This week - June 24th - we wrote talks.
I have been thinking a lot about how we take personal responsibility for our spiritual learning and growth. I have also been thinking lots about the power of the scriptures as key to our personal accountability and responsibility. Thus, the following assignment:

Conference Talk

Sunday, October 5, 2008 * Morning Session

Topic: The Scriptures in Our Lives

Audience: Your audience is new or young members of the Church.

Goal: Inspire them to study, know, love, mark, and treasure the Scriptures.

Warnings: No TYPICAL MORMON WORDS. No phrases or words without defining them and showing what they really look like in your or other’s lives.

Ideas:

· Life Lessons you have learned from the Scriptures.

· A pattern of discipleship gained from the disciples of the Scriptures.

Quotes:

· “Do we truly know the scriptures and, therefore, the power of God?”

o Joseph B. Wirthlin, “Guided by His Exemplary Life,” Liahona, Feb 1999, 34

· “[The Book of Mormon] is also the best example of the connection between history and doctrine. I’ve come to understand and appreciate the power of scripture and history working together.”

o Marlin K. Jensen, “There Shall Be a Record Kept among You,” Liahona, Dec 2007, 26–31

· Scripture Power

o 1. Because I want to be like the Savior, and I can,
I’m reading His instructions, I’m following His plan.
Because I want the power His word will give to me,
I’m changing how I live, I’m changing what I’ll be.

Chorus

Scripture power keeps me safe from sin.
Scripture power is the power to win.
Scripture power! Ev’ry day I need
The power that I get each time I read

2. I’ll find the sword of truth in each scripture that I learn.
I’ll take the shield of faith from these pages that I turn.
I’ll wear each vital part of the armor of the Lord,
And fight my daily battles, and win a great reward.

o Scripture Power With conviction Words and music by Clive Romney

· “Do we look to the scriptures as a source of great spiritual power?”

o L. Tom Perry, “‘Give Heed unto the Word of the Lord’,” Ensign, Jun 2000, 22

· President Romney recalled; “I remember reading it with one of my lads when he was very young. … I lay in the lower bunk and he in the upper bunk. We were each reading aloud alternate paragraphs of those last three marvelous chapters of Second Nephi. I heard his voice breaking and thought he had a cold. … As we finished he said … , ‘Daddy, do you ever cry when you read the Book of Mormon?’

“‘Yes, Son, … sometimes the Spirit of the Lord so witnesses to my soul that the Book of Mormon is true that I do cry.’

“ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that is what happened to me tonight.’ ” 8

o Richard G. Scott, “The Powerof a Strong Testimony,” Liahona, Jan 2002, 100–103

NO CLASS Tonight!!

I announced last week in class that we should have a temple night tonight since we didn't have class. I, however, think I am going to collapse and fall asleep right now. I think I need to work on getting more than 5 hours of sleep at night . . . I'm getting too old to do that!! :(

Please feel free to go and if you go and don't see me and get mad, I am sooo sorry!! I think I would crash if I drive down!!

SORRY!
--em

The Tabernacle and the Temple.

Planning of the Tabernacle. 

Bible Dictionary: Temple

A temple is literally a house of the Lord, a holy sanctuary in which sacred ceremonies and ordinances of the gospel are performed by and for the living and also in behalf of the dead. A place where the Lord may come, it is the most holy of any place of worship on the earth. Only the home can compare with the temple in sacredness.

Whenever the Lord has had a people on the earth who will obey his word, they have been commanded to build temples in which the ordinances of the gospel and other spiritual manifestations that pertain to exaltation and eternal life may be administered. In cases of extreme poverty or emergency, these ordinances may sometimes be done on a mountaintop (see D&C 124: 37-55). This may be the case with Mount Sinai and the Mount of Transfiguration. The tabernacle erected by Moses was a type of portable temple, since the Israelites were traveling in the wilderness.

From Adam to the time of Jesus, ordinances were performed in temples for the living only. After Jesus opened the way for the gospel to be preached in the world of spirits, ceremonial work for the dead, as well as for the living, has been done in temples on the earth by faithful members of the Church. Building and properly using a temple is one of the marks of the true Church in any dispensation, and is especially so in the present day.

Willing Heart

2 Nephi 31:13

                  

       

       

        

Lyrics to: This Is Home

I've got my memories 

Always inside of me

But I can't go back

Back to how it was 

I believe you now

I’ve come too far

No, I can’t go back

Back to how it was

 

Created for a place I’ve never known

 

Chorus:

This is home

Now I’m finally back to where I belong

Where I belong

Yeah, this is home

I’ve been searching for a place of my own

Now I’ve found it

Maybe this is home

This is home

 

Belief over misery

I’ve seen the enemy

And I won’t go back

Back to how it was

And I got my heart set on what happens next

I got my eyes wide it’s not over yet

We are miracles and we’re not alone

Chorus.

 

And now after all my searching

After all my questions

I’m gonna call it home

I’ve got a brand new mindset

I can finally see the sunset

I’m gonna call it home

 

Chorus.

 

Now I know

Yeah, this is home

 

I’ve come too far

And I won’t go back,

Yeah, this is home

The Law of Sacrifice.

• How do we continue to live the Law of Sacrifice today without offering blood sacrifices?

Alma 5: stripe of pride, envy, born again, cleanse garments, repent always.
matt 22:39 love thyself, love they neighbor as we love ourselves.
D&C 121:45 virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly.
mosiah 18 bear burdens, comfort, stand as witness ALWAYS.
3 Nephi 15:16 conversations are eternally minded.
proverbs 31:9 open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.
D&C 136:31 Tried in all things.

the Ten Commandments and Covenanting

Moses Goes Up

• What are the conditions of the people when Moses is commanded to go to the Mountain?

• "If man will not be ruled by God, he will certainly be ruled by tyrants - and there is no tyranny more imperious or more devastating than man's own selfishness, without the law. We cannot break the Ten Commandments. We can only break ourselves against them - or else by keeping them, rise through them to the fullness of freedom under God. God means us to be free. With divine daring, He gave us the power of choice" (Commencement Address, Brigham Young University Speeches of the Year, Provo, 31 May 1657).

• "By His own finger, the Lord wrote the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone. They represent the basic law of the Almighty and have formed the underlying elements of civil and religious law ever since. They are fundamental to our relationships with God. They are an integral part of the restored gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and are essential to our becoming perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. Variations of these laws are given in the rules laid down in Leviticus and Deuteronomy as they are applies to specific matters, but generally they form the foundation for all proper human conduct" (Old Testament Student Institute Manual, 127; Petersen, Moses, p.101).

The Ten Commandments

No God's before Him:

• "God will not favor us if we put Him in second place in our lives" (Petersen, Moses, p.111).

God' Name in Vain:

• "There is an additional implication in the commandment to avoid taking the name of God in vain. An integral part of living the gospel is the making of oaths and covenants with God. When a person is baptized he covenants to take the name of Christ upon himself. It he forget that solemn oath made at baptism, he has taken the name of the Lord in vain (Manual, p.129).

Sabbath Day Holy:

• "The death penalties attached to the violation of the sabbath in the Old Testament era convey two very obvious assumptions. First, the sabbath law involves a principle so important and basic that violation thereof is a capital offense. Second, the law conveys also the fact that violation f the sabbath laws involves a kind of death in and of itself, i.e., that violation brings on death. The prophets clearly made this assumption. Obedience, by implication, mean life" (Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Lay, p.137).
• The measuring stick of a righteous life is how we keep the Sabbath day holy.
  
• "The concept of sanctification and the idea of rest as used in the scriptures seem closely related. The rest of the Lord is defined as "the fulness of [God's] glory". Alma taught that certain early Saints entered the "rest of the Lord" after being made pure through a process of sanctification (Alma 13:12). In other word, God's work is the sanctification of His children to the point where they can enter into the ultimate rest, which is the fulness of His glory. Once each week man is commanded to cease hi own labors and allow God to perform His work of sanctification on him. Resting on the Sabbath, then, implies far more than taking a nap or stopping normal activities. Mankind must enter into the Lord's work on that day. This work involves making themselves and other more godlike, another way to speak of sanctification. Doing the work of the Lord (sanctification) often involves great activity on the Sabbath day, and the day may not be restful in the usual sense. One can assume that if doing good to an animal on the Sabbath is approve by the Lord (see Matthew 12:11; Luke 13:15), then doing good to men is an even higher good. The two commandments for the Sabbath are rest and worship. The Hebrew verb la-avodh, "to worship", means also "to work" and "to serve." This holy work then creates a new and holy man; so the Sabbath is tied into the work of creation.
  
• "The Sabbath is a day on which to take inventory - to analyze our weaknesses, to confess our sins to our associates and our Lord" (In "The Fourth Commandment," Part 2, The Ten Commandments Today, pp. 66-68).

Honor our Father and Mother:

• "Proper family relationships constitute on of the ten fundamental principles of law, both in this world and in the world to come" (Manual, p.131).

Justice and Mercy; Works and Grace

Covenants

Moses 1:39 "To bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man".

• Eternal life is gained as we make, keep, and renew covenants.
  
• What ARE the covenants we have made?
  
• What are the blessings we will have poured upon our heads and we make and keep these covenants?

Second Tablets

1. What was so wrong about Aaron making the golden calf?
2. What more could the Lord give me if I prove ready and worthy?