, to their exaltation and glory in all things, as hath been sealed upon their heads, which glory shall be a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever." (Doctrine and Covenants | Section 132:19)