A Marvelous Work

This week for my D&C class I was told to write on "the significance of the phrase 'a marvelous work is about to come forth among the children of men." So I've been thinking a lot the past few days about what I would write. Today, while listening to a devotional given by Kim B. Clark, President of BYU-I, I was listening specifically for comments on the importance of the coming forth of The Book of Mormon. One scripture that President Clark used particularly stuck out to me. The scripture was Mormon 8:35- "Behold, I speak unto you as if ye were present, and yet ye are not. But behold, Jesus Christ hath shown you unto me, and I know your doing." I wasn't quite sure why it stuck out to me or how I was going to use it, but I felt I should, so I looked it up when I got home. When I did so, I saw why the Spirit led me to this scripture. The verse before it says: "Behold, the Lord hath shown unto me great and marvelous things concerning that which must shortly come, at that day when these things shall come forth among you." Right there is another example of very similar wording to the phrase used four times in the D&C. I was curious to know how many times a phrase like this was used in the standard works, so I searched for "great", "marvelous", and "work". I ended up with seventeen results. One in the New Testament, eleven in the Book of Mormon, and 5 in the D&C. It was interesting to see that the different instances were used slightly differently.

#1 Some of the references were more general, such as the one in Revelations 15:3- "Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty". Six of the instances that I found fell into this category.

#2 One reference spoke of "great and marvelous work(s)" explicitly meaning missionary work. One of these was Ammon saying "we have been instruments in his hands of doing this great and marvelous work". In the context, it is pretty obvious that the "great and marvelous work" is missionary work. It really surprised me that so few were necessarily said in reference to missionary work.

#3 In Helaman 16:16, in reaction to Samuel the Lamanite's preaching, many of the people say "Some things they may have guessed right, among so many; but behold, we know that all these great and marvelous works cannot come to pass, of which has been spoken." In this case, "great and marvelous works" appears to refer to the atonement and coming of Christ.

#4 Four appear specifically to refer to the word of God, a two-edged sword that leads "either to the convincing of them unto peace and life eternal, or unto the deliverance of them to the hardness of their earts and the blindness of their minds unto their beig brought down intocaptivity, and also into destruction, both temporally and spiritually, according to the captivity of the devil, of which I have spoken" (1 Ne. 14:7).

So, the question is, which of these four answers is a correct interpretation of the phrase used four times in the Doctrine and Covenants of "A great and a marvelous work is about to come forth unto (or among) the children of men"? If you read farther in these chapters, you will see that this statement is followed by an admonition to heed God's word, and then a few verses about missionary work and gathering the house of Israel. To answer this, I think it would be most effective to turn to the scriptures that refer to our day. In 1 Ne 14:7, it says that this work can convince the children of men "unto peace and life eternal". 1 Ne 22:8 states that this work will "be of great worth to [the Lehites'] seed". In 3 Ne. 21:9, we learn it can be declared and disbelieved. From these descriptions, it seems most reasonable to assume that when this phrase is used in the D&C, it is refering to the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. This book, above all others, has the power to bring others to Christ and Eternal happiness. Conversely, if the Book of Mormon is fought against or disobeyed, it can lead to misery and captivity.

The 116 Pages

In reading chapters 3 and 5 of the Doctrine and Covenants, I was struck by the intricacy of God's preparations to counteract the errors of men. It's amazing how much God loves us. He respects our agency so much that He's willing to let us not do things the easy way. He uses our mistakes as a chance to let us learn and grow while still directing everything towards building the kingdom. I love the first verse of section 3: "The works, and the designs, and the purposes of God cannot be frustrated, neither can they come to naught". This reminded me ov D&C 121:33: "As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it up stream, as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints." God allowed knowledge of the Nephites during the time period that was lost to still be shared with the saints through the extra set of records that Nephi made. Nobody, not Joseph, not Martin Harris or any of the men he showed the pages to could remove a record of Nephi from us. The analogy of the Missouri river especially speaks to me because I live in St. Louis, not far from this river. It would be futile for man to try to change the course of it with his bare strength, just as it would for anyone to stop the Lord.

Despite the immense importance of written records (Mosiah 1:5), God allowed them to be lost so that Joseph and Martin could both learn important lessons. They needed to learn not to "fear man more than God". Much of the persecution that Joseph faced was because of going against social norms by following God's commands. I believe that because God allowed the pages to be lost, Joseph understood better the importance of fearing God more than man, and was more prepared to face things like the introduction of polygamy. After chastizing Joseph Smith and Martin Harris about the severity of what they had done in losing the pages, He ends chapter 5 by saying: "And if thou art faithful in keeping my commandments, thou shalt be lifted up at the last day, Amen." He ends with a message of hope. There's always a way to return. He loves us and never wants us to feel like there's no way back.