Moses Chapter One

There is an important article written by Hugh Nibley on Moses Chapter 1 about the opening of the last dispensation.  Both Gospel Doctrine students and students of the Pearl of Great Price Class should read this article.

Click here to read the article.

Pearl of Great Price Class

The Pearl of Great Price Class begins on Thursday, January 7, at the Granite Stake Tabernacle, at 2005 South 900 East, in Sugar House. The class starts at 7:00 pm and ends at 8:30 pm. Parking is usually sparse as some semesters classes are very large, so come early. The texts are the scriptures and the Institute Pearl of Great Price Manual. The manual can be purchased at the Distribution Center. 

You can register by phone at: (801) 422-8925 or
You can register online at: ce.byu.edu/ed, Then go to Adult Religion Classes then to: For a current list of classes by Stake (in red), then to: Salt Lake County, then to: Salt Lake Granite Stake Robert J. Norman $22.50 register online now.

Merry Christmas

The New Jerusalem Built Before Second Coming

This process of building and strengthening the great tent of Zion will continue until the dawning of the millennial day, when the King of kings will return in power and glory to dwell upon the earth. Then will the saints of God "break forth [in] joy" (Mosiah 15:30) as the scattered sheep of Israel gather to Zion and fulfill the marvelous millennial promises so long foretold by the scriptures. The New Jerusalem in America will have been built before that glorious Second Coming of Christ. To that Holy City will come Enoch of old and all his city. "And the Lord said unto Enoch: Then [that is, after Christ's Second Coming] shalt thou and all thy city meet them there [that is, in Zion, the New Jerusalem], and we will receive them into our bosom, and they shall see us; and we will fall upon their necks, and they shall fall upon our necks, and we will kiss each other; And there shall be mine abode, and it shall be Zion, . . . and for the space of a thousand years the earth shall rest." (Moses 7:63-64.)  
            (Alexander B. Morrison, Visions of Zion, p.7)

Family Watch International

Please be aware of this very important site for the preservation of families worldwide. 

Family Watch International

As link to this site is also provided on this blog under "Good Sites."

Sharon Slater is the president of Family Watch International.  Here is her biography that was published in Meridian Magazine and online LDS magazine.

Sharon Slater and her husband Greg reside in Gilbert, Arizona with their four children. Sharon has served as President of United Families International (UFI) for the past two years, and previously served for two years as the President of United Familes Arizona. She and her husband have traveled throughout the world attending United Nation conferences to promote family provisions in UN documents. They also have traveled throughout Africa promoting UFI's Stay Alive, HIV/AIDS abstinence based education program. The Slaters are in the process of adopting three orphans from Mozambique, Africa. Before marrying Greg, Sharon served a mission in Costa Rica and Panama. Sharon is a graduate of BYU in the field of Family Sciences.

Literal Kingdom of God

Let us understand that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the literal kingdom of God in the earth; that neither defectors from within nor enemies from without can stay its progress. It is here to stay and to triumph. In the words of Moroni, "The eternal purposes of the Lord shall roll on, until all his promises shall be fulfilled"  (Morm. 8:22).     
Righteousness in the end is to prevail in this dispensation. So said the Lord himself in his reply to Enoch's query,    
Wilt thou not come again upon the earth?    
[He said] As I live, even so will I come in the last days, in the days of wickedness and vengeance.    
And the day shall come that the earth shall rest, but before that day the heavens shall be darkened, and a veil of darkness shall cover the earth; and the heavens shall shake, and also the earth; and great tribulations shall be among the  children of men, but my people will I preserve. [The Lord is here talking to Enoch, long before the flood, concerning our day, the last gospel dispensation. He continued]    
And righteousness will I send down out of heaven [Think of angel  Moroni  and the other messengers from heaven who came to the Prophet Joseph Smith!]; and truth will I send forth out of the earth, to bear testimony of mine Only Begotten; his resurrection from the dead; yea, and also the resurrection of all men [Think of the Book of  Mormon  and its testimony of Christ!]; and righteousness and truth will I cause to sweep the earth as with a flood [Think of the missionaries as they go out today and as they will go out in greater  numbers  in the immediate future, sweeping the earth as with a flood of truth and righteousness!], to gather out mine elect from the four quarters of the earth, unto a place which I shall prepare, an Holy City, that my people may gird up their loins, and be looking forth for the time of my coming; for there shall be my tabernacle, and it shall be called Zion, a New Jerusalem.    
And the Lord said unto Enoch: Then shalt thou and all thy city meet them there, and we will receive them into our bosom, and they shall see us.    
And there shall be mine abode, and it shall be Zion, which shall come forth out of all the creations which I have made; and for the peace of a thousand years the earth shall rest  (Moses 7:59-64).     
It is Zion, as portrayed in this scripture, for which we are preparing ourselves and which we shall yet build, which has held the righteous on course in all dispensations. It will so hold us if we keep it in view and individually commit ourselves to meet Alma's charge to "look to God and live."    
To these truths I bear solemn witness in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.    
            (Marion G. Romney, Look to God and Live , p.13-14)

Visions, Mysteries And Miracles

Visions of a Personal Nature—I ask, Is there a reason for men and women being exposed more constantly and more powerfully, to the power of the enemy, by having visions than by not having them? There is and it is simply this—God never bestows upon his people, or upon an individual, superior blessings without a severe trial to prove them, to prove that individual, or that people, to see whether they will keep their covenants with him, and keep in remembrance what he has shown them. Then the greater the vision, the greater the display of the power of the enemy.

(Brigham Young, Discourses of Brigham Young, selected and arranged by John A. Widtsoe [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1954], 338.)

As I read the above statement my President Brigham Young, I can't help but think of the night when the Prophet Joseph Smith was beaten and tarred and feathered, and Sidney Rigdon was dragged by his heels over the frozen ground until he was unconscious.  This took place shortly after they both had received the vision of D&C 76 which revealed the three degrees of glory.

From Wickedness of this World to Highest Kingdom - Brigham Young

We are inhabitants of a world of sin and sorrow; pain and anguish, every ill that can be heaped upon intelligent beings in a probation we are heirs to. I suppose that God never organized an earth and peopled it that was ever reduced to a lower state of darkness, sin and ignorance than this. I suppose this is one of the lowest kingdoms that ever the Lord Almighty created, and on that account is capable of becoming exalted to be one of the highest kingdoms that has ever had an exaltation in all the eternities. In proportion as it has been reduced so it will be exalted, with that portion of its inhabitants who in their humiliation have cleaved to righteousness and acknowledged God in all things. In proportion to our fall through sin, so shall we be exalted in the presence of our Father and God, through Jesus Christ and by living the righteousness of his Gospel. All this the people will understand in due time through their faithfulness, and learn to rejoice even in the midst of afflictions.

(Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. [London: Latter-day Saints' Book Depot, 1854-1886], 10: 175.)

Crowned With Immortality And Eternal Life

In D&C 138:51 it reads,
These the Lord taught, and gave them power to come forth, after his resurrection from the dead, to enter into his Father's kingdom, there to be crowned with immortality and eternal life,

The following experience is recorded in the Life of Heber C. Kimball by Orson F. Whitney,

He [Joseph Smith] saw the Twelve going forth, and they appeared to be in a far distant land. After some time they unexpectedly met together, apparently in great tribulation, their clothes all ragged, and their knees and feet sore. They formed into a circle, and all stood with their eyes fixed upon the ground. The Savior appeared and stood in their midst and wept over them, and wanted to show Himself to them, but they did not discover Him. He [Joseph] saw until they had accomplished their work, and arrived at the gate of the celestial city; there Father Adam stood and opened the gate to them, and as they entered he embraced them one by one and kissed them. He then led them to the throne of God, and then the Savior embraced each one of them and kissed them, and crowned each one of them in the presence of God. He saw that they all had beautiful heads of hair and all looked alike. The impression this vision left on Brother Joseph's mind was of so acute a nature, that he never could refrain from weeping while rehearsing it.  (emphasis added)
            (Heber C. Kimball, Journal, Life of Heber C. Kimball, Writings of Early Latter-day Saints, p.93)

The Divine Potential of Women by Elder James E. Talmage

The Divine Potential of Women

TALMAGE, JAMES E.

In the restored Church of Jesus Christ, the Holy Priesthood is conferred, as an individual bestowal, upon men only, and this in accordance with divine requirement. It is not given to woman to exercise the authority of the priesthood independently; nevertheless, in the sacred endowments associated with the ordinances pertaining to the house of the Lord, woman shares with man the blessings of the priesthood. When the frailties and imperfections of mortality are left behind, in the glorified state of the blessed hereafter, husband and wife will administer in their respective stations, seeing and understanding alike, and cooperating to the full in the government of their family kingdom. Then shall woman be recompensed in rich measure for all the injustice that womanhood has endured in mortality. Then shall woman reign by divine right, a queen in the resplendent realm of her glorified state, even as exalted man shall stand, priest and king unto the most high God. Mortal eye cannot see nor mind comprehend the beauty, glory, and majesty of a righteous woman made perfect in the celestial kingdom of God. (Young Woman's Journal, Oct. 1914, 602-3.) (emphasis added)

(LDS Women’s Treasury: Insights and Inspiration for Today’s Woman [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1997], 461 - 462.)

Return of the Ten Tribes of Israel

D&C 133:26–34 . What Do the Saints Know about the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel?

Elder Bruce R. McConkie wrote:

“When Shalmanezer overran the Kingdom of Israel (about 721 B.C. ), he carried the Ten Tribes comprising that kingdom captive into Assyria. From thence they were led into the lands of the north and have been called the Lost Tribes because they are lost to the knowledge of other people. ( 1 Ne. 22:4 .) ‘We have no knowledge of the location or condition of that part of the Ten Tribes who went into the north country.’ ( Compendium. p. 88.)

“Esdras, an apocryphal writer, records this version of their escape from Assyria: ‘Those are the ten tribes, which were carried away prisoners out of their own land in the time of Osea the king, whom Salmanasar the king of Assyria led away captive, and he carried them over the waters, and so came they into another land. But they took this counsel among themselves, that they would leave the multitude of the heathen, and go forth into a further country, where never mankind dwelt, That they might there keep their statutes, which they never kept in their own land . And they entered into Euphrates by the narrow passage of the river. For the most High then shewed signs for them, and held still the flood, till they were passed over . For through that country there was a great way to go, namely, of a year and a half: and the same region is called Arsareth. Then dwelt they there until the latter times; and now when they shall begin to come, The Highest shall stay the stream again, that they may go through.’ ( Apocrypha, 2 Esdras 13:40–47.)

“Commenting on this, Elder George Reynolds has written: . . .

“‘Is it altogether improbable that in that long journey of one and a half years, as Esdras states it, from Media the land of their captivity to the frozen north, some of the backsliding Israel rebelled, turned aside from the main body, forgot their God, by and by mingled with the Gentiles and became the leaven to leaven with the promised seed all the nations of the earth? The account given in the Book of Mormon of a single family of this same house, its waywardness, its stiffneckedness before God, its internal quarrels and family feuds are, we fear, an example on a small scale of what most probably happened in the vast bodies of Israelites who for so many months wended their tedious way northward. . . .’ ( Are We of Israel, pp. 10–11.)

“ The Lost Tribes are not lost unto the Lord . In their northward journeyings they were led by prophets and inspired leaders. They had their Moses and their Lehi, were guided by the spirit of revelation, kept the law of Moses, and carried with them the statutes and judgments which the Lord had given them in ages past. They were still a distinct people many hundreds of years later, for the resurrected Lord visited and ministered among them following his ministry on this continent among the Nephites. ( 3 Ne. 16:1–4 ; 17:4 .) Obviously he taught them in the same way and gave them the same truths which he gave his followers in Jerusalem and on the American continent; and obviously they recorded his teachings, thus creating volumes of scripture comparable to the Bible and Book of Mormon. ( 2 Ne. 29:12–14 .)

“In due course the Lost Tribes of Israel will return and come to the children of Ephraim to receive their blessings. This great gathering will take place under the direction of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for he holds the keys. . . . Keys are the right of presidency, the power to direct; and by this power the Lost Tribes will return, with ‘their prophets’ and their scriptures to ‘be crowned with glory, even in Zion, by the hands of the servants of the Lord, even the children of Ephraim.’ ( D. & C. 133:26–35 .)

“At the October, 1916, general conference of the Church, Elder James E. Talmage made this prediction: ‘The tribes shall come; they are not lost unto the Lord; they shall be brought forth as hath been predicted; and I say unto you there are those now living—aye, some here present—who shall live to read the records of the Lost Tribes of Israel, which shall be made one with the record of the Jews, or the Holy Bible, and the record of the Nephites, or the Book of Mormon, even as the Lord hath predicted; and those records, which the tribes lost to man but yet to be found again shall bring, shall tell of the visit of the resurrected Christ to them, after he had manifested himself to the Nephites upon this continent.’ ( Articles of Faith, p. 513.)” ( Mormon Doctrine, pp. 455–58.)

For a discussion of the role of John the Beloved with the ten lost tribes, see Notes and Commentary for Doctrine and Covenants 7:3–6 .

(Institute Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual pp. 340-341)

Historical Context of D&C 136

At early candle-light I met with the Presidency at the west school room, in the Temple, to attend to the ordinance of anointing our heads with holy oil; also the Councils of Kirtland and Zion met in the two adjoining rooms, and waited in prayer while we attended to the ordinance. I took the oil in my left hand, Father Smith being seated before me, and the remainder of the Presidency encircled him round about. We then stretched our right hands towards heaven, and blessed the oil, and consecrated it in the name of Jesus Christ.

   
The Prophet Blessed to Lead Israel in the Last Days.    
We then laid our hands upon our aged Father Smith, and invoked the blessings of heaven. I then anointed his head with the consecrated oil, and sealed many blessings upon him. The Presidency then in turn laid their hands upon his head, beginning at the oldest, until they had all laid their hands upon him, and pronounced such blessings upon his head, as the Lord put into their hearts, all blessing him to be our Patriarch, to anoint our heads, and attend to all duties that pertain to that office. The Presidency then took the seat in their turn, according to their age, beginning at the oldest, and received their anointing and blessing under the hands of Father Smith. And in my turn, my father anointed my head, and sealed upon me the blessings of Moses, to lead Israel in the latter days, even as Moses led him in days of old; also the blessings of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. All of the Presidency laid their hands upon me, and pronounced upon my head many prophecies and blessings, many of which I shall not notice at this time. But as Paul said, so say I, let us come to visions and revelations.

 
The Prophet's Vision of the Celestial Kingdom; Alvin Smith.    
The heavens were opened upon us, and I beheld the celestial kingdom of God, and the glory thereof, whether in the body or out I cannot tell. I saw the transcendent beauty of the gate through which the heirs of that kingdom will enter, which was like unto circling flames of fire; also the blazing throne of God, whereon was seated the Father and the Son. I saw the beautiful streets of that kingdom, which had the appearance of being paved with gold. I saw Fathers Adam and Abraham, and my father and mother, my brother, Alvin, that has long since slept, and marvelled as that he had obtained an inheritance in that kingdom, seeing that he had departed this life before the Lord had set His hand to gather Israel the second time, and had not been baptized for the remission of sins.    

Thus came the voice of the Lord unto me, saying-    
            All who have died without a knowledge of this Gospel, who would have received it if they had been permitted to tarry, shall be heirs of the celestial kingdom of God; also all that shall die henceforth without a knowledge of it, who would have received it with all their hearts, shall be heirs of that kingdom, for I, the Lord, will judge all men according to their works, according to the desire of their hearts.

   
The Salvation of Children.    
And I also beheld that all children who die before they arrive at the years of accountability, are saved in the celestial kingdom of heaven. I saw the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb, who are now upon the earth, who hold the keys of this last ministry, in foreign lands, standing together in a circle, much fatigued, with their clothes tattered and feet swollen, with their eyes cast downward, and Jesus standing in their midst, and they did not behold Him. The Savior looked upon them and wept.

 
           (Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 vols., introduction and notes by B. H. Roberts, 2:, p.379-381)