2.36 This is the Spirit of Revelation

In Matthew 5:13, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth, a bold reminder that our lives are meant to carry His flavor, His truth, and His love to the world. Join me each day to explore one verse of scripture and one thought, striving to stay full of savor and truly live as savory salt. Hello, my friends.

Great to have you with me. Today, let's be anxiously engaged in a good cause and bring to pass much righteousness. Let's talk about Revelation.

It is one of the cornerstones of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's one of the claims that we hold today in modern churches as we talk about Revelation and the heavens being opened. And here today we're going to look at a verse that speaks directly to that.

Remember this week you're going to be reading Doctrine and Covenants sections 6 through 9 and 1 Nephi chapters 18 through 22. So now that we've kept ourselves on pace here today, we're going to be looking at Doctrine and Covenants section 8. Section 7 is pretty fascinating as we find out that John never died and He's still out there and doing great work.

So, good job, John. Good to have you in the work. Maybe at some point we get to meet and say, "Awesome, let's go do this!" Our verse for today is in Doctrine and Covenants section 8, verse 2.

And this is a revelation directly to Oliver Cowdery through Joseph Smith. We find out here that the Lord is actually going to define this as the spirit of revelation. So the verse—verse 2 today—is as He says: "Now behold, this is the spirit of revelation." He, referencing verse 2 here, says: "Yea, behold, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and which shall dwell in your heart." Now I work inside of a profession that deals a lot with scientific methods, right?

The brain, the mind, how the brain works, what the mind is versus what the brain is. There's a lot of times—a lot of times—I'm talking to people that are explaining that, 'look, our brain and the functions inside of our body are nothing more than electrical impulses.' And so a lot of times I talk to people who have, you know, scientific evidence. And I say that with 'quotes' with my hands—'scientific evidence'—that there is no such thing as spiritual matters or there's no such thing as God in general, right?

It can't happen. It's just not the way that the body functions. And yet, interestingly enough, if you look at this verse here, look at what He says here: 'I will tell you in your mind and in your heart.' Do you think the Lord's actually saying, 'Hey, this fleshy muscle that is beating all day, every day in your life, I'm going to connect to that fleshy muscle, your heart, and I'm going to send the Holy Ghost to dwell there?

And then you're going to know that revelation'? I don't think that's what the Lord is saying at all. And in fact, when we're talking about mind and heart and we're talking about spiritual things, we're beyond scientific things.

And I was trying to figure out where had I heard this before, and I'm so glad that I dug into it because I landed on a talk by President Oaks from 2008. It's April 2008. At the time, he was Elder Oaks, and President Oaks is talking.

The talk is called "Testimony." I will make sure there's a link inside of it. Phenomenal, phenomenal. If you take some time to dig into this one, I want to read a segment on here of what he has to say about the spirit of revelation.

One of the greatest things about our Heavenly Father's plan for His children is that each of us can know the truth of that plan for ourselves. That revealed knowledge does not come from books, from scientific proof, or from intellectual pondering. As the Apostle Peter, we can receive that knowledge directly from our Heavenly Father through the witness of the Holy Ghost.

And then he said this, and I love that he said this. Get this one right here: "When we know spiritual truths by spiritual means, we can be just as sure of that knowledge as scholars and scientists are of the different kinds of knowledge they." I love that it's offered to each one of us individually. My friends, I would encourage you to seek that revelation in your life.

And don't just seek it once or twice. Seek it often. Maybe even seek it daily that the Lord may talk to you spiritually and through the Holy.