The Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ is the heart and core and center of revealed religion.

Elder Bruce R. McConkie Christ and the Creation

[W]e are promised that in the temple the Lord’s name will be put upon us. It means at root that we become his. The answer to “Who am I?” can never be complete unless it answers “Whose am I?” You are the son or daughter of a king. The Father himself. Through the ordinances you are begotten spiritually through his Son. You become heir to his throne. That is a worldly way of saying it. But it is true. An old Jewish proverb says that the worst thing the evil inclination can ever do to you is to make you forget that you are the son or daughter of a king. I don’t know how you can forget that in the temple. You take his name.

To receive him fully is to receive the fullness of his atonement. Think about it—the at-one-ment that Jesus Christ wrought by the shedding of his own blood. The atonement was, and is, to enable us to overcome through his grace and healing power three things: Ignorance, sin, and death. Hence I often say the temple is a matter of life and death.

“A man cannot be saved in ignorance.” This passage refers to a specific kind of ignorance. The preceding verse is talking about sealing, about coming to know by revelation through the power of the Holy Priesthood not only that Jesus is the Christ, but also that a relationship has been forged between you and Jesus Christ. It is a testimony that there is light at the end of the tunnel, that he is making you his. How do you come to know that? I can only tell you that the promise does pertain to the temple. And we may come to a like testimony about temple sealings to our progenitors and our children.

The Savior said that he came that men might have life, and have it more abundantly. Life, abundant life, is pluralized in the teachings of Joseph Smith as “eternal lives.”

You are all alive in several ways and to certain degrees. You are alive intellectually; you think, you study, you teach. There is, no matter what else we do each day, the life of the mind. Then there is the life of the heart. The word in Hebrew is leb, “heart,” the inmost throbbing center. A hard heart is different than a malleable, tender heart. Christ’s heart is tender. Those who come to him feeling mercy and gratitude for his mercy are tenderized in the very center of their being.

We seek life in another way. It is the creative life. It is lodged in the cry of ancient Israelite fathers and mothers: “Give me children, or I die.” This is the life of creation and procreation.

I testify that in the house of the Lord all three of these modes of life are enhanced and magnified and increased. Therein we are promised that whatever our age or the decline and disabilities that we experience here, we will one day enter in at the gate to eternal lives. On that day of renewal, we will emerge into a celestial condition, into the “fulness of the glory of the Father.” There the glorious privilege of priesthood, parenthood, and godhood come together as one. There will be the reunion of the separated forever. As this is the crowning ordinance of the house of God, it is also the crowning truth of the gospel.

Truman G. Madsen
The Temple and the Atonement, The Maxwell Institute

Sherrie was able to move some of her fingers and toes after being released from intensive care. Dr. Walker was encouraged, but he told Sherrie’s parents that surgeons certainly could not take all the credit if Sherrie recovered.

“There is a power in surgery that is not mine,” says Dr. Walker, a member of the Cottonwood Fifth Ward in Salt Lake City. “I really felt that was manifest in Sherrie’s case. She came in here almost totally paralyzed, but things went so smoothly. A lot of good things happen to kids here that we can’t take credit for. Maybe because we help children, the Lord looks over us.”

When Sherrie came out of anesthesia, Dr. Walker asked her, “Sherrie, do you still love me?” She forced a smile through the pain.

Following the surgery, Clayne and Debbie spent the day praying fervently and taking turns keeping vigil at Sherrie’s bedside. As he watched his red-haired daughter sleep in a curtained cubicle that night, Clayne worried that she might die, as Dr. Walker had warned. But Sherrie awoke the next morning and immediately began speaking. A feeling of reverence engulfed the cubicle. For a moment, Clayne was puzzled by Sherrie’s words.

“Daddy, Aunt Cheryl is here,” she told her father. “And another lady I don’t know is with her.” Clayne and an attending nurse, the only ones at Sherrie’s bedside, glanced at each other. Sherrie continued.

“Grandpa Norman [Sherrie’s deceased great-grandfather] and Grandma Brown [Sherrie’s deceased great-great-grandmother] are here. And Daddy, who is that standing beside you?”

“I don’t know, honey,” Clayne replied. “Who does he look like?”

“He looks like you, only taller.” Sherrie paused, then continued. “He says he’s your brother, Jimmy.”

Clayne was three when Jimmy, ten years his senior, died of cystic fibrosis. “I doubt that during Sherrie’s life Jimmy’s name had ever been mentioned,” Clayne says. “She had never even seen a picture of him.”

Clayne, feeling that Sherrie’s death was imminent, hurried from the intensive care unit to awaken Debbie, who was sleeping in the hospital’s parent room. “There are visitors,” he told his wife. “I can’t see them, and I doubt that you can see them. But I can feel them.”

For nearly an hour, Sherrie looked about the cubicle and described her visitors, all deceased family members. Exhausted, she then fell asleep.

“Daddy, all of the children here in the intensive care unit have angels helping them,” Sherrie later told her father. Other visits and sacred experiences, before and after subsequent surgeries and during painful tests and procedures, followed.

“People from the other side helped,” Sherrie recalls tearfully. “When I was really in pain, they would come and help me calm down. They told me that I would be okay and that I would make it through.”

Michael R. Morris
Sherrie’s Shield of Faith, Ensign, June, 1995
Quoted by Elder Kent F. Richards, The Atonement Covers All Pain, General Conference, April, 2011

[Healing is] an integral component of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It is so powerful—so all encompassing in its scope and reach—that it not only pays the price for sin but also can heal every mortal affliction. He who went forth suffering pains and afflictions of every kind that He might know perfectly how to succor His people (see Alma 7:11–12), who bore the incomprehensible burden of the sins of all who belong to the family of Adam (see 2 Nephi 9:21), in like manner extends His healing power to all, regardless of the cause of their affliction. “With his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

. . . .

The divine gift of healing is, therefore, manifested in different ways, tailored to the individual needs of those who are its recipients by Him who knows them best because He loves them most. Christ’s healing power may provide permanent relief in the sense that abnormal functioning of one or more parts of the body is corrected and the heavy burden of suffering lifted from weary hearts. But the peace, rest, and relief of suffering so devoutly wished for by those whose burdens seem ofttimes unbearable may come not from healing in a medical sense but from the gift of added strength, understanding, patience, and compassion, which enable sufferers to carry their burdens. Like Alma and his brethren, they may then “bear up their burdens with ease” and “submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord” (Mosiah 24:15).

. . . .

I believe our spiritual strength is directly related to the extent to which our souls are stretched. But we should neither seek for suffering nor glory in tribulation. There is no intrinsic value in suffering in and of itself. Suffering can wound and embitter the soul as surely as it can strengthen and purify. Some souls become stronger in response to suffering, but others bend and break. As author Anne Morrow Lindbergh wisely noted, “If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers.” (“Lindbergh Nightmare,” Time, Feb. 5, 1973, 35) If we are to partake of “the fellowship of [Christ’s] sufferings” (Philippians 3:10), we must pay the price of striving with all our hearts to know and emulate Him. That price may indeed involve suffering, but to suffering we must add compassion, empathy, patience, humility, and a willingness to submit our will to that of God.

The wondrous manifestations of Christ’s love for all bring hope and encouragement to those who suffer from ailments of all sorts. His love is ever present and never failing. As Paul testified:

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? …

“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

“Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35, 38–39).

Elder Alexander B. Morrison
The Spiritual Component of Healing“, Ensign, June 2008, 46–50

December 2, 2012

Healing, Hymns, Mercy

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Come, ye disconsolate, where’er ye languish,
Come to the mercy seat, fervently kneel.
Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish;
Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.

Joy of the desolate, light of the straying,
Hope of the penitent, fadeless and pure!
Here speaks the Comforter, tenderly saying,
“Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot cure.”

Here see the Bread of Life, see waters flowing
Forth from the throne of God, pure from above.
Come to the feast of love; come, ever knowing
Earth has no sorrow but heaven can remove.

Come Ye Disconsolate, Hymn 115

There has always been in all of humanity a sprinkling of those who are described in the scriptures as the blind, the halt, the lame, the deaf, the withered, the dumb, the impotent folk. We refer to them as having learning or communication disorders, as the hearing or visually impaired, as those with motor or orthopedic limitations. We speak of intellectual or emotional impairment, of retardation, and mental illness. Some suffer from a combination of these, and all of them cannot function without some help.

. . . .

It is my intent to teach doctrine which, if understood, will reinforce your courage and endurance, even foster a measure of contentment with circumstances which you did not invite, do not deserve, but from which you cannot turn away.

. . . .

The very purpose for which the world was created, and man introduced to live upon it, requires that the laws of nature operate in cold disregard for human feelings. We must work out our salvation without expecting the laws of nature to be exempted for us. Natural law is, on rare occasions, suspended in a miracle. But mostly our handicapped, like the lame man at the pool of Bethesda, wait endlessly for the moving of the water.

. . . .

At a recent stake conference, I noticed on the front row a family including a girl of ten who has palsy and is deaf. Her father held her so that she would not slide off the bench. Their tenderness touched me deeply. When the meeting ended, I motioned for them to come up to me, for they were holding back. The father turned so that I could see Heidi’s face, which was buried into his shoulder, and he said with a smile, “She’s under there someplace.”

Indeed she is under there someplace. All of them are under there somewhere.

. . . .

President Joseph Fielding Smith explained that “all spirits while in the pre-existence were perfect in form, having all their faculties and mental powers unimpaired. … Deformities in body and mind are … physical.” (Answers to Gospel Questions, comp. Joseph Fielding Smith, Jr., 5 vols., Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1979, 3:19.) Physical means “temporal”; temporal means “temporary.” Spirits which are beautiful and innocent may be temporally restrained by physical impediments.

If healing does not come in mortal life, it will come thereafter. Just as the gorgeous monarch butterfly emerges from a chrysalis, so will spirits emerge.

. . . .

“Their sleeping dust [will] be restored unto its perfect frame, bone to bone, and the sinews and the flesh upon them, the spirit and the body to be united never again to be divided, that they might receive a fulness of joy.” (D&C 138:17.)

And, “the soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul; yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body; yea, even a hair of the head shall not be lost; but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame.” (Alma 40:23; italics added.)

“O how great the plan of our God! … The spirit and the body is restored to itself again, and all men become incorruptible, and immortal, and they are living souls, having a perfect knowledge like unto us in the flesh, save it be that our knowledge shall be perfect.” (2 Ne. 9:13.)

. . . .

Truth: Mortal life is temporary and, measured against eternity, infinitesimally brief. If a microscopic droplet of water should represent the length of mortal life, by comparison all the oceans on earth put together would not even begin to represent everlasting life.

Truth: After mortal death we will rise in the resurrection to an existence to which there will not, neither could there be an end. The words everlasting, never ending, eternal, forever and forever in the revelations describe both the gospel and life.

That day of healing will come. Bodies which are deformed and minds that are warped will be made perfect. In the meantime, we must look after those who wait by the pool of Bethesda.

President Boyd K. Packer
The Moving of the Water,” General Conference, April, 1991, Ensign, May, 1991

“Jesus’ daily mortal experiences and His ministry, to be sure, acquainted Him by observation with a sample of human sicknesses, grief, pains, sorrows, and infirmities which are ‘common to man’ (1 Cor. 10:13). But the agonies of the atonement were infinite and first-hand! Since not all human sorrow and pain is connected to sin, the full intensiveness of the Atonement involved bearing our pains, infirmities, and sicknesses, as well as our sins. Whatever our sufferings, we can safely cast our ‘care upon him; for he careth for [us]‘ (1 Pet. 5:7).”

Who could even begin to fathom the depths of the suffering and the depths of the pain that the Savior condescended to take upon himself so that he could meet the needs of his children and redeem them? No wonder it could be said, “The Son of Man hath descended below them all” (D&C 122:8).

Elder Neal A. Maxwell

quoted by Elder Gerald N. Lund in Selected Writings of Gerald N. Lund, (1995, Deseret Book Company, Salt Lake City, Utah)

Satan will strive to alienate you from your Father in Heaven with the thought that if He loved you He would have prevented the tragedy. Do not be kept from the very source of true healing by the craftiness of the prince of evil and his wicked lies. Recognize that if you have feelings that you are not loved by your Father in Heaven, you are being manipulated by Satan. Even when it may seem very difficult to pray, kneel and ask Father in Heaven to give you the capacity to trust Him and to feel His love for you. Ask to come to know that His Son can heal you through His merciful Atonement.

Elder Richard G. Scott
To Heal the Shattering Consequences of Abuse,” Ensign, May 2008, 40–43

 

In this education [the trials of mortality] we experience misery and happiness, sickness and health, the sadness from sin and the joy of forgiveness. That forgiveness can come only through the infinite Atonement of the Savior, which He worked out through pain we could not bear and which we can only faintly comprehend.

It will comfort us when we must wait in distress for the Savior’s promised relief that He knows, from experience, how to heal and help us. The Book of Mormon gives us the certain assurance of His power to comfort. And faith in that power will give us patience as we pray and work and wait for help. He could have known how to succor us simply by revelation, but He chose to learn by His own personal experience.

President Henry B. Eyring
Adversity,” Ensign, May 2009, 23–27

No matter what the source of difficulty and no matter how you begin to obtain relief–through a qualified professional therapist, doctor, priesthood leader, friend, concerned parent, or loved one– no matter how you begin, those solutions will never provide a complete answer. The final healing comes through faith in Jesus Christ and His teachings, with a broken heart and a contrite spirit and obedience to His commandments.

.

Elder Richard G. Scott, General Conference, April, 1994

July 4, 2012

Healing, Hymns, Mercy

(No comments)

Come, ye disconsolate, where’er ye languish,
Come to the mercy seat, fervently kneel.
Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish;
Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.

Joy of the desolate, light of the straying,
Hope of the penitent, fadeless and pure!
Here speaks the Comforter, tenderly saying,
“Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot cure.”

Here see the Bread of Life, see waters flowing
Forth from the throne of God, pure from above.
Come to the feast of love; come, ever knowing
Earth has no sorrow but heaven can remove.

Come Ye Disconsolate, Hymn 115