One Eternal Round

In the Doctrine and Covenants the Lord told Joseph Smith, “Listen to the voice of the Lord your God, even Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, whose course is one eternal round, the same today as yesterday, and forever” (D&C 35:1).  The words that the Lord’s “course is one eternal round” is found a few scriptures and is an interesting phrase.  It conjures up an image of a circular path that is continually repeated, such as going around the circumference of a sphere.  The other reference in the Doctrine and Covenants to the same phrase gives more clues about how we might understand it: “For God doth not walk in crooked paths, neither doth he turn to the right hand nor to the left, neither doth he vary from that which he hath said, therefore his paths are straight, and his course is one eternal round” (D&C 3:2).  This suggests that the phrase refers to the Lord’s unchanging nature; He doesn’t deviate from what He says or from what is right. 

The idea that his “paths are straight” was repeated by Alma as well: “He cannot walk in crooked paths; neither doth he vary from that which he hath said; neither hath he a shadow of turning from the right to the left, or from that which is right to that which is wrong; therefore, his course is one eternal round” (Alma 7:20).  These two phrases together in some respects seem like opposites: His paths are “straight” like a line and yet He also goes in an eternal “round” like a circle. Yet I think both refer to the undeviating nature of what the Lord does.  Alma also used the same phrase when teaching his son Helaman: “He doth counsel in wisdom over all his works, and his paths are straight, and his course is one eternal round” (Alma 37:12).  Here Alma was suggesting that because the Lord has straight paths and goes in an eternal round we can trust His counsel; He does not deviate from what is right and good and true.  We need never fear that His commands or words will not be right.  We cannot “trust in the arm of flesh” but we can “trust in the Lord with all [our] heart” (Proverbs 3:5, 2 Nephi 4:34).   

Nephi gave us I think another way to interpret the phrase when he prefaced his great vision with these words: “He that diligently seeketh shall find; and the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto them, by the power of the Holy Ghost, as well in these times as in times of old, and as well in times of old as in times to come; wherefore, the course of the Lord is one eternal round’ (1 Nephi 10:19).  Here Nephi’s focus seemed to be on the way that God always has and always will reward His children who seek Him with revelation.  Nephi showed how the Lord had revealed great things to his father and to him.  His father received great revelations because he was a prophet through whom the Lord needed to speak to the people at Jerusalem, but Nephi received revelation simply because he sought it diligently before the Lord.  His testimony to us is that we too can receive knowledge from the Lord too if we will seek Him.  If we don’t receive a witness from the Lord it’s not because the Lord has changed but that we have not asked.  As he later wrote, “If ye cannot understand them it will be because ye ask not, neither do ye knock; wherefore, ye are not brought into the light, but must perish in the dark” (2 Nephi 32:4).  There is no “variableness neither shadow of changing” in the Lord, and so we can trust that He will speak to us in His own way if we do indeed “diligently seek Him” (Mormon 9:9).