THE GRANDEUR OF OUR GOD

 

 

I began to read The Mortal Messiah series again and could not get past the preface. I became so emotionally overcome that I could not read any further.

Many of us think that we are studying the life of Christ when we study the New Testament. This is far from the truth. The Gospels are not biographies of Jesus but a synopsis of faith promoting accounts from the Saviour’s ministry.

“No mortal can write the biography of a God. A biography is but the projection through the eyes of a penman of what the writer believes were the acts and what he feels were the thoughts and emotions of another man…. How, then, can any mortal plumb the depths of the feelings, or understand in full the doings, of an Eternal Being?

“The true Life of Jesus must be written by the spirit of revelation and of prophecy and cannot come forth until that millennial day when men have a perfect knowledge that God can show them all things [see D&C 101:32-34]. Only then will they be able to believe and rejoice in the heavenly account.”

-        (Bruce R. McConkie, The Mortal Messiah Book 1, p xvi [1979].

Even the faith promoting accounts do not contain all the words and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Elder McConkie goes on to say that so sacred and holy were Christ’s teachings that only a selection of them were preserved for ‘presentation to the unbelieving and skeptical masses of men into whose hands the New Testament would come’ (ibid).

We do not fully know or understand the lonely road He travelled here. We do not fully understand the condescension of a God who stepped down from His gilded throne to traverse the dusty roads of Galilee.

 I am always touched when I see the humanity in Him through scripture….the hunger when He reached for the figs on the barren fig tree, the physical exhaustion that made Him sleep through a violent storm on the sea of Galilee. How did He cope with such overwhelming humility that kept at bay His godship and divinity?

And then the ultimate subjection to become a man whose ‘visage was so marred more than any man’ by being willingly lifted upon the cross of Calvary, allowing the nails to be driven into His hands and feet and His body to be broken to ensure our eternal destiny (Isaiah 52:14; John 19:17-18,32-34; see Old Institute Manual commentary for Isaiah 52:13-15). A God in a mangled body…..Could any of us possibly understand this?

This was the man from Nazareth, who sailed on the seas of Galilee and ascended to His exalted throne in glory and majesty. This was Christ the King, the eternal God of heaven and earth, the Son of God, the Saviour of my soul. I stand all amazed.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN