Key of Knowledge

I love the song “Oh my Father” which is found in the LDS hymn book. The thoughts are so clear and empowering. I love to sing the song. I was first introduced to the phrase “Key of Knowledge” in this song. For years I have wondered what the key might be. For a time I thought it was the Book of Mormon, then I thought it was the Gift of the Holy Ghost and finally while I think they are all keys, I decided that it was living Prophets. In Amos 3:7 we are told “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealed his secret unto his servants the prophets.” That knowledge is very assuring, as we listen to the prophets we will never be lead a stray.

A couple of Sundays ago I went looking to see how many times the phrase is used in the scriptures. It only appears three places. D & C 84:19 teaches us the Melchezidek Priesthood holds the keys of the knowledge of God. D & C 128.14 teaches that the keys of the kingdom are part of the keys of knowledge. Then the final one is found in Luke 11:52 where the Lord indicates that the lawyers (I think he is talking about the Pharisees) have the keys of knowledge and they hide them from the people. They themselves don’t use them and then if someone tries the keys they stop them.

So what could he be talking about? The Jews didn’t have the Book of Mormon. They didn’t have the Gift of the Holy Ghost and they persecuted anyone claiming to be a prophet. We can only speculate to what they are talking about.

 I believe that they Jews had a unique way of writing. They taught like Christ did in parables. All the stories told in the scriptures have some meaning that only those that are given the keys will understand.

The disciples approached Christ and asked him why he spoke in parables. He explained to them they were to have the mysteries of the kingdom revealed to them. When he taught a parable he would explain to them what the images in the parable meant. When he told the story they would understand the higher meaning of the parable. Those that were not told what the keys were would just hear a story and would not understand.

To understand what is taught in the scriptures we need to have the keys. We need to understand what the Savior meant and when we do we see the deeper meaning. It dawned on me since we do have living prophets, additional scriptures and the Gift of the Holy Ghost, we should understand the scriptures differently than those that don’t. If we interpret the scriptures the same way that most do then we are missing the deeper meaning.

The purpose of this blog is to show you some of the keys that I have discovered and how they make the scriptures clearer to our understanding. I will outline them as we go and I would encourage you to use them as you study the scriptures and see how it changes your understanding.

Happy Easter!

Brother B