Seeking the Riches of Eternity

I have recently been listening to Saints volume 1 again and I have really enjoyed learning again about the early days of the church and the incredible sacrifices that so many have made.  One of the themes that I have noticed in the first 10 or so chapters is the fact that the Lord requires of His saints to put the kingdom of God first over material wealth.  We see this first in Joseph’s attempt to retrieve the plates when he first went to Cumorah. The book records that when he first saw the gold plates, “Astonished, Joseph wondered again how much the plates were worth. He reached for them—and felt a shock pulse through him. He jerked his hand back but then reached for the plates twice more and was shocked each time.”  He had been tempted by the wealth and could not obtain them.  Moroni explained that “they are not deposited here for the sake of accumulating gain and wealth for the glory of this world. They were sealed by the prayer of faith.”  Joseph learned quickly that he needed to have his eye single to the glory of God and nothing else. 

               We see this same theme in the story of Martin Harris and the financing of the Book of Mormon.  Joseph asked for financial support from Martin to publish the Book of Mormon.  To come up with the $3000, he would need to mortgage his farm.  The book recounts, “Troubled, Martin began to question the wisdom of financing the Book of Mormon. He had one of the best farms in the area. If he mortgaged his land, he risked losing it. Wealth he had spent a lifetime accruing could be gone in an instant if the Book of Mormon did not sell well.”  He sought for a revelation from the Lord and Joseph received this direction to him: “I command thee that thou shalt not covet thine own property, but impart it freely to the printing of the Book of Mormon, which contains the truth and the word of God” (Doctrine and Covenants 19:26).  Martin was taught like Joseph that the things of God are of far greater worth than the wealth of man.                

               Shortly after the Church was organized, Joseph received a commandment to have all of the members move to the west: “A commandment I give unto the church, that it is expedient in me that they should assemble together at the Ohio” (Doctrine and Covenants 37:3).  This was a difficult requirement for some; the book explains, “Many of them had also worked hard to improve their property and cultivate prosperous farms in New York. If they moved as a group to Ohio, they would have to sell their property quickly and would probably lose money. Some might even be ruined financially, especially if the land in Ohio proved less rich and fertile than their land in New York.”  Again, the Lord had asked them to be willing to sacrifice material wealth for the kingdom of God.  Interestingly, around this same time Joseph received the story of Enoch by revelation in which he learned of Zion and their holy city in which “there was no poor among them” (Moses 7:18).  The Lord wanted of His people to be a Zion society in which they would be more concerned about righteousness and caring for each other than about their own personal wealth.

               These kind of sacrifices—and many, many others that would be required of the saints in the pursuing decades—then set the stage for what the Restoration would require: a people who could “lay aside the things of this world, and seek for the things of a better” (Doctrine and Covenants 25:10).  We must all learn to not have our “eyes full of greediness” but to “seek earnestly the riches of eternity” instead (Doctrine and Covenants 68:31).