Therefore they were called after this holy order, and were sanctified, and their garments were washed white through the blood of the Lamb. Now they, after being sanctified by the Holy Ghost, having their garments made white, being pure and spotless before God, could not look upon sin save it were with abhorrence; and there were many, exceedingly great many, who were made pure and entered into the rest of the Lord their God.
The concept of hope plays a vital role in Latter-day Saint thought. Firmly centered in Christ and his resurrection, it is the “hope of eternal life” (Titus 1:2) repeatedly alluded to by Paul. It is the opposite of the despair found among those who are “without Christ, having no hope, and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12). As the Book of Mormon prophet Moroni writes, “If ye have no hope, ye must needs be in despair” (Moro. 10:22). For those, however, who accept Christ’s Atonement and resurrection, there comes a “brightness of hope” (2 Ne. 31:20) through which all who believe in God “might with surety hope for a better world” (Ether 12:4).
. . . .
Regardless of their form, the individual variations of meaning all center on the confidence or trust in God that springs from knowledge that mankind is saved through the Atonement (“for we are saved by hope,” Rom. 8:15). Hence, hope is inseparably connected with faith. Book of Mormon passages add insight to New Testament teachings by expanding on this interactive relationship: “How is it that ye can attain unto faith, save ye shall have hope?” (Moro. 7:40); “hope cometh of faith” (Ether 12:4); “without faith there cannot be any hope” (Moro. 7:42).
In combination with faith, hope leads to knowledge of the truth about Jesus Christ (“if ye have faith, ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true” [Alma 32:21]). It is also an essential attitude for individual salvation (“man must hope, or he cannot receive an inheritance in the place which thou hast prepared” [Ether 12:32]).
James K. Lyon
Hope, The Encyclopedia of Mormonism
I grew up on ranches and farms in Colorado and Minnesota. In the spring, we used a number of different farm implements to prepare the ground for planting. One of those implements was the harrow.
Some harrows use sharp round disks and others have tines. One of the harrows we used consisted of a heavy rectangular metal frame with several crossbars. On each crossbar, several tines were mounted. Each of these tines was like a thick and rugged dagger with a sharp point on one end. The sharp point faced downward toward the earth.
We attached the harrow to a tractor and dragged it back and forth over the field. The sharp point of each tine cut into the earth, digging through the surface and opening up fresh earth where new seeds would be planted. Unless the earth was broken and dug up, our crop would not grow. If seeds were dropped on the old surface, few would take root, and those that did would not thrive. We cut and broke the earth in the spring so it would produce a good harvest in the fall.
If the earth were a living being, the harrow would have felt like an instrument of torture. The earth had developed a hard surface that resisted penetration by productive crops. While that hard surface was not very fertile, the soil just beneath was capable of producing a rich harvest. Without the harrow, however, the good soil would never be exposed to light and air and seeds of growth. It would always have possessed the potential to bless us, but that potential would never be fulfilled.
The scriptures frequently use the harrow as a metaphor for the painful and difficult experiences that often seem to precede major spiritual change.
Alma the Younger was traveling through the land committing terrible sins when an angel appeared to stop him. Alma was struck down by the angel and describes the experience of confronting the true character and consequences of his actions:
“I was racked with eternal torment, for my soul was harrowed up to the greatest degree and racked with all my sins.” (Alma 36:12) (emphasis added)
This experience with a spiritual harrow is key to preparing Alma for his later repentance. He says:
“As I was thus racked with torment, while I was harrowed up by the memory of my many sins, behold, I remembered also to have heard my father prophesy unto the people concerning the coming of one Jesus Christ, a Son of God, to atone for the sins of the world.” (Alma 36:17) (emphasis added)
In an echo of Alma’s earlier problems that must have been particularly painful for him, Alma has a son who also commits serious sins. Corianton is sent to the Zoramites on a mission but abandons his work and is involved in sexual sin. Alma meets with Corianton to call him to repentance. In the process of doing so, Alma bluntly confronts his son with the magnitude of his sins and their consequences. Then he explains his reason for doing so.
“I would not dwell upon your crimes, to harrow up your soul, if it were not for your good.” (Alma 39:7) (emphasis added)
Alma is providing Corianton with the same painful experience that Alma himself learned was necessary for him to make a permanent change in his earlier life.
The blessing of the harrow and its attendant pain is not restricted only to the sinful who need to repent. It often comes through unearned trials that come into our lives. When we need to grow, when we need to change, when we need to take steps up to a higher and better place, sometimes the Lord must allow the harrow to cross and re-cross our lives. As it does so, it opens up our souls and fixes our attention on our Savior.
Elder Maxwell said, “When we take Jesus’ yoke upon us, this admits us eventually to what Paul called the ‘fellowship of [Christ’s] sufferings.’ (Philippians 3:10) Whether illness or aloneness, injustice or rejection . . . our comparatively small-scale sufferings, if we are meek, will sink into the very marrow of the soul. We then better appreciate not only Jesus’ sufferings for us but also His matchless character, moving us to greater adoration and even emulation.” (Neal A. Maxwell, “‘From Whom All Blessings Flow,’” Ensign, May 1997, 11)
If we are to respond to tribulation by either growing out of it or growing strong enough to bear it more easily, we must trust in the Driver of the harrow. We are greatly tempted to doubt in times of immense pain. We doubt ourselves and our righteousness. We doubt that our God and our Savior are really paying much attention to us. Some wonder if there is a God and others feel that He has turned His back to them.
These are the times of chastening, of tutelage, of testing, of preparation of our souls for a future harvest.
David P. Vandagriff
I Need Thee Every Hour – Applying the Atonement in Everyday Life
Wisdom, holiness, and happiness are one; are inseparably united; and are, indeed, the beginning of that eternal life which God hath given us in his Son.
John Wesley
Sermon 70, “Case of Reason Impartially Considered”
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Behold, I say unto you, wickedness never was happiness.
Alma 41:10
We are accustomed to thinking about the permanent and unchanging aspects of the gospel, and there are many enduring principles that applied to Adam and Eve just as they apply to us. However, in the midst of this eternal doctrine, we can sometimes forget that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the greatest force for change in the universe.
Since we reside in mortal bodies in a fallen world, we’re pre-programmed to be natural men and women. Our most important job in this life is to change—put off the natural man or woman and become Saints—and the only way we can do that is through the power of the Atonement of Christ.
[W]e need to become very adept at changing bad for good and good for better. Sometimes that requires letting go of bad attitudes, bad habits, and large or small sins that we have become accustomed to incorporating in our lives. There can be something dangerously comfortable in such flaws. “I wasn’t struck down by lightning yesterday because of my little problem,” we think, “so I’ll probably be fine today, as well.”
Alma understood the changes necessary to deal with our familiar frailties. “Yea, I say unto you come and fear not, and lay aside every sin, which easily doth beset you, which doth bind you down to destruction, yea, come and go forth, and show unto your God that ye are willing to repent of your sins and enter into a covenant with him to keep his commandments, and witness it unto him this day by going into the waters of baptism.” (Alma 7:15)
David P. Vandagriff
I Need Thee Every Hour – Applying the Atonement in Everyday Life
I will, for a day, pause in posting about the Atonement of Christ to address an important issue for all Christians today.
The following excerpt is from a much longer article entitled, “Confessions of a Mormon Law Clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court,” for which a link is provided at the bottom of this post.
Most of the article is devoted to the ascendancy of anti-Christian secular thought and philosophy in the halls of power in the United States and virtually all other Western democracies.
As an explanatory note for my much-respected and appreciated non-LDS readers, Korihor is a man described in the Book of Mormon who lived about 74 BC. Korihor was preaching a philosophy that is startlingly similar to that proposed by current secular thought, which included attacking religion and those who practiced it.
Korihor was confronted by the prophet Alma and the two debated Korihor’s philosophy. That debate is found in Alma 30.
Now to an excerpt from the article I mentioned:
One of the dogmas in present day secularism is that death is the end, a view attributed to Korihor at Alma 30:18. On this point of secularist theory Professor Taylor points out that “[i]n terms of a central image of Christian history, a judgment intervenes before our full entry into the Kingdom. In some way or other, our life will be weighed, and can be found wanting.”
Secularity, by proclaiming [that] death is the end, thereby subtracts from secular thinking any final accounting of our acts and choices.
It is a subtraction that injures my circumstances and my society as well as myself as a moral agent. This final accounting is an important part of our identity.
Even when my attention is focused elsewhere, my identity continues to shape and pre-shape my actions towards myself and others.
My inevitable thoughts of my death and future judgment provide the backdrop or framework within which I have reason to choose the right, thereby connecting my present situation to my future in a fundamental way. Taylor’s point about secularism is an instructive one and is relevant to why The Book of Mormon is so quick to condemn the error in Korihor’s belief [that] there is neither after-life nor final judgment. As more and more individuals in a society either accept or, alternatively, reject Korihor’s teaching, the moral quality of that society is directly affected.
The secularist denial of the Judgment is part of a constellation of secular reasons not “to fear death as the end of life”. When I contemplate my inevitable demise, and then move in my thinking from my death back to today, if knowledge of the final judgment has been subtracted it becomes more difficult to consistently answer the question, Why should I be moral? An important point to consider in making today’s decisions is missing. “[T]herefore,” says Taylor, absent “the completion, as it were of the dossier with which we all [confront] judgment,” society has lost the backdrop or framework for individuals to choose to act unselfishly as a rational decision.
Men and women, says The Book of Mormon, will be judged by God according to their works. “Ye must stand before the judgment seat of Christ to be judged according to your works.” (Mormon 6:21.) In secular theory, however, with no final judgment, the moral significance of death disappears, and the doctrine that life is a “test [that] we can fail” seems to inevitably become misplaced.
Ashby D. Boyle II
Confessions of a Mormon Law Clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court
Meridian Magazine, October 25 2010
(minor typos in the original are corrected)
The Savior could effect our deliverance for two important reasons. First, he met the demands of the law of justice for himself because he kept the laws of God perfectly. In other words, Christ was justified by his works. He avoided the debt altogether and qualified himself to return to the Father-the only one of all mankind to do so. Second, he met the demands of the law for all of the rest of mankind. He himself owed no debt to the law, but he went before it and in essence said: “I am perfect and therefore owe you no suffering. However, I will pay the debt for all mankind. I will undergo suffering that I might pay the price for every transgression and sin ever committed by any man.”
In the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross, Christ paid the price by suffering for every sin as though he himself had committed them, satisfying fully the law of justice. Such suffering is beyond the power of any mortal man to endure. We can’t understand how he did it, only that he did and that “through Him mercy can be fully extended to each of us without offending the eternal law of justice.” In terms of Elder Packer’s parable, he generated sufficient payment to satisfy the debt of every other man. He met the demands of the law for himself through obedience and for all others through suffering.
Alma told his son Corianton that mercy could not rob justice, or else “God would cease to be God.” (Alma 42:25.) That is the case with the merciful love of the Father and the Son. In fact, mercy paid justice! Their Love said to Justice, by virtue of the price paid in the Garden, “Here is payment for the wrongs committed. You are paid in full. Now let the captives go free.”
In one of the most beautiful images in all of scripture, we find the solution to that awful dilemma we all face as sinners. We are standing before the bar as defendants, facing the great judge, God the Father. Our “Advocate with the Father” steps forward, not to refute the charges or to hold up a record of our good works to counterbalance our guilt, but to plead our case in a different manner:
Listen to him who is the advocate with the Father, who is pleading your cause before him-saying: Father, behold the sufferings and death of him who did no sin, in whom thou wast well pleased; behold the blood of thy Son which was shed, the blood of him whom thou gavest that thyself might be glorified; wherefore, Father, spare these my brethren that believe on my name, that they may come unto me and have everlasting life. (D&C 45:3-5.)
Nothing man could do for himself could bring him past the judgment bar successfully without such an Advocate. That is why eternal life is always a gift, and those who receive it do so by “inheritance.” It is interesting to note that the word inherit and its cognate words are used seventy-eight times in the Doctrine and Covenants, while the word earned and its related words are not used once.
Gerald N. Lund
Jesus Christ, Key to the Plan of Salvation
Deseret Book Company, 1991
Elder Lund was later sustained as a Seventy
Alma speaking to his son, Corianton:
6 But behold, it was appointed unto man to die—therefore, as they were cut off from the tree of life they should be cut off from the face of the earth—and man became lost forever, yea, they became fallen man.
7 And now, ye see by this that our first parents were cut off both temporally and spiritually from the presence of the Lord; and thus we see they became subjects to follow after their own will.
8 Now behold, it was not expedient that man should be reclaimed from this temporal death, for that would destroy the great plan of happiness.
9 Therefore, as the soul could never die, and the fall had brought upon all mankind a spiritual death as well as a temporal, that is, they were cut off from the presence of the Lord, it was expedient that mankind should be reclaimed from this spiritual death.
10 Therefore, as they had become carnal, sensual, and devilish, by nature, this probationary state became a state for them to prepare; it became a preparatory state.
11 And now remember, my son, if it were not for the plan of redemption, (laying it aside) as soon as they were dead their souls were miserable, being cut off from the presence of the Lord.
12 And now, there was no means to reclaim men from this fallen state, which man had brought upon himself because of his own disobedience;
13 Therefore, according to justice, the plan of redemption could not be brought about, only on conditions of repentance of men in this probationary state, yea, this preparatory state; for except it were for these conditions, mercy could not take effect except it should destroy the work of justice. Now the work of justice could not be destroyed; if so, God would cease to be God.
14 And thus we see that all mankind were fallen, and they were in the grasp of justice; yea, the justice of God, which consigned them forever to be cut off from his presence.
15 And now, the plan of mercy could not be brought about except an atonement should be made; therefore God himself atoneth for the sins of the world, to bring about the plan of mercy, to appease the demands of justice, that God might be a perfect, just God, and a merciful God also.
[T]he Lord urged the Twelve to “get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away” (Matthew 14:22). Then Jesus went to a mountain to pray. In the evening he was alone on the land and “the ship was in the midst of the sea” (Mark 6:47). As the sky darkened the Twelve were tossed about upon the waves of the sea (see Matthew 14:24). The wind was blowing against them as they toiled to row the ship. They continued in this toil all during the night.
What would it be like to row all night, being tossed by the waves and the wind, making no progress? Can we feel the pain in our hands, stomach, thighs, shoulders, and back? Can we feel the beating of the waves against our bodies? Can we see the blackness of the night? If we sense these things, we may have a deeper appreciation for what Alma called the “endless night of darkness” (Alma 41:7). In those words Alma described the condition of souls who had not repented, which would be the condition of all souls if there had been no atonement and repentance were not possible. The ship on the sea may be seen as a type of the endless condition of all mankind if there were no Redeemer.
Brent Top
“Lord of the Gospels”
The 1990 Sperry Symposium on the New Testament
Bruce A. Van Orden and Brent L. Top, eds.
Deseret Book (1991)