January 10, 2008

Today we finished out the book of Deuteronomy. We spent a little time in some of the earlier chapters. Some of the students role-played a situation which was in regards to Revelation 22:18. This is the scripture that says that nothing can be added to the scriptures. The students who role played asked questions using this scripture regarding the validity of the Book of Mormon. We followed the cross reference in Revelations back to Deuteronomy 4:2 which almost exactly repeated the Revelations scripture. However, as we discussed it, we could see that Moses was talking about the commandments. That we can't add to, or take anything away from God's commands. We also discussed that this Deuteronomy scripture was given in the time of Moses - roughly 1200 BC. Therefore, if this scripture were to be taken literally, it would completely invalidate the entire rest of the bible!!
We then skipped to Deuteronomy 17:18-20. Here we found a commandment to read the scriptures and study them every single day. There are some great blessings which are connected with this commandment found in verse 20. It's interesting to see that just as the prophets of today ask us to read our scriptures every day, even in the time of Moses they too had this guidance and direction from the prophets. The gospel doesn't change too much throughout time. In chapter 29 we looked at some verses that discussed how the Israelites' clothing never got old, nor their shoes - even after 40 years of wandering around and camping in the wilderness - truly the Lord was looking out for them.
And we finally discussed some of the blessings and promises found in the latter chapters, and how Moses died/was translated and how next week we will read about Joshua taking them into the promised land.
To finish out class today, we played a scattergories game with the book of Deuteronomy. The students looked for certain people, places, prophecies, commandments, curses, blessings etc which started with specific letters.

Tomorrow we will be passing off Proverbs 3:5-6 and playing the fly swatter game.
The reading for next week is Joshua 1-5