Therefore What - Jeffrey R. Holland

In spite of life’s tribulations, there is help for all of us on this journey. When Christ bids us to yield, to submit, to obey the Father, He knows how to help us do that. He has walked that way, asking us to do what He has done, but He has made it very much easier for our travel. He knows where the sharp stones and the stumbling blocks lie and where the thorns and the thistles are the most severe. He knows where the path is perilous, and He knows which way to go when the road forks and nightfall comes. He knows that because He has suffered “pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind … that he may know … how to succor his people according to their infirmities” (Alma 7:11–12). To succor means “to run to.” I testify that Christ will run to us, and is running even now, if we will but receive the extended arm of His mercy.

When we stagger or stumble, He is there to steady and strengthen us. In the end He is there to save us, and for all this He gave His life. However dim our days may seem, they have been a lot darker for the Savior of the world. As a reminder of those days, Jesus has chosen, even in a resurrected, otherwise perfected body, to retain for the benefit of His disciples the wounds in His hands and in His feet and in His side—signs, if you will, that painful things happen even to the pure and the perfect; signs, if you will, that pain in this world is not evidence that God doesn’t love you; signs, if you will, that problems pass and happiness can be ours. Remind others that it is the wounded Christ who is the Captain of our souls, He who yet bears the scars of our forgiveness, the lesions of His love and humility, the torn flesh of obedience and sacrifice.

These wounds are the principal way we are to recognize Him when He comes. He may invite us forward, as He has invited others, to see and to feel those marks. If not before, then surely at that time, we will remember with Isaiah that it was for us that a God was “despised and rejected … ; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief,” that “he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (Isa. 53:3, 5).

-Elder Jeffrey R. Holland - CES Conference - August 8, 2000 ("Therefore, What?”)

Read or download the full talk HERE

The Savior's Intercessory Prayer

(Click on image for larger view)

Undershepherds - Nourish the Flock of Christ

Alexander B. Morrison

General Conference - April 1992

Full the full talk HERE

To faithful souls who labor in His service, in whatever calling, Jesus gives the blessing of acting as His undershepherds, charged with nourishing the sheep of His pasture and the lambs of His fold. How do wise undershepherds fulfill that sacred responsibility with honor and energy, striving always to be true and faithful to the trust reposed in them? The scriptures provide the guidelines within which faithful servants carry out sacred tasks.

Faithful undershepherds nourish with the good word of God…

Faithful servants of the master use the scriptures to learn and teach the grand and glorious principles of salvation and exaltation…

Christ is at the center of the scriptures... 

Faithful undershepherds nourish through commitment to sacred covenants which bind the children of God to their Father and His glorious Son…

Wise undershepherds are never casual in their commitment to Christ and His cause, and do all in their power to encourage others to honor sacred agreements, solemnly made in the Lord’s house.

Faithful servants nourish by focusing on the individual. God loves us one by one... 

True undershepherds help others to partake of the bread of life and the living water through selfless service. They know that service solves the seeming paradox of the scriptures: one has to lose his or her life to find it... 

Wise undershepherds, in helping others to partake of the bread of life and the living water, seek neither acclaim nor accolade. The honors of men are of no consequence to them. They seek only “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with [their] God.”

We Need a Shepherd - Jeffrey R. Holland

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

“For Times of Trouble”

We need a shepherd because in innocence or ignorance—but on occasion willfully and against counsel—we turn “every one to his own way” and as a result “have gone astray.” We wander here and scamper there, inspect this and nibble at that, until at some point we look up and realize we are either lost or about to be destroyed. We realize that we, or others who affect us, have done either something stupid or something wrong—which are so very often the same thing. We realize we desperately need help; we are in trouble and frantically look about for our shepherd, our defender, our savior.

…Life will be quick to teach us that we are all going to need a shepherd “at all times and in all things, and in all places.” How loving and strong, how devoted and determined that shepherd is in His care will be the all-important issue of our lives, though that may not be as obvious as it should be until we are in peril. Of course, what we often fail to remember is that in a fallen world and with a tempter bent on destroying us, we are in peril all the time. Thank heaven—literally—that Christ is our protector. As the prophet Isaiah promised, when the Lord comes, “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom…”

Neal A. Maxwell - Willing to Submit

Neal A. Maxwell

General Conference - April 1985

"Willing to Submit"

When the unimaginable burden began to weigh upon Christ, it confirmed His long-held and intellectually clear understanding as to what He must now do. His working through began, and Jesus declared: “Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour.” Then, whether in spiritual soliloquy or by way of instruction to those about Him, He observed, “But for this cause came I unto this hour.” (John 12:27.)

Later, in Gethsemane, the suffering Jesus began to be “sore amazed” (Mark 14:33), or, in the Greek, “awestruck” and “astonished.”

Imagine, Jehovah, the Creator of this and other worlds, “astonished”! Jesus knew cognitively what He must do, but not experientially. He had never personally known the exquisite and exacting process of an atonement before. Thus, when the agony came in its fulness, it was so much, much worse than even He with his unique intellect had ever imagined! No wonder an angel appeared to strengthen him! (See Luke 22:43.)

The cumulative weight of all mortal sins—past, present, and future—pressed upon that perfect, sinless, and sensitive Soul! All our infirmities and sicknesses were somehow, too, a part of the awful arithmetic of the Atonement. (See Alma 7:11–12; Isa. 53:3–5; Matt. 8:17.) The anguished Jesus not only pled with the Father that the hour and cup might pass from Him, but with this relevant citation. “And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me.” (Mark 14:35–36.)

Had not Jesus, as Jehovah, said to Abraham, “Is any thing too hard for the Lord?” (Gen. 18:14.) Had not His angel told a perplexed Mary, “For with God nothing shall be impossible”? (Luke 1:37; see also Matt. 19:28; Mark 10:27; Luke 18:27.)

Jesus’ request was not theater!

In this extremity, did He, perchance, hope for a rescuing ram in the thicket? I do not know. His suffering—as it were, enormity multiplied by infinity—evoked His later soul-cry on the cross, and it was a cry of forsakenness. (See Matt. 27:46.)

Even so, Jesus maintained this sublime submissiveness, as He had in Gethsemane: “Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” (Matt. 26:39.)

While bearing our sins, our infirmities, our sicknesses, and bringing to pass the Atonement (see Alma 7:11–12), Jesus became the perfect Shepherd, making these lines of Paul’s especially relevant and reassuring: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” (Rom. 8:35.)

Indeed, we are in His hands, and what hallowed hands!

Read the full talk HERE

The Last Week of the Savior’s Life

First Day    (Sun.  April 2, AD 30)

Triumphal Entry

Arrives at Jerusalem

Goes to the Temple

Second Day

Second Cleansing the temple

Third Day

Jesus’ Authority is challenged

From this point on- Jesus does not teach in Public– only the Twelve

Judas arranges betrayal

The Jewish Leaders plot to have Jesus arrested

Olivet Discourse on the destruction of Jerusalem and the second coming

Fourth Day

Time was spent outside of Jerusalem

Jesus knew of the plot

No writings about this day

Fifth Day

Jesus arranges to have the Passover meal alone with the Twelve

Jesus washes the Twelve’s feet

Jesus introduces the sacrament

Prophesies of his death and betrayal

Discourse on the comforter

Jesus offers the Intercessory Prayer

Goes to Gethsemane

Jesus is arrested

Sixth Day

Trial

Execution by crucifixion

His Burial

Seventh Day

Jesus’ body lies in the tomb

In Spirit He visits the dead in Paradise

Resurrection

View a more comprehensive list

from the New Testament Teacher Resource Manual, [(2002), 288–91 - Seminary] HERE

Gethsemane - Bruce R. McConkie

Bruce R. McConkie - Mortal Messiah - Volume 4

As he went into Gethsemane, it was with a total awareness of what lay ahead. "Jesus knew that the awful hour of His deepest humiliation had arrived—that from this moment till the utterance of that great cry with which He expired, nothing remained for Him on earth but the torture of physical pain and the poignancy of mental anguish. All that the human frame can tolerate of suffering was to be heaped upon His shrinking body; every misery that cruel and crushing insult can inflict was to weigh heavy on His soul; and in this torment of body and agony of soul even the high and radiant serenity of His divine spirit was to suffer a short but terrible eclipse. Pain in its acutest sting, shame in its most overwhelming brutality, all the burden of the sin and mystery of man's existence in its apostasy and fall—this was what He must now face in all its most inexplicable accumulation." (Farrar, pp. 622-23.)

There is no language known to mortals that can tell what agony and suffering was his while in the Garden. Of it Farrar says: "A grief beyond utterance, a struggle beyond endurance, a horror of great darkness, a giddiness and stupefaction of soul overmastered Him, as with the sinking swoon of an anticipated death. . . . How dreadful was that paroxysm of prayer and suffering through which He passed." (Farrar, p. 624.)

And as to the prayer in the Garden—repeating, as it did, his divine promise made in the councils of eternity when he was chosen for the labors and sufferings of this very hour; the divine prayer in which he said, "Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever" (Moses 4:2)—as to the prayer in the Garden, "That prayer in all its infinite reverence and awe was heard; that strong crying and those tears were not rejected. We may not intrude too closely into this scene. It is shrouded in a halo and a mystery into which no footstep may penetrate. We, as we contemplate it, are like those disciples—our senses are confused, our perceptions are not clear. We can but enter into their amazement and sore distress. Half waking, half oppressed with an irresistible weight of troubled slumber, they only felt that they were dim witnesses of an unutterable agony, far deeper than anything which they could fathom, as it far transcended all that, even in our purest moments, we can pretend to understand. The place seems haunted by presences of good and evil, struggling in mighty but silent contest for the eternal victory. They see Him, before whom the demons had fled in howling terror, lying on His face upon the ground. They hear that voice wailing in murmurs of broken agony, which had commanded the wind and the sea, and they obeyed Him. The great drops of anguish which fall from Him in the deathful struggle, look to them like heavy gouts of blood." (Farrar, p. 624.) And so they were. 

And as he came out of the Garden, delivering himself voluntarily into the hands of wicked men, the victory had been won. There remained yet the shame and the pain of his arrest, his trials, and his cross. But all these were overshadowed by the agonies and sufferings in Gethsemane. It was on the cross that he "suffered death in the flesh," even as many have suffered agonizing deaths, but it was in Gethsemane that "he suffered the pain of all men, that all men might repent and come unto him." (D&C 18:11.)

The first Adam brought death, both temporal and spiritual, into the world and was cast out of the first Eden. The second Adam (Paul says he is the Lord from heaven) brought life—spiritual life, eternal life—into the world when he bore the sins of all men on that awesome night in a second Eden. Let God be praised that Adam fell; let Gods and angels rejoice that the Messiah came in the meridian of time to ransom men from the effects of the fall! In part the ransom was paid on a cross—having particular reference to the immortality that passes upon all men because Jesus rose from the dead. But primarily the ransom was paid in a garden—for there eternal life was won for the obedient—in the Garden of the Oil Press, where Judas now stands, strengthened by the arm of flesh, ready to betray the Atoning One.

View and download the Gethsemane Section Commentary HERE

Partnership with the Lord

John A. Widtsoe

"the Worth of Souls"

Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine

October 1934

“In our preexistent state, in the day of the great council, we made a certain agreement with the Almighty. . . . We agreed, right then and there, to be not only saviors for ourselves but . . . saviors for the whole human family. We went into a partnership with the Lord. The working out of the [Father’s] plan became then not merely the Father’s work, and the Savior’s work, but also our work”.

Class Discussion 02-29-2012

Ascension of Christ

Transfiguration

Brown - When Did Jesus Visit the Americas

The Lord's Second Coming

More information related to our last class.  Two CES Symposium handouts.

How Christ's Coming to the Americas Parallels His Second Coming


The Book of Mormon - Preparing People for the Savior's Coming

Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

I try to imagine what an intensely poignant moment it must have been for our Father in Heaven when the Savior cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”. I don’t believe Father in Heaven forsook His Son on the cross. I do believe the cry was motivated when that Son felt removed the sustaining support He had always enjoyed from His Father. His Father recognized that the Savior needed to accomplish the Atonement totally and completely on His own, without external support. The Father did not abandon His Son. He made it possible for His perfect Son to win the eternal fruits of the Atonement.

Elder Richard G. Scott - General Conference April 2010

Now I speak very carefully, even reverently, of what may have been the most difficult moment in all of this solitary journey to Atonement. I speak of those final moments for which Jesus must have been prepared intellectually and physically but which He may not have fully anticipated emotionally and spiritually—that concluding descent into the paralyzing despair of divine withdrawal when He cries in ultimate loneliness, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

The loss of mortal support He had anticipated, but apparently He had not comprehended this. Had He not said to His disciples, “Behold, the hour . . . is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me” and “The Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him”.

With all the conviction of my soul I testify that He did please His Father perfectly and that a perfect Father did not forsake His Son in that hour. Indeed, it is my personal belief that in all of Christ’s mortal ministry the Father may never have been closer to His Son than in these agonizing final moments of suffering. Nevertheless, that the supreme sacrifice of His Son might be as complete as it was voluntary and solitary, the Father briefly withdrew from Jesus the comfort of His Spirit, the support of His personal presence. It was required; indeed it was central to the significance of the Atonement, that this perfect Son who had never spoken ill nor done wrong nor touched an unclean thing had to know how the rest of humankind—us, all of us—would feel when we did commit such sins. For His Atonement to be infinite and eternal, He had to feel what it was like to die not only physically but spiritually, to sense what it was like to have the divine Spirit withdraw, leaving one feeling totally, abjectly, hopelessly alone.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland - General Conference April 2009

President Brigham Young spoke of what evoked the why from Jesus, saying that during the axis of agony which was Gethsemane and Calvary, the Father at some point withdrew both His presence and His Spirit from Jesus (see Journal of Discourses 3:205-6). Thereby Jesus personal triumph was complete and His empathy perfected. Having descended below all things, He comprehends, perfectly and personally, the full range of human suffering!

Elder Neal A. Maxwell - General Conference October 1997

Benson- Nothing is going to startle us more

A few years ago, we knew our Elder Brother and his and our Father in heaven well. We rejoiced at the upcoming opportunity for earthly life that could make it possible for us to have a fullness of joy as they had.  We could hardly wait to demonstrate to our Father and our Brother, the Lord how much we loved them and how we would be obedient to them in spite of the earthly opposition of the evil one.  And now we're here - our memories are veiled - and we're showing God and ourselves what we can do.  Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father and how familiar his face is to us.  And then, President Young said, we're going to wonder why we were so stupid in the flesh.

God loves us, he's watching us, he wants us to succeed, and we'll know someday that he has not left one thing undone for the eternal welfare of each of us.  If we only knew that there are heavenly hosts pulling for us - friends in heaven, whom we can't remember now, who yearn for our victory.  This is our day to show what we can do - what life and sacrifice we can daily, hourly, instantly bring to God.  If we give our all, we will get his all from the greatest of all.
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