Fundamentals of the Law of Consecration and Stewardship (3,9)

• All members of a Zion society enjoy equality
• Equal not in the sense that all members of the society owned the same things, but equal in the sense that each got what was needed for their subsistence. According to each individual's circumstances, wants, and needs
• Everyone dealing honestly and being alike
. Consider the following wise words from Dr. Ruy Barbosa, a Brazilian legal scholar at the beginning of the 20th century, on true equality:

"The rule of equality consists only in unequally rewarding unequals according to the measure of their inequality. In this social inequality ... is found the true law of equality. All else are just frenzies of envy, pride, or madness. To unequally treat equals, or to treat unequals with equality, would be flagrant inequality, and not real equality.

The human appetites have conceived the inversion of the universal norm, pretending not to give to each one according to the measure of what they are worth; but instead, to attribute the same to all, as if all were equivalent.

This blasphemy against reason and faith, against civilization and humanity, is the philosophy of misery proclaimed in the name of labor rights. Once implemented, it would inaugurate not the supremacy of work, but the organization of misery."   Ruy Barbosa (1849-1923)   Prayer to the Youth, 1923

Missouri is identified as a future place of gathering for the first time (2-3, 42-43)

Another instruction to the missionaries: Preach only what the prophets and apostles have taught and the things received by revelation (9)

"To cut short": to stop before the end; to abbreviate  (11)

How to judge if one is an accepted (or authorized) servant of the Lord (15-19)

. Must have received the saving ordinances
. Must produce fruit of praise and wisdom according to the latter-day revelations

An early warning: repent, be humble and contrite, or else ... (3)

Questions for Review

1. Church welfare is administered by Bishops according to which variables? (51:3)

2. Under the Law of Consecration and Stewardship, did the notion of having “all things common” mean that everyone got the same amount of temporal goods? (51:3)

3. In what two sources should missionaries obtain the word to be preached to others? (52:9)