Psalms 119:103, 105; 12:6; 18:28
How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth! . . .
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
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The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.
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For thou wilt light my candle: the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness.
The scriptures—the words of the Lord—as they came anciently and in modern times are the most secure means we have for knowing who God is, what His purposes are, and what He expects from His children in mortality. The scriptures are our standards for measuring truth—our “standard works.” Without them we “would have dwindled in unbelief,” not understanding God’s mysteries and not having His commandments “always before our eyes.”184
One wonders if God will hold us guiltless if we treat lightly the words He has spoken and the lives given for those words?185 One by one, the great figures of the Old Testament gave their lives that we might have that great record. He sent His Only Begotten into the world, and His life was sacrificed (along with the lives of His Apostles) in order that we might have the teachings of the New Testament. Many of the prophets of God whose words are recorded in the Book of Mormon laid down their lives and sealed their testimonies with their blood in order that those in our day might know of His dealings—and of Christ’s appearance—in the New World. The Lord sent the Prophet Joseph Smith, who likewise sealed his testimony with his own blood, that we might have the truths contained in modern revelation. Joseph’s brother Hyrum gave his life at the same time. Others have done so since.
It seems highly unlikely that after the Lord has done all this for us, has given to this world the best lives and the best blood in it in order to record and preserve His holy word, that He will be pleased with careless—or no—attention to those revelations. The “silver” of the scriptures has been refined in a furnace, all right, in part because those prophets and apostles went into a personal furnace to provide them.
The word of God is an iron rod to lead us through mists of darkness, a feast of divine sustenance in an otherwise fallen world. No lamp could be more reliable in the dark of the night and no sweeter taste could come to the lips of a people when there is a famine in the land—“not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.”186
Thank heaven and all eternity for the scriptures, “for behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do.”187 And as with the prophet Lehi, so too with each of us. “As he read [the words of the book], he was filled with the Spirit of the Lord.”188 Such precious, piercing experience with the Godhead through the medium of the revealed word makes that experience sweeter than honey to our mouths. The first foundation stones of my testimony came from my youthful experience reading the scriptures. They sustained me then and they sustain me now. We ought to be so grateful that the heavens are open, that God “speaks,” not just “spake,” because in times of trouble and always we need “a lamp unto [our] feet, and a light unto [our] path.”
Notes