IT IS UP TO US

Jeremiah lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem

by Rembrandt

The biggest heroes of the scriptures are the ones that make things happen. They are workers who understand that God's will is up to His children to put into effect. When we read scriptural prophecies we tend to think that God will miraculously make things happen or that someone else will suddenly appear to fulfil the promises God has made.

Daniel of the Old Testament is a good example of making things happen. As we know he lived in Babylonian captivity in service to heathen kings for most of his life. He was very much devoted to the God of Israel and had Israel's welfare at heart. He eagerly hung onto the Lord's promise that Israel's captivity would last only 70 years (Jeremiah 29:10). It is suggested by historians that when Cyrus, the king of Persia, conquered Babylon that he found Daniel there in his governmental capacity,  and that Daniel  pointed out to him the prophecy of Isaiah that was given 140 years before the fall of Jerusalem, that the Lord would raise up a mighty king who would free the Jewish captives in Babylon and allow them to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and the holy city. Isaiah even named Cyrus by name.....210 years before he even appeared in Babylon. Astonishing isn't it? It certainly was to Cyrus because he freed the Jews and allowed 50,000 of them to return to Jerusalem. The rest chose to stay until Ezra's second party of 17,000 some years later after the construction project was completed. It is significant here to note that Daniel who so loved his homeland and his heritage did not choose to return to Jerusalem but chose to remain in Babylon to continue to serve God in a foreign land. The point is this. Daniel in all likelihood played a huge part in this historical event. This theory can be supported by another example of Daniel's doing.

When the Jews returned to Jerusalem and began rebuilding the temple, they encountered bitter opposition from Samaritans who reasoned that they should be involved in the project. Because Samaritans were not pure Israelites and had practised a variant religion of Jehovah worship heavily intermingled with pagan and other unauthorised religious practices, the Jews refused. In retaliation the Samaritans influenced the Persian kings who succeeded Cyrus to halt the rebuilding project for 17 years. In steps Daniel again. In the first year of King Darius, Daniel again petitioned the Lord about Jeremiah's prophecy. Daniel 9:17-19 shows Daniel's prayerful concern for the unfinished temple and the city of Jerusalem. The Lord answered Daniel and raised two prophets in Jerusalem: Haggai and Zechariah. You might wonder how prophets could finish construction of anything, right?? You might wonder why God didn't send someone with political clout, negotiation expertise or even military power....but instead he sent two of his servants to finish the job....and finish they did....Haggai alone showed the Jews exactly why they were not able to finish the project. He taught them that all temporal problems arise out of spiritual weakness and that if they would put God first, they would extricate themselves from abject poverty they were in which was their main problem.  It makes for compelling reading. These two prophets instructed the governor Zerubbabel, the high priest Jeshua and the Jewish people how to complete the temple in spite of persecution, poverty and governmental red tape (Haggai 1:1-5, 12-14; Zechariah 4:9, Ezra 6:14). Even though these two prophets got the job done, in reality, this began with Daniel and was his doing.

President Kimball prayed and petitioned the Lord repeatedly regarding the priesthood for the black members of the Church. I am sure President Nelson did the same regarding the many changes he has brought in since his calling. They didn't sit back and think things will happen out of thin air. The state of Christ's Kingdom when we present it to Him upon His coming will depend on us. The Church as an administrative body takes care of the physical entity of the Kingdom but we, its' member body take care of its spiritual condition. We must consider this our responsibility because we will be the ones to usher in the Millenium. The scriptures state that at the beginning of the Millenium Satan will be bound and will have no power for 1,000 years. This loss of power will not be because God will bind him in chains and throw him in a dungeon but because we, God's saints and disciples of Christ, will be so spiritually strong that he will simply have no power over us and will therefore no longer have a role to play. We will simply make him irrelevant.

When the Jews returned to Jerusalem to rebuild, the first thing they built was the altar of the temple, even before the foundation of the temple was laid (Ezra 3:1-6). They knew that the altar was the heart of the temple and the temple was the heart of the Jewish religious life.  Our temples today dot the earth, and all without much sacrifice from us. Our temples set us apart from other religions, they make us a 'peculiar people' to the world and a 'peculiar treasure' to the Lord (Exodus 19:5). They provide us with spiritual backbone through our obedience to its covenants. It is in the temples of our God that we will be armed with His power to bind Satan and to become a holy people (D&C 109:22); and it is in the temples that we will find refuge from the storm that is yet to come upon the saints of God in the last days. Consider Elder Featherstone's words:

"Before the Saviour comes the world will darken. There will come a period of time where even the elect will lose hope if they do not come to the temples. The world will be so filled with evil that the righteous will only feel secure within its walls. The saints will come here not only to do vicarious work but to find a haven of peace. The covenants and ordinances will fill us with faith as a living fire. In a day of desolating sickness, scorched earth, barren wastes, sickening plagues, disease, destruction and death, we as a people will rest in the shade of trees, we will drink from the cooling fountains. We will abide in places of refuge from the storm; we will mount up as on eagles' wings; we will be lifted out of an insane and evil world. We will be as fair as the sun ad clear as the moon. When the Saviour comes He will honour His people. Those who are spared and prepared will be a temple-loving people. They will know Him. Our children will bow down at His feet and worship Him as the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. They will bathe His feet with their tears and He will weep, and bless them for having suffered through the greatest trials known to man. Let us prepare them with the faith to surmount every trial and every condition. We will do it in these holy, sacred temples." (Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone, Manti Temple, April 1987)

May we worship the King of Kings and Lord of Lords in our hearts, in our homes and in our temples that we may possess God's power and ever remember that "we have a labour to perform whilst in this tabernacle of clay to conquor the enemy of all righteousness." (Moroni 9:6)

IF I PERISH, I PERISH

This week's Sunday School lesson is about three valiant Jewish exiles who lived in Babylon during the 70 years of Jewish captivity. We are all familiar with their stories of courage which landed them in a fiery furnace and a lion's den. When Judah was about to be sacked by the Babylonians, Jehovah promised to Jeremiah He would spare them if any righteous could be found in all of Jerusalem but such was not the case. Judah had sinned and broken her covenants with God. Out of this sinful and idolatrous nation, King Nebuchadnezzar carried off into Babylon (about 605 BC) the choicest Jewish youths to be trained for service in the king's court. Four such youths among them were Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. It is not clear whether these youths were disposed towards the God of Israel before their arrived in Babylon or whether they learnt from the sins of their fathers and turned their hearts toward Him once they found themselves in a strange land where with others of their nation they became zealous about the God they once worshipped. Because of their righteousness and commitment to the covenants which they made with the God of their fathers, they were endowed with spiritual and temporal gifts and were given miraculous protection from their enemies.

During the 70 years of Jewish captivity in Babylon, Daniel served 5 kings remaining in Babylon even after most of his countrymen had returned to Jerusalem to rebuild their temple and nation. It would seem strange that a devout Jew such as Daniel would choose to remain in a foreign land and not return to Jerusalem but I believe there was a purpose for this for "......he was raised to positions that enabled him to spend his life in service to the kings of the land. He became the Lord's minister to those rulers. He was made chief of the wise men, chancellor of the equivalent of a national university, ruler of all the Hebrew captives, and as governor of the province of Babylon, one of the chief rulers in both the Babylonian and Persian Empires" (Old Testament Student Manual, 1 Kings-Malachi, p. 297). So honourable and righteous was Daniel in his personal and professional life that he endeared himself to King Darius to such an extent that the King preferred him above all the presidents and princes and he 'thought to set him over the whole realm' (Daniel 6:3). This attachment to the King ignited a lot of jelousy among the presidents and princes who sought to discredit Daniel in some way by hoping to 'dig up some dirt' on him. When they could find no fault in him they devised a plan by which they knew they could trap him and put him away for good. From their observation of Daniel, they knew that he was so committed to the worship of his God that he would not break that commitment under any circumstances. In other words, he was true to his covenants in every way. The trap which they set was to get the King to pass a decree that whosoever shall ask a petition of any God or man for thirty days save King Darius, shall be cast into the den of lions. They then ensured that once the King signed the decree that he also signed a document stating that this law could not be changed. The trap was set and the victim caught. Daniel, as was his usual habit, continued to pray to Jehovah three times a day, facing Jerusalem, with his window open for all to see. Daniel was arrested for breaking the law and King Darius was devastated. The scriptures record that 'he laboured till the going down of the sun' to deliver him (Daniel 6:14), fasting and spending a sleepless night and when the morning came he went to the lion's den with haste to test his own belief that Daniel's God would deliver him (Daniel 6:16). Addressing Daniel as a 'servant of the living God' (Daniel 6:20) Darius called to him to come forth and was 'exceeding glad' (Daniel 6:23) to find him alive and unharmed. What can we learn from this? The usual lesson is that the Lord protects those who are loyal to Him and this truly is so but a further lesson lies herein. Looking at Daniel's life one cannot help but see that he was sent to Babylon and used by God to be his advocate with kings who presided over exiled Judah. This was Daniel's mission and God's purpose. Was Daniel successful in this? King Darius was certainly convinced enough to proclaim Daniel's God 'the living God' an made a decree that in every dominion of his kingdom 'men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel: for he is the living God and steadfast for ever....' (Daniel 6:26,27). Daniel's story proves to us that God has a plan for each of us: "When we say God has a plan, he truly has a plan - not simply a grand scale, but for each of us as individuals, allocating some special talent to this dispensation and some to another. I regard God as the perfect personnel manager, even though he must work with and through all of us who are so imperfect. I assume, gladly, that in the allocation to America of remarkable leaders like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln, the Lord was just as careful. After all, if you've got only one Abraham Lincoln, you'd better put him in that part in history when he's most needed - much as some of us might like to have him now" (Neal A Maxwell, Deposition of a Disciple, p. 46). We find another valid example of this concept in Queen Esther who had to marry King Ahasuerus of Persia in order to avert annihilation of all Jews in Persia and Media (Esther 1-10). Her story of intrigue and suspense reads like a modern day action drama series.

We can learn something about keeping covenants from Daniel's companions, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. They too had risen to prominent positions within the governing body of Babylon and as such inspired jelousy amongst the other rulers of the provinces and in particular the Chaldeans (Daniel 3:8). When King Nebuchadnezzar erected a massive golden image for his people to worship, his three Jewish rulers were not found among the worshippers. The Chaldeans thought it their duty to report this to the King who summoned Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and promptly reminded them that if they do not worship the designated image with his people they will be basically fried in a fiery furnace. He went further to assert his power by saying: "...and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?" (Daniel 3:15). Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego were not perturbed. With boldness and daring they answered: "O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter" (Daniel 3:16). In other words, we are not going to weigh our words hoping not to offend you for we don't care if we do! They then made it known to the King that they would never worship his golden image and serve any of his gods even if they stood to perish. Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego had learnt something valuable in exile, that the covenant which their fathers had made with the God of Israel that they would have no other gods before Him is not to be broken. They knew this is what led them into exile and servitude to other nations. They therefore chose to perish rather than break the covenants which they made to worship Jehovah. Their spiritual resilience paid off. King Nebuchadnezzar, seeing the three Jewish rulers come out of the fiery furnace unharmed, acknowledged the God of Israel as 'the most high God' (Daniel 3:26) and made a decree that whoever should speak against the God of Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego should be put to death.

God is a keeper of covenants. We find proof throughout the scriptures that He keeps His promises. Whereas the House of Israel had forsaken Him as their God, He has not forsaken the House of Israel. He will never break the covenant which He has made with Abraham that through his seed all nations of the earth will be blessed. This promise includes gathering the scattered Israelites who He longs to bring back. In the Book of Mormon we read: "Yeah, and ye need not any longer hiss, nor spurn, nor make game of the Jews, nor any of the remnant of the house of Israel; for behold, the Lord remembereth his covenant unto them, and he will do unto them according to that which he hath sworn" (3 Nephi 29:8). The question begs to be asked: if God always keeps his covenants with us, are we prepared to keep our covenants with Him? Even at the point of death? Would we gladly step into a fiery furnace before we would break the laws of obedience, sacrifice, chastity and consecration that we have covenanted we would keep? Is there a Daniel among us or maybe an occasional Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego?  These men could not be turned out of the path defined by their covenants or by their sense of right and wrong. We too can be like them and face the fiery furnace saying like Queen Esther did with all her daring: "If I perish I perish" (Esther 4:16).

THE DAY OF THE HUNTER

The prophet Jeremiah preached to the Kingdom of Judah for 40 years attempting to avert the impending captivity that eventually left Judah's land desolate. So seeped in sin and idolatry, Judah, like Ephraim and the 10 tribes, lost sight of the God they once promised to worship and serve. It would seem they needed the experience of captivity to discover them that this is indeed the god they wanted and not the dumb idols of heathen nations that they came to bow down to. The 10 tribes came to their senses quickly and were led by the hand of Jehovah into obscurity until such time that He would bring them back. Judah on the other hand became a very zealous nation for its God whilst in captivity to Babylon. They realised as their homes were left desolate that the prophets were right all along and that they needed to abandon image worship and return to the one true and living God. So zealous were they in their devotion to Jehovah's law that they became slaves to the numerous rules of conduct that went beyond the law itself. Out of this zeal different religious factions were born such as Pharisses and Sadducees which ensured strict observance to the overwhelming number of laws and rules that were invented. Up until the Babylonian captivity, scriptures were only read on special occasions and on the sabbath. Once Judah was taken into captivity this changed and scriptures began to be taught to the general public on regular basis by another factious group called scribes. Over time the Jews in Babylon began to adopt the language and culture of the Chaldeans forgetting the Hebrew language. This necessitated the assistance of scribes who read and interpreted the scriptures to them. "Through the years, each religious group - scribes, Pharisses, Sadducees and others referred to the written word, quoted it, enlarged upon it, interpreted it, and in other ways continued to add to what their fathers had established. The commentaries, explanations, interpretations, and inferences became known as oral tradition. In time, these traditions, written and oral, took on so much importance that they often overshadowed the law and became a stumbling block for the Jews" (Old Testament Student Manual, 1 Kings - Malachi, p. 262). This is the condition in which the Saviour found them when He made His appearance as the awaited and promised Messiah.

"....A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not." (Jeremiah 31:15)

Rachel, the beloved wife of Jacob, the mother of Israel, is here depicted lamenting over the loss of her children which she longed for and which were given an inheritance in the household of God; once a chosen people, now lost in captivity (Old Testament Student Manual, p. 255). And they would be lost forever if not for one thing: the everlasting love of a God who never forsakes and abandons and never breaks the covenants which He has made; a god of mercy, a god of love, a god who fulfills his promises. As the Jews entered exile, the Saviour made a promise that He would bring them home to Jerusalem after 70 years of captivity (Jeremiah 29:10). True to His word, 70 years later to the day, King Cyrus of Persia, raised by the Lord for this purpose, ended the Babylonian rule and released Jews from their captivity giving them a charge to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. And herein lies another testament of Jesus' endless love - after the time of Christ Judah endured another exile that would last for centuries but once again the Saviour of all mankind does everything in His power to reclaim that which is lost.

"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord that I will make a new covenant with the House of Israel, and with the house of Judah....this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel...I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God and they shall be my people.....for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more." (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

Preceding the Saviour's second coming, a latter-day gathering of the scattered Israel will take place in three phases: the gathering of Israel to the land of Zion, the American hemisphere; the return of the Ten Tribes from the countries of the north; and the reestablishment of the Jews in Palestine as God's chosen people (Old Testament Student Manual, p. 254). The Lord will accomplish this work through the restoration of His Church. Israel will be gathered and return to the land of their fathers 'with weeping' (Jeremiah 31:9) 'because they will realise that the sufferings they have endured throughout the centuries came about because they rejected the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall lead them in the last days' (Old Testament Student Manual, p. 255). The Saviour, with everlasting love and willingness to always forgive will lead them as they come out of obscurity to once again possess their blessings: "I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters in a straight way, wherein they shall not stumble; for I am a father to Israel and Ephraim is my firstborn" (Jeremiah 31:9)

 "Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be said, The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; But, the Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither he had driven them; and I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their fathers. Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks." (Jeremiah 16:14-16)

In Jeremiah's day, most fishing was done with nets and so was in Peter's but Peter was no ordinary fisherman, he was called to be a fisher of men. Peter fished with his nets and brought in 3,000 converts on the day of Pentecost. In like manner the early converts of the Church used nets to fish and bring in multitudes of converts: Wilford Woodruff converted more than 2,000 people in eastern states of America and British Isles; The Twelve under the direction of Brigham Young converted over 6,000 people in Britain between 1839 and 1841 and Parley P. Pratt who repeatedly baptised in excess of 100 people wherever he stopped to preach. But after the fishers, the Lord promised that He would send many hunters. Hunting, unlike fishing with nets, is more precise work. It is not usual practice to hunt a heard but individual animals, 'from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks' (Jeremiah 16:14-16).... Is not the day of the hunter here as we seek for the honest in heart who want to become the pure in heart? Are not our missionaries searching with precision individuals who desire to know the Lord? Are we not labouring endlessly seeking out our ancestors and those who have gone before us to bless them with saving ordinances necessary for salvation? We are hunting in His name by day and by night so that not one is overlooked who seeks to know Him and come unto Him for He will go to any length and any depth and any measure to find that which is lost.