THE MIGHTY ELIJAH PART 3

 

Jehovah Creates the Earth by Water Rane

The most important part of Elijah’s mission was the Melchizedek Priesthood sealing power by which things that are bound or loosed on earth are bound or loosed in heaven (D&C 128:8-18). He was the last prophet to have this power before the time of Jesus Christ.

He appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration with Moses and conferred the keys of this priesthood on Peter, James and John (Matt 17:3). He appeared again, with Moses and others, on April 3, 1836, in the Kirtland Ohio Temple and conferred the same keys upon Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery (D&C 110:13-16). It is for this purpose that he did not taste death. This was the second part of his earthly mission.

Elijah’s ascension into heaven on a chariot of fire is one of the most endearing accounts in the Old Testament. Elisha’s grief at the parting is heart rendering. As he cried after him, calling him ‘father’, he rent his clothes into pieces in his distress (2 Kings 2:11,12).

There is a significant connection between Elijah’s mission and the planet we presently live on. When Moroni delivered his message to Joseph Smith, he said that the earth would be wasted if Elijah didn’t come to restore the sealing power (D&C 2:2-3). Malachi goes so far as to say that if it were so, the Lord would smite the earth with a curse at His coming (Malachi 4:5).

Our Mother Earth which gave us physical birth (Moses 2:7) was foreordained and consecrated to establish on its face a family system patterned after the order of heaven and to become the future celestial abode of exalted sons and daughters of God. She also has a mission to accomplish like the rest of us.

Had Elijah not come to restore the sealing priesthood power to bind us together, the earth would not have accomplished its foreordained purpose and would not have been able to answer the end of its creation. All men and women would be forever without root and branch, meaning without ancestry and posterity that would otherwise extend into eternity.

Enoch learnt from his encounter with Mother Earth that she had a soul as deep as the river. Grief came  over him and made him weep when he heard her call us her children and witnessed her mourn over our wickedness (Moses 7:48). So overcome was Enoch at her suffering that he asked God three times, ‘’when shall the earth rest” (v 49,54,58).

You think the earth has no soul? Consider how she groaned when the Son of Man was lifted up and all nature suffered at the death of its creator (Moses 7:56; 1 Nephi 19: 12). Imagine this big beautiful perfect planet, the workmanship of God’s hands, with a soul as tender and real as you and I, utterly wasted at Christ’s coming…..Imagine how Father Adam and Mother Eve would feel to see this earth wasted after they paved the way for humanity by ‘the sweat of their brow’ (Moses 5:1). We think we have it hard…..we don’t even have to slice our bread…

When the end comes, this earth will be celestialized and crowned with the Father’s presence to be an eternal abode for those who will accept the sacrifice of His Beloved Son who was lifted upon the cross of redemption so that we can return to live with Him on this Mother Earth forever (D&C 88:17-20). 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

THREE PILLARS OF ETERNITY: THE FALL

 

“He [Adam] stood in the presence of his Maker, conversed with him face to face, and gazed upon his glory, without a dimming veil between. O reader, contemplate for a moment this beautiful creation, with peace and plenty: the earth teeming with harmless animals,….the air swarming with delightful birds whose never-ceasing notes filled the air with varied melody;….while legions of angels encamped round about him and joined their glad voices in grateful songs of praise and shouts of joy.

“Neither sigh nor groan was heard through the vast expanse; neither was there sorrow, fear, pain, weeping, sickness, nor death; neither contentions, wars, nor bloodshed, but peace crowned the seasons as they rolled, and life, joy, and love reigned over all God’s works.”  (Parley P. Pratt, “Key to the Science of Theology and Voice of Warning, ; p 85)

Such was Parley P. Pratt’s vision of the idyllic world of Eden. But as idyllic as it was, a Harvard philosopher, John Fiske, called it rightly a “way-station, not a destination” a fool’s paradise where nothing called ‘character’  could have been produced there” (Fiske, “Studies in Religion”, p 252)

The Garden of Eden, where such tranquility existed, had two positives and two negatives. The positives were: 1. Immortality; 2. The presence of God. This state of existence produced only one thing, “a world of spiritual sterility” (Tad R. Callister, “The Infinite Atonement, p 34)

The two negatives of Eden were: 1. No knowledge of good and evil hence no moral agency and no progression; and 2. No procreation. “A continuation of this condition would literally defeat the plan of salvation (ibid, p 35)

There is much that can be written about this subject but this has to be the most important thing we should take away from it. When Adam and Eve partook of the fruit, the seeds of death were planted in their veins and when they were cast out from the Garden of Eden they became ‘spiritually dead’ (D&C 29:41). To be spiritually dead means to be ‘cut off from the presence of the Lord’ (2 Nephi 9:6; see also Helaman 14:16).

“To be cast from the presence of the Holy One is estrangement of the worst kind. It is to take from us that which means most – our sense of belonging to the divine family. It is to strip us of security and self-worth in one fatal blow…It is akin to restricting our communication with a loved one to the telephone; the lines can be clear, the conversation frequent, but the happiness that comes from being in another’s physical presence is missing.” (Tad R. Callister, “The Infinite Atonement, p 41). This is the state Adam and Eve were in after they left Eden. And this is the state of us now. Only the telephone line is there.

This is what we should take notice of…..There is a return from the first spiritual death through the Atonement of Christ but there shall be no return from the final spiritual death that shall be pronounced upon all the wicked on Judgment Day when God shall say: Depart, ye cursed (D&C 29:41).  

This is something we would feel the effects of for eternity: a perpetual sorrow, a wanting, a longing that can never be satisfied. To be cut off from the presence of God is the greatest tragedy there is. Even Cain in his depraved condition considered his banishment from God’s presence more than he could bear (Genesis 4:13,14).

I think the Saviour knew in the beginning what it means to be cut off from Father’s presence forever. This is why He yearned to save us from this devastation, hence so much emphasis on the sheep that are ‘lost’.

 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Creation of Eve by Rose Datoc Dall)