The Atonement

This post I decided to talk about the Atonement, and I wanted to focus on 2 main questions with this subject.
1. What is it?
2. Why did Christ have to go through it?

Lets start with the first question and establish "what was the Atonement?"
Many people are familiar with the suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane and the Crucifixion as the acts made by Jesus by which we are saved. His grace was then given at that time so that we all can be saved. But there is a third part. The Resurrection. This is one of the major points of Christ's life! He lived, then died, then LIVED AGAIN! So this is the order of the Atonement in which we will be talking about today.
1. The Garden of Gethsemane. (Luke 22:39-44) Video: http://www.mormonchannel.org/bible-videos?v=1518836079001
2. The Crucifixion. (John 19:1-30) Video: http://www.mormonchannel.org/bible-videos?v=1526708882001
3. The Resurrection. (John 20:11-17) Video: http://www.mormonchannel.org/bible-videos?v=1537265083001


These 3 events are are what make up the Atonement and each one has a specific purpose. Jesus did not suffer, die and rise again for no reason. I would like to share my understanding of these events in Christ life.

                           The Garden of Gethsemane

The Garden of Gethsemane was a garden of olive trees and was a place the Jesus spent much of His time. In this Garden is one of the greatest events of all time took place. Jesus Christ suffered for our sins. But this is not all. Jesus Christ to fulfill the prophecies of prophets of old not only took upon him the sins of His people but also the sicknesses, the pains and sorrows (Alma 7:11-12). He felt any kind of pain you feel physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually so that He, the Son of God can comfort you, and help you as you go through hard times. He suffered to the point that He bled from every poor! No mortal man could do that! The amount of pain a person would have to go through to bleed from ONE poor is enough to kill them. Think of what He went through for you and I! The Son of God, sitting upon the right hand of God, came down to earth and suffered for you! This was not all. After Jesus Christ suffered for us, he was betrayed by one of His apostles to the priests. I cannot imagine what if felt to be betrayed by a friend into the hands of someone who wants to kill you.

                                      The Crucifixion

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends..." (John 15:13-14)
After Jesus was taken prisoner he was scourged and mocked. He was spat upon, bruised and beaten. The Lord Jesus suffered much to stand for truth. He was condemned for blasphemy, a crime punishable by death in those days. He stood for the truth that He is the Son of God. The Christ. He was delivered to the soldiers and they caused more suffering for our Lord and Savior and nailed Him to the cross. I think we know the story of the crucifixion quite well. There was one thing needed to be done before His death. "And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"(Mark 15:34) Jesus Christ had the companionship of the Holy Ghost through His life. And because He was perfect, He had never lost it. He had to know what is was like to lose that companionship so He would know how to succor those who have the gift of the Holy Ghost but lose it. Without this it would not have been finished! Then He exclaimed that it was finished and He died. What was the purpose of all this? Why did Christ have to be killed and go through so much? I will explain. Gods plan includes our death. That is how we can progress and start a new chapter! It is part of the plan! Christ has “broken the bands of death” (Mosiah 16:7)  "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive" (1 Cor 15:22). Christ was given the power over death! Many Christians have a cross necklace or a crucifix in their home to remember the death of the Savior. If there is one thing I have learned growing up in the LDS church it is that we don't need to focus on just His death, but on his life. Both before and after death!

                                   The Resurrection

"He is not here, for he is risen..."(Matt 28:6) Jesus Christ overcame death and rose again upon the third day! I love the story of Mary seeing Christ because it just shows how amazing it was! “The death of Christ shall loose the bands of this temporal death, that all shall be raised from this temporal death.

“The spirit and the body shall be reunited again in its perfect form; both limb and joint shall be restored to its proper frame, even as we now are at this time; …
“Now, this restoration shall come to all, both old and young, both bond and free, both male and female, both the wicked and the righteous; and even there shall not so much as a hair of their heads be lost; but every thing shall be restored to its perfect frame” (Alma 11:42–44).

But why? Why do we need to be resurrected? What I believe is that God gave us a body so that we could experience things in this life like pain but also joy. Think about this. You have a favorite food and a least favorite food. If you only ate your least favorite food and had never experienced your favorite food, would you have a favorite? No. So God in a sense gives you this other food for you to try. You eat in and now you are like "Wow! That's good! I like that stuff way better!" Then what if God said "Ok well now you have tried it, I am going to take it away now." You wouldn't be very happy. But God doesn't take it away forever. He brings it back and you can have that food forever! That's why we are resurrected! So we can be joyful forever! 2 Nephi 2:27 says "Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy."

God wants us to be happy. The Savior chose to do these things for us so that we can enter into our Fathers kingdom. He payed for our sins so that we may follow Him and be lead to our Father and receive the fullness of joy! I know that God loves us all! I know that Jesus suffered and died then lived again for me! I know that He is  my savior and that as I follow Him I can live with God again and be happy for all eternity with my family! 

Questions?

Have any questions you would like answered? Check out our Q&A page!

This week "The Atonement"

This week will be about the Atonement, Christ sacrifice for us and why it is so important, what does it really do?

What is the purpose of life?

Last time we talked about where we came from and about God's plan for us. That was Act 1 of the play we are in. Now we are in Act 2. This life is Act 2. To understand what the purpose of this life is, we need to go back to the beginning of our existence on this earth. Human life began on the earth at the creation when God created Adam and Eve in His own image (Gen 1:26). God told them to tend to the garden and to "multiply and replenish the earth," (Gen 1:28) Another commandment he gave to them was to not partake of the fruit of the tree of good and evil. We know that eventually they did eat the fruit and were cast out. With this "fall" enters suffering, pain, sickness and death. Many people mistakenly see this as the worst thing in human history, and we would all be better off if it didn't happen. This isn't true. The prophet Lehi in the Book of Mormon explains why,

"22 And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end.
23 And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin.
24 But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things.
25 Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy." (2 Nephi 2:22-25)

If Adam had not fallen, the we would never have had the opportunity to be on earth! We would not experience joy, happiness, and not doing any good. Remember that all is done "in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things." This is part of His plan for us! With the fall, we can now enter into the probationary state. It's like a test (2 Cor 8:2, 2 Nephi 2:21).

As we go through life, we have 2 great influences fighting for our attention, good and evil. God gives us the natural ability to know good and evil and to choose for ourselves which we choose. God sets commandment to help us keep doing right. But he also allows Satan to temp us to do evil. But why? Lehi answers that too. He says that there must be opposition in all things, or else how are we to learn (2 Nephi 2:11)? You may notice that many things tell us what not to do, but our nature is to do. As part of Gods test is he gave us bodies, these bodies are imperfect and carnal. The natural man is lazy, rude, and does not take control. Its runs on pleasure rather than what is right. "Because the carnal mind is the enmity against God;" (Rom 8:7). Paul teaches us about having a mind of the spirit (Rom 8:5-6). This leads to life.

God continues to test us as we sin. He allows us to be tempted and to sin. We all sin, and he wants to see what we do when we sin. Repent and come back, or turn and try to find comfort in evil. Ge tells us what the full purpose of life is (Alma 34:32). We are here to prepare to meet Him, this is where we perform our labors and to be tested. But we must repent always (Alma 34:34). We will be the same person there as we are here. And it is that person there as we are here, and it is that person who will receive final judgment. 

Our Heavenly Father does love us. We are surrounded by so much doom and gloom in this world. We sin we suffer and eventually we die and return to Him. How great will be our joy as we see the Father we have longed to know. God gives us so many good things in this life. Look at the beautiful world we live in. Think of the times you have been happy think of those you care about and those who care about you. These and countless others are things God gave to us because He loves us so much. I know that He does and I hope you do too.

Sorry

Sorry the last post was late, some things came up ^.^

This we will talk about "What is the purpose of this life?"

And next week is "The Atonement, and what is it?"

Where Did We Come From?

Many people today see life as now, they believe that this is it, "My life began when I was born and ends when I die." Have you ever thought that? I think most religious people think there is a life after death where we live with God, but what about before life? We know that our bodies were created by our parents,  but what about our spirits? If spirits live forever after death, did they live before we were here on Earth?

President Boyde K Packer told us that our life is like a 3 part play. We are in Act 2 and we don't really know what Act 1 was. Its like we showed up late to the play! So if we don't know what happened, then we wont understand Act 2. God gave us a script so that we understand what happened. Lets go back and see what happened.

Before the Earth was created, we lived with God. We are His spirit children (Ps 82:6), we knew Him, we walked with Him, we talked with Him. He created us in His own image, and He knows us personally (Jer 1:5). While we lived with God, he gathered us all together and presented a plan about how we could come to earth and gain bodies and make choices. He told us that we would receive imperfect bodies and that we would sin but that a Redeemer would be chosen to suffer and to pay for our sins so that we could return to Him. One of the main points of the plan was we had free agency. We could choose for ourselves whether we did right or wrong. He asked who should be the savior and 2 spirits volunteered, Jesus, and Lucifer. Lucifer wanted to change the plan and take God's honor (Is 14:12-15). Jesus wanted to follow God's plan, and give the glory to God. Jesus was chosen and Lucifer rebelled. We were at a war in heaven! We fought against Lucifer and his followers and because we were on God's side, we won, and Lucifer was cast out (Rev 12:7-11)!

Before we came to earth, God prepared us taught us about what would happen while we were on earth and we were "foreordained" to do certain things on earth (Alma 13:3). But you may be asking, "Why don't I remember this?" The Lord put a "veil" over our minds so that we can proceed in this life by faith, rather than pure knowledge (Eccl 1:11).

I hope this post has answered some questions that you may be having! If you have any questions, go to the Q & A section of this blog and comment! I will do my best to answer :)

Answering questions

We all have questions that come to us during our life time that may be hard to answer, but all the answers can be found in the scriptures. The Lord provides us these books so that we can learn wisdom in Him and be able to find the answers to our questions if we but search for them. But what are the scriptures exactly? They are the written word of God's prophets that He calls to preach His word to all nations, kindreds, tongues and people. The scriptures are the inspired writings of such men. The Lord reveals His secrets to them and tells them to write it down so that we can learn the secrets as well (Amos 3:7). Jesus told His disciples that it is given to them to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven but the the others would not know (Matt 13:11). If we do not open our ears and open our eyes to the word of God, then we will not hear or see what the scriptures and the Spirit will teach us (Matt 13:13-15). Always read with a question and be searching for ways that you can apply the teachings to your life. God reveals the scriptures to answer the questions of the soul and to teach us what we can do to be happy. He has done this from the beginning and will always do it. He tells us this in 2 Nephi 29:11 "For I command all men, both in the east and in the west, and in the north, and in the south, and in the islands of the sea, that they shall write the words which I speak unto them;" I hope we can all use the scriptures and they were intended to be used and to see them for what they are. Not just as long books with hard words but as precious treasure given from God. I like what 2 Timothy 3:15-17 says.


"15 And that from a  child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee  wise unto  salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.


16  All  scripture is given by  inspiration of God, and is profitable for  doctrine, for  reproof, for correction, for  instruction in righteousness:


17 That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works."


Let us read and pray about he scriptures that we read and seek after the answers hidden inside the words of God.

This week "Where did I come from?"

This week I will talk about "Where did I come from?" Stay tuned for the post.

This Blog's Purpose

     Have you ever thought about where we came from? What is our purpose here on Earth? Where are we going after this life? Who is God? Why did Christ have to die for me?

     If you have ever had this kind of a question than this is where you will find some answers. On this Blog I will try my best to answer one of these questions every week. There are a few things I wish to make clear. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I have been called on a 2 year mission for my church and am serving in the Florida and Georgia areas. On these blogs I will be using the knowledge I have gained through study of the scriptures. I will use scriptures from the King James Version of the Bible and the Book of Mormon which is a support to the Bible and is another testament of Jesus Christ. I pray that I will be lead by the Holy Spirit in answering these questions and I would ask that you search your heart as you read. I do not want you to take what I say as truth because I said it, but pray and ask God if it is true because He will cause His Holy Spirit to touch your heart if it is true.

     I will be posting many scriptures to support what I find. Feel free to click the links and see for yourself what I am trying to say. I am not a perfect teacher but my main focus is to answer these questions to bring others closer to Christ. I hope that this message will be taken as it is intended.