The Church’s Come, Follow Me program for 2025 is the Doctrine and Covenants. As we begin this new year of study, there are many resources that can help us to better understand and appreciate the Doctrine and Covenants.
What is the Come, Follow Me program?
President Russell M. Nelson introduced the “Come, Follow Me” program in the October 2018 General Conference:
“This morning we will announce a new balance and connection between gospel instruction in the home and in the Church. We are each responsible for our individual spiritual growth. And scriptures make it clear that parents have the primary responsibility to teach the doctrine to their children. It is the responsibility of the Church to assist each member in the divinely defined goal of increasing his or her gospel knowledge.”1
After President Nelson introduced this new “connection between gospel instruction in the home and in the Church,” Elder Quentin L. Cook provided some details regarding this new program:
“Family and individual gospel study at home will be significantly enhanced by a harmonized curriculum and a new Come, Follow Me resource for individuals and families that is coordinated with what is being taught in Sunday School and Primary.”2
The Come, Follow Me manual states the purpose of the manual:
“This resource is for anyone who wants to study the Doctrine and Covenants—individually, as a family, and in Church classes. If you haven’t studied the scriptures regularly in the past, this resource can help you get started. If you already have a good habit of scripture study, this resource can help you have more meaningful experiences.”3
Over the last several years, we have begun using the phrase “Come, Follow Me” to describe gospel study. People will say something like, “What did you do for your ‘Come, Follow Me’ this week,” or “for ‘Come, Follow Me’ this week I watched this podcast,” or other such statements. The Church’s instructions are clear that we should be studying the scriptures. There are many resources to help us improve the effectiveness of our studies, but the focus of our study should be the scriptures.
The “Come, Follow Me” program is a resource to help us better understand and apply what we learn in the Doctrine and Covenants. The purpose of the program is clear:
“The aim of all gospel learning and teaching is to deepen our conversion and help us become more like Jesus Christ. For this reason, when we study the gospel, we’re not just looking for new information; we want to become a ‘new creature’ (2 Corinthians 5:17). This means relying on Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ to help us change our hearts, our views, our actions, and our very natures. . . . True conversion requires the influence of the Holy Ghost.”4
Why I love the Doctrine and Covenants
I haven’t always loved the Doctrine and Covenants. In my first semester at BYU (starting in August 1992), I took a Book of Mormon class. I loved it, and it created in me a desire to continue to study the Book of Mormon. In 1996, I attended study abroad at the BYU Jerusalem Center, which was essentially a five-month intensive study of the Bible. We took classes focused on the Bible, then visited the sites where those events happened. I developed a love of the Bible and have studied it ever since.
But I have always struggled with the Doctrine and Covenants (“D&C”). I took a D&C class at BYU, but I don’t remember much about it. I tried studying it, but would always give up because I didn’t like it.
At the beginning of 2013, the topic of study for the gospel doctrine class was the D&C. My goal for that year was to learn to love the Doctrine and Covenants. I made an effort, but I still really struggled. I didn’t like it, and I couldn’t figure out why.
Then in February 2013, I had to take a work trip to Idaho, and so I was looking for something to listen to during the drive. I found a podcast called “The Joseph Smith Papers.” I didn’t know what it was, but thought it would be related to my study of the D&C. As I listened, I was amazed at what I heard. There were a lot of things about Church history that I didn’t know, and was surprised that I didn’t know them. I was 39 years old at the time, had grown up in the Church, and had studied. So as I heard all these things I didn’t know, I decided I needed to focus on Church history while I studied the Doctrine and Covenants.
I dove into Church history. I read as much as I could get. There is more to this story, which I discuss in the “About Me” page of this site, but the point for this post is that my study of Church history helped me learn to love the Doctrine and Covenants.
I learned that I need stories to enjoy the scriptures. As I studied Church history while I was reading the Doctrine and Covenants, I started to see the stories behind the sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. The Doctrine and Covenants contain revelations received by the Lord’s prophet, directing the Lord’s people how to act in certain situations, and instructing them as they had questions. I realized that I learn from the stories in the scriptures. The Lord wants us to live his gospel, so as I learned the stories, I better learned how to live the doctrines exemplified by those stories.
Example: the Colesville Saints
The Colesville Saints are an example of a story that runs through the Doctrine and Covenants. Colesville, New York was a short distance away from Harmony, Pennsylvania. Harmony is where Emma Smith’s family lived, where Joseph and Emma lived after they were married, and it’s where Joseph and Oliver Cowdery first worked together on the translation of the Book of Mormon. Harmony is the Church’s historical site honoring the priesthood restoration. I have written a post about Colesville and Harmony, discussing primarily the geography and a general overview of events in those areas.
Colesville is the home to many faithful, early Saints. But perhaps the most prominent is the Joseph Knight family. Joseph Knight provided supplies to Joseph while he was working on the Book of Mormon. When the Lord commanded the Saints to leave New York and move to Ohio, Joseph Knight and his family went. In Kirtland, Joseph Knight and other Colesville Saints were making their home on land owned by a man named Leman Copley, but Copley changed his mind and told Joseph that he wanted his land back, so the Colesville Saints found themselves without a home. Following instructions from the Lord (through Joseph), they moved to Missouri. Early in their stay in Missouri, Polly Knight, the wife of Joseph Knight, died. During all the persecutions in Missouri, the Colesville Saints moved from one place to another, until they ended up moving to Nauvoo. At the death of Joseph Smith, Joseph Knight and his family followed Brigham Young and the apostles. Joseph and Newell Knight both died on the journey to Utah.
There are many references to these faithful saints throughout the Doctrine and Covenants. Their story is intertwined with the story of the restoration, and is an example of how we can see the story of the early saints in the revelations that are now called the “Doctrine and Covenants.” Here are a few examples of the references to the Colesville Saints in the Doctrine and Covenants:
- D&C 26 – Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and John Whitmer are told to “confirm the church at Colesville.”
- D&C 37 – The Lord commands the Saints to move to Ohio.
- D&C 38:32 – The Lord emphasizes the commandment to move to Ohio.
- D&C 38:37 – This is a particularly poignant verse, as the Lord emphasized the need to move to Ohio, and says, “And they that have farms that cannot be sold, let them be left or rented as seemeth them good.”
- This is relevant to the Colesville Saints, because they followed the Lord’s instruction to leave their home in Colesville and move to Ohio. Joseph Knight’s home is now a historical site.5 In the home, they have a framed newspaper advertisement:
In the Doctrine and Covenants, we read about the Lord’s commandment to move to Ohio, and in the lives of Joseph Knight and the Colesville Saints, we see the faith required to follow that commandment. But that is not the only sacrifice that the Coleville Saints made.
- D&C 54 – When the Coleville Saints moved to Ohio, they began making their home on land owned by Leman Copley. Brother Copley had consecrated his farm as a place for the Coleville Saints to live, but he changed his mind and so the Coleville Saints needed a new place to live. Newel Knight, the son of Joseph Knight, asked Joseph Smith what they should do, and the revelation received by Joseph (what is now D&C 54) told the Coleville Saints to move to Missouri.
- D&C 59 – Shortly after the Coleville Saints arrived in Missouri, Polly Knight, the wife of Joseph Knight, died. It is not clear whether this revelation was given as a result of her death, but records indicate that Joseph received it on the same day.
- D&C 124:132 – In January 1841, Newel Knight was called to the High Council. Although the revelations don’t detail the trials of the Colesville Saints as a result of the persecutions in Missouri, or their suffering as they left yet another home and moved to Nauvoo, their story is an example of faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.
Although the entirety of the story of the Colesville Saints is not told in the Doctrine and Covenants, we can see, woven through the revelations, their challenges, their faith, their trust in the Lord’s prophet, and their desire to seek and do the will of the Lord.
This is only one example, but it shows how we can find the stories in the Doctrine and Covenants.
Sources to find the stories
Although there is quite a bit of factual information that we can find in the Doctrine and Covenants, there are many sources that can help us to find the stories.
- Revelations in Context. This book, published by the Church, gives the “context,” or the story, of the revelations found in the Doctrine and Covenants. For example, the story of the Colesville Saints is told briefly in this book, in the chapter called “The Journey of the Colesville Branch.” The various chapters are brief, each chapter is a separate story, and each chapter references related sections of the Doctrine and Covenants.
- Joseph Smith’s Revelations: A Doctrine and Covenants Study Companion from the Joseph Smith Papers. This is a tremendous collection of information prepared by the editors of the Joseph Smith Papers. It contains information for each section of the Doctrine and Covenants, giving the context, and quoting the revelation as found in the historical records. The “Revelations in Context” is organized by the stories, and is an easier read, but “Joseph Smith’s Revelations” gives information for each section of the Doctrine and Covenants. This book is only available electronically.
- Saints, Volume 1, The Standard of Trust, 1815-1846. This first volume of the four-part series tells the history of the Church in narrative form. It is written as a story, but it has footnotes that reference related sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. A reader of the Doctrine and Covenants can look up the section they’re reading in “Revelations in Context” and “Joseph Smith’s Revelations” to gain greater insight. Because “Saints” is written more in a narrative style, it might take a little more work to find information related to specific sections, but it is written in such an easy and beautiful style that I highly recommend it as a way to learn the stories of the Doctrine and Covenants.
- Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual. This is the manual published for the Church’s institutes of religion. This manual is primarily focused on a discussion of the doctrines contained in the revelations, but it also contains a historical introduction, timelines for events found in the referenced sections, and maps that can help locate the events.
- Doctrine and Covenants Historical Resources. This is a tool that has been organized to coincide with the Come Follow Me schedule. For each week of the Come, Follow Me lesson, this resource references corresponding chapters in Revelations in Context and Saints. It also has a list of people discussed in those sections, and links to read more about those individuals. This is a tremendous resource that will be extremely valuable in studying the Come, Follow Me lesson each week.
- The Church’s Gospel Library has a link called “Church History,” with a significant amount of information and additional sources.
- For those who are willing to put in a little more work, I would recommend that you explore the Joseph Smith Papers website (josephsmithpapers.org). There is so much information on this site that it can be fairly daunting, but a few of the sites to help with a study of the Doctrine and Covenants could be the Videos, Charts, Maps, and Podcasts. These resources can help us learn the stories that are told through the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants.
Come, Follow Me: find the stories in the Doctrine and Covenants
In a recent post titled “Revelation: The Heavens are Open,” Casey Mortensen wrote about how the Doctrine and Covenants teaches us the pattern for seeking and receiving revelation. That post discusses the pattern of revelation through the example of Joseph Smith’s First Vision. Knowing the stories of the revelations contained in the Doctrine and Covenants can help us learn how to live the gospel.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is meant to be lived. There are many doctrines that can feel esoteric, but are easier to understand as we see examples of how the Lord’s disciples have lived those doctrines. One way to better understand and learn from the Doctrine and Covenants is to find the stories that resulted in those revelations.
References
- Russell M. Nelson, “Opening Remarks,” October 2018, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2018/10/opening-remarks?lang=eng&id=p11#p11. ↩︎
- Quentin L. Cook, “Deep and Lasting Conversion to Heavenly Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” October 2018, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2018/10/deep-and-lasting-conversion-to-heavenly-father-and-the-lord-jesus-christ?lang=eng&id=p17#p17. ↩︎
- Come, Follow Me-For Home and Church: Doctrine and Covenants 2025, page 2, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/come-follow-me-for-home-and-church-doctrine-and-covenants-2025/002-using?lang=eng&id=p1#p1. ↩︎
- Come, Follow Me-for Home and Church: Doctrine and Covenants 2025, page 1, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/come-follow-me-for-home-and-church-doctrine-and-covenants-2025/001-conversion?lang=eng&id=p1-p2#p1. ↩︎
- The Joseph Knight home is not run by the Church, but by a private foundation organized by the Knight family. See https://www.josephknightfamily.org/history. I’ve also written a post about my family’s visit to Colesville, and a few facts about the geography of the area. See https://discoverfaithinchrist.com/harmony-pa-and-colesville-ny/. ↩︎