Every lamp must be filled by the person who carries it. An artistic illustration of the personal preparation taught in Matthew 25:1–13.
CFM-07 · Jeremiah 1–29 · Full lesson collection
Jeremiah 29:13 and Elder David A. Bednar: the Lord’s promise went to the searchers, not to the people who trusted the house.
In April 2019, Elder David A. Bednar stood in general conference and said something many of us have never heard said that plainly:
"We should not expect the Church as an organization to teach or tell us everything we need to know and do to become devoted disciples and endure valiantly to the end."
He went further:
"If all you or I know about Jesus Christ and His restored gospel is what other people teach or tell us, then the foundation of our testimony of Him and His glorious latter-day work is built upon sand."
Built upon sand. That’s the Savior’s word for the house that falls (Matthew 7:26–27).
An apostle is not belittling the Church when he says this. He’s telling us what it’s for. The Church was never meant to carry you.
What the house is for
Elder Bednar set the line carefully. Each of us, he said, has "an individual responsibility to learn and live the Lord’s teachings and to receive by proper authority the ordinances of salvation and exaltation."
By proper authority. You can’t baptize yourself. You can’t seal yourself. You can’t hand yourself the priesthood. The Church holds the keys, the ordinances, the covenants, and the scriptures. No searcher can supply those alone.
But the Church can’t learn for you. It can’t pray for you. It can’t know the Lord for you. Elder Bednar again:
"We cannot expect simply to attend Church meetings and participate in programs and thereby receive all of the spiritual edification and protection that will enable us ‘to withstand in the evil day.’"
The house supports. The searcher climbs.
The people who expected the house to carry them
Jeremiah met a whole city that believed the opposite.
They had the temple Solomon built. And they had a slogan, said three times at the gate:
"Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, are these." (Jeremiah 7:4)
The temple is here, so we’re safe. The house will carry us.
The Lord called that a lie. Then He sent them to look at the ruins of the first house that bore His name: "go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and see what I did to it" (7:12).
A house can bear His name and still not carry the people inside it.
The people who had no house at all
Twenty-two chapters later, Jeremiah writes a letter to the captives already carried off to Babylon.
They had no temple. It was hundreds of miles away, and it would soon be burned. No altar, no priests at work, no house of the Lord at all.
And to them, not to the people in the temple gate, the Lord gave the promise:
"Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart." (Jeremiah 29:12–13)
The word for "search" is the Hebrew darash. It means to tread a path, to go somewhere again and again to ask. It’s the word for a seeker who keeps showing up.
The people with the house trusted it and lost it. The people without the house searched and found Him.
The promise went to the searchers.
"I have learned for myself"
Elder Bednar pointed to the pattern that opened this dispensation. A fourteen-year-old came home from a grove of trees and told his mother, "I have learned for myself" (Joseph Smith—History 1:20).
The Book of Mormon opens the same way. Nephi heard everything his father saw in vision. A good son could have stopped there. He didn’t:
"I, Nephi, was desirous also that I might see, and hear, and know of these things, by the power of the Holy Ghost, which is the gift of God unto all those who diligently seek him." (1 Nephi 10:17)
He heard it from his father. Then he went and got it from the Lord. The next verse finds him "caught away in the Spirit of the Lord… into an exceedingly high mountain" (11:1).
Alma said it of himself: "I have fasted and prayed many days that I might know these things of myself. And now I do know of myself that they are true" (Alma 5:46).
Heard it. Then searched it. Then knew it.
Oil cannot be lent
The Savior told a story about ten young women waiting for the bridegroom. Five ran out of oil. They asked the other five to share.
"Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves." (Matthew 25:8–9)
That isn’t stinginess. It’s how oil works. You can’t borrow it from a bishop, a parent, a teacher, a favorite author, or this website. Every lamp gets filled by the one who carries it.
And the Lord meters it. Alma taught that the word is given "according to the heed and diligence which they give unto him" (Alma 12:9). The one who keeps a soft heart receives "the greater portion of the word." The one who hardens his heart receives "the lesser portion of the word until they know nothing concerning his mysteries" (12:10–11).
No one can give you their portion. No one can take yours.
The house stands. The sorting is personal.
In October 2024, Elder Bednar drew the line one more way. Apostasy, he said, can happen at two levels, institutional and individual, and "at the institutional level, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will not be lost through apostasy or taken from the earth."
That’s a promise about the house. It isn’t a promise about you.
The Lord told Joseph Smith that His judgment "upon my house shall it begin," and He named who it begins with: "those among you… who have professed to know my name and have not known me" (D&C 112:25–26).
He doesn’t sort by membership. He sorts by who knows Him.
They had the house, and missed the Lord of the house
This has happened before.
Malachi promised that "the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple" (Malachi 3:1). He came. He walked into the very temple they trusted, overturned the tables, and quoted Jeremiah to their faces: "ye have made it a den of thieves" (Matthew 21:13).
The people who trusted the house didn’t know its Lord when He walked in. Before Him came John, and "they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them" (Matthew 17:12).
President Brigham Young warned that "the Gentiles will be as much mistaken in regard to his second advent as the Jews were in relation to the first" (Journal of Discourses 8:115).
The house didn’t save them from missing Him. Only knowing Him would have.
Where the road goes
Next week’s reading shows where all this searching ends. Jeremiah 31 promises a new covenant, written not on stone but in the heart:
"And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them." (Jeremiah 31:34)
Isaiah promised it too: "all thy children shall be taught of the LORD" (Isaiah 54:13). Jesus quoted it: "It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God" (John 6:45).
That’s the end of borrowed light. Not because the Church goes away, but because every person in it finally knows the Lord for themselves.
Elder Bednar said it’s urgent: learning for ourselves, at home and supported by the Church, "will be even more vital in the future."
Before next Sunday
Read Jeremiah 29:11–13 out loud. Notice who the promise was written to: people with no temple.
Pick one question you’ve only ever had answered by someone else. Take it to the Lord yourself. Go back to it every day this week. That’s darash.
Ask the hard one: If everything I know about Christ came from someone else, what’s my house built on?
"And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart." — Jeremiah 29:13
Ken Krogue is a co-founder of The Covenant Project and has been deeply searching Isaiah for more than ten years. He writes with two AI research partners, Orson (Claude) and Nathan (ChatGPT), and approves every word.
For another way to approach your study: Seven Ways People Read Isaiah.
Continue searching CFM-07
- Jeremiah Stood in the Temple Gate and Called It a "Den of Robbers." The Priests and Prophets Tried to Kill Him.
- Jeremiah Promised David "a Righteous Branch." Zechariah Called the Branch "My Servant."
- Judah Burned Its Children in the Valley of Hinnom. Jesus Used That Valley’s Name for Hell.
- Why We Split Jeremiah Into Two Lessons at Chapter 30
- The Rest of the Book: Jeremiah & Lamentations
