Post by Heloram –
After my father ended his speaking about what the angel had told him about the coming of Jesus Christ, the people fell to the earth with fear. They recognized their own carnal state and desired with all their hearts to receive forgiveness of their sins and to have their hearts purified. They proclaimed their faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God and their belief that He would come down among the children of men. Once they had done this the spirit of the Lord came upon them and they were filled with joy having received a forgiveness of their sins. I cannot describe the beauty of that kind of peace of conscience that comes from this exceeding faith in Jesus Christ.
My father then took the opportunity to instruct the people (me included) about what was happening to them. The goodness of God had awakened us to a sense of our nothingness and our worthless and fallen state. That alone is a pretty powerful blessing. How often had I gone about thinking I was something great, simply because my father was a great king and I was one of his sons. This spiritual awakening was very powerful. We had come to a knowledge of the goodness of God and His matchless power, and His wisdom, and His patience, and His long-suffering towards us, His children. We had felt the blessing of the atonement which we were taught was prepared from the foundation of the world for those who should come to Him and put their trust in Him and keep His commandments and continue in faith for the rest of our mortal life. This is how salvation comes.
My father then summarized again how salvation comes and reiterated that there is no other way salvation comes and that there are no other conditions whereby we can be saved. So let me repeat them here as well.
We must believe in God; believe that He is, and that He created all things, both in heaven and in earth; believe that He has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man does not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend. We must believe that we must repent of our sins and forsake them, and humble ourselves before God; and ask in sincerity of heart that He will forgive us; and if we believe all these things we have to do them.
One more time; as we come to the knowledge of the glory of God, or if we have known of His goodness and have tasted of His love, and have received a remission of our sins, which causes such exceedingly great joy in our souls, its vital that we should remember, and always retain in remembrance, the greatness of God, and our own nothingness, and His goodness and long-suffering towards us, unworthy creatures, and humble ourselves even in the depths of humility, calling on the name of the Lord daily, and standing steadfastly in the faith of that which is to come, which was spoken by the mouth of the angel and reiterated several times by my father.
We are promised that if we do this we will always rejoice, and be filled with the love of God, and always retain a remission of our sins; and we will grow in the knowledge of the glory of Him that created es, or in the knowledge of that which is just and true. If this be the case, then this is what we will do:
1 – We will not have a mind to injure one another, but to live peaceably, and to render to every man according to that which is his due.
2 – We will not suffer our children to go hungry, or naked; neither will we suffer that they transgress the laws of God, and fight and quarrel one with another, and serve the devil, who is the master of sin, or who is the evil spirit which has been spoken of by our fathers, he being an enemy to all righteousness.
3 – We will teach them to walk in the ways of truth and soberness; we will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another.
4 – We ourselves will succor those that stand in need of our succor; we will administer of our substance unto him that stands in need; and we will not suffer that the beggar puts up his petition to us in vain, and we don’t turn him out to perish.
(When we see the beggars, sometimes we think, the man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore “I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just”—)
Let me quote my father on this one.
” O man, whosoever does this the same has great cause to repent; and except he repents of that which he has done he perishes forever, and has no interest in the kingdom of God.
For behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have, for both food and raiment, and for gold, and for silver, and for all the riches which we have of every kind? And behold, even at this time, you have been calling on His name, and begging for a remission of your sins. And has He suffered that you have begged in vain? No; He has poured out His Spirit upon you, and has caused that your hearts should be filled with joy, and has caused that your mouths should be stopped that ye could not find utterance, so exceedingly great was your joy. And now, if God, who has created you, on whom you are dependent for your lives and for all that you have and are, does grant to you whatsoever you ask that is right, in faith, believing that you shall receive, O then, how you ought to impart of the substance that you have one to another.”
There are so many ways we can commit sins and we are counseled that we must do things in order and we can’t run faster than we have strength, but the things we can do we must do. If we can share with those that have less and we don’t judge them but we love them and do what we can do, the Lord will hold us guiltless after all, all things belong to Him anyway. Too often we covet our own things and hold them more precious that the children of God, whom we should be serving with all our heart. If we impart of our substance to the poor, and we feed the hungry, and clothe the naked, and visit the sick, and administer relief both spiritually and temporally as well as we can, we will retain a remission of our sins and we can walk guiltless before God.
But we need to be careful and watch ourselves, our thoughts and our words and our deeds and keep the commandments and continue in faith in the Lord Jesus Christ even till we die. If we do, we are promised eternal life, which I want with all my heart.
(Book of Mormon | Mosiah 4:1 – 30)
