A generation ago, in the mid-1980s, I was asked to speak at a fireside on "The Old Testament: Sominex of the Scriptures?"

I had to ask many questions to get to the point of what I was being asked to teach. It turned out that in an Old Testament year of Sunday School study people were lamenting the course of study as boring; they were convinced the Old Testament was sleep-inducing and not as "fun" as they wished. Apparently "Sominex" is a medication in America to help put you to sleep at night.

I was a bit stunned at the request but after I had recovered from the shock and disappointment that Latter-day Saints would consider any part of the word of the Lord in such terms I began a vigorous effort to try to correct these views and to show how marvelous the Old Testament can be. I soon realized that the problem is not with the subject matter; the problem is always with the reader or student.

A silly little thought I heard years ago comes to mind: A man complained to his doctor that he was always falling out of bed. The doctor suggested to the man that it might be because he didn't get into it far enough.

The divine command on the scriptures has ever been that we search them, study, treasure their abundant truths, feast upon the words of Christ, pay the price and stretch our minds, with an abundance of satisfying rewards and blessings for our having done so. If we attempt a half-hearted study and come away with little or nothing, then we have received precisely what we have earned.

Does anyone actually think that the Lord is boring? Think on the last stunning sunset you witnessed, the vivid double rainbow you saw in April, the birth of a child with all of its wonder and complexity, a waterfall, the mystery of a forest at dusk. Is the Lord and Creator of all of it a boring Person?

We have pointed out previously that "Unless we see Jesus everywhere in the Old Testament, there is no understanding of the Old Testament at all" (Glenn L. Pearson, June 1986 Ensign, p. 17). To illustrate: the serpent on the pole in Numbers chapter 21 is as clear a type of Christ and His crucifixion as could possibly exist. Yet it was taught last week in one Church classroom that a serpent could not possibly refer to the Savior, that a serpent was a symbol of Satan. . . . And so a great teaching moment was lost.

Truly, as the Prophet Joseph taught in quoting an Alexander Pope poem, "A little learning is a dangerous thing / Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring; / There, shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, / And drinking deeply sobers us again."

Many of us are drunk with shallow knowledge and understanding, and the only cure is to drink deeply of the living waters of the scriptures. The serpent on the pole from Numbers 21 is a clear and vivid picture of the Savior on the cross. The Gospel of John in the New Testament clearly shows this to be so: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life" (3:14--15).

But this is not all, in no less than four places in the Book of Mormon the picture first presented in Numbers finds clear explanation as a type and picture of Jesus on the cross. The picture has been perpetuated in modern medicine with the intertwined serpents on the winged pole ("with healing in his wings") and is known as the "caduceus". I wish I could draw one for you here.

Andrew Jukes wrote, "The types are indeed pictures, but to understand the picture it is necessary we should know something of the reality . . . and the greater the acquaintance with the reality, the greater will be the ability to explain the picture" (The Law of the Offerings, p 14).

I sense that we are missing the point, blurring the picture, distorting the reality, and the result is that we do not teach it right. And He and His doctrine, wherein alone is found salvation, go unseen.

Recall, "They shall come to the knowledge of their Redeemer and the very points of his doctrine, that they may know how to come unto him and be saved" (1 Nephi 15:14).

Indeed the Old Testament is boring and sleep-inducing if all we do is read it as literature, or as a daily goal. But if we search it and value it as the multi-faceted witness of Christ that it truly is, then it is life and light to the soul, rich and vibrant and life giving. Speaking to those who considered that they already were on the path to eternal life, and speaking of the Old Testament, Jesus said in John 5:39, "Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

More later.

Steve