Sacrament Service
Bulletin
“The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives.” - President Nelson
Primary Program
DnC 43:34
34 Hearken ye to these words. Behold, I am Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. Treasure these things up in your hearts, and let the solemnities of eternity rest upon your minds.
DnC 19:16
16 For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent;
“If the Savior stood beside me, would I do the things I do?” (“If the Savior Stood Beside Me”, August 2007 New Era)
DnC 35:17
17 And I have sent forth the fulness of my gospel by the hand of my servant Joseph; and in weakness have I blessed him;
Amos 3:7
7 Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.
JST
7 Surely the Lord God will do nothing, until he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.
3 Nephi 30:2
2 Turn, all ye Gentiles, from your wicked ways; and repent of your evil doings, of your lyings and deceivings, and of your whoredoms, and of your secret abominations, and your idolatries, and of your murders, and your priestcrafts, and your envyings, and your strifes, and from all your wickedness and abominations, and come unto me, and be baptized in my name, that ye may receive a remission of your sins, and be filled with the Holy Ghost, that ye may be numbered with my people who are of the house of Israel.
Mosiah 26
29 Therefore I say unto you, Go; and whosoever transgresseth against me, him shall ye judge according to the sins which he has committed; and if he confess his sins before thee and me, and repenteth in the sincerity of his heart, him shall ye forgive, and I will forgive him also.
30 Yea, and as often as my people repent will I forgive them their trespasses against me.
31 And ye shall also forgive one another your trespasses; for verily I say unto you, he that forgiveth not his neighbor’s trespasses when he says that he repents, the same hath brought himself under condemnation.
DnC 59:5
5 Wherefore, I give unto them a commandment, saying thus: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy might, mind, and strength; and in the name of Jesus Christ thou shalt serve him.
Matthew 25
34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
Sunday School
Sacrifice
Sacrifice comes from a word that means to make sacred.
Matthew 6
33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Whatever we sacrifice the sacrifice we need to get to is to sacrifice our will to God. That is the most valuable thing we have. It is the biggest thing that will change our character to be like God.
Dnc 97:8
8 Verily I say unto you, all among them who know their hearts are honest, and are broken, and their spirits contrite, and are willing to observe their covenants by sacrifice—yea, every sacrifice which I, the Lord, shall command—they are accepted of me.
Teaching in the Savior's Way
2 Nephi 1:6-7
6 Wherefore, I, Lehi, prophesy according to the workings of the Spirit which is in me, that there shall none come into this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the Lord.
7 Wherefore, this land is consecrated unto him whom he shall bring. And if it so be that they shall serve him according to the commandments which he hath given, it shall be a land of liberty unto them; wherefore, they shall never be brought down into captivity; if so, it shall be because of iniquity; for if iniquity shall abound cursed shall be the land for their sakes, but unto the righteous it shall be blessed forever.
Ether 2
8 And he had sworn in his wrath unto the brother of Jared, that whoso should possess this land of promise, from that time henceforth and forever, should serve him, the true and only God, or they should be swept off when the fulness of his wrath should come upon them.
9 And now, we can behold the decrees of God concerning this land, that it is a land of promise; and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall serve God, or they shall be swept off when the fulness of his wrath shall come upon them. And the fulness of his wrath cometh upon them when they are ripened in iniquity.
10 For behold, this is a land which is choice above all other lands; wherefore he that doth possess it shall serve God or shall be swept off; for it is the everlasting decree of God. And it is not until the fulness of iniquity among the children of the land, that they are swept off.
11 And this cometh unto you, O ye Gentiles, that ye may know the decrees of God—that ye may repent, and not continue in your iniquities until the fulness come, that ye may not bring down the fulness of the wrath of God upon you as the inhabitants of the land have hitherto done.
12 Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ, who hath been manifested by the things which we have written.
1 Nephi 2:20
20 And inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper, and shall be led to a land of promise; yea, even a land which I have prepared for you; yea, a land which is choice above all other lands.
Handout from the Discussion Leader
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FOLLOW THE PROPHET
LOVE OF GOD AND COUNTRY
A talk given by President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles Ezra T Benson Mar. 28, 1977
Purpose: To recognize God's hand in our nation's history and listening to the warning voice of the Lord's prophets
PROPHECIES ABOUT AMERICA'S DESTINY AND HISTORY
2 Nephi 1:6-7; Nephi 2:20; 1 Nephi 13:12
QUOTE: Though unnamed, the man this passage refers to is Columbus. His own testimony about this epic voyage is recorded in a letter to the Spanish hierarchy and reads as follows: "Our Lord unlocked my mind, sent me upon the sea, and gave me fire for the deed. Those who heard of my enterprise called it foolish, mocked me, and laughed. But who can doubt but that the Holy Ghost inspired me?" (Jacob Wasserman, Columbus: Don Quixote of the Seas [Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1930], pp. 19—20).
President Ezra T. Benson
HISTORY What is our nation's destiny?
QUOTE: America is a choice land, a land reserved for God's own purposes. America and its inhabitants are under an everlasting decree. Many great events have transpired in this land of destiny. This was the place where Adam dwelt; this was the place where the Garden of Eden was located. It was here that Adam met with a body of great high priests at Adam-ondi-Ahman shortly before his death and gave them his final blessing, and the place to which he will return to meet with the leaders of his people. This was the place of three former civilizations: Adam's, the Jaredite, and the Nephite. This was also the place where our Heavenly Father and his Son, Jesus Christ, appeared to Joseph Smith inaugurating this great and last dispensation.
The Lord has also decreed that this land should be "the place of the New Jerusalem, which should come down out of heaven the holy sanctuary of the Lord" (Ether 13:3). Here is our nation's destiny! To serve God's eternal purposes and to prepare this land and people for America's eventual destiny, he "established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom [he] raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood" (D&C 101 :80) President Ezra T Benson.
INACCURACIES OF SECULAR HISTORY
"A Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln the President of the United States of America" March 30, 1863:
Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation. And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly Imagined, In the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of
our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
QUOTE: President Benson: "As a nation we have become self-sufficient. This has given birth to a new religion in America which some have called secularism. This is a view of life without the idea that God is in the picture or that He had anything to do with the picture in the first place.
In the first century of our nation's history, the university was the guardian and the preserver of faith in God. In this present century, the university has become ethically neutral, by and large, agnostic. Our country is now reaping the effects of this agnostic influence. It has cost us an inestimable price. For who can place the price on the worth of a human soul or the cost of the cynicism that many young people have toward our republic and its leaders?
SECULAR REINTERPRETATIONS OF AMERICAN HISTORY
QUOTE: A few of these reinterpretations: First, that the American victory in the War of Independence, they say, was only the result of good fortune, ineptitude by the British generals, and the entrance of France into the war. All these facts are evident, but what is significantly left out are additional explanations which could provide the student with a spiritual perspective of our history.
Why is it we do not read in our history of explanations such as this from George Washington? "The success which has hitherto attended our united efforts, we owe to the gracious interposition of heaven, and to that interposition let us gratefully ascribe the praise of victory and the blessings of peace. "
Our second reinterpretation is that the political thought of the founding fathers was the result of borrowed ideas from the eighteenth-century philosophers. However, Benjamin Franklin solemnly counseled: "l have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?
INTELLECTUAL TRENDS DEFAMING THE FOUNDING FATHERS
QUOTE: Winston Churchill said, "George Washington holds one of the proudest titles that history can
bestow. He was the Father of his Nation. Almost alone his staunchness in the War of Independence held
the American colonies to their united purpose.... He filled his office with dignity and inspired his
administration with much of his own wisdom. To his terms as President are due the smooth organization of
the Federation Government, the establishment of national credit, and the foundation of foreign policy. [A
History of the English Speaking People: The Age of Revolution (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company,
1962), p. 347]
QUOTE: Elder Mark E. Petersen wrote a book entitled The Great Prologue. It provides the prophetic history to our nation's history and its founders. Within that volume Elder Petersen assesses Washington's character in these words:
In many respects [Washington] was like Moroni, the noted general of the Book of Mormon who hoisted his banner of liberty. Washington was the personification of honesty, even as Lincoln, with whom he became a supreme example of integrity in public office. He had the true vision of one united nation of separate states with an inspired Constitution to give strength to the whole but with liberty assured to the several units. [The Great Prologue (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company, 1975), pp. 90—911
QUOTE: President Wilford Woodruff said of the founders collectively, and of Washington specifically, the following:
I am going to bear my testimony to this assembly, if/ never do it again in my life, that those men who laid the foundation of this American government were the best spirits the God of heaven could find on the face of the earth. These were choice spirits, not wicked men, Genera/ Washington and all of the men that labored for the purpose were inspired of the Lord .... Everyone of those men that signed the Declaration of Independence with General Washington called upon me as an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ in the temple at St George two consecutive nights and demanded at my hands that I should go forth and attend to the ordinances of the House of God for them.
Brother McAllister baptized me for all of those men, and then / told those brethren that it was their duty to go into the temple and labor until they had got endowments for all of them. They did it. Would these spirits have called on me, as an elder in Israel, to perform this work if they had not been noble spirits before God. They would not. (Conference Report April 1898, pp. 89, 90)
The temple work for the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence and other founding fathers has been done. All these appeared to Wilford Woodruff when he was president of the St. George Temple.
President George Washington was ordained a high priest at that time. You will also be interested to know that, according to Wilford Woodruff's journal, John Wesley, Benjamin Franklin, and Christopher Columbus were also ordained high priests—by proxy, of course—at that time.
CURRENT AMERICAN SELF-CRITICISM
A recent editorial in the London Daily Telegraph appealed to us: The United States should know that her European cousins and allies are appalled and disgusted at the present open disarray of her public life. The self-criticism and self-destructive tendencies are running mad with no countervailing force in sight. Please America, for God's sake, pull yourself together.
It is the job of the historian and educator and church leader to help us as a nation to "pull ourselves together," to help us regain perspective and vision and the respect of all nations. This will not be done by showing that this is merely a phase through which we are passing. No, it will be done by men who possess a love of country, a vision of our country's future, and the assurance of her divinely guided destiny.
HUMANISTIC TRENDS IN CHURCH HISTORY
QUOTE: This humanistic emphasis on history is not confined only to secular history; there have been and continue to be attempts made to bring this philosophy into our own Church history. Again the emphasis is to underplay revelation and God's intervention in significant events and to inordinately humanize the prophets of God so that their human frailties become more apparent than their spiritual qualities. It is a state of mind and spirit characterized by one history buff, who asked: "Do you believe the Church has arrived at a sufficient state of maturity where we can begin to tell our real story?"
Implied in that question is the accusation that the Church has not been telling the truth. Unfortunately, too many of those who have been intellectually gifted become so imbued with criticism that they become disaffected spiritually.
Some of these have attempted to reinterpret Joseph Smith and his revelations; they offer what they call a psychological interpretation of his motives and actions. This interpretation suggests that whether or not Joseph Smith actually saw God, the Father, and His Son, Jesus Christ, or other visions is really unimportant. What matters is that he thought he did. To those who have not sought after or received a testimony of Joseph Smith's divine calling, he will ever remain what one called "the enigma from Palmyra."
THE PROFESSION OF HISTORY
QUOTE: I love history books that tell history as it was—as the Book of Mormon tells it—with God in the picture, guiding and directing the affairs of the righteous. I love to read history for its timeless lessons and the inspiration I can gather from the lives of great leaders. I have been privileged to know many in my lifetime who have made history both in the world scene and in the Church.
My purpose this evening is to help you to discern a trend that has been destructive to the faith of many of our people in our nation's founders and our country's divine origin and destiny. My purpose further is to forewarn you about a humanistic emphasis which would tarnish our own Church history and its leaders.
My plea to you tonight is to stir up the gift that is within you. You will recall the Lord told us why we needed to exercise the spiritual gifts he has given us: "Beware lest ye are deceived; and that ye may not be deceived seek ye earnestly the best gifts" (D&C 46:8). If there was ever the need to apply that counsel, it is now. Those gifts of the Spirit are needed to discern truth from error.
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