TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST

 

“The spirit of our Lord’s invitation [ ‘come and see’] to the young truth seekers, Andrew and John, is manifest in a similar privilege extended to all. The man who would know Christ must come to Him, to see and hear, to feel and know…. To comprehend the works of Christ, one must know Him as the Son of God; to the man who has not yet learned to know, to the honest soul who would inquire after the Lord, the invitation is ready; let him ‘Come and See’.”  - James Talmage, Jesus the Christ, p 149, 151

 

As I studied the temptations of Christ this year, I came to ‘see’ more clearly who Christ was: a man of impeccable integrity and infallible selflessness. This picture of His character came to me through the very first temptation. When Satan came to Jesus after 40 days of fasting in the desert, following His baptism and at the onset of His ministry, he appealed to His ego by tempting Him to prove that He was the Son of God and therefore had power to assuage His, by then, overwhelming hunger. Turning stones into bread was easy. The Saviour knew it and Satan knew it. What lay at stake was succumbing to His ego by displays of His power and something even more important….the use of His power for His gain and His purpose. This Satan also knew. He knew that Christ’s power was only meant to be used for the benefit of others and not His own. And so the Saviour of mankind would not feed Himself even at the peril of His life but He would feed 5,000 others who ‘might’ have been hungry whilst listening to Him (Matthew 14:13-21).  The proof of His infallible selflessness was manifest in many miracles such as turning water into wine, healing the sick and afflicted, raising the dead, casting out devils, feeding multitudes and ultimately ascending the hill at Calvary to finally give His ALL. He who had the power to have the most abundant life of all, didn’t….for foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests but the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head (Matthew 8:20). No man, ever, has possessed such selflessness. No man ever has put others before himself to such an extent. No man ever has been or will be like Him….. Christ, the Saviour, our God and our King.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: The Anointed One by Joseph Brickey)

PARENTHOOD

 

I am often amazed how much is required of some parents. I see it in my daughter constantly who is a mother of a special needs child. I worry about her, I ache for her, I cry with her. It has made me reflect on the two special attributes that she is acquiring in the process of her motherhood: selflessness and self-sacrifice.

 

Our society has drummed into us, especially into women, that we need to have a life of our own, unimpeded by children who always demand to come first and push us and our needs to the back burner. We often complain that we no longer have a life of our own because of kids. Whereas there needs to be some sort of a balance and respite provided to cope better with demands of parenthood, society’s dogma has convinced a lot of people in the world not to have children at all. 

 

I think of Christ, whose children we are….and his selflessness and self-sacrifice. Imagine if the Saviour spent His life complaining that He also had no life of His own because He was purely here for us. Would He be willing to get up on that cross when the time came? It boggles the mind. Lucky for us, the Saviour navigated His whole life through the pure love of Christ within Him. Pure love basically means He had no motive for self-advancement or self-gain. The love was purely for others and this love enabled Him to carry the cross of  selflessness and self-sacrifice. By virtue of our discipleship, we have access to the pure love of Christ so we too can carry such a cross. This love is bestowed upon all true followers of Christ who actively seek it. Moroni promised as much (Moroni 7:47,8). 

 

I take my hat off to you parents who are bringing up children in this ever increasingly evil world. Just remember, your children will one day be gems in your royal crown, as we will be in Christ’s when He comes to make up His jewels (Malachi 3:17).

 

What are children to a mother

If not gifts from heaven’s door;

As jewels from God’s own bosom

Gifted to her heart forever more.

Entrusted with the greatest charge

Sealed with hope of tender care;

From His hands

To mothers given

As gifts of worth beyond compare.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN

(Art by Greg Olsen)

 

A SON OF THE LAW

 

Imagine being 12 years old and knowing you are the Son of God. Imagine you are a child being brought up in a devout Jewish home and being schooled with scriptures from a very tender age. Imagine studying the prophecies of much awaited Messiah and coming to realise that YOU are ‘the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief’, that you will one day be despised and rejected of men, bruised for the iniquities of others, and led as a lamb to slaughter when you will make your soul an offering for sin of all mankind (Isaiah 53). Would you feel superior to your peers? Would you feel consuming aloneness knowing that there is none like you? Would you be scared to tell others that you knew who you were? Would you be scared of your future?

 

At twelve years of age Jesus found himself to be ‘a son of the law’ according to Jewish custom, and as such He had become subject to obligatory fasts and attendance of feasts. A question begs to be asked how He viewed the Jewish Passover in Jerusalem that He attended at this age knowing what He knew. One cannot but wonder if He remembered the very first Passover when He, as Jehovah slew the firstborn of Egypt and saved His people Israel. Was He overwhelmed with His knowledge, His rapid growth in grace and intelligence, and His memories as He traversed the streets of  Jerusalem and followed Joseph to the temple with the Paschal lamb to be offered in similitude of His own offering? Was He overwhelmed with the experience of Jerusalem to the point that He yearned to be ‘about His father’s business’? Was the fire of His passion for redemption He was destined for so great within Him that the only way He could quench it was to commune with those who understood His destiny, supposedly as He did, the doctors of the law, whose wisdom and knowledge was valued above all of the Jewish populace. Did He think He was going to find some acceptance and understanding there, or the same level of wisdom and knowledge that He possessed? Most likely He didn’t, because these doctors of the law were “hearing HIM, and asking HIM questions” (Luke 2:46 JST) simply because “He needed not that any man should teach Him” (Matthew 3:24-26 JST). 

 

Who cared for this boy all alone in Jerusalem for three whole days at the temple while his parents searched for Him? Who fed him? Where did he sleep? Was nobody concerned that He was alone? Did nobody search for his parents? Maybe nobody had to because He truly was ‘about His father’s business’ and His Father watched over Him. And no doubt He watched this boy of His who would one day be nailed to the cross with love that seared His heart. No wonder Jesus was surprised when Mary and Joseph found Him and questioned Him why He had remained in Jerusalem. Why would they be worried? Because, in His mind, He was in His father’s house, and He was home. 

 

Did You see me Father

Giving glory to Thy name?

Did You see them hearing

My words of Thee 

Flowing from my tongue

Like a holy flame.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN

(Art by Rose Datoc Dall)

BORN TO BE THE MESSIAH

 

Imagine the buzz surrounding the arrival of the long awaited Messiah which began with the birth of John the Baptist. News of John’s miraculous conception and proclamation of his divine calling as the Forerunner was noised ‘throughout all the hill country of Judea’ (Luke 1:65). Now six months later, the witnesses of His birth are coming thick and fast, from the shepherds who witnessed the heavenly choir praising God and who ‘made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child’ (Luke 2:17); to Simeon and Anna testifying in the temple (Luke 2:25-38); to that of wise me of the East who went straight to the top to ask, not  “Where is he that is born King of the Jews?” as recorded in Matthew 2:2, but as Joseph Smith translated, “Where is the child that is born the Messiah of the Jews?”. 

 

Imagine what mortal threat such a question was to Herod, the puppet king of Judah, installed by Caesar Augustus, without a drop of Jewish blood in him, whose only claim to the throne was his family’s conversion to the Jewish faith (see Bible Dictionary). Had Jesus been born to be the King only, it would not have been such a threat because anyone can become a king, as Herod very well proved, but to be a Messiah meant more, much more, because a Messiah RESCUES and DELIVERS. And who would he rescue? The captive Jews. The captives of the Empire Herod served, the very Empire that placed the crown on his head. He had only one solution: to dispose of Jewish infants two years old and younger. Imagine the carnage that the Christ child had to be protected from. Hence the directive to Joseph to flee with his family to a land that became another witness of the arrival of Messiah fulfilling the prophecy, “Out of Egypt have I called my son” (Hosea 11:1; Matthew 2:15). Egypt, which was a sacred memory of deliverance to ancient Israel, would serve to make the connection to the spiritually astute that the Son of God could deliver them from sin also.  (See Bruce R McConkie, “The Mortal Messiah” Book 1, p 364 for more clarification)

 

No earthly hand can stop and thwart the salvation of God’s children that was decreed eons ago. The Messiah has come and gone but He will return and set foot on this earth again. Of this we can be sure. Because of this we can hope for a better world. Because of this, we will live forever….

- CATHRYNE ALLEN

(Art by Rose Datoc Dall)

WITNESSES OF CHRIST'S BIRTH

 

This poignant painting by Ron  DiCianni depicts the moment of exquisite joy felt by Simeon, a man in Jerusalem ‘just and devout, waiting for the ‘Consolation of Israel’, to whom was revealed by the power of the Holy Ghost that ‘he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’s Christ’ (Luke 2:25,6). Simeon did indeed see Christ before his death being led by the spirit to be at the temple the same day that Mary and Joseph brought Jesus ‘to be presented to the Lord according to the custom’ (Luke 2:22,27). Simeon took the Saviour in his arms and rejoiced bearing witness of His divine birth and mission.

 

Simeon was not the only living witness of the divine birth. God raised up witnesses for Himself to meet all classes and conditions of people . There was also Anna, a prophetess who testified to all in the temple  (Luke 2:36-38); shepherds who testified to the poor and lowly that the hope of Israel was fulfilled (Luke 1:8-17); and the wise men of the East who were not afraid to enter the royal court testifying of the birth of the Messiah of the Jews to the contemptuous king and proud priests of Judea by asking one simple question (Matthew 2:2a/JST). Simeon’s testimony, however, was by far the greatest, after which he said something to Mary that must have seared her heart: "A sword shall pierce through thy own soul, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed" (Luke 2:35). 

 

Simeon’s testimony to Mary of Christ’s death and Atonement was delivered through an unusual choice of words but yet the most poignant. Mary’s pain to see the suffering of her Son would be necessary so that the thoughts of our hearts will be revealed when Christ comes again in His glory and we stand before God to be judged of our earthly works. When that day comes, who we are will be in our hearts and that is all we will have to give Him. May we be overjoyed like Simeon because we have waited with eagerness for His appearing and may our hearts be imbued with faith and love to make them fit for an offering to the Lord of Lords and King of Kings.

 

 - CATHRYNE ALLEN

(Art: "Simeon's Moment by Ron DiCianni)

KISSING THE FACE OF GOD

 

“Though heaven was His habitation and earth His footstool, He chose to lie as an infant in a manger, surrounded by horses and camels and mules. Though He laid the foundations of the earth, and worlds without number had rolled into orbit at His word, He chose to come into mortality among the beasts of the field. Though He had worn a kingly crown in the eternal courts on high, He chose to breathe as His first mortal breath the stench of a stable. Though He would one day come forth – born then in glorious immortality – with all power in heaven and on earth, for now, as the helpless child of a peasant girl, He chose to begin the days of his probation as none of Adam’s race had ever done before.”

(Bruce R. McConkie, The Mortal Messiah Book 1, p 345)

 

Angels and Archangels may have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim throned the air,

But only His mother in her maiden bliss,

Worshipped the Beloved with a kiss.

- Christina Rosetti

 

-       CATHRYNE ALLEN

(Art: Kissing the Face of God by Morgan Weistling)

DIVINE PREPARATION

 

Never before have I considered how emotionally and spiritually charged was the preparation for the Saviour’s birth that involved four people: Zacharias, Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph. I marvel at the sacrifices these four people made to ensure the success of Christ’s mission on earth. 

 

Consider Zacharias and Elizabeth, both descendants of the priestly line of Aaron, ‘both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless’ (Luke 1:2), well stricken in age, denied children, until the fateful day when Zacharias was performing his priestly duties in the temple. As he burnt incense at the holy altar to importune God to hear the prayers of the multitude outside who prayed for deliverance from oppression and sin, glorious Gabriel came and announced the birth of John who would pave the way for the promised Messiah (Luke 1:8-11). Now consider two elderly parents protecting the life of their long awaited son from Herod’s murderous edict, raising him in the desert  on locusts and honey (Matthew 3:4). Zacharias paid dearly for preserving this  child of promise, being slain between the temple and the altar as he performed his priestly duties (Matthew 23:35; Luke 11:51).  

 

Now consider Joseph and Mary, first cousins and both descendants of mighty King David. Mary, just 15 years of age, the most pure and fair of all God’s daughters, inexperienced in meeting the trials of life, under contract to marry, accepts a pregnancy that would shame her among her fellowmen, well aware that it would quality her for death penalty. Who would believe her strange tale that an angel came to her or that she carried in her womb the son of God? One person would….Elizabeth! She, being filled with the Holy Ghost would validate Gabriel’s visit and Mary’s sacred mission as the mother of the Son of God (Luke 1:42-45).

 

And Joseph? He who had grown up with Mary and knew the nobility of her character, how he must have suffered and struggled to accept that she was with child by some other man. But Joseph was of noble character too and he believed what he was told in a dream and accepted his role in the life of the promised Messiah. What an incredible man and protector of Christ child and a noble servant of God he was. 

 

How grateful I am to these four people who prepared the way for the Saviour to be born so He could atone for my sins. My heart aches at the thought of His difficult mortal life but rejoices in the glory that is His now and forever. 

 

 

- Cathryne Allen

(ART by Liz Lemon Swindle)