Post by Jacob –
I appreciate my brother Joseph’s kind words but they do not ease the frustrations we experience as we attempt to share in written word, what we teach and present to our people in spoken word. We minister in word – spoken word and then we strive to record that ministry as we write. Oh that we could more easily record our ministry in a way that will not perish and vanish away – our words must be etched into plates just as the plates of brass which my older brothers retrieved from Laban. The difficulty of engraving our words on plates makes it difficult to write the things we wish to share with our posterity. Yet we write with the hope that what we write will give our children and our beloved brethren, even a small degree of knowledge concerning us or concerning our fathers. Then after we work so diligently to make this record we hope they who receive our words with thankful hearts, and learn with joy concerning our first parents rather than sorrow or contempt.
Our deepest hope and intent of having written these things is that they will know that we know of Christ. We have a hope of His glory, even now several hundred years before His coming. We are not the only ones who have a hope in His glory but all the holy prophets which were before us believed in Christ and worshiped the Father in His name and we too worship the Father in Christ’s name.
It is because we believe in Christ that we keep the law of Moses. The law of Moses points our souls to Christ and we are blessed for our obedience to this law, just as Abraham was blessed for his obedience to God’s commandment to offer up his son Isaac. That offering was to teach Abraham about God and His Only Begotten Son. So in like ways we research the prophets and find many revelations and the spirit of prophecy and because of all these witnesses we gain a hope until our faith becomes unshakable. Our faith in Christ becomes so strong that we can actually command the trees, the mountains or the waves of the sea and they obey us. But even then, God shows us our weaknesses so we remember that it is because of His grace and His kindness to us, His children, that we have power to do these things. It is the works of the Lord that are marvelous. We can’t even begin to search out the depths of His mysteries, nor find out all His ways. Actually, we can’t know much of His ways unless they are revealed to us, so when we do receive these revelations, we should not reject them.
By the power of God’s word man was created and placed upon the earth which was also created by the power of His word. So, if God is able to speak and the world and man are created, then why couldn’t He speak and control all the world and everything on it? So we shouldn’t try to counsel the Lord, but we should take counsel from Him. We all know very well that He will counsel us in wisdom, in justice and in great mercy. Therefore we should take great comfort that we are reconciled to Him through the atonement of Christ, His only Begotten Son, and we may obtain a resurrection because of the resurrection of Christ.
Don’t be surprised that I talk so much about Christ and His atonement. All the prophets have testified of Him so that we may attain a perfect knowledge of Him, which knowledge gives us hope and therefore faith.
Everyone certainly does not attain this hope and faith. The Jews were a stubborn people; and they despised the words of plainness, and killed the prophets, and sought for things that they could not understand. Wherefore, because of their blindness, which blindness comes by looking beyond the mark, they fall; for God takes away His plainness from them, and delivers to them many things which they cannot understand, because they desired it. And because they desired it God does it, and they stumble.
Now, I am led by the Spirit to prophesying; for I perceive by the workings of the Spirit which is in me, that by the stumbling of the Jews they will reject the stone which is Christ, upon which they might build and have safe foundation. But, according to the scriptures, this stone (Christ) shall become the great, and the last, and the only sure foundation, upon which the Jews can build. And now, how is it possible that these, after having rejected the sure foundation, can ever build upon it? I hope I can unfold this mystery unto you; if I do not, by any means, get shaken from my firmness in the Spirit, and stumble because of my over anxiety for you.
(Book of Mormon | Jacob 4:1 – 18)
