Day 37: The Most Beautiful Part of My Life

Happy sabbath :)
Today was our rest day. We went to church and ate some food and played bananagrams. Bekah curled my hair tonight and she recommended this beautiful video. The composer and director, Rob Gardener also composed Lamb of God (my favourite Easter music) and so I fell in love with this right away. I may have listened to it ten times already.

I know not everyone who has read my blog knows what the Book of Mormon is all about. I think I should give you some context. Read on if you would like to understand me and what I believe a little bit better.
The Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ. The LDS church believes that there was a time of apostasy after Christ's death when all the apostles were killed and the authority of God's church was taken from the earth. In the early 1800s, a young 14 year old boy named Joseph Smith was seeking to know what church to join. He felt that he should pray and he went to a grove of trees. There he saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. They told him that none of the churches at the time has the full truth and that he should wait for a time. Eventually God called Joseph as a prophet and gave him a sacred record written on golden plates to translate. That record is the Book of Mormon and is an account of the a group of people, a prophet and his family, who were warned to leave Jerusalem before its destruction by Babylon around 600 BC. They sailed to the Americas and they recorded their own history and their communications with the Lord from generation to generation. After Christ's death and resurrection he visited these people in the Americas. The Book of Mormon is another testimony to the world that God loves all of his children and that his son Jesus Christ atoned for all of us.

The video I shared above is a song that was written about 3 of the men (besides Joseph Smith) who saw the plates of gold that Joseph translated.

So far what I've said might seem crazy to some people but I dare you to find someone who can write a book as long as the Book of Mormon (600 or so pages) in less than 60 days (which was how long it took Joseph Smith) and call it revelation from God. 

Hugh Nibley, an LDS BYU professor, used to open his class every semester with this challenge, 

"Since Joseph Smith was younger than most of you and not nearly so experienced or well-educated as any of you at the time he copyrighted the Book of Mormon, it should not be too much to ask you to hand in by the end of the semester (which will give you more time than he had) a paper of, say, five to six hundred pages in length. Call it a sacred book if you will, and give it the form of a history. Tell of a community of wandering Jews in ancient times; have all sorts of characters in your story, and involve them in all sorts of public and private vicissitudes; give them names--hundreds of them--pretending that they are real Hebrew and Egyptian names of circa 600 b.c.; be lavish with cultural and technical details--manners and customs, arts and industries, political and religious institutions, rites, and traditions, include long and complicated military and economic histories; have your narrative cover a thousand years without any large gaps; keep a number of interrelated local histories going at once; feel free to introduce religious controversy and philosophical discussion, but always in a plausible setting; observe the appropriate literary conventions and explain the derivation and transmission of your varied historical materials.

"Above all, do not ever contradict yourself! For now we come to the really hard part of this little assignment. You and I know that you are making this all up--we have our little joke--but just the same you are going to be required to have your paper published when you finish it, not as fiction or romance, but as a true history! After you have handed it in you may make no changes in it (in this class we always use the first edition of the Book of Mormon); what is more, you are to invite any and all scholars to read and criticize your work freely, explaining to them that it is a sacred book on a par with the Bible. If they seem over-skeptical, you might tell them that you translated the book from original records by the aid of the Urim and Thummim--they will love that! Further to allay their misgivings, you might tell them that the original manuscript was on golden plates, and that you got the plates from an angel. Now go to work and good luck!" 

And besides the fact that it would have been impossible to write The Book of Mormon without revelation, I testify that I have felt the truth of the words in this book through prayer. Faith is more tangible and logical than you might think. Jesus Christ's true church has been restored through him. I know that a lot of churches are wonderful, wonderful places where people can connect with their God and their Redeemer. But I also know that some truths must come directly from God and not just individual interpretation of the Bible. Christ's church also has to have his authority, his priesthood.

If I had one wish it would be that everyone would give The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints a chance. People hear crazy things about Mormons all the time. Many of those things are absolutely not true. And some of the other things are taken out of context. We are Christians. We believe in baptism, receiving the holy ghost, and keeping our bodies holy (no drinking, smoking, premarital sex etc.). We believe that before coming to earth we were all God's spirit children but that he sent us to earth to get bodies, to be tested and to receive families so that we could be like our father some day. We believe that one day we can live with God again. We believe in seeking for whatever is virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy. We know we are imperfect but we want to try to be better every day because we have a Saviour that believed in us. We believe that God has given us living prophets (ever since the time of the Restoration of the Gospel) and we receive counsel from him and his apostles as spokesmen for God.

If you want a copy of the Book of Mormon I'll get you one. OR if you want a Book of Mormon you can go here and get one for free. I think everyone should pick up this book at least once in their life. I don't mind if you do it just out of curiosity or even out of a desire to see if I'm crazy. But I'm not crazy and this book is true. It has changed my life and the life of many of the people that I care about.

Love,

Stéf