Welcome: Joseph

Welcome everybody! This is June 24, 2023, Summer Conference and we are pretty excited to be here. I know myself, I am all a tingle inside and excited to find out what everyone has for us, and what the Lord has for us. It is always a great blessing. So it looks like, from what I see here, that we have visitors from all around the world today, we have at least 3 countries I see here, Canada, United States, Philippines, and is this not amazing, that we can actually see each other and talk to each other in real time. You know, this is really quite a wonderful thing; it is a great blessing to have. It kind of reminds me of that scripture where the guy is going to speak from the rooftops and it will be heard all around the world at the same time; it is pretty amazing stuff, a great age that we live in. Now, let us see, let us have an opening prayer, and today, Toni has volunteered to open our conference with prayer.

Opening Prayer: Toni

O God, the Eternal Father, we are so very grateful for this opportunity that we have to gather together, all around the world, and to hear Thy word and to feel Thy Spirit. We are very excited to hear what it is that Thou hast prepared for us this evening. We ask Thee to open our hearts and our minds and our souls so that we may embrace what we are taught and apply it to our lives. We are grateful for this technology that we have, that we can all gather all together all at once, and we ask Thee to bless the technology so that it continues to work for the rest of the evening. We thank Thee for all of Thy many blessings, Lord, and this we pray in the name of Yeshua Messiah, amen.

Introduction: Joseph

Today, we will actually start off with a few speakers here. Bill will address us first, and then Ted will talk, and then Chris, and Will. So let us start off in that order. So, Bill, would you like to go first, please?

Keep the Commandments: by Bill Berrett

I would like to discuss a topic, keeping the commandments. That is perhaps the first thing that was really taught to me in detail when I started to study the gospel with Joseph Rockwell. It is in fact the key concept we must understand to show our love and commitment to our Father in Heaven.

My objective in my talk tonight is to encourage two things: First, I would like to encourage all of us to keep the commandments. By this I mean those commandments found in scripture. It is those eternal rules that flow from the Holy Spirit or Spirit of Holiness and guide us in our lives. It is those same eternal, unchangeable rules that our Heavenly Father and His Son, Yeshua, lived to show us how to become perfect.

My second objective is to help us remain on course to become perfectly obedient. There are those among us who are determined to do everything they can to get us to break these eternal unchangeable commandments. They are well funded, well organized, very dedicated and skilled in getting God's children to break those commandments. So, we must all be alert and prepared to do whatever it takes to remain on course to be obedient and succeed in this life.

Lesson from Joseph Smith

When Joseph Smith was a teenage boy he prayed and asked God which church he should join. In the early spring of 1820 Heavenly Father and His Son, Yeshua appeared to Joseph Smith and answered that question. The Lord made an interesting statement regarding the various religions that existed at that time.

One of the things that the Lord said regarding those various churches is: "They teach for doctrines the commandments of men." (JSH 2:19). That is, churches of that day were teaching commandments of men and teaching them as if they were the Lord's true doctrine.

Caution Be very careful--Do not confuse the commandments from God with Doctrines of Men

So, what "commandments" are we to study? Should we follow the Lord's commandments found in scripture or should we follow the commandments of Men?

Question asked of Jesus

This was reemphasized during the Earthly ministry of Jesus. Yeshua was asked a question by a lawyer, tempting Him, saying,

36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
37 Jesus said unto him, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
(Matthew 22: 36-37)

Yeshua also taught: "If ye love Me, keep My commandments." (John 14:15)

And so, the first commandment is to love the Lord with all of our heart, might, mind and strength. And the Lord also said: If ye love Me, keep My commandments. So that is our most important assignment as His children. We must get to know our Heavenly Father and Mother, and our Lord, Yeshua, the Messiah. We must love them and keep the commandments.

Joseph Smith taught:

Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God. But we cannot keep all the commandments without first knowing them, and we cannot expect to know all, or more than we now know unless we comply with or keep those we have already received. (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 255)

So, we must study the scriptures to learn the true commandments found there.

We are all encouraged to go through the Book of Mormon and list all of the commandments found there. And we are instructed to organize and group them into categories to better understand what they intend. And we are instructed to keep these commandments.

Commandments are under attack

As I already mentioned, the doctrine and commandments from God are under attack by the adversary.

In the New Testament the Lord taught us about those who seek to lay aside the commandment of God.

The Lord taught us about keeping the commandments when He said the following:

7 Howbeit in vain do they [the people] worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
8 For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do.
9 And he said unto them, full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. (Mark 7:7-9)

Jesus clearly warned us in the New Testament that there are those who lay "aside the commandment of God." But, they hold their own tradition. They wash pots, and cups and many other such things that they have been schooled to do in their tradition. In other words Jesus is telling them that they are avoiding His commandments and replacing eternal commandments with things like washing pots and cups and other such things. The Lord might have a good point here. I am not so sure that washing a pot and a cup will get me into heaven.

Let's examine how the Book of Mormon taught this same issue.

Let's look at Chapter 3 of the Book of Helaman. The Book of Helaman is the record of Helaman, son of Helaman. This is one of the books found in the Book of Mormon. The Book of Helaman covers the time frame on the American Continent shortly before the resurrected Lord made His appearance to His people on the American Continent.

It describes a great conversion of the Lamanite people, a people who we would describe today as the ancestors of the First Nations people in Canada, and the American Indians in the United States. And it describes the great wickedness and abominations of the Nephite people. The group referred to as Nephites no longer exist today, having been destroyed at the end of the Book of Mormon around 421 A.D.

We might ask ourselves: Why did the Lamanites survive? And why did the Nephite nation get destroyed?

Secret Combination in the Book of Mormon

The Book of Helaman describes a secret group, what they refer to as a secret combination. It is described as those who conspired to take over the government of the people. This group caused much conflict, destruction and war. This conflict led to an invasion by the Lamanite army into the center of the Nephite lands including conquering their central city Zarahemla.

These events in the Book of Helaman lead to a time of civil unrest. There was much contention over who had the right to rule the government and to preside over the people.

What did this secret group believe? What was the objective of their "secret combination?"

Now, with this background in mind let's consider some things this group of conspirators believed. What is the thought process of those who had actually conspired to overtake the government by force and fear. How did they do it?

The Book of Mormon, and the Book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price teach us much about the belief system of those who seek to obtain power and control by force and fear. They are described as acting under an agreement or a conspiracy to do evil deeds. They are described as a "secret combination" who choose to do evil. We might ask ourselves a question: Do similar groups exist among us today? And, if so, have they changed their strategy? Or do they do the same things today that they did throughout scriptural history?

The story described in the Book of Helaman tells of a band of robbers led by a man named Kishkumen. Another one of their leaders is named Gadianton. The prophet, Mormon, writes that this band of robbers and their secret agreements will end up proving, "the overthrow, yea almost the entire destruction of the people of Nephi. Behold, I (Mormon) do not mean the end of the Book of Helaman, but I mean the end of the Book of Nephi, from which I have taken all the account which I have written."

(411) In short, this band of conspirators and their "commandments of men" lead to the entire destruction of the Nephite nation.

It is the same evil conspiracy which led to the destruction of the Jaredite nation here in the Americas: The Jaredite nation was the greatest nation. The Lord stated: "And there shall be none greater than the nation which I will raise up unto Me of thy seed upon all the face of the Earth." (Book of Ether 1:10, p. 540)

So, this greatest nation of Jaredites, here on the American continent, and the nation of the Nephites was destroyed by a similar conspiracy of evil believers.

It might be worth it to consider what their strategy is. How did this conspiracy kill two great Nations.

Moroni describes that these secret combinations are had among "all people . . . and they have caused the destruction of this people of whom I am now speaking (Jaredites), and also the destruction of the people of Nephi." (Ether 8:20-21; p. 554) The question is: Do we have these groups of conspirators seeking to do away with the commandments of God and seeking to cause our destruction among us today. Obviously we do. This well organized and well funded conspiracy of evil is in all nations and peoples on Earth.

In the Book of Mormon this group was called Gadianton's robbers and murderers (p. 423) It is not too difficult to identify who they are today.

This secret band of criminals existed both among the Lamanites, the ancestors of the American Indians, and among the Nephites. But, these two groups, the Lamanites and the Nephites had a different approach to dealing with these criminals.

Lamanite Response

When the Lamanites found that these robbers existed among them, they were very sorrowful. They used every means, whatsoever was in their power, to destroy them from off the face of the earth. (pp. 423-424) The Lamanites did hunt the band of robbers of Gadianton. And they did preach the Word of God among the more wicked part of them, insomuch, that this band of robbers was utterly destroyed from among the Lamanites. (p. 425)

Nephite Response

But consider how the Nephites dealt with these evil conspirators:

The Nephites did build them up, and support them, beginning at the more wicked part of them until they had overspread all the land of the Nephites, and had seduced the more part of the righteous, until they had come down to believe in their works, and partake of their spoils, and to join with them in their secret murders and combinations.

And thus they did obtain the sole management of the government, insomuch that they did trample under their feet, and smite, and rend, and turn their backs upon the poor, and the meek, and humble followers of God. And thus we see that they were in an awful state, and ripening for an everlasting destruction. (pp. 425-426)

The band of Gadianton robbers in essence took over the government of the Nephites with an intent to destroy the works of God.

What was their strategy?

Helaman chapter 3:2 tells us their evil strategy:

And seeing the people in a state of such awful wickedness, and those Gaddianton robbers filling the judgment seats having usurped the power and authority of the land: Laying aside the commandments of God, and not in the least aright before Him. Doing no justice unto the children of men. Condemning the righteous because of their righteousness. Letting the guilty and the wicked go unpunished because of their money. And moreover, to be held in office, at the head of government: To rule. And to do according to their wills, that they might get gain and glory of the world. And moreover, that they might the more easy commit adultery, and steal, and kill, and do according to their own wills. (p. 426)

So, we know the plan of our adversary. It is to get people to lay aside the commandments.

What is the plan of those who believe in the ministry of the Lord, Yeshua. What is it that we should be doing to get close to the Lord?

What is the Plan of the current day Gaddianton Robbers

What is their strategy? Has it changed from their successful tactic to destroy the Nephite civilization? Has it changed from their successful tactic to destroy the greatest nation described in scripture, the Jaredites? No, it is always the same plan, from the time of the flood at the time of Noah, to Sodom and Gomorrah, and until today. Their plan is always to keep us from keeping the commandments.

How do they keep us "laying aside the commandments of God?"

Their plan to keep us from obeying commandments is to keep us busy doing other things. They want us to consider that other things are more important.

One time tested successful strategy is used by criminal defense attorneys in the United States. It is a tactic to create a smoke screen. You make somebody focus on something other than what they should be focusing on so they lose track of the real issue. You might even create pride in someone as they are led to believe they are doing something greater, something more important.

The evil conspirators want to minimize the need to obey God. They give us many other commandments of men that they tell us are more important to our survival. They begin with educating our children in public schools where they can mind control them to see only what they want them to see behind the smoke screen. They give us many things of great importance, (according to them), that we should be wholly concerned with, like the Lord said about the washing of pots and traditions of men. They insist that we all believe that keeping God's commandments is not one of the important things.

This is where commandments of men come in. That is what they want us to emphasize, or else. And so, we face a frantic, well organized, well funded, effort to keep us from focusing on true commandments. This attack comes from government, the media, Hollywood, Nashville, business, medicine, the higher education system and everybody else. And they are all promoting their views in unity, at least they are unified in their effort to get us to focus on everything besides obedience to the plan of holiness.

I am not going to tell the many specific and very clever things that they do through governments and well-funded organizations. They seek to educate us all, beginning with the children to believe and do silly things which upon close examination are leading us to set aside the eternal laws which we are here on Earth to live.

I am just suggesting that we each examine how well we are doing in learning and obeying the spirit of holiness and all of the laws that will bring us into God's presence. There is evil on the Earth. And evil is covering the earth with a smoke screen, a veil of darkness, so that mankind has a hard time learning and living true commandments.

We can each do better seeking light and truth from the Lord. This is my humble prayer. Amen.

Overcoming Obstacles: by Ted Rockwell

You know, like Bill was saying that the world is kind of... not the focus of his talk... but he did mention the world has kind of gone to the dogs on the worldly side of things, and you know that gives a lot of problems that come up on our end, on pretty much anybody’s end, and sometimes we come up against challenges and road blocks and stuff like that and we feel like the world is against us, and most certainly the world is, but that’s not the point. We don’t always see it as an opportunity to improve ourselves and to improve our circumstances and pretty well with any challenge and any road block and any problem that arises in our lives gives us an opportunity to improve ourselves at least, if not our circumstances as well.

I have a little story here for you, just a tiny story, but before I read it, I wanted to shout out a scripture verse here which I felt if you heard the verse first, it would help the story have more meaning.

For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the Father chasteneth not? ~ Hebrews 12:6-7

I have a little story here that I found floating around somewhere, so I’ll read that as well.

The King, The Peasant, And The Boulder

In ancient times, a king had his men place a boulder on a roadway. He then hid in the bushes and watched to see if anyone would move the boulder out of the way. Some of the king’s wealthiest merchants and courtiers passed by and simply walked around it. Many blamed the king for not keeping the roads clear, but none of them did anything about getting the stone removed. One day, a peasant came along carrying vegetables. Upon approaching the boulder, the peasant laid down his burden and tried to push the stone out of the way. After much pushing and straining, he finally managed to move the stone off to the side of the road. After the peasant went back to pick up his vegetables, he noticed a purse lying on the road where the boulder had been, underneath the boulder. The purse contained many gold coins and a note from the king that explained that the gold was for the person who removed the boulder from the road.

Anyway, that’s the tiny story, it doesn’t take very long to read, but I have a few other scripture verses that really seem to illustrate that point.

And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. ~ Romans 5:3-5

So you know, it’s important to be happy, it’s important to take the challenges in stride. It means that if we are progressing, there will be challenges. Once there are no longer challenges, we are no longer progressing, and that’s pretty sad.

My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. ~ James 1:2-5

How about another one, this one is from the Old Testament, there we go, that’s always fun.

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil. It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones. Honour the Lord with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase: So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine. My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord; neither be weary of his correction: For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth. Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. ~ Proverbs 3:5-13

It’s important to note that not only in improving yourself and taking challenges that you come across in stride, taking the chastening that God may or may not send your way, well, and improving, not thinking, oh the world is out to get me, whether it is or it isn’t, not thinking that God is out to get you. It’s not that; it’s giving you the opportunity to improve your circumstances and improve yourself and to become a better person and to become more holy and more righteous. That’s kind of the whole point of things. It says,

For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee. ~ Isaiah 41:13

That’s it, I figure that last verse was a good one to end on, Amen

Live What The Lord Taught by Chris Felder

Greetings everyone! It’s happy to see everyone, all your smiles. I like the way it’s going, we know the world is definitely going through a lot of changes and that certainly is presenting an opportunity for us. We have the commandments that are being laid aside and may appear threatening to those of us who are trying to keep those commandments, but I really like that we look at it like it’s an opportunity for us, it’s that boulder in the pathway that we need to move, so that’s a great analogy.

I actually have been contemplating a lot about the changes and how it’s been challenging to find the way that we can still navigate through life and still be following the commandments and following the Saviour, following our Father in Heaven, and know that He provides the way for us, and He sends messengers to us. So what is it we need to do to receive the message and what have His messengers given us? How do we hear the way He is telling us to go? And the way that we are able to hear is we live what the Lord taught. So we live the way the Lord taught, we can hear.

So I put together, there’s four parts actually, to the scriptures I came across, and I named each one, or I gave each one a part and they help to show that we can live what the Lord taught.

And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you, That ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal.

And so the first part, hope, we have being raised unto life eternal, that’s the inner hope, and it’s pretty good hope for when I end up in heaven, eternal life.

The next part I call faith, and I have a scripture there, it’s in 3rd Nephi, chapter 7, the first part of the first paragraph,

Behold, ye have heard the things which I have taught before I ascended to my Father; therefore whoso remembereth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, him will I raise up at the last day.

This part, faith, remembering the sayings of the Lord and to do them, actually doing what he says, that would be faith. It’s interesting. I like how at the end, it says also that you will be raised up at the last day, so you do it with the faith of following the sayings of the Lord and doing them and you can be raised up and so it ties in that hope that we talked about in the first scripture, cause it says in that first scripture that I read, the hope was to be raised up to life eternal and actually, if you look at that first scripture, which was Moroni chapter 7, it actually has faith in there too, cause through the atonement of Christ, there’s faith. In order to do what Christ did, for it to be through the atonement, you have to do what he did. So there’s faith there, and then the hope. You can see in these scriptures, they’re tied together, hope and faith. You can’t really have faith without hope, and vice versa. I mean, if you had hope with something, but you never had faith, it doesn’t really exist, you can’t have it. So they go hand to hand, hope and faith.

The next part I call charity and I have a scripture for that, 3rd Nephi, chapter 8, and that’s the last page there in chapter 8.

Therefore hold up your light, that it may shine unto the world. Behold I am the light which ye shall hold up -- that which ye have seen me do.

So this is our charity, so if we’re holding up the light and we’re letting it shine unto the world, we’re not holding it up for ourselves, and it actually says of the light, “I am the light,” so the Lord is the light and it even it tells us what the light is also with further clarification, it says, “that which ye have seen me do.” Pretty interesting, cause you actually have to do that, which would require faith, wouldn’t it. It’s like you have to have faith to have charity too. You actually have to hold the light up, which requires effort and you’re doing it for the world, for others, and it’s actually the Lord who says, “I am the light,” so that’s a pretty neat scripture.

The last part I call love, and that scripture is 4th Nephi, the second paragraph,

The people were all converted unto the Lord, upon all the face of the land, both Nephites and Lamanites, and there was no contentions and disputations among them, and every man did deal justly one with another; and they had all things common among them, therefore there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free, and partakers of the Heavenly gift.

And so one part, the last part, love, we can see that it actually requires working together with others and not just like some, but all in, everyone equally works together. No one is more special than anyone else, no one receives more or less, and they don’t contend with each other. Each has their own gift to give, their talent to give and so they’re valued equally. And I notice in that one also is something you have to do, it requires faith, and it requires charity and hope. So if you look at the first part of that scripture that I just read, it says, “The people were all converted unto the Lord.” The first part, “They were ALL converted to the Lord,” and then it continues and shows what the characteristics are when you are all converted unto the Lord. You are not going to have those contentions or disputation, everyone’s going to deal justly with each other, all things are common and as it is all converted and everyone working together for this last part, so goes all of each part in order to live what the Lord taught. You need all four parts, you need hope, faith, charity and love, each part working together and then can be fully converted, and you’re able to live what the Lord taught fully.

So as we gather together in holiness and righteousness and work together in righteousness and holiness and demonstrate that love, that part, and then we give our life and hold up that light from the Lord and give our selfless acts to others, to have that charity, and then as we keep the commandments and the sayings of the Lord, and we have that hope to return to heaven, to be raised up unto life eternal, all four parts working together, each of them working together so that can live what the Lord taught, and I want to share this in the name of Yeshua Messiah, amen.

Recognizing The Spirit Of God: by Will Rockwell

Hello everyone! Well, just yesterday, I had a conversation with one of my co-workers and this co-worker enjoys going to concerts, and we talked a little bit about the spirits of the concerts. We talked about how with that many people doing the same thing, focusing on the same thing, it’s easy to get swept up in the spirit of the concert, and it is very rarely a good spirit, and we talked about the similarities between a concert and certain evangelical like services where everybody is swept up in the spirit of the event and many people say that they have felt the Spirit at many types of events, but they are actually feeling the spirit of the event itself, the energy that goes with it and it is very easy, when you’re into the spirit of such things, when you let that into you, it is very easy to get swept up into things that you do not intend to really be doing, just because you are essentially following the spirit of the concert.

Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me. But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right. But if it be not right you shall have no such feelings, but you shall have a stupor of thought that shall cause you to forget the thing which is wrong; therefore, you cannot write that which is sacred save it be given you from me.

So, a bit of background, Oliver Cowdery asked to be able to translate some of the Book of Mormon, and the Lord allowed it, He said yes, you can do that, you can give this a try, but Oliver Cowdery found it too difficult and after a little while, he went back to being a scribe for Joseph Smith, rather than translate it himself. This previous scripture that I just read was the Lord telling him what he was doing wrong, why he was having so much trouble translating, because he was simply asking the Lord, trying to follow the Spirit, without studying it out himself.

It is a rather lazy answer, when you just say, oh, I will follow the Spirit, without ever trying to learn something new or learn anything for yourself. It always says, “Ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you,” but you have to ask, you have to knock, you have to seek out the answers for what you need yourself, and study it in your mind, and then the Lord can send the Spirit to guide you.

It also mentions a stupor of thought. Many people, when they are seeking to follow the Spirit, they forget about this little fact, but it is important, because if you cannot tell when something is wrong, then you will not be able to tell when something is right. Of course when something is wrong, you also have to be humble enough to accept that your plan or your line of thought was wrong and you need to change and fix it. And of course, if you are seeking the Spirit, and you are looking for a path forwards, when you are trying to study it out in your mind, you need to know what you are doing, what are you comparing it to. Fortunately, the Lord has given us several different guidelines in order to help us to study it out and find out what is right or wrong, because there are plenty of people who get inspiration not from God, and they claim it is from God, but there are a couple of secrets that you can use to tell the difference.

One, of course, is in Mark, chapter 3, verse 23,

And he called them unto him, and said unto them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan? And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end.

So when you look at what you are planning or what you are thinking or what your goal is, you have to look at it and decide whether it supports the Kingdom of God, or the kingdom of the devil, and the thing about it is both heaven and hell have their own spirits and just like when you are in one of those rock concerts, the closer you are, the easier it is to get swept up in that spirit, feel that spirit.

So how can you tell if you are close to the Kingdom of Heaven? Well, there are a few guidelines here. In Galatians, chapter 5, verse 22,

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

And in Doctrine and Covenants, section 4, it says,

And faith, hope, charity and love, with an eye single to the glory of God, qualify him for the work. Remember faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, diligence.

So when you come up with a plan of action or when you wish to follow a certain line of thought, you have to ask yourself, does it support these virtues? Does it bring you and people around you closer to these virtues, to support the Kingdom of God? Or does it follow the beatitudes? Does it bring you closer to alignment with those beatitudes and help others to do so as well? Does it make things better and does it make people better?

In John, chapter 14, verse 15-17, it says,

If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.

If you follow these things, follow the commandments and the beatitudes and follow the virtues, you will be able to hear the Spirit when the time comes.

So, to start to bring it all together, in order to follow the Spirit of the Lord, first you make a plan, whether that is to go on a mission to convert a city and have it translated overnight, or to prepare a talk for a conference. Then second, study out your plan, think it over. Will this help people? Will it cause any problems? Will it encourage the virtues? Does it follow the beatitudes? If it does all of that then third, you pray about it. You ask the Lord if this is the right path and if He says no, then you have to adjust it. You adjust your plan, you fix it, you change it, and then you ask again. Repeat as necessary. You just repeat it until once you have a plan that the Spirit approves of, then you go out and you do it.

I have an example here. Say you want to feed the hungry, one of the commandments of God is to feed the hungry, so you want to follow that. You start by making a plan. Say, “Well, I’ll go to the store, pick up some canned goods and drop them off at the local homeless shelter.” It sounds like a decent enough plan. So you pray about it, and of course then you ... wait, what homeless shelter were you thinking of? You have that stupor of thought and you know that you are not quite lined up. So you change it. You think, “Well, I’ll go get a bunch of food and I’ll go to a different place, maybe a different homeless shelter, or soup kitchen, anything along those lines,” and you pray about it again and it is wrong, it is not the right thing. You think about it some more. “Well, there is a little park in a poor community and I’ll go there and I’ll hand out the food there,” and you pray about it again and it is close, but it is not quite right. So, you think, “Well, instead of just getting some canned goods, I’ll make it a barbeque. I’ll get some meat, some salad, some everything else. Give everybody who comes a nice hot meal,” and you pray about it and you feel that burning feeling inside your chest and before you can even get the words out of the prayer, that feeling comes upon you and you know you have got it right.

So, you take a drive. You load up your barbeque equipment, load up the grill, you get to the store, you buy everything you need and, I don’t know, maybe you just hunted a deer and you are going to cook that up. Then, as you are driving down the road, you go to take a turn to where you are going, and you feel a sinking feeling inside you, that burning feeling diminishes, and you know you are missing something, maybe you go straight, and you will take the next turn, that burning feeling comes right back. And so you do it, you follow that road, you take the next turn, walking down the side of the road, going the same direction, is a man, he looks a little bit, what do you call it, scrappy looking, looks like maybe he has had some hard times himself. So you stop, you talk to him a little bit, you tell him where you are going, what you are doing, and he seems fine with it. He says, “Maybe I’ll drop by there a little later.” You ask him if he wants a ride, but he waves you off.

So you keep going, you get to the park, and you set up. You set up the grill, you get one of those picnic tables around, you lay out your food, I don’t know, maybe put up a sign that says free food, come and eat, maybe charity, no, not charity dinner, I don’t know, put up a Happy Birthday sign, Everyone Welcome!! And so you set up and you start cooking. Now these people in this community, they do not trust very easily, they do not know who you are, you get a few people coming out and see what is going on, but nobody really stays.

But of course, you keep cooking and the Spirit is still with you, and you know, after a little bit of time, someone comes out and they talk a bit and they start eating, and a few more people come out. Then a couple more people show up, maybe with a package of hot dogs to throw on the grill too, and someone comes with a loaf of bread. Then more and more people start to show up, and of course, as you start talking to them, you find out, they just mention, “Oh, well, someone I know told me this was happening,” and that keeps happening, “Well, a friend of mine told me about this place.” Eventually, you figure out they are all talking about the same guy that you passed on the road, who went and told this community that, “Hey, this guy’s okay, he’s just here to bring some food, he just wants to help.” He went and told everybody he knew, and all sorts of people came out and they all came and a few of them brought food, some of them just came to eat.

But as they start eating, they all start to relax and they start to talk amongst each other and they are all neighbours, but this community has fallen on hard times and everybody is out for themselves. They always believe that they do not have enough to share. But of course, as everybody eats and relaxes and starts to enjoy themselves, then they start to talk to one another. Maybe one of them has a problem that another can fix. Fred has a broken down door and George there says, “Hey, I know how to fix that!” And someone needs to move, and 3 guys, “Well, I don’t have anything else to do that day, I can help you.” And people start bringing out food as well and before you know it, the whole community has become closer together, they become more willing to help each other, and they stop being quite so scared, because here is this random guy who just showed up with a barbeque and decided to start feeding people.

Of course, when they start to help each other and they start working together, they realize that maybe they do have enough to share after all, and so even after you leave, people have made connections and who know, maybe next week or next month, or whenever, they will have another get together and everybody will bring a few things to share and they will talk to each other and help each other out even more. The whole community gets closer together and willing to share and lift each other up, all because someone was able to listen to the Spirit.

Now, I know this may seem like a Hallmark ending or you know, people will say, that is not how the real world actually works, but it is far from the most interesting scenario that has happened, even just to us, from following the Lord, following the Spirit and you will find that when you follow the Spirit, the Lord is able to set up some amazing things that can happen, and I say these things in the name of Yeshua Messiah, amen.

Interlude:

Joseph: We are going to get to our last two speakers here and we are pretty excited that everybody has come, and it is definitely a very good ... flows together very well today and the topics are right on, perfectly blending together. So I would like to thank everybody for coming. We have had a few people sign in and then sort of disappear, coming and going a few times, we are not sure. Around this time of evening, we often have some connection issues from our local tower here. Our last two speakers will be John and myself, so John is here.

Service/Missionary Work: by John Rockwell

I would just like to talk a little bit about service, if that’s okay. If I can start with a scripture here, Luke, chapter 10,

whatsoever house ye enter, first say, Peace be to this house. And if the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it: if not, it shall turn to you again.

He also says that in,

whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you: And heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.

So there is work involved, it is not just sitting there, preaching.

In Mosiah, he says,

...that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of your God.

And the Lord gave a revelation, it’s in Doctrine and Covenants, section 58, it says,

Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward.

So here, and many other places, the Lord is always telling people to get to work, that you should always be organizing yourselves and actively putting in an effort to help those around you, and once you’ve helped everybody around you, you are supposed to go out and take care of everyone else.

There is a quote from Joseph Smith, but I do not have it written down here. In essence, I believe it goes that anyone who loves their families would take care of them, and anyone who has the love of God, would not only take care of their families, but would not be constrained by just their families and would go out to take care the entire earth. (A man filled with the love of God, is not content with blessing his family alone, but ranges through the whole world, anxious to bless the whole human race. ~ Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, page 174)

But you shouldn’t just like randomly wander off. First you do have to make sure your family is taken care of at home. You can’t leave without making sure they are cared for, because they are your responsibility, and those at home should be supporting and praying for those people on missions in the field, and everywhere else, well they should really be praying and supporting the people taking care of them at home too.

But you can’t just wander off; you need to create an organization that can actually help you to accomplish these things. The Lord created the Seventies kind of to organize so that people could be taken care of and that things could actually get accomplished rather than everyone just running around, you know, willy nilly, just doing whatever they feel is right.

Mormon, chapter 1,

And it came to pass that the Lord did say unto me, Cry unto this people repent ye, and come unto me and be ye baptized, and build up again my church, and ye shall be spared. And I did cry unto this people, but it was in vain, and they did not realise that it was the Lord that had spared them, and granted unto them a chance for repentance.

Because many people don’t realize that the Lord is sparing them even now, and is giving them a second chance even today, to repent, and continues to give them second chances. They don’t realize that they are the vain ones, they think they’re not the vain ones, they think they are the ones who are humble, and that it’s always someone else the Lord is talking about.

That was chapter 1 of Mormon, but Mormon goes on to talk about how he then organizes a military and they go on to fight and kill a lot of people, and, you know, it just kind of occurs to you that maybe the reason the people were so proud is because they were organizing to kill each other, instead of organizing to help each other. When the Lord gave the commandment to build up His church, he never told anyone to kill anybody. He didn’t say build up and army and wipe out everyone else on earth. He said to build up my church, but nobody listened, they were too busy thinking they were so great, thinking everyone was attacking them, you know, they were the chosen people, who had a right to kill. But if they had spent as much effort organizing the church, as they had spent organizing their militaries, you know, if Mormon had sent out supply chains to feed the poor, clothe the naked, you know, shelter the homeless, if he had put as much effort into getting people out there preaching as he did organizing drill sergeants, a drill sergeant can drill a couple hundred people, but what if he had put that effort into teaching them how to be good, teaching them how to help each other?

The Lamanites would have come in there and said we’re going to take over here, and they would say, “That’s great! How can we help?” The Lamanites would say, “No, no, we’re going to rule over you and be your masters and you’ll be our slaves,” and they’d say, “Okay, well, do you have any poor among you?” “Are you guys hungry?” You know, “We’ve made these clothes for you; you could put on something more than just loin cloths.” “We make soap,” you know, “You don’t have to keep shaving your heads to keep the lice out, we can wash it.” Why weren’t they organizing to be an army of missionaries, you know, an army of people helping each other rather than hurting each other?

A lot of people, if they heard the call to come join an army for God, they would jump to it immediately, they would gladly work 36 hour stretches, you know, sleep for maybe an hour and then go back to work again. But if they got called to come be priests, you ask them what they’ve done and they say, “Well, I said a prayer this morning, I looked at the scriptures, I read some, but then I went and took a nap.” Why don’t people put as much effort into working to get to know the Lord and to taking care of other people, as they do to trying to hurt other people?

Anyways, just wondering if maybe they couldn’t build up the church and they were too proud, cause they just did not catch on that they had spent, you know, the next 10 years working making themselves... they probably could have organized missionary efforts and converted all the Lamanites in that time before they actually attacked. I mean, actually the Lamanites sent Mormon a letter there, telling them they were going to come and attack, so you can’t say they didn’t have time to make a plan.

In the days of the early church... okay, so I don’t know if everyone knows what a seventy is. Seventies were, as I said in the beginning as it was said in Luke, a group of people who were organized to go out and be witnesses for the Lord. They are supposed to assist the 12 apostles and they are supposed to assist in bringing the Kingdom of God to all the ends of the earth and unlocking the gospel. But they are an organization in that they are not just kind of random people; they are supposed to be organized so that they can actually accomplish something. In the days when the early church was getting started, Joseph Smith called on quorums and the congregation to acknowledge the 12 apostles and the seventies and to support them with their prayers. They needed to go out among the nations, but don’t forget that you actually have to take care of the people at home first, you still have an obligation to family first, and once they are set up, as Joseph Smith said, if you have the love of the Lord, you cannot be constrained by just your family, you have to help your neighbours as well, and then the next people and all the ends of the earth. Not the ends first, your family first, and then out to the ends. But if we could organize into a bit more like an army for doing good things, you know, get up every morning and be drilled to help somebody cross the street?

In conclusion, I guess I’d like to go back to Luke, when the seventy returned to Jesus after he had sent them out.

And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject to us through thy name. And he said unto them, as lightning falleth from heaven, I beheld Satan also falleth. Behold, I will give unto you power over serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.

Well, that’s not the end of the chapter, but I guess I can say amen. That’s all I had, amen.

Do We Love Father Enough To Change? by Joseph Rockwell

Alright, thank you very much. You know, that talk brings back a lot of memories for me because when I was a young man, I can remember the time when I really wanted to go on a mission. I was only 17 years old at the time, I wanted the Lord to speak to me like he did to Jonah and say, go and teach the Ninevites, and all that kind of stuff. And I had a little bit of pride at the time and I thought, I would not run away, I would go and I would do whatever He said and I would not be afraid. And of course, I remember the first time I had to speak to somebody; I was so nervous, I could not even open my mouth, but I wanted to so badly; I wanted to go out into the mission field, to be sent out to teach people the gospel. And I wanted to so much that I went and I prayed and I asked the Lord and of course, I just sort of had a thought in my mind that, you know, ‘You are not ready, you are not ready.’ And of course I thought, well why am I not ready? And I had the thought that, ‘You have to be a good example for the people that you meet, you have to represent the Lord, and you have to be a good example and you have to keep all that commandments so that everyone will see a good representative.’ And I thought, well I keep the commandments and I had that thought come back into my mind, ‘You are not keeping the commandments.’ And I remember thinking, what commandments could I be not keeping, and I went to the scriptures and I started to go through the scriptures again and wow, there were a whole lot more than just 10. And I found many different commandments and a lot of different advice that the Lord had given to His people, so I started keeping all the commandments I could find. I tried really hard to try and keep them all.

And finally, when I thought I was doing pretty good, I went back to the Lord in prayer and I asked him again, let me be a missionary, I want to go and teach the gospel and help people and things like that. And still, that same little quiet voice came into my mind and said, ‘You are not keeping all the commandments, look how you talk to people.’ And I could look at my communications; the way I communicated to people was not in tune with the commandments. For example, I was young and I would tell bad jokes; well, bad jokes are not in line with the love of God, they are not in line, they are often making fun of people or being sarcastic and so that definitely needed to go. So I tried to not tell bad jokes anymore. And I looked at the way that I nonverbally communicated, I mean, a 17-year-old boy, I remember that if another boy my age would challenge me, I would stand up big and strong and challenge him right back, and I realized that was not in tune with the rest of the commandments. I mean, the commandment says, you know, not to kill, well I was not going to kill anybody, but the commandments also said that you were not allowed to harm anyone. And here I was, you know, being big and strong 17-year-old thinking I was tough or something, and yet, that type of communication did not bring about peace; it was not a very good example for a missionary, or somebody who wanted to be a missionary, to set. And so, I changed that, you know, I tried very hard to change that in my communications.

And when I went back to the Lord, I said, well now I am keeping the commandments, now send me out; I want to be a missionary. And I heard that little whisper again, only now it was starting to come pretty strong, I heard that little whisper that told me again I was not keeping all the commandments, and I thought, how can I not be keeping the commandments, I am keeping all the ones I can find, I am looking through the scriptures all the time, I am striving as hard as I can to find them and keep them, and I am keeping them now in my communications, in my speech and in my behaviour; I am trying really hard to keep all the commandments. But then the thought came, ‘In your thoughts,’ that I was not keeping the commandments inside my mind, and where, like I said, one of the boys would want to challenge you, and in my thoughts I thought, oh, I could sneak around and push him over here or there or something like that, but then I would talk nice and calm. And so I had to change what was going on inside my mind at the same time. And so I tried everything I could to make sure all my thoughts, that I did not break any commandments, even in my thoughts.

And I went back to the Lord and I said, okay, I have got it, keeping the commandments, I worked really hard, I get it out of my mind, I am actually keeping commandments in my thoughts, I am not hurting anybody in my thoughts, I am not saying bad things in my thoughts, and I have got this. And again, that same gentle little voice came into my mind and said, ‘You are not keeping the commandments.’ And I thought, how can this be possible and with a tear in my eye, I asked the Lord to show me where. And I had the memory, a flash of memory of just earlier that week, a couple times in that week, when I was interacting with my brother, my own brother, that I had an emotion rise up in my chest, like when he did something or said something and my interaction was that flash of emotion, even though it was just sort of instantaneous and did not even really last because I started thinking, how can we make peace, how can I help, what can I do and I was thinking all these things to solve the problem, and of course, I was trying to communicate more calmly and not raise the tension in the air and talk things out. But I still had that flash of emotion. And so I had to learn to keep the commandments even in my emotions... even in my emotions. I had to learn to actually have good emotions toward people, and never again have a bad emotion. This was very difficult; this was very difficult, I remember struggling with this all the time, because emotions would come so fast. But with time and with practice and time and practice, and trying to always make good emotions at all times, before anything ever went wrong, and just making good emotions. I started to learn emotions come from us, that we train our emotions and we can make good emotions to make life happier, or we can make negative emotions to make life very depressing.

And so I learned again to try, to try and control my emotions, to try and make good emotions and I kept the commandments even in my emotions as much as I could. At first, I had a little challenge that I could not do it, I tried and tried and tried and every time, you know, the other boys at school, you know, the bigger kids would give you bump with the shoulder and knock you into the lockers or something like that, I would have that flash of anger, that emotion would come, and no matter how hard I tried, I could not seem to get rid of the instantaneous flash of anger, and yet I tried and tried and tried. And I remember trying for such a long time, and I could not seem to get it. I do not know why I had that challenge at that time, but I could not get it, and so, I went back to the Lord, tears in my eyes, and I told the Lord, I am sorry, I cannot be a missionary for you, I just cannot keep the commandments to the degree that You would like, and then I sort of said goodbye.

I did not pray again for 2 weeks. I was so depressed that I thought I cannot even do anything; I cannot help the Lord in any way, but in reality, that was not the problem. In reality, it was that pride issue. It was the pride of thinking I am so wonderful, I can do it. It was that pride of thinking I am just as good as Jonah or whoever. It was that pride that was keeping me blocked. It was really that pride. It was because I wanted to do something special, I wanted to do something big, I wanted to do something in the world that would change the world, and I guess I never really thought about how to do it for the Lord. And after 2 weeks, I went back to the Lord and I asked him, I apologized and I humbled my heart as much as I could possibly humble myself and I apologized so much, and I asked Him, you know, is there anything I could do? Maybe I could do just a tiny job? I asked Him, maybe if He needs somebody to clean out the barns or something, that maybe I could clean out the barns. Just, I asked Him, I wanted to do anything to just help in His Kingdom.

And that is when things started to change, when things started to change, and people would start talking to me, sometimes even strangers would just say hi and start talking to me and they would start telling me their problems and I had no idea why. Sometimes it was my friends who would tell me things, and again, I did not know why they were all of a sudden talkative, why they would reveal their hearts. And as they would tell me things, I still did not know what to do, so I would go and ask the Lord and I would pray, and that same little voice would tell me something, a scripture that would encourage one person, tell me to just be there for the other person, these little tiny hints of how I could maybe possibly help. And they got more and more and more.

And I remember what happened was I was praying for a friend of mine who was going through a very difficult time, and I was asking the Lord how to help this friend, and I prayed and prayed, and of course, I was in my room and had my hands folded in front of me and I was just praying, asking the Lord for any advice, and I was waiting for that little voice to come and tell me what to do. And of course, I heard the voice. And that little quiet voice started talking to me and telling me what to do for my friend. Of course I held a conversation with this voice and I noticed, even though my eyes were closed, I noticed that a bright light had come on in my bedroom, and I could not figure this out because... and I opened my eyes to look and see if someone had come in and turned on the light, and I opened my eyes and I looked and no one had come in and turned on my light. And I looked in front of me and there was a curtain, is how I would describe it, like the northern lights, a curtain of light in front of me that shimmered and was beautiful, bright, white, pure white light, and within that light stood a man. And He spoke to me, it was the same voice, He just kept talking, and I talked back with this person, and I talked, and we talked about my friend. And we talked about what I could do and how I could help my friend. And at the end of talking with this person, I got up and left my room and went outside, because I often would go for a walk, we had a little wooded area at that house, and so I would often go for a walk in the trees and think about the advice I was given so that I could go and help someone. So I walked outside and I was thinking about how I could approach my friend now, and how I could help. And I stopped about halfway across the yard because I thought, wait a second, there was a person in my room, and I had not realized this. I had not realized this because it was the same person, the same voice that I had always talked to, and it was the exact same voice. And at first I ran back to my room, and I looked in the room and nobody was there, and I went to the wall there where the curtain of light was and I touched the wall to make sure that it was still there. And of course, this was the first time that I had been speaking, that I spoke with the Lord, and I was overwhelmed by the experience.

But let us fast forward a little bit, I still had that... you see I was raised in the Catholic Church and then when I moved around, moved in with my cousins, they were Mormon, and so I started learning from their beliefs as well, and I started going forward that way... but I still had that part deep inside of me that God was this very difficult individual, very hard individual, that would punish you if you did not do well, that he would punish you. If you grovelled enough, that he would grant you a few crumbs of bread or some blessings here or there and that if you did not, then He would punish you. And I thought this way because that is how I was raised. And I thought, this is terrible, I do not want to actually commit myself to serving a God like that, and I was very terrified that I would be punished all of the time, I was always worried about punishment and eternal punishment, things like that. And so I was so nervous and so afraid that one day, I was... I am wringing my hands even right now while I am remembering it... one day, I called out, I thought, I have to do it; I have to find a God who is kind and loving and understanding and knew what it was like to be human, to go through these challenges and these things that we go through here upon the earth. And so I got up the courage and the very first time, I called out, you know, is there another God up there who is nice? And I pulled my blankets over my head, because I was terrified that this God of vengeance would come and strike me with lightening and take me to hell and torture me forever for looking for a God of mercy, a God of kindness. And for me, this was a big thing, and over time, over the next few days, I would do it again, and I called out again, and again, and again.

And I knew very well of the Lord, I knew that He could show up and talk to me, but one time I was praying like that, and I called for the God of mercy to come, and he showed up again, above me, like in front of me in the air. And He asked me, of course, what I would like, and I asked Him all these questions. I asked Him some very serious, what I thought were extremely serious questions. I asked Him, you know, why is He a God of extortion, I mean, I asked Him why are you so mean? Why do want to hurt people? Why do you have to have people grovel at your feet? And why are you forcing people to be good or you are going to send them to hell and beat them for all eternity? And these were just questions I had because that is what I was taught. And of course, the Lord just stood there very quietly and He allowed this accusational questioning. He was very calm, very meek, He put up with these horrible questions. And when I was finally finished asking all these things, He began to speak, and He calmly spoke. And of course He said that he is not that kind of a person, that He was a person who knew exactly what we were like. He knew exactly what being on earth was like. He knew exactly what our challenges were like and He experienced them himself. And He began telling me what kind of person He is and what He was trying to accomplish here and what He is trying to accomplish and how He is trying to accomplish it, and I was astounded. And the Holy Ghost bore witness. As He spoke, I was filled with the most indescribable love, that you cannot describe, you have to experience it in order to understand it. There seemed to be, in a way, a profound silence as He spoke; nothing else really mattered and nothing else really existed as He spoke, because truth was being spoken.

And I remember these experiences where we would converse, and if I remember correctly, it was so odd because it was like harmonic musical vibration that would resonate while we were having these conversations, and sometimes I would stop to try and listen, but as soon as, of course, I would stop and try and focus on it, it would disappear, and then as soon as we were talking again, it would come back. And so it was pretty amazing stuff!

And as He spoke, He taught me about Himself. He taught me what His goals were. He taught me what He wanted to accomplish. He taught me how He wanted to accomplish it. He taught me the reasons behind things, the reasons behind the commandments, and what they are meant to accomplish. He taught me how agency is important and how we actually have to make our own eternity, and He told me that now is the time to make that, in this life right now. And we need to get ourselves under control, that we need to actually bring goodness into this existence, this mortality.

So He continued to teach me of His personality, of His character, of His goals. He taught me of his greatest desires. It is amazing how humble He is. How He can have a desire that He actually wants to lift us higher than He Himself, and I could not figure that out how that would even be possible, but when He said it, I knew that that was the true desire of His heart. The first thing He taught me was that He was love, that all He wanted to do was to help us, that He laid down His heart, His whole life, upon the alter, not just here upon earth, but also in heaven. He does not live for Himself, that all He wants is to help us in all things, and He was completely selfless.

The Lord is very loving and very kind, but at the same time, He never did justify any of my sins. He spoke plainly that sin was very bad and He never really... He always spoke so plainly that sin was bad, but He did not use it as a point of attack or as a judgement. He would try and help you to understand what is going on within yourself, and try and help you overcome it, and try and give you advice that would help you, So that you could have better results, you could have a better eternity, you could have more happiness, more peace, more joy. And that was His desire, that was His desire all the time.

He is total mercy, even though He wants to get all the sin out of us so that we can actually stand in the presence of God. And to do that, we have to be completely humble and accepting that when we have done wrong, without any excuse, and yet, still accept His loving mercy at the same time. It can be a very difficult thing to have someone talk so plainly about your sins, but not condemn you, but still address them. And we have to learn to accept that type of love, we really do.

And as I found out myself what the Lord was really like, my faith in Him increased. I found a man who could love me, even though I was not perfect, and yet and I was striving, but it was also made known to me that striving is a key, and as long as we are striving, which is more than just trying, we are actually doing stuff, as long as we are striving, then we become acceptable to Him. And since that time, I have tried to share the true nature of God to everyone, to anyone who would listen. And I have tried and tried to do it like He did it with me, but it is hard, because a person has to accept that even if you do wrong, you can still keep moving forward, you do not have make an excuse, you do not have to justify yourself just because you did something wrong and you are ashamed of it. You do not have to make an excuse, you can actually own up to it, and address it, and ask for help, and life gets better.

Now myself, none of this happened very quickly, it took me several years to go through all my beliefs and start rooting out the ones that did not fit with what the Lord taught me during that series of visits. He would come back again and again and teach me all these things; I could not handle it all at once. And after the Lord taught me these keys, the Lord taught me more about love, about the virtues of love. Things like patience, and long suffering, and patience in long suffering, and kindness, and charity, and humility, and meekness, and love unfeigned, and faith, and diligence, and all of these things, especially forgiveness and not taking offence. And the ones that stood out the most were actually meekness and humility, not taking offence, and that everything was for others. These four things were always at the basis of everything that was taught to me and His own personality was very meek and humble. He was very honourable and consistent in His behaviour, in His interactions. He was very loving and patient, but at the same time, He did not sugar coat, rather He addressed them matter of factly.

He taught me how to progress, and yet, at the same time, He was very encouraging, and since the true desire of His heart is to help us, and help us become all that we can become, He will never ever give up on any of us. So any time that we are feeling that God will give up on us, or has given up on us, that feeling is not from God, that feeling is from the devil. The God of heaven, the God of mercy will never give up on you. He understands us, He is one of us, and He reaches out to save us and it is His greatest desire to have us come home and have a fullness of love. And so He reaches out to save us from the consequences of our own actions. He cannot really interfere with our choices because we have the agency to choose, but He always offers to help to get us back on track, to give us the best eternal results that we can get, so these results often to do not come first hand from Him, they come from His teachings and we need to follow them. And the consequences, like of our bad decisions, they do not come directly from Him, they are the consequences of us choosing bad choices, making bad choices.

It is Heavenly Father’s will to pour out all His knowledge upon us of how He is who He is, so that we too can become like that. It is His greatest desire that we have the joy that He has, that we get the same results He gets, and so that is why He is teaching us how to get those results. Like it says, it says,

What manner of men had ye ought to be?

And the Lord says,

Even as I am.

He is trying to teach us. This is a very deep statement here. It does not mean just be like me, He is telling you to be the “I am” that is inside you, that is really truly at your heart. I mean we are the children of God. If we were the children of men, we would be men. The lambs are the children of the sheep, I mean, they are sheep. If we are the children of gods, we are gods. That does not mean we just be wicked gods, we have to grow up to be good. We have to grow up to fulfil the measure of our creation. Just like the Lord said, we need to be as “I am.” He wants us to become like Him, He wants us to come home. Like any loving father here on earth wants his children to do better and have a better life than what he had, you know the Lord wants that.

We have a couple of questions, like I was learning that God actually loves us, and He would show up and teach me these things and I would learn that He laid down His life in heaven, His throne, His crown or whatever the worldly people want to call it. He laid down His life in heaven so that He could come down to earth to be born as a man, and to be born mortal here upon the earth so that He could show us the way to become like Him. This was His goal here. We need to understand this. We have to understand His heart; we definitely have to understand His heart. It is so important for us to understand what the desire of God is.

In the scriptures, just so you know I am not making this up, it says it even in the scriptures. Remember Abinadi would say,

I would that ye should understand that God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem His people;

This is a gentleman who loves us so much that He would actually come down and be born here upon the earth. So in order to accomplish this, He lays down His life in heaven, He comes to earth as a son, a human being just like us, gives us an example of how to live our lives, how to have eternal joy, just like He has, and during His life, the Saviour consistently gave the direction to “Follow me,” He would say, right? He consistently gave that example, that He was showing us how, He showed us how to live this life, He Himself did it by example to show us how to live our lives here upon the earth so that we can have the same results that He has, that we can fill the measure of our creation, to become as He is. And if we change our lives from what they are now, and live how the Saviour lived, then we will then have those promised results that the Father has given to all those of His children who live their lives the way His son lived.

This is what the true meaning of the atonement is, that we live how Father has shown us to live, then we will be at one with God. We are then brought back into the presence of the Tree of Life. Father does not focus on the amount of mistakes we have made, but he focuses on our progress. And no matter how small, He is thrilled when we make progress, even if it is a tiny amount. It is His desire to help us to progress, to become more like Him, not so that He can brag and say I have children like me, but so that we can have the joy that He has and we can understand that joy, and we can have that joy for eternity. And He knows as our dedication increases, that we will work on ourselves more and more, until all those bad traits go away, so He is really looking for that dedication. He is inspiring us to be that dedicated to that constant and never ending improvement. This is a vital key to all things; we have to have that desire to improve. And when we stand before God at the last day, we have that, as it says, the bright recollections of all our life there, and so it makes me think, if I am going to be standing there before the Lord at the end, at the last day there, and as my life plays on the big screen, or whatever it is in front of us there, and the Lord sees my life, and I see my life, and I see all those memories that are going to be bright and as if they just happened, all those feelings will be there as if they just happened, and the Lord will feel those feelings too; how is He going to feel if he sees me hurt somebody. How is He going to feel when I make a sort of a snarky comment about someone? How is that person that I made the comment about going to feel? And then I have to feel how I made that person feel, and the Lord feels how that person feels. And every bad comment I made to someone, the Lord feels that, I have made it to Him. This would not be a happy eternity.

And so, why did the Lord come to earth? What was his plan? He came to earth to teach us, and to tell us to change, to teach us to be kind to each other, to teach us to love each other. And He told us that as we love each other and if we are willing to live this way, if we are willing to keep the commandments, the commandments are mostly based around not hurting anyone, not even ourselves, and the commandments that Lord brought are mostly about helping people and helping others, being humble, being meek, never taking offence, but helping, helping others, and He said, if you are willing to live this way, then get baptized, start a new life. Start a new life living this way, and if you can start that new life and follow this new way of living, you will have a wonderful eternity. You will be able to see and have great memories of all the people that you have helped. You will be able to feel those feelings of love throughout eternity.

So I submit that we should actually treat each other well, and treat each other well even those people who do not treat us well. We should never make bad comments about them. Instead, we should treat them well, make good comments. We should treat each other well with as much kindness as we can. This includes our spouses, our children, our in-laws, the mailman that does not deliver your mail, I do not know, whatever it may be, but we have to treat each other with as much kindness as we can, and not say those sarcastic comments. We should not even be thinking them; we should never even have that emotion. We should change our emotions into good and holy emotions. We should change our thinking into good thoughts, and what we say into good speech, and our body language should reflect that. And we should obviously help each other as much as possible. So that when we stand before the Lord at the last day, all we see is good, we are faithful to our new life, our baptism, and we are living our new life being love, being how the Lord was.

It is hard, it is difficult, things do not always change right away, but if we can consistently work at it, then when we stand in the presence of the Father of Love, we will feel the greatest love for everything, and if we feel that love, we will not be happy if we felt any badness towards anybody. So we have to do that now, start now, and feel that love now toward everybody, and do not just feel it, think it, say it, do it, and be very careful, do not take offence from people and try not to give offence. It is very difficult, but if we push ourselves, I think we can do this. I think that we can actually have a bright recollection of all the good that we have done.

So I would propose that we take the advice of our Lord and love each other, and help each other, and say good things about each other, and never, never, ever justify any questionable behaviour, never justify that. I think that we should make sure that we are always trying to improve, that we always own up to any mistakes we made, do not give excuses for it, and fix it, and be nice to each other.

So it is an amazing blessing for the Lord to tell us how He is, for Him to tell us what His hopes and dreams are, for Him to tell us how we can have the happiness that He has, and how we can have happiness for all eternity. This is truly, for me, a great blessing, how to change our lives, how to start again from baptism and go about doing good to our fellow man. And if we do this, from that moment on, we will have a wonderful review of our life and we will have joy and rejoicing throughout eternity. He is a very incredible, loving and merciful God who’s only desire is our own eternal happiness. He understands us, He loves us.

Now really, the only questions are since He loves us this much, the question is, do we actually love our Heavenly Father? I mean, do we love our Heavenly Father enough to change our lives, to actually keep his commandments, to always interact with love toward our fellow man using those virtues of love. Do we actually love our Heavenly Father enough to lay down our worldly life, and live as His son lived? I mean, we know that Heavenly Father loves us, but how much do we love Him? It is a serious question. If we love Him, we will keep His commandments. If we love Him, what is the scripture?

By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

How can we say we follow Him if we do not have that love one to another? He came to earth because He loves us so much, that He wanted us to come home, He wants us to know how to be like Him. He came to earth, He was a human just like us; He wants to show us how to have eternal joy. He wants us to come back so much that He showed us the way. Our Heavenly Father is love. Do we love Him enough to change our lives, and live our lives as He did? He loved us so much He laid down His heavenly life to come here. Do we love our Heavenly Father enough to lay down our worldly life to be able to go with him?

So these are the things that I have been taught and these are the things that I myself have been taught directly by the Lord, and so if we want to have that joy, that peace that we are always looking for, that is why we are all here today, then we need to live as our Father lives. So can we do it? Can we interact with those closest to us, like our brothers, our sisters, can we interact with our parents, with our spouses, can we actually interact good? Or do we have such a habit that we interact badly with them? Yeah, we can interact easy with somebody we only see once a year, but can we interact well with those we see every day? Can we put aside our pride and our vanity to interact better with each other and stop expecting each other to do what we want? It is hard. We have to get rid of that expectation to take away their agency, it is very hard.

These are just some questions. Do we love the Lord enough? The Lord loves everybody, but do we love Him? These are my thoughts and I would like to share them with you, of course looking always toward the Saviour. Amen.

Conclusion: Joseph

Everyone, thank you so much for coming. It is truly wonderful to see everybody here and we have had a few more people show up during the programme that even are from Kenya, so we have had four different countries around the world here. This is pretty good. So, for everyone, I would like to thank everybody who came. We would like to thank everybody who helped out to put this programme together, thank you for everything that you do and we do look forward to see everyone again in 3 months’ time, it will be time for the Autumn Conference and it is truly a wonderful experience to see everyone.

We need a closing prayer, Amy, are you volunteering?

Closing prayer: Amy

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank thee for this meeting and we thank thee for everybody who joined together to listen and speak and we thank thee for thy many blessings and we thank thee for the gospel and the scriptures and all of the many times, more than the scriptures, that thou hast called us home, and please help everyone to do well and to go about their lives with peace and confidence in Thee, and in the name of Yeshua Messiah, amen.