Weeks 31 & 32 -- Looking Back

If you were going to start a club, a business, or any other organization, who should get to name it? You, since you’re the one to whom it belongs? That’s exactly right and that’s just how the Savior felt. The church is His. He organized it. He died for it. Symbolically, it is His bride. It’s not “my” church or “your” church. It’s His. Sometime after His three-day ministry among the Nephites, He appeared to them again. His disciples asked Him what the name of the church should be. The Savior wondered why there could even be any question, let alone a disagreement among them. His answer to them is very clear and is found in 3 Nephi 27. Also, He gave His own definition as to what His gospel is in that same chapter.

For fun, students were randomly placed in groups so that they could form and choose the name for any organization they would like to form and a description of said organization. Here they are:

SWW

Stripling Warrior Wives

Specializing in designing and making modest wedding gowns

AFOA

Ant Farmers of America

A club dedicated to cultivating and producing the largest selection of ant farmed products in the world.

POOL

Pushing of Old Ladies

An organization that has as its goal the saving of old ladies from utter boredom.

Their mission statement includes that of helping old ladies have more to look forward to than Bingo

and gossiping with other old ladies about their husbands.

BJH

Deportation Station

Mission Statement: Deport illegal immigrants in America

(You gotta love these kids – it’s a commandment!)

Fourth Nephi begins with this statement: . . . the people were all converted unto the Lord, . . . . The word convert, when used as a noun is probably misused as often as it is used correctly in our day and time. Most of the time, most of us aren’t even capable of making the judgment of who is a convert. There are outward things that can be noticed, but so much of it involves matters of the heart . I doubt if any of us have “arrived.” Hopefully, each of us is making steady progress with our own conversions so that someday we can be truly converted – made truly whole – through the grace of Jesus Christ. Consider this:

“Webster [dictionary] says the verb, ‘convert,’ means ‘to turn from one belief or course to another.’ That ‘conversion’ is ‘a spiritual and moral change. . . .’ As used in the scriptures, ‘converted’ generally implies not merely mental acceptance of Jesus and his teachings but also a motivating faith in him and in his gospel – a faith which works a transformation, an actual change in one’s understanding of life’s meaning and in his allegiance to God – in interest, in thought, and in conduct. . . .

“In one who is wholly converted, desire for things inimical [contrary] to the gospel of Jesus Christ has actually died, and substituted therefore is a love of God with a fixed and controlling determination to keep His commandments. . . .

“. . . From this it would appear that membership in the Church and conversion are not necessarily synonymous. Being converted . . . and having a testimony are not necessarily the same thing either. A testimony comes when the Holy Ghost gives the earnest seeker a witness of the truth. A moving testimony vitalizes faith; that is, it induces repentance and obedience to the commandments. Conversion, on the other hand, is the fruit of, or the reward for, repentance and obedience” (Pres. Marion G. Romney, Conference Report, Oct. 1963, 23-24).

And now, Mormon. Of all that he did and all that he said all that he was, perhaps his most powerful message to us is that it is possible to be surrounded by wickedness – even when we’re young – and still hold fast to covenants and to a remembrance of Heavenly Father and His Son.

“[Mormon’s] account bears witness of the hopeless, hell-like state of a people who once knew an almost celestial existence and [later] rejected God in totality. . . .

“Mormon was an incredible man. Not only was he entrusted with the responsibility of the plates and called to lead the Nephite armies at tender ages, but Mormon profoundly loved and cared about his unbelievable degenerate Nephite people. Even after he felt compelled to resign as their leader because of their refusal to repent, his compassion for them drew him back to help them, knowing he would lead them to their inevitable demise and probably die with them. Mormon was surrounded by gross iniquity and sorrow throughout his life, yet he remained . . . strong and valiant. . . .

“. . . Mormon, in the final words of his own record, had born testimony to the descendants of those who he knew would probably kill him and his family. . . . Rather than writing words of bitterness, he had invited them to believe in Christ, repent, and be saved.” (Joseph Fielding McConkie and others, Doctrinal Commentary on the Book of Mormon: Volume IV – Third Nephi through Moroni [1992], 207-8).

WHO AM I?

· A prophet came to him when he was young and told him of records engraved on metal plates that he had hidden in a hill. The prophet told him that he was to go to the hill when he was older and obtain the plates.

· In his mid-teens he was visited of the Lord.

· He tried to share part of what he had learned, but the people hardened their hearts.

· He was in his early twenties when he received the plates.

· He was large in stature.

· He had the same name as his father.

· The people in his time lived in a state of apostasy.

· He led his people as a military leader, prophet, and record keeper.

· He was forced by his enemies to leave his home and move with his people from city to city.

· His enemies finally succeeded in killing him.

You’re right. The answer is both Mormon and Joseph Smith. Isn’t that interesting? Mormon abridged most of the records and Joseph translated them!

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“It is at this moment in Nephite history – just under 950 years since it had begun and just over 300 years since they had been visited by the Son of God himself – that Mormon realized the story was finished. In perhaps the most chilling line he ever wrote, Mormon asserted simply, ‘I saw that the day of grace was passed with them, both temporally and spiritually.’ His people had learned that most fateful of all lessons – that the Spirit of God will not always strive with man; that it is possible, collectively as well as individually, to have time run out. The day of repentance can pass, and it had passed for the Nephites. Their numbers were being ‘hewn down in open rebellion against their God,’ and in a metaphor almost too vivid in its moral commentary, they were being ‘heaped up as dung upon the face of the land” (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, Christ and the New Covenant, 319).

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“It is true that the great principle of repentance is always available, but for the wicked and rebellious there are serious reservations to this statement. For instance, sin is intensely habit-forming and sometimes moves men to the tragic point of no return. . . . As the transgressor moves deeper and deeper in his sin, and the error is entrenched more deeply and the will to change is weakened, it becomes increasingly near-hopeless, and he skids down and down until either he does not want to climb back or he has lost the power to do so” (Pres. Spencer W. Kimball, The Miracle of Forgiveness, [1969], 117).

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“In a soliloquy of death, Mormon reached across time and space to all, especially to that ‘remnant of the house of Israel’ who would one day read his majestic record. Those of another time and place must learn what those lying before him had forgotten -- that all must ‘believe in Jesus Christ, that he is the Son of God,’ that following his crucifixion in Jerusalem he had, ‘by the power of the Father . . . risen again, whereby he hath gained the victory over the grave; and also in him is the sting of death swallowed up’ [Mormon 7:2,5]. . .

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“To ‘believe in Christ,’ especially when measured against such tragic but avoidable consequences, was Mormon’s last plea and his only hope. It is the ultimate purpose of the entire book that would come to the latter-day world bearing his name” (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, Christ and the New Covenant [1997], 321-22).

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“If they saw our day and chose those things which would be of greatest worth to us, is not that how we should study the Book of Mormon? We should constantly ask ourselves, ‘Why did the Lord inspire Mormon (or Moroni or Alma) to include that in his record? What lesson can I learn from that to help me live in this day and age?’” -- Pres. Ezra T. Benson