The Lord’s purposes in commanding Joseph Smith to translate the Bible. To accommodate our Come Follow Me Old Testament study, my past 5 blogs have focused largely on Joseph Smith’s study of the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their wives. Facsmile 2, Book of Abraham, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/abr/fac-2?lang=eng In his reconstruction of the timeline over which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Genesis, Kent P. Jackson notes that in his 1838-

How Joseph’s study of the scriptures, including his inspired “translation” of the Bible, contributed to the restoration of temple ordinances. In July 1830, the Lord commanded Joseph to “let your time be devoted to the studying of the scriptures” (D&C 26:1), a commandment that applies equally to us. The Lord knew that to properly understand the need for and purposes of temples, Joseph Smith needed to come to understand what we now know about them. Things about which the Christ

In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, we explored the miraculous preservation of the Egyptian papyri and the scholarly debates surrounding them. In Part 3 we looked at the lives of Abraham and Sarah as revealed through the Book of Abraham and Joseph Smith’s inspired translation of Genesis. In this final blog about Abraham, and the next about Isaac and Jacob, we continue to consider how the Lord was tutoring and preparing the Prophet to restore temple ordinances as the capstone of

In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, we explored the miraculous preservation of the Egyptian papyri and the scholarly debates surrounding them. Parts 3 and 4 focus on how the Lord, by revealing the Book of Abraham to the Prophet Joseph Smith, further prepared him to restore ancient temple ordinances, which were “had . . . from before the world was” (D&C 124:38). As I prepare to post this, we have just participated in a ritual of “great significance” [ 1 ] —a solemn assembly to su