Continuing from a previous post ‘The Veil of Unbelief’, M. Catherine Thomas wrote:
The sobering message in these verses is not only people in general but also many Saints would be led by the precepts of men. This prophetic insight offers a compassionate warning and a call to receive greater lightening. If relatively few or the Saints have discerned these precepts of men, these errors are probably rather subtle and hard to detect. But scripture describes them, and the prophets point them out. President Ezra Taft Benson taught: “God, with his infinite foreknowledge, so molded the Book of Mormon that we might see the error and know how to combat the false educational, political, religious and philosophical concepts of our time” (“The Book of Mormon Is the Word of God,” Ensign, May 1975, p. 64).
The real problem with false ideas, as Nephi reveals (see 2 Nephi 28:5), is that they influence many to deny the power of God and therefore to deny themselves of the power of God in their lives. The precepts of men partake of the philosophy of Korihor and anti-Christ, who taught that man prospered only by his own genius and strength and not by God’s power (see Alma 30:17). It is not so much that we have denied the existence of the power of God as that we have denied that power by implementing false ideas. The Lord warns of that latter-day “spirit which has so strongly riveted the creeds of the fathers, who have inherited lies, upon the hearts of the children” (Doctrine and Covenants 123:7). To some greater or lesser extent, each of us is one of those children.
Not by deliberate consent, but mostly inadvertently, we all have the precepts of men riveted on our hearts just by being born into a fallen world. We have absorbed them without question through growing up and living in a fallen world. It is part of the heritage of the natural man. And we may have embraced false ideas because of our ignorance of God’s revealed laws— “My people have gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge” (2 Nephi 15:13). The Lord, knowing our dilemma better than we do, compassionately warns: “Beware concerning yourselves, to give diligent heed to the words of eternal life. For you shall live by every word that proceedeth forth from the mouth of God” (Doctrine and Covenants 84:43-44).
But we may need to learn more of what the Lord has actually said in order to be able to live it. He continues: “Your minds in times past have been darkened because of unbelief, and because you have treated lightly the things you have received—
Which vanity and unbelief have brought the whole church under condemnation. And this condemnation resteth upon the children of Zion, even all. And they shall remain under this condemnation until they repent and remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon and the former commandments which I have given them, not only to say, but to do according to that which is written—(Doctrine & Covenants 84:54-58.
That they may bring forth fruit meet for their Father’s kingdom; otherwise there remaineth a scourge and judgement to be poured out upon the children of Zion.
President Ezra Taft Benson instructed the Latter-day Saints in general conference: It is important that in our teaching we make use of the language of holy writ. Alma said, I do command you in the language of him who hath commanded me” (Alma 5:61). The words and the way they are use in the Book of Mormon by the Lord should become the source of our understanding and should be used by us in teaching gospel principles . . . . We need to use the everlasting word to awaken those in a deep sleep so that they will awaken “unto God.”
I am deeply concerned about what we are doing to teach the saints at all levels the gospel of Jesus Christ as completely and authoritatively as do the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. By this I mean teaching the “great plan of the Eternal God,” to use the words of Amulek (Alma 34:9). (“The Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants,” Ensign, May 1987, p. 84; emphasis added.) 2-4
