Nov 24 2024 73 mins 4
In this podcast, Denver defends the Covenant of Christ as evidence that our Lord cares for, and is reaching out to our generation just as He has done before.
DENVER: I got an email asking about contacting those involved in the Covenant of Christ text, because the writer wanted to pose questions to have the text defended. I responded with the below answer, which I also forwarded to those who worked on the project, as he requested. The answer to his question may be of general interest, so I am putting it up on this website below:
While I will pass it on, the accountability is confined to me.
During the years of work on moving words into modern meanings, I consulted on choices between variants, but the text remained essentially a restatement of the original with all the difficulties of reading the textual construct of the original.
When it was turned over to me, I trusted all of the predecessor work and went through the text originally believing it was only going to be a sort of commentary. But on the winter solstice I learned otherwise, and the revelation of that night has been put into the prayer I read at the conference.
That changed things. I worked through the text and made more changes to the content structurally, and condensed things that were redundant because it cleared up the text’s message to say it clearly once. I went through the entire text rearranging, condensing, and clarifying often by using fewer words.
Some of the text was particularly difficult and obtuse in meaning, so I highlighted the passage and moved on. As I proceeded I found one place where a sentence was repeated in two different versions. The ones who had it before me had not reached an agreement and one of them rendered the sentence one way and the other rendered it another way. I looked at the original sentence in the Book of Mormon and deleted both of the options and wrote it again plainly.
As I went through I also discovered late in Alma that there was a missing sentence. I found the original text in the Book of Mormon and recovered that missing sentence.
Please understand that I was “inspired” by another, higher intelligence than mine as I uncovered details, such as those I just mentioned and claim that the Lord guided my poor efforts.
After coming to the end I went back and looked at all the highlighted text materials and made the effort to figure out what the text was saying and then put it plainly in English we would understand today. As I did that I looked at the text before and after those places and found that it could be improved still further.
The first pass-through shortened the text by over 20 pages in the MS Word format I was using.
So I returned to the start and went through the text a second time from beginning to end. Then, after completing it I returned and did it again a third time. Then again a fourth time. Each time through the text was clarified and condensed, and sharpened in the statement the text was conveying.
By this time the text was shortened by over another 27 pages in the MS format I was using., reducing the text by over 47 pages total,
As I finished, there were still some things that I knew needed to be standardized but I did not want to keep the text from my predecessors and returned it to them with instructions about standardization and asked for their reactions/input. They completed their assignment and returned the text to me.
I then went through the text for what I believed would be a final pass through, and made still more changes and corrections as inspired to do, trusting this would be the end of the work.
DENVER: I got an email asking about contacting those involved in the Covenant of Christ text, because the writer wanted to pose questions to have the text defended. I responded with the below answer, which I also forwarded to those who worked on the project, as he requested. The answer to his question may be of general interest, so I am putting it up on this website below:
While I will pass it on, the accountability is confined to me.
During the years of work on moving words into modern meanings, I consulted on choices between variants, but the text remained essentially a restatement of the original with all the difficulties of reading the textual construct of the original.
When it was turned over to me, I trusted all of the predecessor work and went through the text originally believing it was only going to be a sort of commentary. But on the winter solstice I learned otherwise, and the revelation of that night has been put into the prayer I read at the conference.
That changed things. I worked through the text and made more changes to the content structurally, and condensed things that were redundant because it cleared up the text’s message to say it clearly once. I went through the entire text rearranging, condensing, and clarifying often by using fewer words.
Some of the text was particularly difficult and obtuse in meaning, so I highlighted the passage and moved on. As I proceeded I found one place where a sentence was repeated in two different versions. The ones who had it before me had not reached an agreement and one of them rendered the sentence one way and the other rendered it another way. I looked at the original sentence in the Book of Mormon and deleted both of the options and wrote it again plainly.
As I went through I also discovered late in Alma that there was a missing sentence. I found the original text in the Book of Mormon and recovered that missing sentence.
Please understand that I was “inspired” by another, higher intelligence than mine as I uncovered details, such as those I just mentioned and claim that the Lord guided my poor efforts.
After coming to the end I went back and looked at all the highlighted text materials and made the effort to figure out what the text was saying and then put it plainly in English we would understand today. As I did that I looked at the text before and after those places and found that it could be improved still further.
The first pass-through shortened the text by over 20 pages in the MS Word format I was using.
So I returned to the start and went through the text a second time from beginning to end. Then, after completing it I returned and did it again a third time. Then again a fourth time. Each time through the text was clarified and condensed, and sharpened in the statement the text was conveying.
By this time the text was shortened by over another 27 pages in the MS format I was using., reducing the text by over 47 pages total,
As I finished, there were still some things that I knew needed to be standardized but I did not want to keep the text from my predecessors and returned it to them with instructions about standardization and asked for their reactions/input. They completed their assignment and returned the text to me.
I then went through the text for what I believed would be a final pass through, and made still more changes and corrections as inspired to do, trusting this would be the end of the work.
