Seven of Everything

Jesus asked His disciples, "whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." ( Matt 16:13-19 ) There are three things here that can all be called the rock: 1 Jesus Christ - He is referred to as the rock many times and it is Him and His divinity about whom the question was asked and the conversation was based. 2 Revelation - It was revelation that Jesus emphasized as the means that brought about this knowledge. This teaches of th...

The New Testament has very little direct reference to understanding the organization of the Kingdom of God the way that it has since been revealed to Joseph Smith. But now that we know more about how the Kingdom of God is organized, we can look back and understand more clearly what was meant by Jesus. Matthew 13 has seven parables that are both instructive as individual parables and, in their proper order, relating to the future of when the parables were given. Here I will only focus on the first parable and how it refers to the Kingdom of God in connection with what has been revealed to Joseph Smith regarding our understanding of the kingdoms within the Kingdom. We know that the parable of the sower has a direct reference to the Kingdom of God because Jesus states that this is the purpose of telling parables in Matthew 13:10-11 . The sower is a parable, which means it has hidden meanings that may not be apparent initially. From Joseph Smith we learn that after the resurrection, w...