8 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2024
  2. Jun 2023
    1. How has your life been blessed by living the Gospel and how has it sanctified you?

      Hey Naomi! I must say your insights and reminders here are powerful!

      To address your question, I really do believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ is a message of good news. While we learn from the scriptures that the gospel is the gospel of repentance ("teach nothing but repentance" - Doctrine and Covenants 6:9, 11:9) , it essentially just means that we focus on preaching the gospel "which is the gospel of repentance and salvation through the mercy, grace and merits of the Lord Jesus Christ." That is good news: that there is salvation, mercy and grace for all mankind!

      • Lately, I feel that I've been surrounded by numerous deaths and illnesses in past two years. Grief has really taught me the impermanence of everything in our fallen world. But the more prominent feeling I've been getting is how lovely it is that I possess the knowledge of the plan of salvation. It brings me great comfort our parting in this life is not the end. This mortality is only a fleeting moment in our eternal lives.

      This is Elder Hugo Montoya in his talk, The Eternal Principle of Love:

      On the third day He was resurrected. The tomb is empty; He stands at the right hand of His Father. They hope we will choose to keep our covenants and return to Their presence. This second estate is not our final estate; we do not belong to this earthly home, but rather we are eternal beings living temporary experiences.

      • Another thing the gospel of Jesus Christ has taught me is that our time here on Earth is to become the person who we will become for eternity. When we meet Jesus Christ in His second coming and face the final judgment, the essence of who we are in that moment will shape our eternal existence. This understanding holds immense power in that each day the Lord gives me another chance to live and be with my family, I choose to improve upon myself, to surpass the person I was yesterday, so that one day, I may reach a state of self-acceptance, forgiveness for my flaws, love for all my cherished ones in the manner that Jesus loves them, and a deep sense of peace and comfort in the presence of my Heavenly Father.
    1. “The great day of the Lord” (D&C 43:17) refers to Jesus Christ’s Second Coming and the commencement of the Millennium. God commanded His servants to declare repentance to prevent His children from being destroyed with the wicked when the Savior returns. While some will give heed and repent, others will ignore and reject the voice of the Lord’s servants. Therefore, the Lord raises the voice of warning to repent through a variety of means: His servants, the ministering of angels, His own voice, and even the destructive power of nature.
      • a powerful reminder that the second coming of jesus christ is a joyous occasion, which is why it's symbolized by a marriage feast:

      "there's a marriage coming! It's gonna be great!" - dr. camille f. olson (https://open.spotify.com/episode/0vGHSOKivLW2MkDLwecsH2?si=73ef0cee0a3c47c8)

      • the prominence of the message of repentance stems from the fact that the gospel of jesus christ is a gospel of salvation brought upon by repentance, which is closely tied to humility. our recognition of our own nothingness leads us to rely on the boundless everythingness of our god to be perfected one day. (Doctrine and Covenants 6:9, 11:9, Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual 11)

      [[say nothing but repentance]]

  3. May 2023
    1. Miracles are part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when completed, is the Atonement.

      How much humility would take for you to order all your guillotines to stop? So many efforts you have put to set this bloody operation going that now it's hard to even think of turning it on hold. Yes, results are outstanding, you've taken care of everything indeed, you even have been kinda generous towards the sentenced for among all the types of executions you chose the most humane. The job gets done in seconds and with those "bastards" no more spoiling the party, the world you hope becomes a better place. In sounds of clanging blades you stand and look around The Justice Square... Behold what you have made.

      Of course, the longest line is made of politicians, the traffic drivers are standing right behind and you could see bad parents, cheaters, terrorists, door dealers, lawyers and many others when you stand up on your toes. And yet at least for once you must had thinking: how many guillotines you'll need? It cannot be they haven't heard about your dreadful fame already but why oh why the line of guilties never ends?

      If you would find yourself in a completely darkened room, trying to locate a switch, and let's imagine also that you would be allergic to some color, blue. What would have happened when you find the switch and turn it on, the room gets lightened but the bulb... is painted blue. Every single thing the room contains and all of them at once instantly would make you sick and hateful - the walls, the chairs, the table - slowly blending into a giant blueish nightmare forcing you to fall down on all fours. But if we would replace the bulb and light the room again, would you be not surprised to see that literally nothing in the room was blue?

      Any pattern situation, when you face the same emotions despite the fact that scenery is not the same, is a potential siren call which when combined inevitably lead you to an extraordinary question: what if the source of all you see is placed in nowhere but within? What if you're occupying not the viewer's chair in movie theater but in the projecting room instead? What if your eyes are not receivers but transmitters of the signal? Would this explain the cause of all psychosomatic symptoms in your body that you feel when looking at their "sins"? What is the point beheading further when you are ready to recall: the only damaged neck has always been but yours.

      This ... course ... is concerned only with Atonement, or the correction of perception. The means of the Atonement is forgiveness. C-in.1

      Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one. C-4.3

      Forgiveness is the central theme that runs throughout salvation, holding all its parts in meaningful relations, the course it runs directed, and its outcome sure. W-169.12

      Forgiveness is the only function here, and serves to bring the joy this world denies T-26.7.8

      Be merciful today. The Son of God deserves your mercy. W-192.9

      No one who learns to forgive can fail to remember God. Forgiveness, then, is all that need be taught, because it is all that need be learned. All blocks to the remembrance of God are forms of unforgiveness, and nothing else. P-2.2.3

      The way to God is through forgiveness here. There is no other way. W-256.1

  4. Dec 2022
    1. to the success of Christianity’s victory over paganism, which hadtraditionally championed the pursuit of happiness and denouncedpain as evil. The triumph of suffering over pleasure had its mostextreme expression in the early monasteries.

      People clung to the promise of salvation. The idea that the more you suffered here on earth, the better your time would be in the afterlife was a potent shield against the desperate realities of everyday life in the fifth and sixth centuries. This doctrine was central

      Relationship to Eric Hoffer's thesis in The True Believer and mass movements' "hope for the future" even if the hope is for one's afterlife? This sort of hope can be seen in both Islam and Christianity

  5. Nov 2022
    1. raphy. Surely the fault of that savant was not neglecbut over-confidence in the virtue of the fiche, and the true morthat there is no necessary salvation in the fiche and the card-indTh

      Surely the fault of that savant was not neglect, but over-confidence in the virtue of the fiche [index card], and the true moral is that there is no necessary salvation in the fiche and the card-index [aka zettelkasten].

      Here the author is referencing part of the preface of Anatole France's book Penguin Island (1908) where a scholar drowns in a whirlpool of index cards.

      see: https://hypothes.is/a/rYHu0FQZEe2mm4_z4pvWLw

  6. May 2019