This year in ward conferences the stake presidency is pursuing a theme encouraging us to "immerse ourselves in the scriptures."  To help illustrate the value of that practice I'd like to show what happens when the opposite is done, by playing with a word that is used three times in the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants.

Alma says, "Behold, the scriptures are before you; if ye will wrest them it shall be to your own destruction."  (Alma 13:20).  Wrest is spelled W-R-E-S-T, meaning to struggle with or to stretch the scriptures to say something that they don't really say.  I'm proposing that if you spell the word R-E-S-T, and you rest the scriptures and not use them, the result is the same.

In the 41st chapter (Alma 41:1) he says, "Some have wrested the scriptures, and have gone far astray because of this thing."  The Doctrine and Covenants says, "And in these things they do err, for they do wrest the scriptures and do not understand them."  (D&C 10:63).

I'm suggesting that if you "rest the scriptures" and don't use them, you won't "understand them", you'll "go far astray", and it "shall be to your own destruction."

—25 January 2009