The following is taken from a testimony that I delivered on April 14, 2019:
Good morning, everybody! I’m glad to be with you today. Most of the time, I’m not. The Lord has had me doing other things, and I look forward to these opportunities when I can be with people that I love a great deal.
You know, when I taught Gospel Doctrine, everybody knew that I was a big fan of definitions and, in particular, Noah Webster’s dictionary because I think that it adds a lot of clarity to the words and the terms that we find in the scriptures and, more importantly, the definitions at the time that Joseph Smith was translating the Book of Mormon and establishing the restoration scriptures, and so I want to just share a definition that has helped me so much. The definition is to the word “understand.” One of the definitions is:
To have the same ideas as the person who speaks, or the ideas which a person intends to communicate.
And I read that, and it seems like such an obvious thing. In order to “understand” one another, you are on the same thinking “wavelength,” right? And I realized that, in my scripture study, God operates at a much higher resolution with His definitions than we do and getting our definitions to match His definitions is quite a feat. It takes Him revealing things to us that we don’t presently understand. But they are things that we can better understand by aligning ourselves with things that put us in tune with the Spirit like the scriptures. That is one reason why we are commanded to read the scriptures—so that we understand things the way God understands them. It is through the scriptures that we find out more about His character, and, therefore, we understand more about His will and what He would do, at any moment. If you want to understand what Jesus would do, you need to go to the scriptures. A lot of people think that the scriptures are outdated. In particular, the Old Testament. I don’t know why that is. I think that sometimes we think that God is very punitive and harsh and judgmental in the Old Testament and, in the New Testament, He is merciful and loving and forgiving and that’s not the case, actually. He is unchanging. We learn that from the scriptures-that He is an unchangeable being. And as we seek to reconcile those accounts, in all of the scriptures, we start to fine-tune our understanding of God’s character and why He does, and why He commands, and why He judges, and why He punishes, and why He is merciful. And it allows us to conform our actions to His character, also. I hope we never depart completely from expounding scripture because it should be one of the avenues by which we understand God better.
And, in light of that, I just want to quickly share a little thing that just popped into my head this morning. My mom used to take us window shopping at the mall. If any of you don’t know what window shopping is, it’s where you just go and look through windows. We were too poor to afford anything. We’d never buy. She just liked to go and look, and she would take us to the mall. I can remember going to the mall when I was very little, and one of the first things that she did was she would take us to the map that they have in lot of big areas, where it has a map of the store and it says, “You Are Here,” and she would teach us how to recognize the stores that were around us and the exits that were around us to understand what that little “You Are Here” point meant and [so] we could orient ourselves to the building and where we were, especially if we got lost, and a location that we could come back to if we were to ever get separated. And God does that with us. He doesn't just send us down here. He tries to orient us as best He can and as much as we are willing to listen.
There's a scripture-this is just one of many-that I feel impressed to share. This is from Leviticus 26. Again, Old Testament. Archaic and outdated, right? No! It's not. This is a "You Are Here" passage. This is a "You Are Here" passage because he goes through and he says, "If this happens, then this is going to happen" and "If this happens, then this is going to happen." And so we can kind of base...we can kind of orient where we are-as an individual, as families, as societies-by looking at passages like this in the scripture and saying, "OK, If this happens, is this happening? Really?" Because, if it's not, then the "If" is not happening the way we think it is.
A couple of verses at the beginning are verses about the commandments: that we're not supposed to worship graven images or have other gods; that we are supposed to keep the Sabbaths. But in verse 3, He says:
If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them;
Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.
And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time: and ye shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely.
I will give you peace in the land...
I'm going to kind of paraphrase here. Great chapter. If you want to follow along, you are welcome to. Ye shall lie down. None shall make you afraid. Rid evil beasts out of the land. The sword will not go through your land. Ye shall chase your enemies and they shall fall before you by the sword. Five of you shall chase an hundred. A hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight and your enemies shall fall by the sword. I will have respect unto you and will make you fruitful and multiply you and ESTABLISH MY COVENANT WITH YOU--which is very interesting because there is a difference between "offering" a covenant and "establishing" a covenant. We learn this in the temple--that the things that are given to us are predicated upon our faithfulness and that, while God, eternally, offers covenant to as many people as will come, establishing that covenant with individuals and societies is something different.
But then, He goes on. "And ye shall eat old store, and bring forth the old because of the new." (He's not just talking about food there.) "And I will set my tabernacle among you: and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you..." I WILL WALK AMONG YOU! "...and will be your God, and ye shall be my people. I am the Lord your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that ye should not be their bondmen; and I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made you go upright."
He gives us freedom. He gives us freedom in all its glory and blessing.
And then, in verse 14, He says, "But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments; And if ye shall despise my statutes, or if you soul abhor my judgments, so that ye will not do all my commandments, BUT THAT YE BREAK MY COVENANT, I also will do this unto you; I will appoint over you...": terror; consumption; burning ague; sorrow of heart; you will sow your seed in vain; your enemies shall eat it; I will set my face against you; ye shall be slain before your enemies; they that hate you shall run over you and ye shall flee when none pursueth.
And this goes in little sections. He lists things and then He says, "And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me...": then I will punish you seven times more for your sins and I will break the pride of your power; I will make your heaven as iron and your earth as brass; your strength shall be spent in vain; your land shall not yield her increase neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.
"And if ye will walk contrary unto me and will not hearken unto me, I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins": wild beasts which will rob you of your children; destroy your cattle; make you few in number; make your highways desolate.
"And if ye will not be reformed by these things, but will walk contrary unto me, then will I also walk contrary unto you and punish you yet seven times for your sins...": I will bring the sword upon you; avenge the quarrel of my covenant; when ye gather together in your cities, I will send the pestilence among you; ye shall be delivered into the hand of your enemy.
I'm not going to cover all of this. It goes on for several more verses. But the Lord establishes a pattern here wherein we can see things that should indicate to us that we have broken that covenant. Verse 15 says that the covenant is broken and there are things that we should recognize as indicators-signs around us, things that should orient us to "You Are Here"--that tell us that we are not on that "covenant path" as much as we would like to think that we are. And then he sends more. And if we don't recognize it, He sends more. And if we don't recognize it, He sends more.
And some would believe that God is just so mean. Why would He bring all of those things? And we don't realize that He is merciful to us! The covenant is broken in verse 15! We already stand worthy of the full measure of His wrath upon us, but He grants it to us little by little so that we can take in what is around us and orient ourselves to where we really are and turn back to Him.
I just want to jump down to the end of the chapter. He talks about being carried away to other lands. Parents eating the flesh of their children. These are things that have happened in the past. In verse 40, He says, "If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me; And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity: Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land."
It's not OUR covenant that saves us, actually, when we get to that point because the covenant is broken back in verse 15. It's the covenant with the people [with whom] He has already established that covenant. They've had promises made to them which the Lord is faithful to keep. And it is through the blessings that are extended to those Fathers, to those Patriarchs, who have actual covenants with God that the blessing of mercy can be extended to us who have broken covenants.
This is just one chapter of many. There are actually many more chapters that are like this. If this happens, if you obey, you can expect this. If you disobey, you can expect this. And, brothers and sisters, it is my testimony that these things are going to happen. We live in a world where people are not obedient to God. He continually offers a covenant that we, as a society, in general, reject. And you will see the things that are promised and prophesied in scriptures happen. And when they do...I don't mean to be a fear-monger of any kind. That's not my intention. That's not the Lord's intention in having me say this. Rather, it is a call to...when we wake up to the situations that are around us, we realize that He is doing this in His mercy. He is giving us an opportunity to recognize what is around us and for us to wake up and say, "Oh! We're HERE, NOT HERE!" and to orient ourselves. Those things allow us to, then, turn back to our God and to reestablish a more permanent covenant with Him. When those things happen, it is my prayer that there will be many...well, the scriptures tell us that there will be many who lift up their voices and curse God for all of the things that are happening around them...and it is my prayer that, as we see those things happening at an increasing rate around the world, we will lift up our hearts in rejoicing and recognize those things as a call to us to repent and to reestablish that covenant that He is willing to offer to us and establish with us.
It is also my testimony that Christ has a character that we assume we know when we don't. It takes knowing Him on a very personal level. It takes Him teaching you all of the things that you don't do, or that you do do, that are not like Him. It's a very humbling... We don't like to hear all of the bad things about ourselves. We don't like hear all of the bad things that we're doing. It's not warm fuzzies, right? But it is what He does in His great love for us. He has a greater perspective than what we do, and it is my prayer that we can use the time that we have now before these things happen to come to know Him more and to put off any unnecessary suffering on an individual basis. And I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.