Christmas Study, Day 5: Blessed is She That Believed

Luke 1:1-25 

When speaking of the birth of Christ, we often forget to also speak of the birth of John, whose birth was not only miraculous, but also prophesied of many hundred years prior. 

The first of the Christmas visitations happens to Zacharias in the temple; the angel, Gabriel, appears and declares to him the fact of John’s oncoming birth to him and his wife, to which Zacharias responds incredulously because of his and Elisabeth’s advanced age. 

“How shall I know?” he asks. As a result, he is struck dumb by the angel, only to be relieved at the time of John receiving his name (a period of nine months, mind you). 

Six months later, the same angel appears to Mary to tell her that because she had found favor with God, she would conceive a son, who should be the Son of God. She is also incredulous, but with different results. 

“How should this be possible?” she asks, which Gabriel graciously explains. Upon learning all that was needed, Mary humbly accepts her new calling and all pertaining consequences, which she could scarcely comprehend at that time. 

It is worth our consideration that both Zacharias and Mary asked, “How?” But Zacharias was struck dumb, while Mary received angelic instruction. Why?

It is because Zacharias’ question was based in doubt: “How shall I know?” He wanted a sign. Mary, on the other hand, asked in faith: “How shall this be?” She accepts that it will be according to the angel’s words, but seeks further light and knowledge. 

In other words, Zacharias questioned, while Mary asked a question. 

When receiving revelation in our own lives, we must all consider the example of Mary. We must be willing to forsake what we think we already know in favor of learning from God. 

Zacharias had already determined a fact in his mind: my wife is barren. He couldn’t let go of that. He asked for more reassurance and paid for it. 

Sometimes the Lord asks us to do impossible things. The math doesn’t add up. They’ll never listen to me. We can’t make it work. I need this job. I’ll never get into that school. Nine o’clock is too early. I can’t live without this ONE sin. 

We need to let go of all of our pre-determined outcomes! We don’t know the end from the beginning. Our wives are not barren, we are not too old! With God, nothing shall be impossible. 

Mary embraced this in faith and was further enlightened. May we all receive the Lord’s instructions in faith this Christmas season. :) 

Merry Christmas!
Sincerely,
Taylor, a dead missionary

Christmas Study, Day 4: Great Lights in Heaven

Helaman 14-16 

Prophets always testified of the coming of the Savior in the flesh, but as far as any record shows, Samuel the Lamanite is the only one to put a cap on the timeline. In five years time, the Christ would be born in “the land of Jerusalem”. As the Nephites and Lamanites  would be unable to witness His actual birth, signs were to be given. 

To signify of His entry into the world, “great lights” were prophesied so to do; exactly what those “great lights” were is left unexplained, but whatever the case, these lights were to be so great as to light the whole face of the earth all through the night, prior to the morning of His birth. 

A day, a night, and a day without darkness - a period of 36 straight hours full of light. 

But the children of Lehi never spoke of His birth without also speaking of His death. The birth of the Christ is only as bright as the star and “lights in heaven” when set against the dark backdrop of Samuel’s contrasting prophecy of His departure into the realm of spirits. 

When Christ should be crucified, there should be darkness - exactly double, in fact, what light was prophesied to attend His birth. Three full days without light. As the sun withholds its light from the earth, the earth would throw itself into turmoil, causing no small amount of destruction and death.

It is curious to note that the very thing Christ would come to do - the reason that the angel’s tidings were so good - would be cause for such great darkness and destruction. Although His death was the symbol of our deliverance, the sign for it was racked with horror!

It is my personal belief that the reason is because a law was broken, for God Himself had died! As Christ was infinitely loved by all that was His, it was His brutal passing that shook all of creation to awake; that every particle of matter not only has a sense of obedience to its creator, but also a sense of compassion toward Him, which was touched at this moment. 

Nature would suffer for despair at the death of its own creator, and Justice itself would acknowledge that if we really meant that much to Him, it would satisfy the law and give way to Mercy - but not before the universe had finished mourning His passing. 

In contrast, His birth was to be cause for celebration. It’s no secret use of symbolism that, as the Light of the World arrives, the whole world was filled with light. Faith, knowledge, love, spirit - all these are synonymous with light in the scriptures. 

When Christ came to His lowly manger, the heavens made it absolutely clear that He, in whom we must have faith, from whom we must draw our knowledge, from whom we receive the Spirit, and He who is the embodiment of pure love was, at long last, here to deliver His people from death, hell, and sorrow. 

As the mountains shout for joy and the heavens dance the night away, may we all celebrate His birth with as much enthusiasm as the rest of the natural world, for He is our Creator, Savior, and Redeemer. :) 

Merry Christmas!
Sincerely, 
Taylor, a dead missionary

Christmas Study, Day 3: How Beautiful Upon the Mountains

Mosiah 13-15 

It seems as though a great many people in the early days (as well as today) were suddenly enraged at the idea of Christ condescending to our level. The Jews hated it, the Zoramites hated it, and the priests of king Noah hated it. 

The idea that God would be born a baby to a mortal woman, perhaps, brought heaven and eternity a bit too close? It's much more comfortable to deal with an invisible unknowable God who just stays "out there," and meddles not in the affairs of men. 

They want a "smooth" God, who asks nothing of us, and for all his doctrine and prophets to testify of bees and flowers and chirping birds nothing but good tidings, gladness, and peace 

The priests of Noah questioned Abinadi, saying, "Hey! Why don't you declare happy things to us like Isaiah clearly said you should do? How dare you tell us we're wicked!" 

"Look, you jibronies," returns Abinadi. "You're totally wrong. Isaiah didn't mean that!" 

He goes on to explain that God himself would step down and make personal intercession for His children. He will come to be mocked, cast out, spit upon, beaten, scourged, humiliated, tortured, and crucified; by this dying and suffering more than anyone could, Christ would break the bands of death and stand between us and justice. 

Salvation comes not by the law, but through the atonement of Christ who should come in the flesh, for which the law of Moses served only as a type. 

As Noah and his priests became angry, as the wicked often do, they send him back to prison. When they finally sentence him to death, his capital offense, they declare, is to have taught that God should be born in the flesh. 

Curious, isn't it, that these very men who asked for the good tidings of gladness - the publication of peace of which Isaiah spoke - are enraged to murder upon hearing those glad tidings? May we all publish the peace of the Christ child this Christmas, and may we all rejoice for the good tidings of great joy. 

Merry Christmas! 

Sincerely, 

Taylor, a dead missionary

Christmas Study, Day 2: The Condescension of God

1 Nephi 8, 11

Hmm, what to say? The allegory is clear: God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. 

When you think about it, Christ was the first Christmas gift. God’s love is so great that He condescended below all things, to be born of Mary, to go forth only to be cast out and reviled; ultimately, in perhaps the cruelest irony of history, Christ, who is the Judge of the world, was sent to be judged of the world - to be someone of naught, and to be crucified for the very sins of the very people who killed him, while they were in the very act of committing them. 

But Nephi was not yet shown any of this when he identified the meaning of the tree of life. No, it was when he beheld Mary and the Christ child that he declared, “It is the love of God!” 

Perhaps Mary was cradling her Child in her arms. She may have kissed or nuzzled him; maybe she held Him aloft and laughed as the babe screamed with joy at newfound heights; or maybe she sang to Him as he slept soundly. 

As he looked upon the mother, he might’ve sensed the sorrow that would pierce her soul like a sword, as her own Son was called to bear the weight of the world.

Whatever the case, it was the image of the virgin mother bearing the Son of God which caused Nephi’s perceptive pronouncement: “It is the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men;…it is the most desirable of all things.” 

The child which she bore, and the Atoning sacrifice which He represented, was the fruit of the love of God. Nephi felt this as it “shed itself” into his own heart, or he would not have made such a declaration. 

Like the shepherds and the wisemen, Nephi knew that it was no ordinary child she bore, but the very God of heaven and earth, condescending unto the children of men, a lesson and image that would follow Nephi for the rest of his life. 

As Christ is the first and “most desirable” of all Christmas gifts, may we all turn to Him and receive the gift He gave to us all those years ago, that the love of God may shed itself abroad into our own hearts this Christmas season. :) 

Merry Christmas! 

Sincerely, 

Taylor, a dead missionary

Christmas Study, Day 1: Unto Us a Child Is Born

Isaiah 7, 9 

Hundreds of years before His birth, prophets were teaching about the circumstances of Christ’s entry into the world. 

“The Lord himself shall give you a sign,” Isaiah said. “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and shall bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel” (Isa 7:14). 

And he further gloried of the deliverance of Israel, saying, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace” (Isa 9:6). 

Filled with promises of power and deliverance, the prophecies were misunderstood by a vast majority of those who heard them; the Jews expected the uprising of a mighty king, who would blast the chains of bondage to pieces and propel the Jewish nation to freedom. 

When Christ would come, He would deliver Israel, but not from the oppression of the sword; instead, He would deliver them from the chains of death, hell, and of the devil. 

There would be no heroic display of glorious triumph - at least not yet - but instead, a silent and humble birth to a virgin mother, beneath the watchful eye of the stars, and a meek and quiet suffering - alone, in a garden - and subsequent death upon the cross of a thief. 

Is this the same man of whom Isaiah spoke, calling him Immanuel? Even wonderful, mighty, everlasting, and prince? 

The magnificence of the Christ is not found in His battle array, but in His mastery of the human condition and triumph over death and hell thereby. Truly, He is wonderful, mighty, and everlasting. 

This Christmas, may we all look to Him and his birth, and remember that deliverance is found only in and through His atonement, to the end that we may master our own human condition and follow in His silent, humble footsteps. 

Merry Christmas!

Sincerely,

- Taylor, a dead missionary

How can living in the past destroy your faith in God?

Posting on my blog honestly isn’t so much about you as it is about me - and I mean that in the nicest way possible. Sometimes I just need to say something that’s been bothering me or share something I learned recently - and I usually don’t care if you find it interesting or not, because I just like to write!

So you can put that in your juice box and suck it!

All that being said, I really haven’t been on here in a long time. I think it’s high time I share some insight! Do you want to hear some insights? Psh, do you think I even care if you want to? I’mma tell you anyway. 

Leaving Jerusalem was probably a really hard experience for Lehi and his family. I don’t think we give Laman and Lemuel the credit they deserve - I mean, they did leave their home in one night! And lived on raw meat for eight years. And their wives sound like they were more buff than they were. 

As Jews, they believed in God. They lived the law of Moses. There are instances of Laman and Lemuel praying, repenting, offering thanks, pondering the scriptures, seeing angels, and yes - following the prophet! They risked their lives to get their genealogy and the equivalent of the Conference edition of the Ensign. So why did they turn out so drastically different from Nephi?

Because they never let go of Jerusalem. They left it, yes - but they did not let it go. 

They are a Book of Mormon equivalent of Lot’s wife, who was blasted into table salt for looking back at Sodom and Gomorrah. 

The problem was that, in never letting go of what they were leaving, they clearly didn’t believe that God’s plan for their future was better than what they already had going on. The problem was that they didn’t think that God’s warnings about Jerusalem were possible. “They knew not the dealings of that God who created them” (1 Nephi 2:12). 

In other words, they didn’t believe in God’s all-knowing, all-loving, or all-powerful nature. 

Joseph Smith taught that one of the fundamental principles of faith is knowing and believing in God’s character. If you do not believe that God has power to destroy Jerusalem and bring you to the promised land (and that you’ll be happy there), then eventually you will not believe in a God at all. 

I've been there.

All of us are commanded to leave Jerusalem at some point. The promised land is our destination - but whether or not we get there has nothing to do with whether or not we leave Jerusalem; it depends on whether we let go of it. 

No doubt at some point God has commanded you to quit doing something, quit going somewhere, quit seeing someone, or even quit being a certain way. And did you? More importantly, how did you go about doing it? 

Attitude is everything because it determines our level of faith. Faith cannot produce salvation unless it is faith in a true and living God; if your faith lives in a false God (or false attributes of God), then it cannot produce salvation. This applies to all of His attributes: love, mercy, patience, justness, meekness, omniscience, omnipotence, and so on. If we doubt God's perfect possession of these qualities, what kind of God do we believe in? A false one; eventually (and I can't emphasize this enough), none at all. 

When we keep commandments and follow spiritual promptings, we have to do more than just follow the Savior - we have to trust Him too! It’s like that cute saying you always hear: Believe in Christ…but Believe Christ too. 

If the Lord asks me to change, then I need to stop looking back on what I’m leaving behind, wondering if He was right about it! I need to look myself in the mirror, abolish my own beliefs about the situation, and recognize these things:

1. God is filled with a perfect love, and therefore, He only wants what is best for me. 
2. God is all-powerful, and therefore, He has the power to lead me along and fulfill His promises. 
3. God is all knowing, and therefore, He knows me better than I do. He knows the situation better than I do. He knows what will make me the most happy. He knows where I will be the most happy. He knows who will make me the most happy. 

It’s not enough to leave! I have to stop wishing, dreaming, and imagining. 

Until we believe in the true character of our Father in Heaven, we will doubt His directions. The more we doubt His character, the further from the path we pull ourselves, until God is nothing more than the world’s oldest storybook figure. 

May we all leave Jerusalem with the utmost assurance in God and His character, that we may know the dealings of the God who created us, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. 

Thanks for reading, whoever you are, and God be with you till we meet again!

Sincerely, 

Taylor, a dead missionary