Ether 12:1-4

12:1-4 - This is a very long and very content intensive chapter, so it's probably going to take some time to get through. We met Ether yesterday, but today we are set up more fully to understand his role, personality, and position as the Jaredite nation collapses. Moroni tells us that "Ether was a prophet of the Lord; wherefore Ether came forth in the days of Coriantumr, and began to prophesy unto the people, for he could not be restrained because of the Spirit of the Lord which was in him. For he did cry from the morning, even until the going down of the sun, exhorting the people to believe in God unto repentance lest they should be destroyed." There's a really interesting phrase in here "for he could not be restrained because of the Spirit of the Lord which was in him." It's incredible how the Lord sets me up, almost daily, for my post that night because it seems like almost everyday I hear something in the lessons or in the Ensign on my way to work that applies directly to the lesson that night. There are several from today's reading that I think fit in here, but first I thought about what it means to not be able to keep yourself from speaking the truth because the Holy Spirit is so strong in you. I imagine myself as a young girl, believing the gospel was true, or at least hoping that it was, when something controversial came up or some temptation maybe sometimes being able to resist, but definitely not stand up and say something or oppose what everyone else was doing. But as I've learned and grown spiritually, sometimes I just can't help but say something. For instance, I was talking to a friend once who had just gotten out of a horrible marriage and was "talking" herself out of "dating" non member men. My response to her, my only response was "don't do it! There is nothing but heart ache waiting for you on that path." I told her to strengthen herself and her kids, go to the temple and strengthen her relationship with her Heavenly Father, I couldn't say anything else and I really couldn't indulge her thinking that it might be a good idea, I just couldn't. When things like that happen, I wonder if that's what it means that Ether had to call the people to repentance because the Spirit was so strong in him. One draw back to calling repentance to a wicked people is the danger, as all prophets know, I imagine living in a wicked world and being in circumstances where you feel compelled to speak up about something. At that point, your faith must be strong enough to know that even if you are killed, that would be better than staying silent. It's this concept of having focus on the Savior and the atonement and the plan of salvation that Moroni refers to as God "maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast." I just had the thought, I've always considered this to be an abstract concept, difficult in practical application, but God as our anchor wouldn't just be in this life, it would be in the premortal life as well as the next life. Ether tells the people himself that God is his main focus when he says, "by faith all things are fulfilled- Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God." He's basically telling them, "this life is not the most important thing to me, being righteous so that I can be with God again is the most important thing to me." That's pretty profound if you think about it, thinking it is one thing, but embodying this principle to the point where you will put your life in danger to fulfill God's commandments, that is faith, that is belief. The IM quotes President Gordon B. Hinckley as teaching, "We live in a world of uncertainty. For some, there will be great accomplishments. For others, disappointment. For some, much of rejoicing and gladness, good health, and gracious living. For others, perhaps sickness and a measure of sorrow. We do not know. But one thing we do know. Like the polar star in the heavens, regardless of what the future holds, there stands the Redeemer of the world, the Son of God, certain and sure as the anchor of our immortal lives. He is the rock of our salvation, our strength, our comfort, the very focus of our faith." In the last couple of days I've really been confronted with some of the immense human suffering that is happening around the world, and really, always has. I read this quote and I thought, "there has to be more, there has to be a piece of this puzzle that I'm missing." It seems to me that if God knew beforehand the unimaginable cruelty and violence that would befall the vast majority of inhabitants of this earth, and he still said, "go live your life, it will be worth it," then there has to be something missing, some factor that I don't see. Jesus Christ as the anchor of our "immortal lives" was my first clue. I thought, "well he's my anchor here, but if he's also my anchor in the premortal world, what does that mean?" I thought about it and what I came up with was, in our premortal life, he was our anchor, in that we believed that he would atone for our sins like he promised he would, and we believed that living this life would be worth it in the eternal perspective. We believed that we would be happier having gone through it, I'm sure that we learned and studied in the manner that he prescribed so that we would be ready to come here. This also implies that he's our anchor in the next life as well, what does that mean? I would imagine that when we go to the next life, there is a work that the Lord is conducting over there as well, and we will focus on whatever it is that he tells us to do there because whatever he commands leads to happiness. We will focus on learning and growing towards Him and doing His work, that's how we will be anchored to him eternally. I'd imagine that in both the pre and post mortal worlds there was and will be confusion, differing opinions, false teachings, etc, but we will harken to what he says, and trust that he will make us happy. We don't remember the last life, and we can't see the next one, so here is where we really learn with our hearts that following the Savior and living the gospel is what leads to happiness and eternal life. When thinking to the next life, and how we will be anchored to the Savior and in what ways the atrocities experienced in this life will be compensated for, I can't help but think that, yes, in this life we can focus on the gospel, but we are still so self-absorbed, day to day living, hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck that this mortal life is pretty much all we can focus on. Think about it, as mortal human beings, we can only really stay away for 16 hours before we almost get to tired to even function. We can only go a couple of days without water before we lose consciousness, and only at most a day before we become completely focused on finding our next meal, we are very bound to the confines and needs of this mortal body, so any ability to focus on anything else, especially the spiritual is actually pretty amazing. Once we get to the next life and those limitations aren't there anymore, then I think that there is going to be something going on, some work, some agenda at work, that is so large, so incredible, so beautiful that we can't even fathom it right now because we can barely see past the next 24 hours. It seems counterintuitive but this mortality serves a vital purpose in our eternal progression. In the April 2009 general conference talked entitled "Adversity," President Henry B. Eyring taught, "My purpose today is to assure you that our Heavenly Father and the Savior live and that They love all humanity. The very opportunity for us to face adversity and affliction is part of the evidence of Their infinite love. God gave us the gift of living in mortality so that we could be prepared to receive the greatest of all the gifts of God, which is eternal life. Then our spirits will be changed. We will become able to want what God wants, to think as He things, and thus be prepared for the trust of an endless posterity to teach and to lead through tests to be raised up to qualify to live forever in eternal life... It will comfort us when we must wait in distress for the Savior's promised relief that He knows, from experience, how to heal and help us. The Book of Mormon gives us the certain assurance of His power to comfort. And faith in that power will give us patience as we pray and work and wait for help. He could have known how to succor us simply by revelation, but He chose to learn by His own personal experience... I spoke recently to a young father who has lost his job in the recent economic crisis. He knows that hundreds of thousands of people with exactly his skills are looking desperately for work to feed their families. His quiet confidence led me to ask him what he had done to become so confident that he would find a way to support his family. He said he had examined his life to be sure that he had done all he could to be worthy the Lord's help. It was clear that his need and his faith in Jesus Christ were leading him to be obedient to God's commandments when it is hard to do. He said that he saw that opportunity as he and his wife were reading in Alma where the Lord had prepared a people to find the gospel through adversity." That was a deeply moving talk for me. I thought it most profound when he pointed out that Jesus could have learned the depths of our sorrow and pain and suffering through simpler, less painful means, but he didn't do that. He CHOSE to experience the full throttle of it. There was a family tragedy last week and it's really rocked us, but my brother showed us that the Lord didn't limit our adversity and trials that help us grow because he wanted to limit the amount of pain he himself suffered. In fact, the opposite is true, the Lord endured MORE pain and suffering in order that we might experience trials and adversity for our benefit, even when they are unspeakable crimes against humanity.