Pearl of Great Price - Moses 4 - January 12, 2022

 1/12/2022 – Moses 4

The scriptures we have in the Pearl of Great Price add so much to the scriptures we have in Genesis. I don’t think I visit the Pearl of Great Price enough.

V’s 1-6 cover just how Lucifer became the devil. The Lord is speaking to Moses AFTER Moses has banished Satan by having “commanded in the name of mine Only Begotten” (v 1) And then the Lord goes further to explain and compare and contrast the plans that both Lucifer and Jesus offered. Lucifer’s plan would have eliminated our independence, and thus our growth…or lack there of. Christ speaks of the importance of our independence in D&C 30: “All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also, otherwise there is not existence.” 

President Joseph Fielding Smith spoke of what God had planned us to learn from our earthly experience. He explained how the Lord wanted us to “be tried and proved to see if we, by trial, would prepare ourselves for exaltation.” It was in the council in heaven that the Lord explained: “the thought of passing through mortality and partaking of all the vicissitudes [I like hardships better] of earth life in which they would gain experiences through suffering, pain, sorrow, temptation and affliction, as well as the pleasures of life in this mundane existence, and then, if faithful, passing on through the resurrection to eternal life in the kingdom of God, to be like him, filled them with the spirit of rejoicing, and they ‘shouted for joy’ [Job 38:1-7”

The Lord explains this all very clearly in v 3: “Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled against me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him mine own power; by the power of mine Only begotten, I caused that he [Satan] should be cast down; and he became Satan, yea, even the devil, the father of all lies, to deceive  and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will, even as many as would not hearken unto my voice.” I see His promise to us is that our hearkening unto His voice will lead us to our growth and our protection.

In v 6 we learn much about what is always called the “fall of man “...Satan…sought also to beguile Eve, for he knew not the mind of God, wherefore he sought to destroy the world.”  The Lord knew that the “fall” of Adam and Eve would actually be the beginning of their earthly growth experiences. It was not a fall at all! It was the beginning of a wonderful test that we were anxious to be able to take, where Heavenly Father is always close enough for us to reach out to for help. He always watches over us, and He will always come to our aid when we call upon Him, and then listen for His counsel, and then FOLLOW his counsel!


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