70. We Are Bought with a Price

On Sunday morning, December 19, 1993, in a special high council meeting, President F. Michael Watson put aside all regular agenda items and invited the members of the stake presidency and high council to share their thoughts and some favorite scriptures about either the Lord Jesus Christ or the Prophet Joseph Smith. In essence, the following represents a summary of the testimony I shared on that occasion. I was serving at the time as the stake executive secretary.

It is amazing how much buying and selling are a part of the celebration of Christmas in our culture. Indeed, the very health of our national economy is measured largely on how much we buy during the holiday season.

Interestingly, the holy scriptures employ monetary terminology in discussing the Atonement of Jesus Christ, the very heart and soul of our religion. Jesus came to “redeem” us, which means to “pay a price for” us. Peter speaks of the Lord’s people as being “a peculiar people” (1 Peter 2:9), which in the original Greek meant “a purchased people.”

I think often we do not appreciate the cost of the Savior’s gift, the price He paid for us, for as the scriptures affirm, we “are bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:20; 7:23; see also 2 Peter 2:1), the price being His own “precious blood” (1 Peter 1:19).

Jacob, the brother of Nephi, taught that “he cometh into the world that he may save all men if they will hearken unto his voice; for behold, he suffereth the pains of all men, yea, the pains of every living creature, both men, women, and children, who belong to the family of Adam” (2 Nephi 9:21). That appears to include everyone. If we could somehow remember all the pain and suffering and hurt we have ever experienced personally—mentally or physically or spiritually—and times that by the billions of people that now live or have ever lived on this planet, that might begin to give us an inkling of the price He paid for us. That is a lot of pain!

President John Taylor testified that “in a manner to us incomprehensible and inexplicable, he bore the weight of the sins of the whole world” (Mediation and Atonement, ch. 21). I don’t think we can begin to understand the magnitude of what He went through for us, although the revelations give us glimpses.

Mark records an interesting little detail, not mentioned by the other gospel writers, about the suffering Jesus faced in Gethsemane: “And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy” (Mark 14:33). Sore amazed. The Greek renders this passage as “amazed, awestruck, astonished.” Here was the Savior of the world, knowing full well what He had to face, the cup He had to drink, and yet even He was amazed, awestruck, astonished at the weight of it all, of how terrible it was, of how exquisite it would be.

Some 1,800 years later He would talk of that experience: “Therefore, I command you to repent—repent, lest I smite you by the rod of my mouth, and by my wrath, and by my anger, and your sufferings be sore—how sore you know not, how exquisite you know not, how hard to bear you know not.

“For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent;

“But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I;

“Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink—

“Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and finished my preparations unto the children of men” (D&C 19:15–19).

That was the price He paid for us, just as similarly the Prophet Joseph Smith gave his life to seal his witness of the reality of the Father and the Son and all that they communicated through him as the Prophet of the Restoration, which “cost the best blood of the nineteenth century to bring them forth for the salvation of a ruined world” (D&C 135:6). There is mention again of the cost.

I am grateful beyond all ability to express for the price that has been paid—not only by the Prophet Joseph Smith, but by all the faithful Saints who have gone before in this dispensation who have made possible what we enjoy here today. I thank the Father and His beloved Son for Their priceless gift, the pearl of great price, that opens the gate to our everlasting salvation in Their presence.

62. Samuel the Lamanite

A short talk given by eleven-year-old Talmage Cleverly on Sunday, January 15, 1989, in the Primary of the Bountiful Twentieth Ward, Bountiful Utah South Stake. The talk was published in the February 1989 issue of the Family Journal. Talmage at the time was a fifth grader at Bountiful Elementary.

There was a prophet, and his name was Samuel, and he was a Lamanite.

Once when Samuel was teaching some Nephites, they got mad at him, and he got discouraged and left. But then he saw a vision and was told to go back.

So he came back and got on a high wall and told everybody to repent and told them that Jesus was going to come in about five years and told them what the signs were. The Nephites were angry, and they tried to hit Samuel with arrows and rocks and things. And then he got down off the wall and went back to his own land and was never heard of again.

And we should repent and do what the prophet says. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

58. A Final Word

An article I wrote in Bountiful, Utah, in late December 1986 and published in the January 1987 issue of Die Lange Zeit. This message was based on a talk I gave on Sunday, December 28, 1986, in the final sacrament meeting of the year in the Bountiful Twentieth Ward, Bountiful Utah South Stake. I was serving at the time as the second counselor in the bishopric.

The Prophet Mormon spent fifty years of his adult life in reviewing, selecting, abridging, and summarizing a thousand years of Nephite records. It must have been a glorious experience. At the same time he witnessed the sad destruction of his people.

As he came to the closing moments of his own life, knowing that soon he would stand before his Maker to answer for the unique mission that had been his, what were the final thoughts running through his mind? What was the final message he wanted to leave as he closed his record? What would be the last thing he would choose to say to those of us who lived in our day?

Of all the things he might have chosen to write, his final message was a simple one:

“Therefore repent, and be baptized in the name of Jesus, and lay hold upon the gospel of Christ, which shall be set before you, not only in this record [the Book of Mormon] but also in the record which shall come unto the Gentiles from the Jews, which record [the Holy Bible] shall come from the Gentiles unto you.

“For behold, this [the Book of Mormon] is written for the intent that ye may believe that [the Bible]; and if ye believe that ye will believe this also; and if ye believe this ye will know concerning your fathers, and also the marvelous works which were wrought by the power of God among them.

“And ye will also know that ye are a remnant of the seed of Jacob; therefore ye are numbered among the people of the first covenant; and if it so be that ye believe in Christ, and are baptized, first with water, then with fire and with the Holy Ghost, following the example of our Savior, according to that which he hath commanded us, it shall be well with you in the day of judgment. Amen” (Mormon 7:8–10).

This brief closing message is in a nutshell the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ: have faith in Christ, repent of our sins, be baptized, first with water and then with the Holy Ghost, and endure in faith to the end. If we do these things, it shall be well with us in the day of judgment. It is the very same message heralded by the angel at the first coming of Jesus: “I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people” (Luke 2:10).

The Prophet Joseph Smith said it in another way: “The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it” (Teachings, 121).

On another occasion the Prophet declared: “And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, this is the testimony, last of all, which we give of him: That he lives!

“For we saw him, even on the right hand of God; and we heard the voice bearing record that he is the Only Begotten of the Father” (D&C 76:22–23).

Elder Bruce R. McConkie’s final testimony, borne less than two weeks before his death, was especially moving to any who heard it:

“As pertaining to Jesus Christ, I testify that he is the Son of the Living God and was crucified for the sins of the world. He is our Lord, our God, and our King. This I know of myself independent of any other person.

“I am one of his witnesses, and in a coming day I shall feel the nail marks in his hands and in his feet and shall wet his feet with my tears.

“But I shall not know any better then than I know now that he is God’s Almighty Son, that he is our Savior and Redeemer, and that salvation comes in and through his atoning blood and in no other way” (Ensign, May 1985, 11).

24. That Ye May Not Remember Your Guilt

A bishopric message published in the February 1999 issue of the Bountiful Twentieth Ward Newsette. On February 28, 1999, Kevin Thueson was released as my first counselor. Hyde Frederickson moved from second to first counselor, and Lionel Farr became the new second counselor.

A few weeks ago I had to go to LDS Hospital to have my esophagus dilated. I have had the procedure done a few other times over the years and was not looking forward to the unpleasant experience. Although partially sedated, I could not be put all the way out because I had to cooperate with the doctors during the procedure by swallowing the tube they stuck down my throat.

This time, however, they used a new type of sedative that actually made me forget the whole experience. Although I was apparently awake for the entire procedure, I remember absolutely nothing from when the medication went into my arm until I was being walked back to the recovery area. Pretty nice.

It occurred to me that there is one type of pain that is even more excruciating than physical pain and that is the pain that results from sin. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were some way to induce amnesia to forget that type of misery? Fortunately, there is. It’s called repentance.

Notice what Nephi says about not remembering our sin at the day of judgment: “Prepare your souls for that glorious day when justice shall be administered unto the righteous, even the day of judgment, that ye may not shrink with awful fear; that ye may not remember your awful guilt in perfectness” (2 Nephi 9:46).

The only way that happens is to repent of our sins before that great and dreadful day. That’s the only way to prepare our souls so that it will be a glorious day. Otherwise, we will remember our guilt most exquisitely.

If we do repent, however, the Lord promises that even He Who knows all things past, present, and future will forget our transgression: “Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more” (D&C 58:42). The choice is ours.