Scriptures
Ezra
Quotes
“It is indeed a remarkable fact that sufferings and hardships do not, as a rule, abate the love of life; they seem on the contrary, usually to give it a keener zest; and the sovereign source of melancholy is repletion. Need and struggle are what excite and inspire. Our hour of triumph is what brings the void.” William James, The Will to Believe, 47.
“As members of the Lord’s church, we need to lift our vision beyond personal prejudices. We need to discover the supreme truth that indeed our Father is no respecter of persons. Sometimes we unduly offend brothers and sisters of other nations by assigning exclusiveness to one nationality of people over another.
Let me cite, as an example of exclusiveness, the present problem in the Middle East—the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews. We do not need to apologize nor mitigate any of the prophecies concerning the Holy Land. We believe them and declare them to be true. But this does not give us justification to dogmatically pronounce that others of our Father’s children are not children of promise.” President Howard W. Hunter, “All Are Alike Unto God,” speech at BYU, 1979, quoted by Dr. Nafez Nazzal at the BYU Jerusalem Center, in 1995.
“Mr. Mayor, many years ago when I was a young boy in Tonga, my father and mother and my brothers and sisters sold our home, we sold fruits and vegetables, and we sold everything we could to have enough money to travel to Hamilton, New Zealand, to be sealed as an eternal family in the temple. You need this temple. This temple will bless your city. This temple will bless your community. it will bless the people.”
Vai Sikahema, quoted by Dean Davies, BYU Magazine, Spring 2016, 23-25. Speaking about trying to get the Philadelphia Temple built.
I think that Ezra, knew that below the surface of the pages of scripture, (these Old Testament words we have been studying for two years,) is a great, deep chasm of intelligence and truth. A bottomless ocean of light.