Of Christmas and More than an Infant

Photo by Stephen Andrews on Unsplash

This Christmas many people will sing and speak praises of a baby born in Bethlehem 2021 years ago.  Unfortunately, too many people never get past that story of the “Babe of Bethlehem.”  It is sweet, it is joyful, but it is not enough. 

The birth of Jesus, the Son of God, was miraculous.  Unlike the birth of anyone else, his birth was prophesied over thousands of years, with prophecies fulfilled in every particular, and prophecies that are continuing and accelerating in their fulfillment today.  What does that mean for us?  It means that this is all part of a very big deal.  It is what the prophet Alma said “is of more importance than” all (Alma 7:7).

We love to sing Christmas carols.  The words of carols, however, can at times challenge the vocabulary of little children.  In my younger years of singing “The First Noel” I was certain that the word “certain” in the second line was a verb, not an adjective.  “The first Noel the angel did say/ Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay. . . ”  In my young mind “certain” described what and why the angel was speaking to the shepherds.  The angel appeared in order to certain the shepherds.

Today I am not so sure that I was wrong in hearing a verb.  The angel wanted those shepherds to know, to understand, to be certain of what they saw, and thereby to become witnesses of something extremely important.  The angel explained what was happening, what it meant, where it was happening, how to recognize the marvel, and then the shepherds quickly went to see for themselves, personally.  Immediately afterward they shared with others what they knew. 

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy . . . . For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.  And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. . . . And they came with haste, and found . . . the babe lying in a manger.  And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. (Luke 2:8-17, emphasis added)

Following His resurrection, Jesus was careful to make His disciples certain of His resurrection so that they might witness to others of what they knew, enabling others at first to believe and then come to know for themselves by the testimony of the Holy Ghost.

The Father and the Son want us to know so that we might understand—actually, so that we might not misunderstand.  They appeared to Joseph Smith, such that Joseph’s knowledge was, from the first, certain.  He then could testify, “I had actually seen a light, and in the midst of that light I saw two Personages, and they did in reality speak to me . . .” (Joseph Smith History 1:25)

I have gained my own witness that Joseph’s certainty was true.  I, too, have been certained by the power of the Holy Ghost.  I know for sure that God is real and that Jesus Christ is the resurrected Savior of the world.  God has given certain witness to Joseph Smith and the prophets since then, including the prophet today, Russell M. Nelson.  Many have believed and had belief confirmed into certainty by the assurance of the Holy Ghost.

The words to the carol, “What Child Is This?” are a soul-deep meditation on why the birth of this Baby is so important.  The musings lead to an answer found in what this Child would later do. 

I fear that many modern renditions of the carol miss—or perhaps even avoid—the point. Among the dozen or so recordings of that carol in my possession, I discovered to my surprise that all but maybe four leave out the second of three verses written by William C. Dix, the one that holds a central place explaining why this birth was important.  Some repeat, again and again, the true declaration that this Child is “Christ the King.” Recognition of that reality is essential, but how far does it get you?  Even Herod believed and feared that prophecy, a belief that goaded him to destroy all the babes of Bethlehem that his soldiers could find.

Why did Christ the King find it necessary to lower Himself to be born among men?  That is the central question, the answer to which converts our attitude toward Christ from reverence for a Divine Monarch into deeply felt love born of joy and boundless gratitude.  The second verse, too often skipped, explains what is at the heart of Christmas.  Here are the words.

Why lies He in such mean estate,

Where ox and ass are feeding?

Good Christians, fear, for sinners here

The silent Word is pleading.

Nails, spear shall pierce Him through,

The cross be borne for me, for you.

Hail, hail the Word made flesh,

The babe, the Son of Mary.

This little Child would be pierced by nails and spear when He was older but no less innocent.  Why would He submit to that?  Why would the King submit to that?

Among the beautiful carols of Christmas there is one that surely seems odd and out of place. The haunting melody is in significant measure responsible for its lasting popularity, but the words are anything but joyful for a joyful celebration. Rather than recount the birth of the Savior, Jesus Christ, the song expresses the inconsolable sorrow of a mother of Bethlehem mourning the cruel murder of her little child. Popularly known as “The Coventry Carol,” it includes these words:

O sisters, too, how may we do,

For to preserve this day;

This poor Youngling for whom we sing,

By, by, lully, lullay.

 

Herod the King, in his raging,

Charged he hath this day;

His men of might, in his own sight,

All children young, to slay.

The song helps retell when jealous King Herod, fearful of even rumors of potential rivals for his throne, ordered the slaughter of all the children in Bethlehem of two years old and younger. Herod had been advised by the wise men of the birth of the future King of the Jews, in fulfillment of prophecy.  Herod missed his mark, for Jesus was no longer there. Joseph, warned by an angel, had taken his little family away to Egypt.

Among those who take it upon themselves to second guess God there are those who would question why God would save His Son, while allowing all those other children in Bethlehem to be slain. Again, these critics miss the mark. They get it wrong by failing to consider the whole picture.

God the Father did not spare His Son from the slaying of the children at Bethlehem. The unfair and cruel carnage begun in David’s city was finished on Calvary. Jesus’ life was spared only momentarily so that it could be offered as the last sacrifice for all. That seemingly doleful song points us to the full meaning of Christmas as part of a story that winds through Bethlehem and leads through sorrow in Gethsemane to death on Calvary.

Importantly, the story continues on from there to a glorious resurrection morning on the third day. Christ was born to save us, in spite of the evils of the world that He most of all could not escape, a salvation that extends especially to the children of Bethlehem and to all the little children of the world.

I conceive of a day, a moment, when those very men who pounded the nails into the Savior’s hands and feet come personally to realize, come face-to-face with what they have done.  What depth of grief that this knowledge will cause to the hearts of those men—when they become certain of the meaning of those moments in that day—I can imagine in only the smallest degree.  They will be the only men, among the billions who have trod the earth, who with hammers in their fists drove nails into the hands and feet of the Creator and their Savior.  What will that certainty mean to them?

Perhaps the Savior’s plea from the cross, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do,” (Luke 23:34) will be the beginning of some healing solace when they do know what they personally did.  I suspect that this is not the limit of the mercy that the Savior will extend to these, His brothers, who were so close to the Son of God in this horrible way.

Then I am drawn to consider, how will we feel when our day comes, and it surely will, when we stand face-to-face and see those wounds in His hands and feet?  How will we feel when we come to understand perfectly, as we will, that our own, personal sins made those wounds necessary, that because of what we knowingly have done there was no other way, that we helped to make those nails unavoidable?  More, how will we feel, looking in the Savior’s eyes, when we fully understand that depending on our repentance the suffering that we personally caused was entirely and eternally worth it, or in absence of our repentance for us for naught?  At that moment our joy and our love or our grief and pain will be without measure.

Let us decide now, for we may, to let our loving hearts enthrone Him.  May we decide now, today, that we, when brought into the personal presence of the Savior, will be like Christ's ancient disciples, who did “bow down at his feet . . . and worship him; and . . . kiss his feet, insomuch that they did bathe his feet with their tears.” (3 Nephi 17:10)

Of Discovered Music and Enthroning the Savior

Many people are introduced to the melody, “Greensleeves,” via the well-known Christmas carol, “What Child Is This?”  There could hardly be a better introduction. 

I have a theory that all truly great music—simple or complex—is not created but rather discovered by the composer.  Such music is, I envision, part of a body of music already known and celebrated in heaven.  I could be wrong, but some music is so sublime that it seems to me impossible that heaven could not already be aware of it.  It is my thought that “Greensleeves” belongs to such a class of discovered music.  Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Pachelbel’s Canon in D, the folk tune “Shenandoah,” among many others, are part of that divine play list, along with beauties yet to be discovered.  So it seems to me.

The words to the carol of which I write are fit for the melody.  They are a soul deep meditation on why the birth of this Baby is so important.  The musings lead to an answer found in what this Child would later do.  The mortal mission of Christ the King is incomparably important to you and me.

I fear that many modern renditions miss—or perhaps even avoid—the point. Among the some two dozen recordings of the carol in my possession, I recently discovered to my surprise that all but maybe four leave out the second of three verses, the one that holds a central place in the poem penned by the author, William C. Dix.  Some repeat, again and again, the true declaration of the first verse that this Child is “Christ the King.”  Recognition of that reality is important, but how far does it get you?  Even Herod believed and feared that prophecy, a belief that goaded him to destroy all of the babes of Bethlehem that his soldiers could find.

Why did Christ the King find it necessary to lower Himself to be born among men?  That is the central question, understanding the answer to which converts our attitude toward Christ from more than reverence for a Divine Monarch into humble love born of joy and boundless gratitude.  The second verse explains what is at the heart of Christmas.  But listen to your recording and see whether these words are included:

Why lies He in such mean estate,
Where ox and ass are feeding?
Good Christians, fear, for sinners here
The silent Word is pleading.
Nails, spear shall pierce Him through,
The cross be borne for me, for you.
Hail, hail the Word made flesh,
The babe, the Son of Mary.

This little Child would be pierced by nails and spear when He was older but no less innocent.  Why would He submit to that?  Why would the King submit to that?  We worship Christ not just because He is the King, but because of what this King has done for us.

I conceive of a day, a moment, when those very men who pounded the nails into the Savior’s hands and feet come personally to realize, come face-to-face with, what they have done.  What depth of grief that this knowledge will cause to the minds of those men—of those moments in that day—I can imagine in only the smallest degree.  They will be the only men, among the billions who have trod the earth, who with hammers in their fists drove nails into the hands and feet of the Creator and their Savior.  What will that recognition mean to them?

Perhaps the Savior’s plea from the cross, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do,” will be the beginning of some healing solace when they do know what they personally did.  I suspect that this is not the limit of the mercy that the Savior will extend to these, His brothers, who were so close to the Son of God in this horrible way.

Then I am drawn to consider, how will we feel when our day comes, and it surely will, when we stand face-to-face and see those wounds in His hands and feet?  How will we feel when we come to understand perfectly, as we will, that our own, personal sins made those wounds necessary, that because of what we knowingly have done there was no other way, that we helped to make those nails unavoidable?  More, how will we feel, looking in the Savior’s eyes, when we fully understand that depending on our repentance the suffering that we personally caused was entirely and eternally worth it, or in absence of our repentance all for naught?  At that moment our joy and our love or our grief and pain will be without measure.

 
Let us decide now, for we may, to let our loving hearts enthrone Him.

Of Charity and Forever

The more I ponder, the more I am brought to the conviction that the pure love of Christ, what the scriptures call charity, is the purpose of life and its highest ideal.  So much of this life is designed to provide the opportunity and conditions for developing charity. 

Consider this description of charity, provided by the ancient American prophet, Mormon.

And charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. (Moroni 7:45)

The Apostle Paul offered a very similar description in his first letter to the Corinthians, where he explained that faith, hope, and charity are closely intertwined (see 1 Corinthians 13). 

On this earth, in mortality, man does not come by charity naturally.  It seems that to develop charity its opposite must be possible, too.  As one connects us with heaven, the other ties us to the world of death.  We see abundant evidence that this is so. 

Where is the man or woman who naturally possesses all of the traits that are part of and unified in charity?  We are all drawn to traits the very opposite of charity, to suffer as briefly as we may, to be frequently unkind, often puffed up, normally seeking our own, and surely too easily provoked, thinking plenty of evil, bearing perhaps some things but far from all, with limited hope, and of weak endurance.  Gloriously, we all to some degree by our efforts and with the help of others rise above these evils and exhibit and make part of our natures some portion of the elements of charity.  Most people seem to mix the two opposites to varying degrees. 

God reaches out to lift each of us up and above our mortal nature.  Charity is a gift from God, one that He bestows upon those who qualify to receive it by demonstrating their willingness to receive it and live by it.  The more we desire it and live by it, the more that charity remains with us and becomes part of us and changes us.  When the Spirit of God comes upon us and enters into our hearts and fills our minds, we taste, we experience charity for a time, in all of its aspects, all unified together (the virtues of charity are of a kind and part harmoniously and mutually reinforcing).  For a time, the virtues of charity become our virtues. 

Thus Mormon counseled,

Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God. . . (Moroni 7:48)

That is what it means to be a “son of God,” born of the Spirit.  By following Jesus Christ, living as He would, the gift of charity is bestowed upon us, enabling and teaching us in our hearts and minds how to live like Christ, to do the works that He would do, giving us the power to believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things.  As we experience personally the pure love of Christ our nature changes and we become progressively like Christ.

The world provides ample opportunities to exercise and develop those virtues that we know in spiritual vision but which we need to practice in fact to make ours, to make ourselves into their image, the image of Christ.  We are surrounded by evil, by hardship, by difficulty, by those who need our help.  Reaching to heaven, charity enlightens us to know how to conquer evil and gives us the power to cope with hardship, overcome difficulty, to bless, promote kindness, relieve suffering, and “endure all things.”

Yet we fall short from time to time, we lose the vision, we turn away.  Sin is any and all that would keep us from developing charity.  Repentance brings us back by allowing us to change, to seek and qualify for forgiveness of our sins through Christ’s redemption and again be ready for our hearts and minds to be filled with the gift of charity by the power of the Holy Ghost. 

Once more we exercise faith, we gain hope, “but the greatest of these is charity” (1 Corinthians 13:13).  We may keep charity forever, and as we experience charity in this world we personally learn what forever means.

Of Jesus Christ and Revolutionary Doctrines

There are several key doctrines of the gospel of Christ revolutionary to the general world.  I do not include the existence of God, since belief in God is as old as human thought.  The first man and woman believed in God, and that belief has continued—with much variation—among their children to our present day.  Belief in God is not exceptional.  It comes easily to the human mind.  Disbelief seems to be more artificial.

Without an attempt to list the revolutionary doctrines of Christ by order of importance, I nevertheless will begin with the fact that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and in His divinity He walked among mankind for some 34 years.  Through word and deed Jesus proclaimed His relationship to the Father.  That being true, and it is, all non-Christian religions are human inventions, however well-meaning they might be.  Christ being a God, what He said was true, what He taught was true, what He did had divine approval and purpose.  There is peril of the highest order in disregarding any of that.

Next I would turn to the revolutionary import of the resurrection, beginning with the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The Savior’s resurrection was as sure as His death.  Jesus made significant effort to demonstrate the physical nature of the resurrection.  When He appeared to His disciples in their shut up room on the evening of that first new day He had them touch the wounds in His hands and feet and the wound in His side inflicted by the executioners to make certain of His death, assuring the disciples that, “a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.” (Luke 24:39)  When the disciples for joy yet doubted their own senses, Jesus emphasized the reality by eating some broiled fish and honeycomb to demonstrate the tangible nature of it all (Luke 24:41-43).  The disciples even felt His breath on them (see John 20:22).  In the Americas, shortly afterwards, thousands more beheld the resurrected Christ and personally felt the wounds of His execution (see 3 Nephi 11). 

In this mortal world, death is as common as birth.  The resurrection, already begun, will become as common as death, and will overcome death, making death as temporary as mortal life.  Hence the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians that, because of the resurrection, “Death is swallowed up in victory.”  (1 Corinthians 15:54)  That very physical resurrection rescues from oblivion all done in this very physical world, endowing it all with lasting meaning, nothing of value lost.

The fact that we each and all existed before we were born, in another sphere and in the presence of God, our Father, is another revolutionary doctrine of Christ.  Jesus taught that His Father was also our Father, the literal Father of our spirits.  On the morning of His resurrection, Jesus commanded Mary Magdalene to tell His disciples, “I ascend unto my Father, and your Father” (John 20:17).  The Apostle Paul, who taught that we should obey “the Father of spirits, and live” (Hebrews 12:9), wrote to the Romans, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:  and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:16, 17). 

As His spirit children, we lived in the presence of our Eternal Father before this creation.  The earth was purposely made for us, designed for our growth and development in our brief mortality.  Not only did Christ’s resurrection preserve meaning and purpose for this mortal existence, but that purpose preceded the beginning of mortality.  Among the many consequences of that revolutionary truth is the reality that all members of the human race are more than figuratively brothers and sisters.  The children born to mortal parents existed before their birth, and they come from the same eternal home as did their parents.  There is a deep-rooted respect that is due in both directions between parent and child.

In that context it is appropriate to recognize the revolutionary import of the Christian doctrine of the eternal nature of the marriage relationship.  If we come from an eternal family that was formed before the earth was, then it becomes natural to recognize that life’s closest relationship, between husband and wife, is not a temporary arrangement.  Love is the highest virtue of the highest heaven.  Love finds its deepest manifestation in the marriage union.  God, who preserves all good things, could not mean for that relationship to end with death.  As Christ paved the way for us to live on through the eternities, so He prepared the way for a loving marriage to last forever for those who desire it enough.

Perhaps on another day I will more than touch upon other Christian doctrines that revolutionize the world and human relations.  Among these would be the opportunity to talk with God and receive direct, personal revelation; the ability to change human nature, for better or for worse; the reality of individual freedom, such that God is not responsible for our personal decisions, we own them; and the continuing, unfinished canon of divine scripture, from ancient time into the modern era (scriptures were always revealed in a modern era to those who first received them).

These revolutionary doctrines of Christ are eternal, connecting us to an eternal universe, which makes them revolutionary to a mortal world where endings seem to prevail.  They are rejuvenating to mind and spirit.  When Christ taught them to the people of the ancient Americas, He declared that “all things have become new.” (3 Nephi 12:47)  They make things new today.

Of Man and God’s Work

On the sacred mountain, made sacred by the personal presence of the Divine, Moses spoke face to face with God, without whom “was not any thing made that was made.” (John 1:3)  Moses beheld in vision the many creations of God and many worlds on which God had placed His children, much as with this creation.  The Lord explained to Moses that, “as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall another come; and there is no end to my works, neither to my words.” (Moses 1:38)

That creative work is what God does and has been doing and will continue to do.  Then God explained to Moses the “Why” behind it all:

For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.  (Moses 1:39)

That is to say that what God does is entirely purposeful, the “what” of His work intrinsically tied to the “Why.”  And why He does what He does, and what He does, is all related to man.  We are His children, and the Father is literally our Father.  On the morning of His resurrection, the Father’s firstborn son, Jesus Christ, declared to Mary Magdalene, “I ascend unto my Father, and your Father” (John 20:17).  The Son was speaking literally not figuratively. 

Our Heavenly Father is more interested in our growth and progress than even the most loving earthly parents are in the growth and progress of their children.  His happiness is connected with our happiness and progress, His “job satisfaction” derived from our moral improvement.  That improvement, in turn, comes from the righteous exercise of our freedom to choose and do good. 

The exercise of our choice is all that we can give to God that He does not have, and He will not deprive us of that power of choice.  He will not take it, because by doing so our “choice” becomes worthless to Him.  It is the fullest and therefore richest exercise of that freedom that He seeks and applies His own effort to empower and encourage and protect.  To diminish our freedom is to diminish its worth to Him.  Compelled virtue is no virtue at all and has no value to the Father or to His children.  By choosing good in an environment where we may select evil we become good; by living virtuously among full opportunities to embrace vice we become virtuous.  Through that process—with the free gift of the Savior to retrieve us, upon conditions of repentance, from evil choices—we expand our freedom, rejecting all that would enslave us.  In so doing we qualify for God’s ultimate gift, eternal life.     

That is the process and what life is all about.  God devotes His attention to creating the necessary environment and conditions for our eternal progression.  Then He stays involved to help each of us as much as we will allow.  His love for us extended to the sacrificial offering of His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, who used His own free will to rescue us out of the depths of evil if we would apply what choice we may have left to turn with all our hearts away from darkness toward light.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.  (John 3:16)

This being God’s work and His glory, He cares very much about what we do that affects that work and glory.  That is also to say that nothing else we do matters to Him.  It is only in the context of His work for our immortality and eternal life that anything we do really matters.  God is probably not very interested in whether we buy the blue car or the white car, per se, as it has little bearing on immortality and eternal life.  God could be interested, however, if we choose to buy the blue car after agreeing beforehand with our spouse to buy the white one, as unity in marriage matters a great deal to our eternal progress, as does keeping promises.

All of this begs the question, if something does not matter to God, should it matter much to us?  In fact, paying excessive attention to the minutiae and distractions of life can become a big deal, if doing so draws our time and effort away from what truly drives virtue.

Customs and traditions can do this very thing.  Consider the recent Christmas season.  Were there little things, maybe many little things, that competed for your focus on Christ and the commemoration of His mission, and the many good works that the Christmas season offered?  Customs and traditions can do that if we are not careful. 

The Savior, during his mortal ministry in Galilee and Judea, frequently pointed the people to their traditions that interfered with what He called the “weightier matters”, such as “judgment, mercy, and faith”.  He called that straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel (Matthew 23:23, 24).  Do we not see a similar error in the political correctness of today that raises an uproar over a stray word—no matter how ugly—while embracing all varieties of immorality and family destruction? 

God’s work is all related to us, because we are related to Him.  Knowing God’s work, and making it our work, may be as important and valuable for us today as it was for Moses in his time.  I suspect so.

Of Faith and Life

I hesitate to get into this discussion, because I consider it basically silly.  It is almost entirely a semantic argument, divorced from reality.  I speak of the phony and diabolical debate that poses faith in opposition to works. 

I enter into it, because this manmade doctrine too often becomes a shield against repentance and the changing of one’s life to become like Jesus Christ and receiving all that He has to offer us, which is everything.  In modern days, Jesus Christ announced that all who receive Him, “receiveth my Father; and he that receiveth my Father receiveth my Father’s kingdom; therefore all that my Father hath shall be given unto him.” (Doctrine and Covenants 84:37, 38)

That is to say, I take up the issue not to debate the doctrine, for there is no salvation in doing that.  Rather I seek to focus on how we live our lives to receive Christ, because happiness and salvation can be found there.

I know that there are some human doctrines that hold that a man or woman is “saved” only by faith, absolutely and completely unrelated to any good or evil that the person may do at any point in life.  That is the doctrine.  I do not, however, know of anyone who lives in accordance with that doctrine.  Since I do not know and could not possibly meet everyone, I do not deny that there might be someone who lives his life by that doctrine—I cannot imagine it—but I have yet to meet him, and I doubt that I ever will.

I say that because I hold that how someone lives is an exact and complete expression of his faith.  People think, however briefly, before they act, and their action is an expression of their faith in what will happen as a result of that action. 

You might ask, what about the person who acts on reflex?  I would ask, how did that person develop his reflex if not by thoughtful action, repeated over and over?  His reflex is the expression of his faith exercised in the development of the reflex. 

The same would be true for habits that have become very hard to break.  You may say that a smoker knows and has faith that smoking is bad for his health.  That may be true, but people do a lot of things that they understand to be bad for their health, but they do it anyway because it seems to them like a good idea at the time.  Often a desire for immediate gratification of a physical appetite overcomes understanding of some long off harm.  After all, all life takes place in the immediate moment, and the promise of future effects often can seem less persuasive and less real to the mind.  Faith in the present can trump faith in the future.

What does that have to do with faith and works?  Everything.  What people do are their works, and what they think before hand is where their faith resides before it manifests itself in their works, in what they do.  All we do, except perhaps when we sleepwalk, is a union of our faith and works.  Only in unreal, semantic debate is it possible to separate faith and works.  I have little time in this brief life for that debate.

The Apostles of Jesus Christ have all been, every one of them, practical men, living everyday life as we do.  The very practical James wrote in the New Testament, to those who asserted a separation between faith and works, “I will show thee my faith by my works.” (James 2:18)   So do we all.  Then in metaphor James explained, “faith without works is dead” (James 2:20).  As the body without the spirit is dead, there is no life in faith and works when separated.

I would offer another analogy, albeit one less elegant.  To say that faith and works can be separated and, moreover, that we can be saved by faith without any regard to our works makes as much sense as saying that a house can be built by plans alone, without brick and mortar.  A plan without the bricks and mortar is just so many pieces of paper, providing no shelter, warmth, or comfort for the living.  A house without plans will be nothing more than a pile of building materials awaiting application of some intelligent design.  There is no house without both design and materials organized and applied according to the design.

Sometimes at this point in the discussion an objection is made that there is no faith, no salvation, without grace, and that no amount of works no matter how good can make up for a lack of grace.  All of that is true.  And that is what I would explain next as a concluding point.

Never forget, ever, during this life of mortality that all of this existence on earth is temporary and was designed to be so.  All of mortality eventually has an end.  Men get into great difficulty when they try to make this mortality last.  Nothing of mortality lasts.  God designed and created this temporary life as a learning time and a place of testing to prepare us for worlds where endlessness is the rule, the existence where God lives and where most of life takes place, without end.

Part of that preparation in this life involves the voluntary reception by us of things from the eternal worlds that God offers to us in this world of mortality.  Anything of any real value in this life is what God has extended to us from the eternal worlds, and that is all that survives from our mortal existence.  It is all that we need and any good thing that we could want. 

All of those extensions of eternal things from eternal worlds come by grace, the free gift of God.  We can demand none of them, and there is nothing that we can do to merit them, but we do have to qualify for them.  Basically, to qualify for them we have to demonstrate to God that we will receive the things of eternity rather than despise them.  And then He gives them to us.

Let me illustrate by returning to the house analogy.  The plans for building the house are like faith.  Organizing and applying the bricks and mortar according to the plans are our works.  By grace God has inspired our plans, and by grace we receive from God the building materials.  Indeed, by grace God even works to correct the errors in our building.  Without grace there would be no plans, no materials, no house perfectly formed. 

God will not, however, build the house by grace.  He leaves that for us, in this world of action, and effort, and choice.  In what we do, by the exercise of our faith in Him through our actions, we show what we would do with what God gives us, and we qualify to receive all that the Father has.  We live our faith in this way so that the Father may say to us when we return into His presence, “thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things:  enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” (Matthew 25:23)

Of Coming to Heaven and the Lord’s Supper

The lyrics to a Spanish song that I enjoy listening to include this line:

Para entrar en el cielo, no es preciso morir.

That translates into, “In order to enter heaven it is not necessary to die.”  Of course, that is true.  I have often said and know from some experience that eternal life can begin even in mortality, since the core element of eternal life is to possess the spiritual gift of charity, meaning the pure love of Christ (see Moroni 7:47), the one spiritual gift that never ends.

While it is not necessary to die to receive eternal life, we do need to come unto Christ.  Eternal life means living with God the Father, in His presence, and inheriting all that He has.  To qualify for that existence where perfect love and goodness prevail from this world of imperfection, corruption, and sin, it is necessary to come unto Christ, who has overcome all and who offers to help us to overcome all.

We come unto Christ only on His terms.  We cannot command that He come to us on our terms.  He is the perfect being, and we are very much short of that.  We are the ones with distance to cover.  Christ condescended to come as mortal man into our presence and our world of evil, but He did not condescend to partake of the evil.  We have.  He left our world through death, as we all will, but then was resurrected, which none were before Him, but because of whose resurrection all will follow.

Following resurrection, we will all be judged by the Father to determine whether we may remain in the Father’s presence and continue to grow and develop under His care.  At that judgment, Christ will identify for the Father those who have come to the Son and thereby qualified to remain in heaven.

How do we come unto Christ?  What are His terms?  Just these, that we solemnly promise by covenant with Him and the Father that we will accept Him and keep His commandments.  That is, we promise that we will follow Christ and stay with Him.  How can coming unto the Savior mean anything less?  Either we come unto Him or we do not.

The Savior has declared that this solemn promise and covenant is to be made in such a way as to be unmistakably imprinted on our minds, rich with the symbolism of washing away sin, burying the unrighteous way of life, and then rising to newness of life in accordance with the laws and ways of heaven.  This covenant and symbolism are present in the ordinance of baptism.  We place ourselves in the Savior’s hands via those whom He has personally chosen to represent Him.  We are buried in water, washed and cleansed from sin, and arise out of the water in the image of the resurrection into a Christian life.

The person who approaches baptism truly repentant of all of his sins, genuinely committed to a complete turning away from all evil, will feel the powers and joys of heaven filling his heart.  He will enter into the presence of God through the power of the Holy Ghost.  In fact, shortly after baptism, the next step in coming unto Christ is to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands of Christ’s representatives, just as the Samaritans anciently, who were baptized by Philip and soon thereafter were given the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands of the Apostles Peter and John (see Acts 8:12-17).

I have experienced those steps personally and testify that it works just that way.   Through faith, repentance, and baptism, sins are washed away, and through the gift of the Holy Ghost the heart is changed and filled with the gift of charity, the pure love of Christ.

Sad to say, and I would not excuse myself by noting that it happens to us all, not long after the covenant is made the covenant is broken, and it is not broken by God.  He perfectly fulfills His part.  On our part, sins are once again indulged in, old or new ones, or both.  The Spirit is grieved and withdraws, the gift of charity is also withdrawn, the man is left back on his own.  With the covenant broken what are we to do?

With a graciousness that far surpasses the patience of any mortal man, God allows us to remake the covenant and come unto Christ again.  We need not be rebaptized.  God has provided another ordinance that allows us to reaffirm the baptismal covenant and reclaim its powers and blessings.  As with baptism, it is a physical action that embodies a spiritual commitment.  Also, like baptism, it is designed and prescribed by God in a symbolic form that reminds us of Jesus Christ through whom our redemption is possible.

I refer to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.  As with baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper comes in two parts.  In the first, we partake of broken bread, reminding us of the Savior’s body broken for us and soon after resurrected.  In the second we partake of water or wine to remind us of the blood shed by Christ in Gethsemane and on the cross.

As we partake of the sacrament with the same intent and spirit with which we were baptized, the whole baptismal covenant is reaffirmed and renewed, and we resume our Christian life.  We return to Christ.  We need this sacrament or our baptism would be nullified by our later sins.  We need it to retain the effects of our baptism.

It is astonishing, really.  It is a marvelous manifestation of the grace of God that He offers us this opportunity, weekly, to renew our solemn baptismal promises that we not so solemnly break.  While we renege, the Lord does not.  In fact, He offers us the second, third, and hundredth chance, which by all rights and justice He need not do.  Which of us would have such patience with those who broke their promises to us?

Because of the Lord’s patience, to enter into heaven, the presence of God, again and again, it is not necessary to die.  It is necessary to live, and to do that we must come unto Christ, and He beckons to us, all the time.  Why wait to answer His call?

Of Time for Dying and Living

We are all in the process of dying.  That is why this existence is called “mortality.”  Until we reach the end of that process, though, we are also in the process of living.

The first fact gives rise to the notion of time.  The latter empowers us to do something with time.

The temporary nature of mortality—brought to an end when we receive the immortality that Christ won for us all on the cross and through His resurrection from the tomb—means that time, too, is swallowed up by Christ’s victory over death and will have an end.  What will we do with forever?  How is our forever affected by what we do with time?

While we are in mortality and governed by time an existence without these temporary limitations may seem as hard to grasp as sight must be to one who has never known it.  Yet the promise of eternal existence is as sure as God’s promise of permanent vision to the blind.  As the blind keep a place in their hearts and minds open for the reality of vision, let us keep our hearts and minds open to the concept of forever to be filled one day by its realization, the comparatively brief limitations to be replaced by the boundless.

The ancient American prophet Alma explained how ultimately insignificant time-bound events are, including death itself:

Now whether there is more than one time appointed for men to rise it mattereth not; for all do not die at once, and this mattereth not; all is as one day with God, and time only is measured unto men. (Alma 40:8)

The psalmist Ethan the Ezrahite lamented how short and vain life becomes if we consider only mortality:

Remember how short my time is: wherefore hast thou made all men in vain?  What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? (Psalm 89:47, 48)

If forever, however, is the normal nature of man’s meaningful existence, then why go through this whole temporary mortal experience?  The answer to that is found in the understanding of just how big eternal life is, requiring some intense preparation.  For eternal society to be the great blessing that never grows old, never becomes stale, an eternal source of joy—rather than a never ending hell of bad conduct, conflict, and ultimate pointlessness—people need to prepare to live there in peace, harmony, union, and the kindness that is the pure love of Christ.  That is the point of this life, a training and testing period, where time is a gift from God to be used to learn how to abide in the presence of God forever, guided by commandments He has given us to teach us how to live “after the manner of happiness” (2 Nephi 5:27).

And the days of the children of men were prolonged, according to the will of God, that they might repent while in the flesh; wherefore, their state became a state of probation, and their time was lengthened, according to the commandments which the Lord God gave unto the children of men.  (2 Nephi 2:21)

While time may often feel short, God made sure that it would be long enough—but no need to drag it out.

Seemingly short or long, it is the task of this mortal life to make the most of our time, for when it is over the pattern is set for how we choose to live the eternities on the other side of death.  That is to say, in this life we shape and reveal the character of persons we would like to be forever, with sufficient opportunities to change and adjust while we may, but in time the rehearsals end, the play is performed to its conclusion, the curtain closes, and the stage lights go out.  A missionary in ancient America explained it this way to a group of people who had discovered that evil was not as happy as they had thought:

And now, as I said unto you before, as ye have had so many witnesses, therefore, I beseech of you that ye do not procrastinate the day of your repentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed.  (Alma 34:33)

Today awash in time and place, this life and this world can seem like so much, even though we all acknowledge that we came here with nothing and take just as much with us when we depart.  The tools of learning, building, testing, and trying are all lent and mean very little in the end.  What we make of ourselves during our time with them, whether we relied upon the help of God our Father to become more or less like Him, are what will matter when the angel sounds his trump, announcing “that there shall be time no longer” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:110).

Of Baptisms for the Dead and the Feast of the Lord

I am not troubled by increased attention of the public to the doctrines of Jesus Christ.  I welcome it as an opportunity to invite them to partake of the riches of eternity that the Savior has placed upon the table of mankind for His brothers and sisters to delight in.  I am eager that all should pull up a chair:  the supply is unlimited and the table will never be too small nor the number of chairs inadequate.

I am reluctant, however, to allow the enemies of Christ to pollute the table or to corrupt what the Lord has given to us.  To humanity at large, many of the gifts of the Savior will seem new and powerfully at odds with the fare offered on the impoverished tables of the world.  It has always been so.  If they are to be of value to the disciples of Jesus Christ and those who would join them, they must be preserved in their purity. 

One of the great offerings from the Savior to the world through the church of Jesus Christ is the privilege of being baptized for release from our sins.  Through that marvelous ordinance we are able to make a promise to God to turn away from a life of sinning to a life of goodness and good will to all and eternal perfection of ourselves, leaving the former ways of dissipation in degrees small and great behind us.  In return, we are washed of our sins, and our days and ways of death are left buried underneath the wave as we arise from the water in newness of life.  We escape the consequences of our past sins by completely accepting the Savior Jesus Christ and receiving His suffering in place of our deserved punishment.  As Christ explained through modern prophets,

For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent. . . (Doctrine and Covenants 19:16)

That is a wonderful doctrine of change and peace of mind, by which the evils of the world can be overcome and peace prevail—today for any individual who chooses to embrace it, and for any society made up of such individuals.  It is all the more powerful because it is real, having been tested and demonstrated in millions of lives over the course of human history.

As a young teenager I could see the value of these doctrines, and I welcomed them.  I was particularly moved by the doctrine of extending these blessings of repentance and baptism to all, even to people who had little or no opportunity to hear or receive them during their mortal lives. 

While those who once walked where we walk now live in the world of spirits, awaiting the great resurrection of all, they continue to learn and associate with one another.  There they have the opportunity of learning of Jesus Christ and accepting His sacrifice for them, or rejecting it, as many have and do in mortality.  Those who accept the Savior’s vicarious sacrifice can make the same promise and commitment to newness of life by accepting vicarious baptisms performed by the living on their behalf in Christ’s Temples.  Thereby they obtain all of baptism’s changing and redemptive power.  Similarly, just as Christ and His vicarious suffering can be rejected in the world of spirits so can those vicarious baptisms by which the Savior is otherwise received.  As in mortality, free will is preserved and indeed enhanced by having the opportunity to accept or reject what otherwise would be beyond reach.  Even to a thirteen year old the fairness and justness of this doctrine was apparent.

What is not apparent to me several decades later is the logic of those who would object to this doctrine.  If you do not believe that it is a true doctrine of God, then at worst Christ’s disciples are wasting their time being baptized here on behalf of those who have died.  If the doctrine is false and the church of Jesus Christ is mistaken, then nothing that it does can reach beyond the grave and the dead remain out of touch from any in this life.  If, however, Jesus Christ is the Savior and indeed did suffer vicariously for the sins of any who would receive Him so that they might not suffer for themselves, and if the work offered in Christ’s Temples does reach beyond the grave, then this doctrine is a cause for rejoicing and partaking, among the many other rich things prepared for us and available on the Lord’s table of fat things.

And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.  (Isaiah 25:6)

Y’all come and pull up a chair. 

Of Holy Ordinances and Meaningful Lives

One of the benighted ideas that American society inherited from the benighted 1960s is the idea that marriage and other sacred religious ordinances are just meaningless ceremonies.  Forty years later the tracks of trouble and sorrow caused by this and related assaults on marriage should be readily apparent, yet the concept survives, supported particularly by people who see life as a carnival of selfish delights, where one grabs for all of the gratification that he can—and then dies.

That is after all a doctrine of isolation and death.  Sooner or later the commitmentless self-centered world view ends in death, leaving a heritage of broken kewpie dolls, regrettable memories, shallow relationships, and psychological emptiness.  In fact, periodically statistics show us that it shortens the mortality ride.  For those who follow that lifestyle—and most of America’s social leaders do and increasingly seek to impose it on everyone else—life seems short, cheap, and a despairing struggle for meaning of some sort.  When it is over there is a profound sense of loss, not only the loss in terms of the end of life but in terms of the loss of a lifetime that has been lived so bereft of redeeming value.

Many of the acolytes of this doctrine of death throughout the ages have been desperate to extend life but only to live it with more emptiness.  Others who are overcome along the way by the vacuum of meaning in the lifestyle have sought to end it all sooner than later, only to find that they have brought their empty life view with them into yet another life in the world of spirits, where they fearfully await the tallying up of their lives’ events into pitiful sums of value.

Our Heavenly Father instituted sacred ordinances from the beginning as tools to convey and reinforce meaning, each ordinance pointing to the Source of meaning in this life and in the eternal worlds to come. At the core of each sacred ordinance is a covenant and promise between God and man.  The form of each ordinance from God is designed to point the mind to Jesus Christ, whose atoning sacrifice in Gethsemane and on the cross gave meaning and value to this life.

Baptism, the first sacred ordinance offered to men and women in this life, is a useful example.   Through baptism we accept the vicarious suffering of Jesus Christ in our stead so that we do not have to suffer for our sins, in exchange for a covenant and promise that we will change our lives and refrain from sinning, a promise that we will turn away from the meaningless life of self-indulgence to a life rich in meaning and value focused on love, kindness, achievement, and development of virtue.  We are briefly “buried” in water, simultaneously burying our life of death and washing away its filthiness.  We arise from the water to newness of life, cleansed from our sins.

The marriage ordinance provided by God is an eternal pledge between husband and wife of perpetual faithfulness and dedication to the happiness of each other, as a foundation for living a joint life forever, a fitting and appropriate platform for bringing children into the family.  These covenants and promises are made by husband and wife to each other and also to God, whose power changes and unites hearts to reinforce faithfulness and to give these promises power that extends throughout eternity.  Taken altogether, this becomes a highly significant and holy ordinance with profound impact on the memory and the heart.  Compare that with the world’s version:  hey, want to live together?

Glorious versus pitiful.  The pattern is repeated for all of God’s ordinances versus men’s substitutes, the holy versus the hollow. 

Of Resolutions and Getting Past Frustration

Not to discourage you from making New Year’s resolutions, but how are your 2012 resolutions coming?  Are you still on track?  Given up on them?  Thinking about it?  They can drive you nuts.

The problem is not so much with making resolutions at the start of the year.  Psychologically, a new beginning that is tied to a new beginning of the calendar can be a good motivator, particularly to get started.  Neither is there a problem with choosing to change something or do something for the better.  Given a minute or less, every honest person can identify a habit in need of change or a practice in need of adoption.  The problem is usually not even that the aim is too high, the goal too unrealistic, the resolution too ambitious. 

If anything, the real problem is that the resolution is too narrow, too small, too unimportant, particularly if taken without a greater context.  Each of us should be self aware enough to recognize plenty of material to work with to create a depressingly long “needs improvement” list.  The question of where to begin—if we persist—may soon be overwhelmed by the question, where does it end?  There are too many for any one to hold our attention.  We need to look beyond the individual sin or foible, on to why we are willing to sin.

Martin Luther was in large measure driven away from the Catholic Church because of its emphasis on specifically repenting of each and every sin, correcting every personal flaw, large and small, with particularity.  There was no apparent end in this life to the correcting, no bottom to the list of sins, especially with a list being added to each day.  Repenting of each and every sin, he never made enough progress on his own list.

Fortunately for Luther and for everyone else, the God of Heaven has never called upon us to repent of each of our sins seriatim.  Neither have His prophets.   That is a man-made idea, and one that is sure to lead to deep moral frustration.

To be sure, God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance (Doctrine and Covenants 1:31).  Heaven is the ultimate “white room;” not a speck of evil can be tolerated there, no room for anything unclean in the least degree (see 3 Nephi 27:19).

God does not require us to repent of each sin.  He requires that we repent of all sins.  There is a difference, all of the difference in the world.  The first suggests that we can repent of sins in some kind of order, working on some sins while still playing with some of our favorites, even if only temporarily.  The true doctrine is more demanding and more liberating:  God wants us to give up sinning, the willingness to do evil.  The focus on individual sins is misplaced, as if the source of the problem is in the act itself, what we do, whereas the real source is found in why we do what we do.  God wants us to change our hearts (and will help us to do so), knowing that with the change in their nature of our actions will then take care of themselves.

Carefully search all Christian scriptures, ancient and modern, and you will find God consistently calling upon His children to repent of all of their sins.  He does not ask for or condone a selective repentance that focuses on this or that individual sin or ever ask us to work down our personal list of evil.  He asks us to give it up, all of it.  What the Lord requires of His children to be acceptable to live with Him again is a change of life.  The ancient American prophet Alma described this repentance, this change of heart, as a man who has “desired righteousness until the end of his days” (Alma 41:6).  John, the Apostle of ancient times, referred to this change as walking “in the light” (see 1 John 1:5-10).

This change of heart comes from belief in Christ, a powerful wholehearted belief that manifests itself in our actions.  Another ancient American prophet, Samuel, declared it with these words:

And if ye believe on his [Christ’s] name ye will repent of all your sins, that thereby ye may have a remission of them through his merits.  (Helaman 14:13)

Notice that it is true, vitalizing belief that brings about the change of action.  A modern prophet, Spencer W. Kimball, explained true repentance in this way:

In connection with repentance, the scriptures use the phrase, ‘with all his heart’ . . . Obviously, this rules out any reservations.  Repentance must involve an all-out, total surrender to the program of the Lord. (Spencer W. Kimball, The Miracle of Forgiveness, p.203)

One last point:  note that perfection is not required to enter into the light.  As the Apostle John taught, those who enter into the light are in the process of making themselves pure (1 John 3:3), Christ giving them the power to do so through the soul-enriching influence of the Holy Spirit.

Make your resolutions and do them now, but put them in the context of changing your heart and thereby your whole life.  Aim for the highest of all.  Then we know where to begin and where it all ends.  And keep in mind, Christ allows you to start over when you slip up.

Of the Authority of God and the Witness of Christ’s Resurrection

In May 1829, Jesus Christ sent John the Baptist—slain by command of Herod but resurrected by the will and power of Christ—to bestow on a new prophet, Joseph Smith, the same authority to baptize in the name of God that John the Baptist held during his own mortal ministry. Shortly afterward Christ similarly sent Peter, James, and John to confer on Joseph Smith the same authority from God that had been bestowed upon them under the Savior’s hands. When the Apostles of Christ were gone, their authority also was lost. In 1829 they returned that authority to the earth.

Every week, in congregations all around the world, that authority is exercised to channel the blessings of God to the modern day disciples of Jesus Christ. One of these priesthood blessings is the privilege of renewing promises made at baptism by remembering the suffering and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Acting under the direction and authority of Christ His authorized servants bless and administer the emblems of the body of Christ—broken and then resurrected—and of the blood of Christ shed for the sins of many. All who receive these emblems with sincerity of heart in remembrance of Jesus Christ receive forgiveness of sins and direct spiritual communion with God, and they exercise the same spiritual gifts that the faithful followers of Christ exercised in ancient days.

The thousands of men who administer those emblems to thousands of congregations did not take it upon themselves to act in the holy place of Jesus Christ, made sacred when He offered the bread and cup to His Apostles the night before His death. They had hands placed upon their heads and received authority from others, who in their turn had hands placed upon their heads by those who in turn in the same way received the authority of God, all the way back to those who received that authority under the hands of the Savior Himself. For us in these latter days, one pair of those hands belonged to Joseph Smith, who received the authority of Christ from the hands of those upon whose heads hands were placed shortly before they were nailed to the cross on Calvary.

Just as anciently, eye witnesses today are proclaiming once again to the world the living Christ who was slain and who was resurrected and lives to guide and bless all who will be guided by Him. These are not learned men preaching from their study of the scriptures—though they have made in depth study of the scriptures a daily practice of a lifetime. These are men who know the Christ, who speak from personal knowledge and association with the Savior, Jesus Christ, and who proclaim what they know as well as what they believe.

I will give two examples of many. Keep in mind that these examples are not theories or learned dissertations by the doctors of religion. These are direct, personal, and tangible revelations of God, the way that God has throughout the ages revealed Himself.

The first is from The Book of Mormon, a record written in an ancient era but revealed anew in modern times. Some time after the resurrection of Jesus Christ and His ascension into heaven, a large group of ancient Americans were gathered near their Temple in a place that in their language they called Bountiful.

. . . and behold, they saw a Man descending out of heaven; . . . and he came down and stood in the midst of them. . . .
And . . . he stretched forth his hand and spake unto the people, saying:
Behold, I am Jesus Christ, whom the prophets testified shall come into the world.
. . . I am the light and the life of the world; and I have drunk out of that bitter cup which the Father hath given me, and have glorified the Father in taking upon me the sins of the world . . . .
Arise and come forth unto me, that you may thrust your hands into my side, and also that ye may feel the prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet, that ye may know that I am the God of Israel, and the God of the whole earth, and have been slain for the sins of the world.
And . . . the multitude went forth, and thrust their hands into his side, and did feel the prints of the nails . . .; going forth one by one . . . , and did see with their eyes and did feel with their hands, and did know of a surety . . . , that it was he, of whom it was written by the prophets, that should come.
. . . And they were in number about two thousand and five hundred souls; and they did consist of men, women, and children. (3 Nephi 11:8-11, 14, 15; 17:25)

The second example of many was a modern event, in fulfillment of ancient prophecy. Near the very end of the Old Testament, this prophecy is recorded, from the Prophet Malachi:

Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple. . . (Malachi 3:1)

Who would build this latter-day Temple, and when would the Savior come to it? In their deepest poverty the modern-day followers of Christ, who had received baptism by those authorized by Christ Himself, were commanded by the Lord through the Prophet Joseph Smith to build a Temple in Kirtland, Ohio. One week after the Kirtland Temple was dedicated, Joseph Smith and his colleague, Oliver Cowdery, were praying in the Temple, on April 3, 1836. This is the second example I offer you of the Savior, Jesus Christ, revealing Himself to us in these latter days that we might know Him. This is from the personal testimony of Joseph and Oliver:

The veil was taken from our minds, and the eyes of our understanding were opened.
We saw the Lord standing upon the breastwork of the pulpit, before us; . . .
His eyes were as a flame of fire; the hair of his head was white like the pure snow; his countenance shown above the brightness of the sun; and his voice was as the sound of the rushing of great waters, even the voice of Jehovah, saying:
I am the first and the last; I am he who liveth, I am he who was slain; I am your advocate with the Father. (Doctrine & Covenants 110:1-4)

I have been to the Garden Tomb, in Jerusalem. I have looked in. It is empty. Jesus is not there. He is risen, as He said.

I have not seen Jesus Christ. Joseph Smith did, and he proclaimed the living Christ to the world. I have heard and received the testimony of Joseph Smith. By the gift of the Holy Ghost, bestowed upon me by the priesthood authority of Christ, I know that his testimony is true, by the same way that people anciently knew that the testimony of Paul, or Peter, or John was true. I too know, for myself, that Jesus Christ lives, that He suffered for me in my place, as He did for all who will receive Him. I know that Jesus Christ was resurrected.

Because of the resurrection of Christ, I will be resurrected, too, and so will you.

Of Controlling Events and the Wrath of the Crowd

When Jesus Christ rode into Jerusalem on the Sunday before He was crucified, few in the crowd really knew who He was or what He was doing. Even his closest disciples little understood what was happening and unfolding. All knew it was momentous, but all but the Savior Himself misunderstood why.

To the cheering crowd Jesus was an unstoppable miracle worker come to change their political—and surely many even believed their religious—world. The Savior understood how fleeting this popular acclaim would be. His understanding was akin to that voiced by Oliver Cromwell some 1500 years later, when similarly the focus of the hurrahs of the streets Cromwell said, “Do not trust to the cheering, for those persons would shout as much if you and I were going to be hanged.” Jesus knew that the crowd would be shouting again on Friday.

None of this was accidental. It was all prophesied hundreds and even thousands of years before, and Jesus was in control of all of the events and the fulfillment of all of the prophecies. For an omniscient and omnipotent God, nothing happens by chance.

Jesus had long been warned not to go to Jerusalem, that the local leaders would seek His life. In apparent avoidance of the reach of the authorities in Jerusalem, Jesus had largely confined His ministry to Galilee, beyond their jurisdiction. In a surprise move one time before (and in demonstration that He was always in control of events), the Savior had quietly gone to Jerusalem for the Passover, but once there He made His presence public. On that occasion the authorities were too awed by Jesus’ popularity to move against Him. He came and left His city without harm.

For this final visit of mortality, the Savior made His approach well known. His fame, especially of His miracles, had been building. It was brought to a crescendo shortly before and only a short walk away from Jerusalem when the Savior, before a large crowd, called forth Lazarus from the dead. That Lazarus had been dead, just as Jacob Marley, “dead as a doornail,” there was no doubt; he had been in the tomb four days. That Lazarus was alive again was apparent to all. What kind of a Man was this?

As Jesus entered Jerusalem, in clear token of the Messiah, “the Son of David,” the people filled the streets. But their cheering had little to do with yielding their hearts to God and doing the works of righteousness. It was the expectation of having a Messiah who would do their will, One who could and would feed the thousands, heal the sick, and even raise their dead, and maybe restore the greatness of the kingdom of David. Christ would do all of these things, but only on His terms, and those terms the people were not ready to accept. When that became clear, they would call upon the hated Roman rulers to crucify the last real King of the Jews.

Jesus knew and expected this reaction. With the power of God to make all things work for good, through that unfair sacrifice Christ made His “soul an offering for sin, . . . bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:11, 12), as He and the Father had planned from before the creation of the world. On the third day, Jesus the Messiah Himself rose from the tomb. The Christ had gained the victory over all, including death and hell, and extended that victory freely to all—before and since His sacrifice—who will receive it and Him, on the terms of Him who paid the whole price alone.

Of the Power of Change and the Power of Christ

Change is in the air. It is autumn, the leaves have begun their brief flash of color before gliding to the ground to be swept away.

Fall is also the season when politicians promise change. The mood predominating among the electorate this year seems to be disillusionment with Change. They want change from Change—that is, from Change that makes things worse and reinforces what is bad in Washington. At least for now, voters are showing a strong preference for candidates who do not fit the usual political mold, who reject solutions imposed from Washington. Such moments do not come very often, and like the autumn they seem to pass too quickly.

Yet with all of this discussion of the change apparent in nature and the political world, it seems strange to find those who doubt the ability of people to change. Properly understood, the plan of God for His children is all about change.

The central message of Jesus Christ and of all of His prophets has been the need and possibility for people to change, to change their world by changing themselves, from the world of unhappiness and distraction, to a life of purpose, growth, and deep joy. All who have drawn close to the Savior have experienced change, have drawn upon His power to change, and the closer they drew to Him the more that they changed and became more like Him.

Consider the early Apostles who lived while the Savior walked the earth. Mere fishermen (Peter and John) were turned into inspired leaders whose testimonies have endured for two millennia. A tax collector (Matthew) was converted into a human benefactor. A persecuting zealot (Paul) turned into a powerful missionary. In earlier days, a slave (Joseph) became viceroy of Egypt, a fugitive from Pharaoh’s court (Moses) became the mighty lawgiver who led Israel from bondage, a shepherd (David) became King of Israel. The change in these whom history calls great was repeated among millions of their less well-known compatriots.

In our own times, an untaught boy (Joseph Smith) became a wise prophet and religious founder, a craftsman (Brigham Young) became the greatest colonizer of the West. Again, these are more prominent examples among millions of others similarly changed through the power of Christ, the more effectively changed the closer that they approached Him.

When I was in college a friend explained to me her disillusionment with her church, which in her view told its members to be good but somehow lacked the power to transform them. It lacked the power of Christ, who made change of life possible. As the ancient American prophet Mormon explained in a letter to his son, Moroni, through Jesus Christ our sins can be forgiven, our past can be overcome.

And the remission of sins bringeth meekness, and lowliness of heart; and because of meekness and lowliness of heart cometh the visitation of the Holy Ghost, which Comforter filleth with hope and perfect love, which love endureth by diligence unto prayer, until the end shall come, when all the saints shall dwell with God. (Moroni 8:26)

There is power, the greatest power on earth, the power to change the greatest creations on earth, the children of God. There is the power to transform men and women and make them fit to live with the Father in His presence forever, “that ye may at last be brought to sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the holy prophets who have been ever since the world began, having your garments spotless even as their garments are spotless, in the kingdom of heaven to go no more out.” (Alma 7:25) Thank God that power is on the earth.