The New and Everlasting Covenant

Recently, I was given the opportunity to teach a lesson on temple sealings, and more than a few participants seemed confused on the nature of the new and everlasting covenant.

We find references to this covenant in D&C 131:2 and in various verses of D&C 132, just to mention two relevant sections of The Doctrine and Covenants. The new and everlasting covenant is the restored gospel of Jesus Christ made available to the inhabitants of the earth in this the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times.

Thus it logically follows, and so it is, that the everlasting covenant is the gospel of Jesus Christ that predates the creation of this world. For example, consider the “Lord’s Preface” for The Doctrine and Covenants that we know as Section one. “. . . For they have strayed from mine ordinances, and have broken mine everlasting covenant; . . .” (verse 15). In verses 21 to 23, we read, “. . . That faith also might increase in the earth; That mine everlasting covenant might be established; That the fulness of my gospel might be proclaimed by the weak and the simple unto the ends of the world, and before kings and rulers.”

The saving ordinances of the gospel are baptism, confirmation, receipt of the priesthood, the temple endowment, and eternal marriage. These ordinances exist in every dispensation of the gospel. At the beginning of each dispensation when the gospel was restored to the earth, it was called a new and everlasting covenant i.e., the everlasting covenant newly restored to the earth. It follows that today we have the new and everlasting covenant of baptism, the new and everlasting covenant of confirmation, etc. So we should not be surprised to read that a temple sealing or the eternal marriage covenant is referred to in the scriptures as “the new and everlasting covenant of marriage” (D&C 131:2).