“Abide”

Church Educational System

After spending a year in Chile, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland shared the following insight concerning the word abide: “‘Abide in me’ is an understandable and beautiful enough concept in the elegant English for the King James Bible, but abide is not a word we use much anymore. So I gained even more appreciation for this admonition from the Lord when I was introduced to the translation of this passage in another language. In Spanish that familiar phrase is rendered permaneced en mi. Like the English verb abide, permanecer means ‘to remain, to stay,’ but even [English-speakers] like me can hear the root cognate there of ‘permanence.’ The sense of this, then, is ‘stay—but stay forever’” (in Conference Report, Apr. 2004, 32; or Ensign, May 2004, 32).

Book of Mormon Student Manual (2009 Edition)

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