BECAUSE OF HIM

 

We are tempest tossed on this sea of humanity. Some of us are lost, scared, alienated, and most of us are suffering from some negative effect of mortal life, but there is one collective way in which we all suffer. 

I have been through trials before but have always had good health. The trial of bad health I am going through now has been incredibly hard for me because none of my trials before have tested me to this extent. It began to frighten me of late that I might be losing what I considered to be the most important part of me…..my faith. I was slipping into bad depression one day thinking if my faith in God was taken away from me, there would be nothing of me left because my faith was my make-up.

Upon further reflection I realized what I feared in reality was not losing my faith but my connection to God that I had developed in fifty years of my Church membership. I had come to the point where I was hearing the voice of God in my life in different ways and my testimony of His existence was iron clad. To lose that would be the devastation like I had never known before. I could not comprehend how lost I would feel in this vast universe. This is fear of nothingness for me.

For many years now I have tried to understand the true meaning of earthly suffering. I have been given different gospel perspectives to this question which I agree with but nothing had really stood out to me in such a personal way as what I learnt through physical suffering. If its not the explanation for all, it is for me. On many days of intense pain I have felt alienated from God, abandoned and all alone. Pain seems to do that. Physical suffering teaches us what it would feel like to be spiritually cut off from God’s presence forever. Once you understand it, it becomes a deterrent to sinning.

Just being taken out of God’s presence in which we lived for eons and placed in another sphere of existence has an effect on all of us, even if we don’t realize it. A French philosopher and Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said something profound once: “We are spiritual beings having a human experience and not humans having a spiritual experience”. Because of this truth, we are all hungering and seeking that spiritual connection we once had with God, even if we don’t realise it. Some of us who do not find it in the right place, seek devastating counterfeits which lead them to self-destruction. The truth remains, we are all seeking God.

The good news is that there is hope…..for all of us. There is a spiritual umbilical cord that ties us to the origin of our existence and ensures we do not have to be lost forever. I cannot think of a greater happiness and joy than being in the presence of a God of love for all eternity. This was the Saviour’s primary motivation for His eternal sacrifice…..that we be with the Father forever.

Before He went to the Garden and the cross, the Saviour was certain that the Father would be with Him during His suffering. He said as much to his disciples (John 8:29; 16:32). Imagine His surprise when the Father withdrew and He was left alone. This was needful for a couple of reasons:  1. where there is sin, which was upon the Saviour during the Atonement, God’s spirit withdraws (Mosiah 2:36);  and 2. so the glory would be exclusively His and He could say, “I have trodden the winepress alone…” (D&C 133:50).

This, however, is the primary reason why the Father withdrew. It was imperative that the Saviour understood spiritual death from first-hand experience and what it would be like for us, sinners, to be cut off from the presence of God forever. For this He endured the cross until He could say ‘it is finished’ (John 19:30). The Atonement overcame spiritual death and redeemed us from the Fall.

Considering the closeness and connection He had with His Father, I cannot imagine the devastation He felt during this ordeal of alienation but this too He was willing to suffer for our sake. This is the God we worship, this is the God we love. All honour and praise be to His name forever. 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Uplift the World by Eva Koleva Timothy)

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)