D&C 19: Learn of Me

Segment 1

Scriptures:
D&C 19:8 (Know as the apostles know)
D&C 19:18 (Christ’s empathy)
D&C 19:15-16 (Christ’s description of the atonement)

Words of the General Authorities:
I urge you to devote time each week—for the rest of your life—to increase your understanding of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. (Russell M. Nelson, “The Lord Jesus Christ Will Come Again”, October 2024 General Conference)

Study Helps:
It took Martin and Lucy Harris years to acquire one of the finest farms in Palmyra, New York. But in 1829 it became clear that the Book of Mormon could be published only if Martin mortgaged his farm to pay the printer. Martin had a testimony of the Book of Mormon, but Lucy did not. If Martin went forward with the mortgage and the Book of Mormon did not sell well, he would lose his farm, put his marriage at risk, and damage his reputation in the community. Although our circumstances are different from Martin’s, at some time or another we all face difficult questions like those he faced: What is the gospel of Jesus Christ worth to me? What am I willing to sacrifice to help build God’s kingdom? Martin Harris ultimately decided that he would mortgage his farm so the first 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon could be printed. But even this sacrifice—and any sacrifice we might make—is small compared to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, “the greatest of all”, who bled from every pore to save the repentant. (Come, Follow Me—For Home and Church: Doctrine and Covenants 2025)

Segment 2

Scriptures:
D&C 19:38 (Pray always)
D&C 19:23 (Learn and listen)
Matthew 7:21-23 (We need to know God)

Words of the General Authorities:
We work diligently to raise the percentages of those attending sacrament meetings. We labor to get a higher percentage of our young men on missions. We strive to improve the numbers of those marrying in the temple. All of these are commendable efforts and important to the growth of the kingdom. But when individual members and families immerse themselves in the scriptures regularly and consistently, these other areas of activity will automatically come. Testimonies will increase. Commitment will be strengthened. Families will be fortified. Personal revelation will flow. (Ezra Taft Benson, “The Power of the Word”, Priesthood Leadership Meeting of April 1986 General Conference)

Scriptures can calm an agitated soul, giving peace, hope, and a restoration of confidence in one’s ability to overcome the challenges of life. They have potent power to heal emotional challenges when there is faith in the Savior. They can accelerate physical healing. (Richard G. Scott, “The Power of Scripture”, October 2011 General Conference)

We do not overstate the point when we say that the scriptures can be a Urim and Thummim to assist each of us to receive personal revelation. (Dallin H. Oaks, “Scripture Reading and Revelation”, January 1995 Ensign)

Study Helps:
Martin Harris on the Joseph Smith Papers

Segment 3

Scriptures:
D&C 19:1-3 (Who is Christ)
Moroni 7:12 (All good things come from God)

Words of the General Authorities:
I urge you to devote time each week—for the rest of your life—to increase your understanding of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. (Russell M. Nelson, “The Lord Jesus Christ Will Come Again”, October 2024 General Conference)

One title I love very much is Alpha and Omega, that Christ is everything to us. He is the beginning and the middle and the end…Alpha and Omega, the first and letters of the language in which the New Testament was recorded. I love that consuming, comprehensive, fulfilling declaration that Christ means everything to me. (Jeffrey R. Holland, Instagram post from February 15, 2025)

Segment 4

Scriptures:
D&C 19:5-11 (Endless torment)
Moses 1:3 (Endless is God’s name)
Moses 7:35 (The torment is God’s)

Words of the General Authorities:
If a man rejects the Savior’s Atonement, he must redeem his debt to justice himself. An unredeemed individual’s suffering for sin is known as hell. (D. Todd Christofferson, “Redemption” [footnote 4], April 2013 General Conference)

To hell there is an exit as well as an entrance. Hell is no place to which a vindictive judge sends prisoners to suffer and to be punished principally for his glory; but it is a place prepared for the teaching, the disciplining of those who failed to learn here upon the earth what they should have learned…No man will be kept in hell longer than is necessary. (James E. Talmage, in a Conference Report section: “Hell Hath Both Entrance and Exit”, April 1930 General Conference)

Segment 5

Scriptures:
D&C 19:15-20 (God doesn’t want us to suffer)
D&C 19:32 (Martin’s daily walk)

Words of the General Authorities:
It is customary, even understandable, when we read of God's indignation and anger to think of it in terms of an angry mortal father and not ponder it much more…mistakenly thinking of God as being personally piqued or offended at some act of wickedness or stupidity because He has told us to behave otherwise. This is erroneous, bumper-sticker theology. Simply because we are, so often, angry at a wrong done to us, we assume the same about God's anger. (Neal A. Maxwell, Sermons Not Spoken)

First, if I could not repent to qualify for his atonement for my sins, I must suffer to the limit of my power to suffer. And, second, with all the requisite suffering of my own, with all I could bear, it would still not be enough. I would still be forever shut out of the only place where there will be the warmth of family, the family of my Heavenly Father whom I have loved and whom I miss, and that of my family here. Somehow I had gotten the idea that the choice was between repenting or not. And then I realized that whatever pain repentance might bring in this life, it was certainly no more than the pain I would face if I did not repent here, and yet that later pain could not lift me home. It could not bring the mercy I needed. (Henry B. Eyring, “Come unto Christ”, BYU Speeches delivered on October 29, 1989)

I once wondered if those who refuse to repent but who then satisfy the law of justice by paying for their own sins are then worthy to enter the celestial kingdom. The answer is no. The entrance requirements for celestial life are simply higher than merely satisfying the law of justice. For that reason, paying for our sins will not bear the same fruit as repenting of our sins. (Bruce C. Hafen, The Broken Heart)

Segment 6

Scriptures:
D&C 19:37-41 (God doesn’t want us to suffer)

Words of the General Authorities:
Having a special interest in Martin Harris, I have been saddened at how he is remembered by most Church members. He deserves better than to be remembered solely as the man who unrighteously obtained and then lost the initial manuscript pages of the Book of Mormon…In 1832 Martin Harris’s older brother, Emer, who is my great-great-grandfather, was called on a mission from Ohio (see D&C 75:30). Emer spent a year preaching the gospel near his former home in northeastern Pennsylvania. During most of this time Emer’s companion was his brother Martin, whose zeal in preaching even caused him to be jailed for a few days. The Harris brothers baptized about 100 persons. Among those baptized was a family named Oaks, which included my great-great-grandfather. Thus, my middle name and my last name come from the grandfathers who met in that missionary encounter in Susquehanna County in 1832–33. (Dallin H. Oaks, “The Witness: Martin Harris”, April 1999 General Conference)

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