Many Latter-day Saint youth may have had their first exposure to the Song of Solomon in seminary or on a mission. “Tear it out of your Bible,” “Staple the pages together,” or “Write ‘DO NOT READ’ on the title page with your red scripture marker!” are variants of stories passed on about what seminary teachers or mission presidents have advised. Since such sensational admonitions are almost guaranteed to pique teenagers’ curiosity, they are presumably more alive in student rumors than in the actual practice of seminary and institute instructors or mission leaders. Such stories may be reactions to Bruce R. McConkie’s oft-quoted evaluation of the Song of Solomon as “biblical trash,” akin to verbal pornography.1 Yet nearly twenty years earlier Spencer W. Kimball had approvingly cited a verse from the Song of Solomon in an address entitled “Love vs. Lust”: “For love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire” (Song 8:6).2 With such variant considerations of the Song, it is easy to see how Latter-day Saints might wonder about the Song’s proper place in the canon of the restored Church. pp.21

This is a commentary on Sections 124-138 of the Doctrine and Covenants to be studied in the Come, Follow Me—for Home and Church manual from October 27 through December 28, 2025. It covers some of our Church’s history from April 1839 to November 1918. It also includes a commentary on the two Official Declarations, The Articles of Faith, and the Family: A Proclamation to the World. There is also some material on proxy ordinances, plural marriage, Joseph’s Smith’s wives and polyandry, the founding of the Relief Society, the social and historical background of Joseph and Hyrum’s murders, the following succession crisis in the Church with the eight options open to the Church, the manner of succession to the presidency of the Church today, the American-Mexican War, the Church context of the Civil War, the varying policies of the Church with regards to race and priesthood, the end of plural marriage in the Church, the creation of the state of Utah, politics for a Christian, gender issues around same sex attraction, marriage and how to make it work, a previously unpublished parable on the law of chastity, and an essay on Christmas with excursions into Luke and Matthew’s nativity narratives. And all this in only six hundred odd pages—another Xmas miracle! pp.608