The past couple of weeks in institute class have been really interesting. And I think it's about high time I start to use this blog and write my thoughts down.
A few weeks ago before class one of the girls gave the opening thought and lesson introduction.
She asked three questions which, in groups, we had to come up with one sentence to answer each.
Question 1.
Whose we are?We are Children of God.knowing that we have a purpose and creator means we can fear death less.
Question 2.
Where we came from?We came from the presenece of our Heavenly Father in the pre mortal existence.Knowing where we came from means we know that we will go somewhere once mortality is over.
Question 3.
Why he placed us here?He placed us here to gain a body, experience mortal joy and prove ourselves faithful to him.We are here for trials, for life, to be proved worthy. To ask for your trials to be removed is selfish. Having a body is to die. We are born to die and we die to live.
The girl speaking also made of point of telling us about one of her trials and while she was getting through that trial she realised that we are still only on earth and not to the celestial Kingdom where we sometimes expect ourselves be and be therefore be getting the same benefits and blessings as we would expect when living in the Celestial Kingdom. This is a life of trials. And that's what this experience is. Experiences, hardships and trials.
I hate to just fire this in in note form but I am doing badly at constructing sentences. There were some quotes or thoughts:
- Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.
- The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.
and in Mosiah it says that:
- The sting of Death is swallowed in Christ.
Alma 42:8
Now behold, it was not expedient that man should be reclaimed from this atemporal death, for that would destroy the great bplan of happiness.Death should be a caution that our emotions and devotions are not of the flesh.
Sometimes the trials of people who have accepted the gospel will be heavier than those in the world.
When we die the plan is not over the work continues.
Alma 34:34
Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful acrisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this; for that same spirit which doth bpossess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world.---------------------
The class was then picked up by Brother Douglas G. Mortensen
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D&C 128: 22-24
Brethren, shall we not go on in so great a cause? Go forward and not backward. Courage, brethren; and on, on to the victory! Let your hearts rejoice, and be exceedingly glad. Let the earth break forth into singing. Let the dead speak forth anthems of eternal praise to the King Immanuel, who hath ordained, before the world was, that which would enable us to redeem them out of their prison; for the prisoners shall go free.
23 Let the mountains shout for joy, and all ye valleys cry aloud; and all ye seas and dry lands tell the wonders of your Eternal King! And ye rivers, and brooks, and rills, flow down with gladness. Let the woods and all the trees of the field praise the Lord; and ye solid rocks weep for joy! And let the sun, moon, and the morning stars sing together, and let all the sons of God shout for joy! And let the eternal creations declare his name forever and ever! And again I say, how glorious is the voice we hear from heaven, proclaiming in our ears, glory, and salvation, and honor, and immortality, and eternal life; kingdoms, principalities, and powers!
24 Behold, the great day of the Lord is at hand; and who can abide the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fuller’s soap; and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. Let us, therefore, as a church and a people, and as Latter-day Saints, offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness; and let us present in his holy temple, when it is finished, a book containing the records of our dead, which shall be worthy of all acceptation.What is the office and work of Elijah?
Bringing ancestors to the gospel. ie. Geneology.
The only scripture that is written across all four standard works is the one about the hearts turning from the Fathers to their children and the children to their fathers.
- We cannot be made perfect without our dead.
Mosiah 5:15
Therefore, I would that ye should be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in good works, that Christ, the Lord God Omnipotent, may seal you his, that you may be brought to heaven, that ye may have everlasting salvation and eternal life, through the wisdom, and power, and justice, and mercy of him who created all things, in heaven and in earth, who is God above all. Amen.Alma 34:35
For behold, if ye have procrastinated the day of your repentance even until death, behold, ye have become subjected to the spirit of the devil, and he doth seal you his; therefore, the Spirit of the Lord hath withdrawn from you, and hath no place in you, and the devil hath all power over you; and this is the final state of the wicked.Temple work will eventually seal us to Christ, if we go back and seal everyone to each other, it become the welding link. And to go back to Adam is to go back to God because God is Adam's Father.
The definition of Hell (from the Alma reference) is to be sealed to the devil.
The teacher googled Welding Link and I'm going to see if I can bring up the same talk he found.
This is a lecture/talk by Van C GesselAnd to briefly take some parts from it he talks about reading good books filled with characters that we don't know in real life. And the purpose to do this is so that we can understand and teach ourselves every human experience because one day we might have children that choose to live a certain way and We will have to understand and sympathise with them.
This is a quote from that talk:
Eight years ago, just after I was appointed dean of the College of Humanities, Elder Henry B. Eyring, then commissioner of the Church Educational System, challenged me to spend some time pondering the answer to a simple question. He asked, “Why do we teach a book like The Great Gatsby at BYU?” Now there are many simplistic, snobbishly pedantic ways to dismiss the question altogether. I have chosen to take it seriously—especially since this devotional is being broadcast. As I have pondered Elder Eyring’s question, a piece of a part of an answer has begun to crystallize in my head. Before I venture to unload it on you—and please don’t get your hopes up too high!—I have to refer to a favorite passage from one of C. S. Lewis’ space fantasy novels entitled Perelandra. In this alternate reading of the Garden of Eden calamity, Lewis conjures up a second Eve. Still innocent but learning much about her paradisiacal garden home, Eve considers the ways in which God’s perspectives are superior to ours, and she muses: “When I was young I could imagine no beauty but this of our own world. But [God] can think of all, and all different” (C. S. Lewis, Perelandra: A Novel [New York: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1996], 61).
Can we, I wonder, ever be gods and goddesses of our own universes, eternal parents of imperfect beings who will have to go through the mortal travails as each of us will have done, without somehow having an understanding of and even an empathy toward our flawed progeny? (An empathy better learned, I would suggest, from reading Hamlet than from listening to hip-hop.) How do we school ourselves to comprehend—even marvel at and love—the mental and emotional worlds of other people, since we can never live inside their heads or experience life just the way they experience it? How will perfected humans, looking down from the heights of their own Mount Olympuses, be able to observe the stupid, bungling, relentlessly sinful acts of their children and still resist the temptation to thunderbolt them all to ashes?
