Sacred Records

On Friday I had the opportunity to attend the Church History Symposium here at BYU. One of the talks given was entitled "And there shall be a record kept among you", as quoted from Doctrine & Covenants 21:1. The emphasis of his talk was on the record keeping, not just recording. What good is writing a record, after all, if no one takes care of it afterward and it is lost? The speaker talked a lot about the challenges that the early Saints faced in keeping the records of the Restoration. Persecution, Apostasy, and lack of a stability and resources in the early church led to a great many precious records being lost or destroyed. One example of this is the 116 manuscript pages from the Book of Lehi lost by Martin Harris.

In Between the Testaments, frequent mention is made to Apocryphal writings originating in the first century AD, such as the Book of Enoch and others. When I first read that the records originated so long after the time of the Prophets, I thought that meant that they were works of fiction invented by Jews and Christians of that time. The same is true of many early Christian writings, such as the Gospel of Thomas. However, the book suggests that, although these records were not penned by either Enoch or Thomas, they do have at least some truth to them because they were most likely based on an oral tradition.

There are so many records mentioned in the scriptures that we no longer have access to today (see "Lost Books" in the Bible Dictionary), and many of the records that have remained to our day are no longer in their pure and complete forms. It is really such a tragedy when the sacred words given by God to men are lost to us! I'm grateful that today, in our digital age, we have access to such a wealth of information. We can visit LDS.org and find the teachings of so many prophets and apostles in our day. We have the scriptures in our homes, and most of us are even privileged to have our own copies! These blessings were unheard of in days of old—we are truly blessed!