Jan 17 2017 D&C Lesson 17 by Cynthia Williams

Notes on “Preparing the World for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ

Elder Neil L. Andersen said in April 2011:

“From the early days of the Restoration, the Brethren have been very serious about their charge to declare the gospel. In 1837, only seven years after the organization of the Church, at a time of poverty and persecution, missionaries were sent to teach the gospel in England. Within the next few years, missionaries were preaching in such diverse places as Austria, French Polynesia, India, Jamaica, Chile, and China.15

The Lord has blessed this work, and the Church is being established across the world. This meeting is being translated into 92 languages. We are grateful for the 52,225 full-time missionaries serving in more than 150 countries.(that is now more like 74,000 missionaries in 189 of 224 countries)16 The sun never sets on righteous missionaries testifying of the Savior. Think of the spiritual power of 52,000 [74,000] missionaries, endowed with the Spirit of the Lord, boldly declaring that there is “no other name given nor any other way nor means whereby salvation can come …, only in and through the name of Christ.”17 … The world is being prepared for the Second Coming of the Savior in large measure because of the Lord’s work through His missionaries.”

2001 talk by Janet S. Scharmann entitled Chosen to Witness for His Name,

“…Then a friend shared with me this story told by Phillip Allred in Meridian Magazine. A group of young college students were helping measure range damage after a wildfire raged across the prairie outside their university town. As they walked over the expanse of blackened earth, they noticed a cluster of small smoldering mounds. One of the volunteers was particularly interested in the unidentifiable heaps and asked one of the more experienced range managers what they were.

“This veteran of many range fires replied that he had seen this phenomenon on a few occasions and suggested that the young man turn over one of the piles. He did. To his great surprise several sage grouse chicks ran out from under the upturned mound. He was fascinated. How incredible, he thought, that these little chicks had known to find and run underneath this mysterious shelter.

“The young man asked what the mound was and how the chicks knew to take refuge there. To his amazement, he was told that the smoldering heap was the remains of their mother. When there is danger the mother hen instinctively calls out to her young ones and stretches out her wings for them to run under and find protection in her embrace. The young man was profoundly moved by this symbol of a mother’s innate love and protection.”

The visual imagery of these mother hens protecting their young chicks under their wings, even to their own deaths, is so symbolic of the way that Christ gave His life to save each one of us from death – both physical death and spiritual death

President Gordon B. Hinckley taught: “How do you prepare for the Second Coming? Well, you just do not worry about it. You just live the kind of life that if the Second Coming were to be tomorrow you would be ready. Nobody knows when it is going to happen. … Our responsibility is to prepare ourselves, to live worthy of the association of the Savior, to deport ourselves in such a way that we would not be embarrassed if He were to come among us”. (Church News, 2 Jan. 1999, 2).

Scriptures:  

D&C 45: 56-57 – use the sanctifying, renewing power of the Holy Ghost to fill our lamps; we can engage this power with our daily religious behaviors

D&C 45:34-38; 106:4-5; 39:23 – promises of peace as we prepare for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ