Sept 25 2018 Alma 36-38 by Rebekah Ellsworth

Handout on chiasmus available at:

https://byustudies.byu.edu/system/files/pdfs/charts/bom/132.pdf

“I do not know who in this vast audience today may need to hear the message of forgiveness inherent in this parable, but however late you think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don’t have, or however far from home and family and God you feel you have traveled, I testify that you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines.” – Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Laborers in the Vineyard,” CR April 2012

μετάνοια

Metánoia
The Greek word of which this is the translation denotes a change of mind, a fresh view about God, about oneself, and about the world. Since we are born into conditions of mortality, repentance comes to mean a turning of the heart and will to God, and a renunciation of sin to which we are naturally inclined. – LDS Bible Dictionary

שוב, תשובה
Teshuvah, Shuv
Translated as repentance, the word “teshuvah” is “more accurately understood as turning back (shuv) to God. … This verb…first occurs when God told Adam he would ‘ return to the earth’ (Gen 3:19). In spiritual terms, shuv may be regarded as a practical turning away from evil and a turning toward the good, though Jewish thinking regards turning to God as the means by which we turn away from evil. This act of turning has the power to redirect a person’s destiny. It effects (sic) the whole life of the soul.”

“When He says to the poor in spirit, “Come unto me,” He means He knows the way out and He knows the way up. He knows it because He has walked it. He knows the way because He is the way.” – Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, “Broken Things to Mend,” CR April 2006

“Keep your face always toward the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you.” – Walt Whitman

Sept 18 2018 Alma 33-35 by Kelly Fankhauser

Glow Kids by Nicholas Kardaras, Ph. D.
Quoting Elder Maxwell
“Only an omnisentient, all-loving God could have both roles of advocate (pleading for the petitioner) and judge (deciding the ultimate fate of the petitioner).  This is because He possesses a perfect balance of the qualities of justice and mercy and all other divine attributes that make Him perfect, or complete, in all the Godly virtues”.
President Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles is quoted saying….
“His Atonement is infinite—without an end [see 2 Nephi 9:725:16Alma 34:10, 12, 14]. It was also infinite in that all humankind would be saved from never-ending death. It was infinite in terms of His immense suffering. … It was infinite in scope—it was to be done once for all [see Hebrews 10:10]. And the mercy of the Atonement extends not only to an infinite number of people, but also to an infinite number of worlds created by Him [see D&C 76:24Moses 1:33]. It was infinite beyond any human scale of measurement or mortal comprehension.
“Jesus was the only one who could offer such an infinite atonement, since He was born of a mortal mother and an immortal Father. Because of that unique birthright, Jesus was an infinite Being” (Russell M. Nelson“The Atonement,” Ensign, Nov. 1996, 35).
Elder Bruce R. McConkie
“Man cannot resurrect himself; man cannot save himself; human power cannot save another; human power cannot atone for the sins of another. The work of redemption must be infinite and eternal; it must be done by an infinite being; God himself must
atone for the sins of the world.”
(A New Witness for the Articles of Faith [1985], 111-12)
The Coming Of Wisdom With Time – Poem by William Butler Yeats
THOUGH leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.
Robert Frost – Carpe Diem
But bid life seize the present?
It lives less in present
Than in the future always,
And less in both together
than in the past. The present
Is too much for the senses,
Too crowding, too confusing—
Too present to imagine.
Roman poet Horace in 65 B.C.E.
Scale back your long hopes
to a short period. While we
speak, time is envious and
is running away from us.
Seize the day, trusting
little in the future.
Henry VanDyke
The shadow by my finger cast
Divides the future from the past:
Before it, sleeps the unborn hour,
In darkness, and beyond thy power:
Behind its unreturning line,
The vanished hour, no longer thine:
One hour alone is in thy hands,—
The NOW on which the shadow stands.
Elder Melvin J. Ballard:
▪    “Do not let any of us imagine that we can go down to the grave not having overcome the corruptions of the flesh and then lose in the grave all our sins and evil tendencies. They will be with us. They will be with the spirit when separated from the body.
▪    “It is my judgment that any man or woman can do more to conform to the laws of God in one year in this life than they could in ten years when they are dead. The spirit only can repent and change, and then the battle has to go forward with the flesh afterwards. It is much easier to overcome and serve the Lord when both flesh and spirit are combined as one. This is the time when men are more pliable and susceptible. We will find when we are dead every desire, every feeling will be greatly intensified. When clay is pliable it is much easier to change than when it gets hard and sets.
▪    “This life is the time to repent. That is why I presume it will take a thousand years after the first resurrection until the last group will be prepared to come forth. It will take them a thousand years to do what it would have taken, but three score years and ten to accomplish in this life.
▪    “You remember the vision of the redemption of the dead as given to the Church through the late President Joseph F. Smith.  President Smith saw the spirits of the righteous dead before their resurrection and the language is the same as one of the Prophet Joseph’s revelations—that they, the righteous dead, looked upon the absence of their spirits from their bodies as a bondage.
▪    “I grant you that the righteous dead will be at peace, but I tell you that when we go out of this life, leave this body, we will desire to do many things that we cannot do at all without the body. We will be seriously handicapped, and we will long for the body, we will pray for the early reunion with our bodies. We will know then what advantage it is to have a body….
▪    “The point I have in mind is that we are sentencing ourselves to long periods of bondage, separating our spirits from our bodies, or we are shortening that period, according to the way in which we overcome and master ourselves.” (Three Degrees of Glory, p12-13)
Do Not Delay – Henry B. Eyring – Oct. 1999