Dear Gramps,
Someone recently suggested to me that I should only study the scriptures and not rely on someone else’s (like Gramps’) interpretation and comments about them. Your comments have helped me a lot in understanding various topics and have motivated me to think and study further.  Your answers have been a great inspiration to me and I suspect to many others as well. How should I respond to that someone who suggested not to read your comments?
Peter, from Thousand Oaks, California

Dear Peter,
Your question is a little complex. Let’s see if we can digest it. Statement: “One should only study the scriptures.” If it were given that that statement were true, it would then be appropriate to unsubscribe to the Ensign, and to destroy the saved copies that one has. The next that must go would be all the books written by the prophets of God. I wonder if the person would attempt to make a living from his study of the scriptures since he would be proscribed from studying any college text book. But that may be going a little too far, so let’s allow the studying of college texts, but disallow the studying of any religious text. The problem there would be that we are placing our faith in the arm of flesh–giving more credence to the professors than to the prophets.
So perhaps, by having made a juxtaposition between the scriptures and Gramps, the person didn’t mean what he said in the strictest sense, but perhaps rather something like we should only study the scriptures and the words of the prophets, who are authorized to speak for God. That sheds a bit of a different light on the matter, and referring specifically to the Gramps articles, he may have a point. So one could limit one’s study to the scriptures and the prophets, and throw away all other literature that expound on the scriptures and the words of the prophets. Here Gramps has a difficult time defending himself. So my belief is that all that Gramps says should be taken with a grain of salt. In other words, none of Gramps’ articles should be accepted just because they were written by someone called Gramps. But since they treat mostly religious subjects, at least those subjects should be viewed in the spirit of prayer and with an appeal for the influence of the Holy Ghost to reveal to the reader if they are consistent with the truth or not. Any time that the inspiration comes that they are not consistent with the truth they should immediately be trashed and given no more consideration. But it the Spirit testifies to the truthfulness of that which is said, then they could be accepted in the same light as anything else that would be approved by the Spirit of God.
Gramps