Lay Hold Upon the Word of God

In telling about a time when numerous people joined the church of God among the Nephties, Mormon made this comment, “Yea, we see that whosoever will may lay hold upon the word of God, which is quick and powerful, which shall divide asunder all the cunning and the snares and the wiles of the devil, and lead the man of Christ in a strait and narrow course across that everlasting gulf of misery which is prepared to engulf the wicked—And land their souls, yea, their immortal souls, at the right hand of God in the kingdom of heaven” (Helaman 3:29-30). I like this idea of laying hold upon the word of God; in this description he seems to be saying that we have to grab hold of the scriptures and hang on to them. This is not a casual picking up of the scriptures but a firm grasp that won’t let go despite all the cunning and snares and wiles of the devil. This is a “holding fast to the iron rod” kind of attachment with which the faithful hang on for dear life lest they fall into the nearby filthy river of water which is “a representation of that awful hell” (1 Nephi 8:30, 15:29). To find our way back to the “right hand of God in the kingdom of heaven” we need to find the word of God and hang on to it; we must symbolically hold fast to it and never let it out of our grasp.

                Other scriptural passages give us similar invitations. Mormon, in some of his final words, invited us, “Therefore repent, and be baptized in the name of Jesus, and lay hold upon the gospel of Christ, which shall be set before you, not only in this record but also in the record which shall come unto the Gentiles from the Jews” (Mormon 7:8). In other words, hang on to the gospel that is written in the Book of Mormon and in the Bible. He similarly exhorted us, “Wherefore, I beseech of you, brethren, that ye should search diligently in the light of Christ that ye may know good from evil; and if ye will lay hold upon every good thing, and condemn it not, ye certainly will be a child of Christ.” While to lay hold on every good thing encompasses perhaps more than the word of God, his focus again here was on the word: “Wherefore, by the ministering of angels, and by every word which proceeded forth out of the mouth of God, men began to exercise faith in Christ; and thus by faith, they did lay hold upon every good thing” (Moroni 7:18,25). We must hold on to the promises and testimonies, the warnings and revelations contained in the word of God and given even by angels. Ultimately to lay hold on the word of God is to hold fast to the Word of God, the Savior, and Mormon’s son Moroni invited us to do just that in his final words in the Book of Mormon: “And again I would exhort you that ye would come unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift, and touch not the evil gift, nor the unclean thing.” We must come unto the Savior and hang on to all that is good from Him—especially His word—and we will be “perfected in him” (Moroni 10:30,32). All of these passages encourage us to symbolically hang on to the word of God, to feast upon the words of Christ each day and hold fast to them. Most of us have a phone that we have trouble being apart from for even a few minutes; we take it with us wherever we go and hang onto it at all times. Surely that is how we should feel about the scriptures, holding on to them so firmly that we never want to be apart from them or go very long without reading in their pages.