The scriptures tell us to learn line upon line through faith. A good example of this is from the below verses of revealed scripture we can see that Adam was performing an action out of faith. He did not understand why he was doing it at first but “after many days” of showing faith, the meaning of the commandment was revealed to Adam.
Moses 5:6-7
And after many days an angel of the Lord appeared unto Adam, saying: Why dost thou offer sacrifices unto the Lord? And Adam said unto him: I know not, save the Lord commanded me.
And then the angel spake, saying: This thing is a similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father, which is full of grace and truth.
I’m sure we all have had commandments that we followed out of faith, despite not understanding the why behind it; however, that are also times when through a journey of faith, study, prayer, and patience, we come to understand it better. Having been on this journey we get the privilege of greater understand and experience.
With this greater understanding and experience, we are now able to take on greater challenges of learning and growing our understanding. As it says in scriptures such as: Isaiah 28:10,13; Doctrine and Covenants 98:12; and 2 Nephi 28:30, we can follow this pattern to learn “line upon line, precept upon precept” as we continue to gain greater understandings about the gospel and our purpose on earth.
Why not All at Once?
May times people wish they could just skip ahead and learn it all at once, but as we can see from these scriptures, this is not the way that God works. I believe there’s a good reason for this. The answers we seek are often unobtainable to us because we haven’t taken the journey of learning and growth that is needed to prepare us for a more challenging journey required to gain the knowledge we seek.
It would be like trying to run a marathon when you haven’t ever done any running before in your life. You’ll likely fail very early on in the journey to the finish line. Or trying to understand calculus before learning basic algebra. We need to first understand the basics, and show faith in what we have so far before we are ready for the more challenging and deeper understandings.
Jesus learned Line Upon Line
The scriptures even tell us that Jesus himself did not have all his knowledge at once:
And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.
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And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.
We too must learn a little at a time, and not expect to have all the answers we seek all at once. Many times we just need to have faith.