This week’s Come Follow Me lesson includes the story of King Limhi trying to obtain a translation of records they found in the ruins of a perished society. Ammon teaches him about prophets, revelators, and seers. This reminds of Joseph Smith’s significant role in the eternal plan to bringing forth lost scriptures. This sort of coming forth is far more than archeological entertainment; cultures are changed and individual spirits fortified with the results.
I remember a conversation had during my dad’s work commute when I was a teenager. He observed the ways in which people in centuries past don’t seem to be better or worse individuals, on whole, than today; there is no less lying, cheating, stealing, cowardice, temper, or any other vice as ever there has been. This fact stands in contrast to revolutions in science and technology in which we rapidly are constructing a scaffolding upon which every leap and bound builds.
The difference is because personal growth is just that – personal. We cannot simply give to others the fruits of our painfully won experience and expect them to replicate our life wisdom (such as it is). But we do have tools to help. To this point Neal A. Maxwell has highlighted one of the precious values of sacred scripture, first distributed in his 1985 “Sermons Not Spoken” with the title “Enlarged the Memory of This People.” It starts with the following sentence:
So far as our Christian convictions are concerned, individuals are almost never more than one generation away from regression, dissension, or disaffection!
A year later he extended many of the same ideas in his openly available General Conference talk “God Will Yet Reveal".
The Restoration’s Messiah-centered scriptures expand mankind’s spiritual memory significantly and further educate us concerning the unfolding of God’s plan ever since the world began. The Restoration has provided sweeping sermons about God’s plan with its rescuing Redeemer, such as from Moses, Abinadi, Ether, Alma, Ammon, and Aaron (see Mosiah 13:33–35; Ether 13:2–14; Alma 12:30–33; Alma 18:36–39; Alma 22:12–14). These answer the rhetorical question of one prophet who said: “Why not speak of the atonement of Christ?” (Jacob 4:12). Brothers and sisters, given man’s true self-interest, why should we really speak much of anything else?
Why was the revelation of new scripture the lynchpin of the coming forth of this Last Dispensation? Why is having a Seer so crucial to our well-being? Because scriptures give us the chance to extend our spiritual memory and to make true personal progress. They are key parts of our mental and spiritual technology.