Of What I Believed and What I Found

February 6, 2014 1 Comment

Until the day that I was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ I had not affirmatively adhered to any of the various creeds of the denominations of Christendom, none of them in particular, but I have always had faith in God and Christ. My parents, acting upon the best knowledge and light that they possessed at the time, had me baptized when but a few days old into the Lutheran church (I think that it was the Missouri Synod, but I am not sure of that). I was quite short of sin at the time of my infant baptism, a claim that I confess I could not make when I approached the waters of baptism on my own volition later in my youth.

Also upon the initiative of my parents, and without any resistance on my part, I was a regular and active attendee at the protestant churches my parents attended. I sang in youth choirs, and I tried to pay attention to the weekly sermons. Often I would sit by myself on the front row, right in front of the minister’s podium, and watch him go page by page through his text. I regularly attended Sunday School and was involved in the lessons. It was at one such Sunday School where as a little lad I was taught by the Sunday School teacher, my mother, to build my house upon a rock.

In my childhood I grew up in suburban communities, richly endowed with a wide variety of Christian churches and sects, and when as a youth we moved to western New York I became acquainted with still others. My experience was that people chose their protestant church in accordance with what suited them as to location, music, oratorical powers of the minister, the fellowship of the members, the physical facilities of the local building, worship customs and practices, meeting hours, and a variety of other factors. Whether one denomination was “true” in comparison with another was not a question that I recall ever being raised. The general attitude that I could discern was that each and all of the denominations were recognized as possessing no more or less truth of consequence as any other.

I do not remember a beginning to my faith in Christ or my assurance of the presence of God. I recall them as much as I can recall anything from my earliest memories of my earliest thoughts. What I was taught in my childhood reinforced that faith. Indeed, if the churches taught anything, it was to have faith in God and in Jesus Christ.

Nevertheless, I thought of more. More than occasionally I pondered why the churches of the day were so different from the Church of Christ as described in the New Testament. None of them was even close in resemblance. I imagined that it would have been marvelous to live in the days when Apostles of Jesus Christ walked among men and when the gifts of the Spirit were abundant. I also pondered, even as a child, the situation of people in China and elsewhere who had little knowledge of Christ and no access to His saving ordinances. The churches offered no solution to the problem of these people other than to try to reach them by missionaries as much as possible. But what was the fate of those who missed out in the meantime? I never heard the question asked or an answer offered.

I was also taught by my mother to pray. Prayer was a part of my daily routine. I had a deep reverence for the Holy Bible, a copy being one of the first books I ever “bought” (by redeeming a book of green stamps). The churches I attended taught from the Bible, particularly recounting the stories. As I got older, I sensed, however, a hint of embarrassment on the part of minister and teacher about relying upon the Bible too literally. We were not encouraged to bring a copy with us to church or class.

All of that changed after my mother invited the Latter-day Saint missionaries to come by and tell us something about their church. She really had my brother in mind, since at the time he was wrestling with all of the distractions of young manhood. She felt that they might do him some good. When the missionaries arrived, I was home and he was not. I listened and learned.

What the Latter-day Saint missionaries unfolded to me was the ancient Church of Christ in its fullness, all restored on earth today. Once more living Apostles walked among men, with all the same gifts and powers of the Spirit manifested as they were nearly 2,000 years before. The scriptures came alive, the Holy Bible resumed its place as a standard reference for daily living and communion with God, its messages and miracles embraced into real life rather than mere moral tales of antique lore. As they did anciently, the living prophets and Apostles were revealing more from God, guidance directly relevant to our current and modern conditions, all fully in harmony with what God had always said.

One example I learned and had until then never been taught was news of the work to spread the message and redemption of Christ to all people, wherever and whenever they lived. As the Bible taught and as modern prophets taught, those who left this life without access to the gospel of Christ would hear that message in the world of spirits, where they lived and waited for the day of resurrection to come when the Savior returned to the earth, as He promised. None were to be left out, all to have as full a chance to receive God and Christ as would any other.

Echoing what I had always believed, the Latter-day Saints proclaimed that Jesus Christ was the Savior of all the world and of all mankind, His religion not just a faith for a segment of the population in one part of the world. Together with the Holy Bible of the ancient east The Book of Mormon was a testimony from the ancient west that salvation is in Jesus Christ and in Him alone, proclaimed by two societies of antiquity separated by an ocean but united in the same witness from God of the divinity of His Son.

To these ancient testimonies of Christ were added the modern testimonies of men and women who knew. The Latter-day Saints gained through their faith personal knowledge born of personal revelation of the Savior Jesus Christ. Through prayer and many personal unimpeachable experiences their faith had grown to solid assurance.

To their witness I add my own, gained in the same way. Building upon my own faith in Christ, exercising the familiarity with personal prayer taught me by my mother, I acquired just as the saints of old days and modern times a deep personal knowledge and assurance that God is real, that Jesus Christ is resurrected and the Savior of all, and that His Church is on the earth again possessing and manifesting all that it had anciently.

I found the true and living Church of the true and living God. The interaction has made my life richer and better, deeper and full of value. Since and from that discovery I have been gaining every good thing.

(First published March 10, 2013)

Filed under apostasy, baptism, faith, Holy Bible, Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ, knowledge, organized religion, prayer, prophets, revelation, scripture, Second coming of Christ, spirit world, spirituality, The Book of Mormon, The Restoration

Of Predictions and Prophecies

December 26, 2013 Leave a comment

Two dangers to which members of our society—and perhaps members of many another society—have been prone is the eagerness to know the future, and dismay and disillusionment when the reality of the future does not play out as expected. That makes predictors of the future in high demand and always at risk.

Experience also teaches us that most predictors of the future do not know what they are talking about and are highly susceptible to failure. That probably explains why the oracles of history and modernity are sphinx-like in their pronouncements, offering up vague prognostications whose insightful value can only be appreciated after the ensuing events occur and are appropriately explained—or explained away.

In modern times our most prolific prognosticators are sports-wizards who tell you before the season begins and as it evolves who will be the champions and who the losers. Not far behind are the political experts who make a living pronouncing who will win in the next elections, hoping greatly that their predictions will take the energy out of the doomed candidates and make the prophecy self-fulfilling. Also high on the list in recent decades are the economic gurus who predict with assurance and precision everything from jobless numbers to economic growth to interest rates.

Some of these last are actually becoming reliable after a sort in terms of how consistently wrong they are. An oft-cited economist from Standard and Poors comes to mind, who you can now generally count on getting his jobless predictions backwards. I am reminded of Raymond F. DeVoe, Jr., who generously remarked that, “Economists use decimals in their forecasts to show that they have a sense of humor.” (Raymond F. DeVoe, Jr., The DeVoe Report, February 7, 1996) Economists love to produce charts with erratic lines displaying the recorded past and smooth lines presenting their forecasts. These are helpful in that you can be sure that the future will look nothing like the lines of predicted future performance. It would be wise to keep in mind the observation of Alex Pollock concerning the recent recession, “Among the many losses imposed by the bubble is a well-deserved loss of credibility on the part of central bankers and economists.” (Alex Pollock, “2007 Bust: How Could They Not Have Known?”, Real Clear Markets, September 21, 2011)

All of this is not to say that it is impossible to predict the future. There are certain trends that can be predicted within tolerable levels of probability, such as that flooding the money supply will usually produce inflation, that you get less of what you tax (be that income, jobs, investment, or healthcare, for example), or that the Yankees will before long win another World Series.

Aside from acting upon reasonable probabilities based upon experience, good data, and rational analysis, it is safe to say that man cannot reliably predict the future. We can learn from history, because although history never repeats itself it can teach us lessons. In the world of human action there is nothing new that is wholly new. All of this, however, is in the realm of managing risks and probabilities, something that we all have to do every day just in order to act. Nevertheless, while we expect certain things to happen, none of us on our own can know what will happen.

God can and does know. He sees it all, and He is never surprised. God’s omniscience is not limited by time or place. Moreover, our loving and generous Father shares or withholds from us knowledge of the future, depending upon our need. God has shared with me enough glimpses of the future to help me prepare and be prepared for when the events arrived. Yet many is the difficult experience of life that I am glad to have had and learned and grown from, looking at the experience in the past, that I am not sure that I could have mustered the courage to face had I known with any clarity that it was coming. God withholds from most of us knowledge of our manner of death, all the while equipping us with the knowledge that we need in order to live well.

There is much that God does want us to know about the future, our individual future as well as mankind’s future, to aid us in our daily living, to give purpose and direction to daily activities that might otherwise seem pointless or even hopeless, or to elicit from us extra efforts and undiscovered talents. From the beginning of time our Father has sent to us prophets, fellow humans like ourselves, to whom He has revealed prophecies important to His children. The prophet Isaiah brought comfort to Ahaz, the king of Judah, when his land was invaded. He prophesied that the invasion would fail and to encourage him offered the sign of the coming of the Messiah and His miraculous virgin birth (see Isaiah 7:14-16).

Amos was another such prophet, who declared, “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.” (Amos 3:7) That is why Jesus Christ has sent us new apostles and prophets in our day, to inspire, counsel, comfort, uplift, and in many ways aid us by divine guidance in the difficult times in which people always live, we no less than God’s children in the past.

We need, however, to keep in mind the point that while God’s prophecies are reliable and never fail our loving Father is careful to tell us what we need while withholding what were better that we not yet know. That can leave room for misinterpreting God’s prophecies and assigning to them meanings and dressing them up with interpretations not included by God in the vision. When the prophecy is fulfilled in ways that vary from our own predictions and expectations it is not the prophecy of God that has failed but rather our own unwarranted assumptions.

Throughout ancient scriptures there were many prophecies of Christ’s mortal ministry as well as of His triumphal second coming. Many have confused the two, and such confusion led more than some to reject the Messiah when He walked among them in the land of Judea and Galilee. Jesus Christ fulfilled all that was prophesied for thousands of years about His mortal ministry, including His sacrifice and death. Yet many—but not all—eyes and ears were closed to Jesus because He did not fulfill mistaken expectations and traditions. A similar pattern is playing out today as the hour approaches for the Savior’s return.

Inasmuch as God sees all, there is much that He sees and knows that He could not possibly explain to men bounded by the extent of their own experiences. How would God explain to an ancient people some of the most common of daily happenings in our technological world? And certainly we are as far removed from the realities of heavenly experience as the ancients were from our daily 21st century experience. That is to say that God’s prophecies can be fulfilled in ways far beyond human expectation or even imaginings prior to their fulfillment.

When I was a missionary in 1979, I knew of the prophecy that the gospel of Jesus Christ would be preached to all nations, and I firmly believed it. Yet I did not have the slightest clue as to how missionaries would ever be allowed beyond the Iron Curtain. Little did I know that in less than a decade those barriers would come down peacefully and that the Soviet Union itself would cease to exist. Knowing of the prophecy allowed many to prepare. That preparation did not require knowledge of how God would work upon the nations to bring about His purposes.

I thank God for His ancient and modern prophets, and for the prophecies He has shared and continues to reveal, great and small, glorious and helpful. As the prophecies unfold, my plan is to adjust my expectations to the unfolding reality of God’s work and take comfort in knowing that all will be fulfilled as God continues to reveal to those who will listen everything that they will need to know.

(First published April 7, 2013)

Filed under atonement, courage, demagoguery, economics, future, heaven, Jesus Christ, knowledge, missionary service, politics, prophecy, prophets, scripture, Second coming of Christ, taxes

Of Faith and Life

October 12, 2013 Leave a comment

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)

(First published August 31, 2013)

Filed under abundant life, death, divine nature, eternal life, faith, grace, happiness, heaven, Jesus Christ, joy, knowledge, life, repentance, salvation, stewardship, works

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