Sunday July 20, 2008 - Services Sullivan Hollow Second Ward

This Week at Church
Priesthood Opening
Malachi 3:8-10

8 ¶ ^aWill a man ^brob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In ^ctithes and offerings.

9 Ye are ^acursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.

10 Bring ye all the ^atithes into the storehouse, that there may be ^bmeat in mine house, and ^cprove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not ^dopen you the ^ewindows of heaven, and pour you out a ^fblessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

Elders' Quorum

Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith - Chapter 13: Obedience: “When the Lord Commands, Do It” p. 158–70
True leaders lead by example. I read something on this recently in the book One Lord...On Faith by Mark E. Peterson.
"To lead youth, we must be leaders in very deed.
We ourselves must hold to every standard which we hope to make part of their lives.
We must be as firm in the faith as we hope they will be." p.4

And from page 11 of the same book, "As the shepherd leads, so moves the flock."

In his talk Obedience—Life’s Great Challenge - Elder Donald L. Staheli Of the Seventy quotes President Ezra Taft Benson. “When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power.”

The goal is to get to the point that we are not just doing our duty because it is expected, but because we want to do it. Perhaps we start out doing it because it is expected, but we keep going and we will grow and eventually get there.

1 Samuel 15
22 And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great ^adelight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the ^bvoice of the Lord? Behold, to ^cobey is better than ^dsacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of ^erams.

Doing our duty because we truly want to be obedient is better than doing it because it is a sacrifice for us.

Sunday School
Book of Mormon Lesson 27: “All Things Denote There Is a God” p120
Alma 30-31
We have prophets, scriptures, and the gift of the Holy Ghost to prove to us that Christ lives, but we have to test it out for ourselves.

An Antichrist can be a person, a philosophy, or an organization. It was expressed that an Antichrist has much of the same properties as Idols. They lead us away from doing our duty or learning the truth. Antichrists set themselves up to sound like truth.

Alma 30:13-15

13 O ye that are bound down under a ^afoolish and a vain hope, why do ye yoke yourselves with such foolish things? Why do ye look for a Christ? For no man can ^bknow of anything which is to come.

14 Behold, these things which ye call prophecies, which ye say are handed down by holy prophets, behold, they are foolish traditions of your fathers.

15 How do ye know of their surety? Behold, ye cannot know of things which ye do not ^asee; therefore ye cannot know that there shall be a Christ.

Korihor says that the followers of Christ are bound by the yoke of the gospel and that it is weighing them down. Christ also referred to it as a yoke, but he talked of himself being yoked with us and helping us carry it and make it light.

He also says that one cannot know of things they cannot see. Someone expressed that that philosophy is like a child's perspective when playing peekaboo. If they cover their eyes they think you are not there. They also try to hide from you by covering their eyes.

• First Korihor teaches against Christ saying he doesn't exist.
• Then he preaches against the prophets. By saying that no one can know of things to come of of things you cannot see.
• Then he preaches against the people and their fathers. He said they believed it because they had a frenzied mind.

He taught them to rely on their own minds and strength. Many continue to think that science knows so much when it is constantly being discovered that what we thought was scientific fact is in fact untrue. For example, the world is flat. Based upon what they perceived the learned men of the day deduced that it must be flat.

Sacrament Meeting
First Speaker
Our spiritual trial in our day are going to be as hard as the physical trials of the pioneers.

Next one of the youth reported on a camp out he went on recently.

The choir sang Love One Another. They merged it with some other upper room song. One of the men sang a solo accompanied by piano and violin.

Second Speaker
A missionary that just return from a Spanish speaking mission in Chicago.

Third Speaker - Our high councilman
Symbolism allows the human mind to expand upon the meaning.

Raising our arms to sustain people who are called is a symbol of a covenant to serve each other.

An angel asked Adam why he offered sacrifices. The angel then taught him that it was a symbol. Moses 5

5 And he gave unto them commandments, that they should ^aworship the Lord their God, and should offer the ^bfirstlings of their ^cflocks, for an offering unto the Lord. And Adam was ^dobedient unto the commandments of the Lord.

6 And after many days an ^aangel of the Lord appeared unto Adam, saying: Why dost thou offer ^bsacrifices unto the Lord? And Adam said unto him: I know not, save the Lord commanded me.

7 And then the angel spake, saying: This thing is a ^asimilitude of the ^bsacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father, which is full of ^cgrace and ^dtruth.

What happened with you this week at Church?