Sections 116 to section of 120 reveals a church and prophet trying desperately to make the best of a bad situation.

By the date of the last revelation, a third of the quorum of the 12 would apostatize.

The Lord directed that the church moved its headquarters from Ohio to Missouri, and then from Jackson County to northern Missouri.

In the midst of this, God gave them answers,

but not ones that seem to fix their problems in the short term.

However, the Lord's revelations pointing to things working out in the long run.

He identified the place where Jesus would return before the Second Coming,

where to send missionaries to bring in new members,

and laid out the importance of councils and counseling with them

to allow for a wide variety of perspectives and voices to make decisions.

Or, thinking even bigger picture, I wonder if he was teaching us

that we have to remember that the Lord's timeline is a lot longer than ours is.

My name is Joseph Stewart.

I'm the public communication specialist at the Neil A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University.

Janice Johnson is a Willis Center research associated the Institute.

And each week we will discuss the block of reading from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

Come Follow Me curriculum.

We aren't here to present a lesson, but rather to hit on a few key themes from

the scripture blog that we believe help fulfill the Maxwell Institute's mission to inspire and

fortify Latter-day Saints in their testimonies of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and engage

the world of religious ideas. Now, I mentioned in the introduction, the place where Jesus would

come before the second coming.

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