Here it is:<\/p>\n
What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same. (Doctrine & Covenants 1:38)
\n
\nWhat I dislike about the way we read this verse is that we take not just the verse out of the context of the chapter, but the final dependent clause out of the context of the sentence. The only part of this verse one hears is “whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.” This clause is then used to defend a concept of prophetic inerrancy, and a fundamentalist reading of not just scriptures, but general conference addresses, Ensign articles, and off-the-cuff remarks by general authorities.<\/p>\n
Although the syntax is slightly ambiguous, the context of the sentence, and of the rest of Section 1, especially the verse immediately preceeding this one, make it seem pretty clear that what’s meant here is that the words of the Lord will come to fruition, whether those words were spoken by the Lord himself or by his servants. The idea that it’s exactly the same when a prophet (or really *any* servant of the Lord; it’s not clearly defined here) speaks as when the Lord speaks is pretty nearly idolatrous, and I find it frankly shocking that such a reading has become so commonly accepted in the church.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here it is: What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same. (Doctrine & Covenants 1:38)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scriptures"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}