My Heart Rejoices in your love for the scriptures

Oh my Precious Brooke, 

              What an exceptional privilege it is to be your Mother. My absolute favorite time of the day is reading scriptures with you, and going over the Scripture Mastery Scriptures that you have memorized with you. As I hear your little, soft and beautiful voice speak the words that I love so deeply from the scriptures; it truly is like music to my ears. My heart rejoices in your love for my love- the scriptures....

               One reason that I am so happy as your Mother Brooke is because I know that you make angels rejoice every single day. When I see you make a good choice and excite to learn more about the gospel; I literally imagine how the angels must rejoice at you; and it makes me happy. 

                Brooke, you told me something a couple nights ago that showed me just how grateful that you are for the scriptures. You told me with zero fear in your voice; but with great assurance in your voice that you were at peace; as you said, " I have been having this dream over and over Mom." I said, " Well, what happens in the dream? " You proceeded to explain as you do with your hands and picking up the scriptures while holding them in your lap, " In my dream the church members are being forced to move and live all together, but we aren't allowed to take our scriptures, so each of the families in the church hide a couple pages of the scriptures among their things; that way we will be able to put them all together again when we get to where we are being sent."  

                   Brooke, this not only shows me your love for the scriptures; your devotion to the gospel and your willingness to go wherever it will take you; but also it shows me that you have great faith that in the gospel we will all work together and be able to work things out. 

                    I am so proud of you, and I am thankful that tonight I could read with you about those who sacrificed greatly for the scriptures that we do have now. Your dream is not far fetched at all...

In fact, you most likely are just so in tune with the sacrifices made in order for us to have what we have in the gospel that this kind of sacrifice seems quite expectant to you?

From the talk below titled, " The Historical Context of The New Testament "

By Thomas A. Wayment

Associate Professor of Ancient Scripture, Brigham Young University

How Was the New Testament Passed Down to Us?

From the larger group of disciples, Jesus called 12 men as Apostles. Those men followed Him throughout His ministry, suffered with Him, and also enjoyed triumphs and Spirit-filled experiences. After Jesus died, the Apostles, along with other faithful followers, began to record their experiences. Two events may have triggered their desire to preserve their records about the life of Jesus: first, Jerusalem and the temple fell to a Roman army in A.D. 70. Second, the forces of apostasy were already at work (see Acts 20:29–30). Therefore, many of the writings in the New Testament were recorded to help the faithful see their way through the calamity and controversy of their day.

Looking back on their experiences, we can learn how they faced troubling times and how the good news of the gospel became a steadying power in the struggle against the forces of apostasy.

Toward the end of the first century, all of the writings now preserved in the New Testament were completed and circulated widely among the branches of the Church. Scribes made copies of the texts on papyrus and then later on parchment, but there were relatively few copies available. Church members gathered the books that were available to them and read and studied the words of the Lord and the Apostles. One notable setback to the circulation of the scriptures was the persecution of Christians by the Roman emperor Diocletian in A.D. 303. He ordered that the Christian scriptures be burned and forced Christians to offer sacrifices to pagan gods. Many faithful individuals hid the sacred texts during those years of persecution. Later, when the first Christian emperor, Constantine, ordered new copies of the scriptures to be made, his scholars were able to recover books that had been used in the branches prior to Diocletian’s edict. Our modern printed editions of the New Testament trace their ancestry to the copies of the Bible made during Constantine’s day and therefore back to those individuals who sacrificed their safety to preserve the new covenant of the Lord.

Not long after Constantine had directed the New Testament to be copied and circulated anew, the books that compose our current Bible came to be organized in their present order. This order follows a pattern set by the Old Testament. The New Testament contains the Law (the Gospels), the history of Christianity (Acts), and the Prophets (Romans through Revelation). Both the Old and New Testaments end with a promise of the Lord’s return (Malachi and Revelation). The placement of these prophetic works also emphasizes a forward-looking hope of salvation and future revelation.