Centuries in advance

First off I wanted to say thank you to all of you readers out there, the blog hit 10,030 views this last week , having always hoped this blog could help someone as well as myself in the writing of it, I'm glad that it is getting out there.

Tonight I'd like to share the words of Elder Holland and his testimony of the Book of Mormon and the Prophet Joseph Smith. My cousin serving in the Tampa Bay, Florida mission shared these words with us this week.

"For 179 years this book has been examined and attacked, denied and deconstructed, targeted and torn apart like perhaps no other book in modern religious history—perhaps like no other book in any religious history. And still it stands. Failed theories about its origins have been born and parroted and have died—from Ethan Smith to Solomon Spaulding to deranged paranoid to cunning genius. None of these frankly pathetic answers for this book has ever withstood examination because there is no other answer than the one Joseph gave as its young unlearned translator. In this I stand with my own great-grandfather, who said simply enough, “No wicked man could write such a book as this; and no good man would write it, unless it were true and he were commanded of God to do so.” 

"As one of a thousand elements of my own testimony of the divinity of the Book of Mormon, I submit this as yet one more evidence of its truthfulness. In this their greatest—and last—hour of need, I ask you: would these men blaspheme before God by continuing to fix their lives, their honor, and their own search for eternal salvation on a book (and by implication a church and a ministry) they had fictitiously created out of whole cloth?

Never mind that their wives are about to be widows and their children fatherless. Never mind that their little band of followers will yet be “houseless, friendless and homeless” and that their children will leave footprints of blood across frozen rivers and an untamed prairie floor. Never mind that legions will die and other legions live declaring in the four quarters of this earth that they know the Book of Mormon and the Church which espouses it to be true. Disregard all of that, and tell me whether in this hour of death these two men would enter the presence of their Eternal Judge quoting from and finding solace in a book which, if not the very word of God, would brand them as imposters and charlatans until the end of time? They would not do that! They were willing to die rather than deny the divine origin and the eternal truthfulness of the Book of Mormon." - (Elder Holland, Safety for the Soul, October 2009).  


Reading these words it was brought to me that all the good and great blessings I have in my life came because Joseph stuck to his word, he covenanted with the Lord that he would restore His gospel to the earth, he promised the Lord that he would bear his witness of the divinity of this work to the world without hesitation or apology. The blessings of the priesthood, the power of the temple, access to the word of the Lord and power of the spirit in our lives comes because Joseph Smith walked into a grove of trees to ask the Lord if he, Joseph, was okay. The answer to that question, the power behind the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ is that Heavenly Father meets us in our extremity, He answers our prayers and when we go to Him with the question "are we okay?" He will answer us and He can and will help us be okay. Because Joseph asked his question and told the world we know that the Lord will answer our questions and we can be okay.

Our very nation was prepared by the hand of God so that this truth could once more be told to God's children. Heavenly Father cares for us so much He wants the world to know that He will answer our prayers, He wants all of us to be okay, He wants all of us to be worthy, He wants to speak peace to our hearts. We are imperfect beings facing overwhelming trials and He knows we worry and He knows we fall short. All He cares it that we turn to our Savior, that we keep turning to the Savior so that with the Savior we can and will be okay.

I'm thankful for a Father in Heaven who prepared a way centuries in advance so that I and each of us can know we can and will be okay.