Andrew's Missionary Homecoming Talk

On 14 Feb 2010 I was asked to speak on any topic of my choice. I chose to speak about the Atonement, and it seems appropriate to start this blog with this topic.

We sometimes overlook the power of words. The ancient chant "sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can drive me into depression" comes to mind. In the Bible we read about the Lord creating the world in seven days, merely by the phrasing of words. "Let there be light". The priesthood operates on the principles of language; one does not just place his hands on another's head and expect them to be healed, or to receive the Holy Ghost. Words are spoken, and the powers of heaven are invoked. By this same token, words spoken over the pulpit in righteousness have the power to move hearts, and heal the broken-hearted. God willing my words will bring one of you closer to our Savior.

I served 10 1/2 months in Arkansas, the rest of my two-year mission was served in Tennessee. There were at that time roughly 125 missionaries in my mission, and the Lord had allowed us to be part of the biggest baptizing year ever in that mission. I taught people in Memphis TN, a city that holds one of the highest homicide rates in the nation, and a proud part of the "Bible Belt". These people already know Jesus.

Just West of Little Rock Arkansas is a town called Conway. We found a young man, about 22 years old named Leon. We found him through the Habitat for Humanity. Brother Oliver, the ward mission leader, was doing the roofing on this house, and met Leon, who was going to be living in the house with his mother. Brother Oliver made an appointment where we could meet with Leon at the church. That first appointment, Leon was an hour late. He had been busy with "court business". He felt the love of God in our lessons, he asked lots of questions, and he was looking for a way to change his life. Being in court, bad friends, a history of drinking and drug use, he wanted something new. He wanted a new life to come with his new house. He wanted to change. And he did.

The Atonement is about change. It is only through Christ that any change can truly and eternally be made.

"For I know that ye have searched much, many of you, to know of things to come; wherefore I know that ye know that your flesh must waste away and die; nevertheless, in our bodies we shall see God. Yea, I know that ye know that in the body he shall show himself unto those at Jerusalem, from whence we came; for it is expedient that it should be among them; for it behooveth the great Creator that he suffereth himself to become subject unto man in the flesh, and die for all men, that all men might become subject unto him. For as death hath passed upon all men, to fulfil the merciful plan of the great Creator, there must needs be a power of resurrection, and the resurrection must needs come unto man by reason of the fall; and the fall came by reason of transgression; and because man became fallen they were cut off from the presence of the Lord. Wherefore, it must needs be an infinite atonement - save it should be an infinite atonement this corruption could not put on incoruption. Wherefore, the first judgment which came upon man must needs have remained to an endless duration. And if so, this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble to its mother earth, to rise no more." (2 Nep 9:4-7 http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/9?lang=eng)

Bruce R. McConkie, at that time a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, spoke about the act we call the Atonement.

Two thousand years ago, outside Jerusalem’s walls, there was a pleasant garden spot, Gethsemane by name, where Jesus and His intimate friends were wont to retire for pondering and prayer. There Jesus taught His disciples the doctrines of the kingdom, and all of them communed with Him who is the Father of us all, in whose ministry they were engaged and on whose errand they served. This sacred spot, like Eden where Adam dwelt, like Sinai from whence Jehovah gave His laws, like Calvary where the Son of God gave His life a ransom for many, this holy ground is where the sinless Son of the Everlasting Father took upon Himself the sins of all men on condition of repentance. We do not know, we cannot tell, no mortal mind can conceive the full import of what Christ did in Gethsemane. We know He sweat great gouts of blood from every pore as He drained the dregs of that bitter cup His Father had given Him. We know He suffered, both body and spirit, more than it is possible for man to suffer, except it be unto death. We know that in some way, incomprehensible to us, His suffering satisfied the demands of justice, ransomed penitent souls from the pains and penalties of sin, and made mercy available to those who believe in His holy name. We know that He lay prostrate upon the ground as the pains and agonies of an infinite burden caused Him to tremble and would that He might not drink the bitter cup. We know that an angel came from the courts of glory to strengthen Him in His ordeal, and we suppose it was mighty Michael, who foremost fell that mortal man might be. As near as we can judge, these infinite agonies—this suffering beyond compare—continued for some three or four hours.

We know from the testimonies of the Apostles that this great and eternal suffering, the suffer that only our Lord Jesus with his Godly lineage could undertake.

I can testify that this is true. I make no claims of perfection for myself. I need the Atonement on a daily basis, and one who has made both little and big mistakes, I can testify to the healing power of repentance through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

As He moved on through the scourging and then the crucifixion, He exemplified the path that we should walk to fulfill our part of Repentance. He showed Faith in His Father, hope, love, virtue, knowledge of the Plan of Salvation, humility, diligence, and obedience to the will of the Father. As difficult as it is for us to have these attributes in our lives, we know it wasn't easy for Him.

James Edward Talmage, a modern Apostle, wrote a book called Jesus the Christ going into some depth of the power of the Savior, and the divinity of His life and mission. He wrote much of this book while living in the Salt Lake City Temple. He writes of the Saviors suffering.

"Scourging was a frightful preliminary to death on the cross. The instrument of punishment was a whip of many thongs, loaded with metal and edged with jagged pieces of bone. Instances are of record in which the condemned died under the lash and so escaped the horrors of living crucifixion. In accordance with the brutal customs of the time, Jesus, weak and bleeding from the fearful scourging He had undergone, was given over to the half-savage soldiers for their amusement. He was no ordinary victim, so the whole band came together in the Pretorium, or great hall of the palace, to take part in the diabolical sport. They stripped Jesus of His outer raiment, and placed upon Him a purple robe.[1293] Then with a sense of fiendish realism they platted a crown of thorns, and placed it about the Sufferer's brows; a reed was put into His right hand as a royal scepter; and, as they bowed in a mockery of homage, they saluted Him with: "Hail, King of the Jews!" Snatching away the reed or rod, they brutally smote Him with it upon the head, driving the cruel thorns into His quivering flesh; they slapped Him with their hands, and spat upon Him in vile and vicious abandonment."

There is a painting of Christ standing before Pilate, beaten and bleeding.  Pilate, adorned in his robes and small crown in his large hall looks upon Jesus, and his face is not satisfied. Jesus, clearly the King of Kings, stands below and at the mercy of Pilate, this lower court judge. The physical pains and torment the Savior passed through can be viewed as an exaggerated and overwhelming similitude of the struggles we go through daily, of the temptation we suffer, and often give into. With Christ as our example, we can overcome all.

Somewhere in the middle of my mission, we began to eradicate the word "try" from our vocabulary. "Try" has a done-once-and-failed mentality. We replaced it with "strive". Strive is not giving up. Strive is working until you get success despite past failure. Much of what makes us give up is the feeling that we are alone, or that what we are doing is impossible. We cannot try, we have to strive. Happiness is not quick and easy like a bowl of ice cream. Happiness is listening to a moving song and having a welling up within that makes you get back up, and succeed the second, or fifth, or hundredth time.

Jeffery R Holland, and current member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles speaks about the Savior facing His trials alone.

"Now I speak very carefully, even reverently, of what may have been the most difficult moment in all of this solitary journey to Atonement. I speak of those final moments for which Jesus must have been prepared intellectually and physically but which He may not have fully anticipated emotionally and spiritually—that concluding descent into the paralyzing despair of divine withdrawal when He cries in ultimate loneliness, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” The loss of mortal support He had anticipated, but apparently He had not comprehended this. Had He not said to His disciples, “Behold, the hour … is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me” and “The Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him”? With all the conviction of my soul I testify that He did please His Father perfectly and that a perfect Father did not forsake His Son in that hour. Indeed, it is my personal belief that in all of Christ’s mortal ministry the Father may never have been closer to His Son than in these agonizing final moments of suffering. Nevertheless, that the supreme sacrifice of His Son might be as complete as it was voluntary and solitary, the Father briefly withdrew from Jesus the comfort of His Spirit, the support of His personal presence. It was required, indeed it was central to the significance of the Atonement, that this perfect Son who had never spoken ill nor done wrong nor touched an unclean thing had to know how the rest of humankind—us, all of us—would feel when we did commit such sins. For His Atonement to be infinite and eternal, He had to feel what it was like to die not only physically but spiritually, to sense what it was like to have the divine Spirit withdraw, leaving one feeling totally, abjectly, hopelessly alone. But Jesus held on. He pressed on. The goodness in Him allowed faith to triumph even in a state of complete anguish. The trust He lived by told Him in spite of His feelings that divine compassion is never absent, that God is always faithful, that He never flees nor fails us. When the uttermost farthing had then been paid, when Christ’s determination to be faithful was as obvious as it was utterly invincible, finally and mercifully, it was “finished.” Against all odds and with none to help or uphold Him, Jesus of Nazareth, the living Son of the living God, restored physical life where death had held sway and brought joyful, spiritual redemption out of sin, hellish darkness, and despair. With faith in the God He knew was there, He could say in triumph, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”"

Christ stooped to the lowest of lows, death of both physical and spiritual life. There has never nor will be anyone lower than the Savior.

With this example, and no doubt endless ways to relate in some way to the Lords sacrifice, the ultimate question comes: HOW DO I RECEIVE A FULLNESS OF HIS LOVE? HOW CAN I CHANGE TO BE LIKE HIM?

A woman in the same city as Leon was ready to be baptized and make a covenant to follow the Savior. She only had one hang up. Smoking. She was not sure how to get rid of her addiction. She said she doesn't have the desire to quit. She said in her beautiful southern accent, "I like smoking, I know it hurts me, but I like it, and I don't even want to quit." I shared the scripture from Alma 32 "if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words." (http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/alma/32?lang=eng) She said she wants to have a desire to quit, but she doesn't. I told her that her desire to have the desire, would be enough. Alma 29:4 reads "I ought not to harrow up in my desires the firm decree of a just God, for I know that he granteth unto men according to their desire, whether it be unto death or unto life; yeah, I know that he allotteth unto men, yeah, decreeth unto them decrees which are unalterable, according to their wills, whether they be unto salvation or unto destruction." (http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/alma/29?lang=eng)

Allen F Packer visited our mission and spoke to us about praying for desire. I can testify that it woks. Mika quit smoking, and has since gone to the temple and been sealed to her husband for all eternity.

There are countless other stories from my mission about the Atonement changing people's lives. A man who said "if I had the gospel in my life when I was younger, I wouldn't have lost my family years ago". A woman who said "depression wouldn't be here if everyone would turn to the savior".

But the biggest impact on me is my story. I am a different person now that I was years ago. I found a true testimony in Christ. I have searched Him out. I have experimented on His words. I can testify whole heartedly to the power and perfection of repentance. We can all change. We can all get back to Him.