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Post by Daughter of Yeshua on Jan 13, 2024 14:55:14 GMT
Family of Yeshua Messiah
Winter Conference
December 23, 2023
Welcome: Joseph
Welcome, welcome everyone! This is already the Winter Conference 2023. We have been doing this for a few years now, and things are getting better and better each time. Let us see, we have people here from, it looks like, from Canada, USA, we have nobody from Mexico this year. We have people from Kenya, and we have people from the Philippines. So we are moving around. This is good, this is very nice. It is very wonderful to see everybody here. You know, in the doctrine of the Church we hold these conferences every 3 months, so we basically do it at the winter solstice and the summer solstice, I think they are called the same thing, and then 3 months in the middle there, which is pretty nice. It gives us a steady timeline all the time, and it gives us a chance that we can meet together ..., and listen to each other's talks and thoughts, and we can strengthen each other, and we can hear the word of the Lord as always, and we can teach each other the gospel. We can hear what is new in the revelations to the Church, and everything else; and it is a great time. And we are hoping that we will end up with a lot of cabins built and stuff like that; so that someday, we can all gather together, and make a big trip out of it and actually be together in person and enjoy each other’s company; have a lot of fun. So I am looking forward to that day. So, this conference though, we have about 7 speakers, so we have lots of speakers and so it will be quite fun. We will first have an opening prayer, Amy will offer the opening prayer for us. And after which, we would like to start with Brother Chris, and then Brother Will, and Brother Ted, who will speak to us, and then we will have some announcements of what the Church is going through, after Ted.
Opening prayer: Amy
Dear Heavenly Father, we thank thee that we can gather together at this conference time. We thank thee for the internet and technologies that allow us to gather when we can’t be here together in person. Please pour out thy Spirit upon us and please bless that we will both hear and understand and that the speakers also will be able to hear and speak properly. In the name of Yeshua Messiah, amen.
Hear God Better Through Charity
by Chris Felder
Chris: Okay, so I have had a question I’ve been studying and pondering lately, how do we hear the will of God? And I thought of Mr. George Mueller and he has, it’s called, “How to ascertain the will of God,” and he has 6 different points on there, and so I kind of used that and some different scriptures and things that I am going to share today.
First, we must have our heart in a place where it has no will of its own, no wanting any selfish desire at all, no coveting, and to be blunt about it, we’re not going to be able to hear the will of God if we have any selfish intent, any of that coveting or anything. It’s only when we align ourselves with God that we can hear the will of God. God is selfless; to be aligned with Him, we must be selfless. We align ourselves by following His path. This is the path that our Saviour, Yeshua Messiah, took. I think of a cabin, like up on a mountain, and there’s like a light in the cabin and you can see it far away and so up the path, all the way up the mountain, you can see this tiny little light, but as long as you continue on that path, you’ll be able to get closer and closer, the light’s going to get brighter and brighter and easier to see as you go up that path.
Charity is a key ingredient to hearing the will of the Lord. Charity is doing for others, being selfless. Charity helps us hear the will of God. It’s how God is; He is completely selfless. Charity, grace, love, they’re not feelings, they’re not emotions. If we get caught in feelings, emotions, and we act upon those and we do that without measuring them against the commandments of the Lord, then we put ourselves at risk of not being able to hear the will of God.
We actually earn the Lord’s trust when we gain His trust through following His sayings, His commandments, and keeping the virtues. Trust is a product and a natural consequence of faith. Faith in God is when we follow His commandments, and this by doing His sayings, applying them to our actions. Faith is another key component that we use along with charity, for being able to hear the will of God. God is involved in our lives. He is involved in the lives of His children. He is there for when we need His help and we pray, and He wants to be there and is there for us; that is charity. He is there to help.
He indicates His will to us, to His children, and this is something real important to understand, in order to, for one, be willing to hear and understand that God our Father, He is our Father, He wants to help us, and that we can hear His instructions and His will.
I have a story here. There was a fella one time, his name was Buddy. Buddy had an important appointment, it was a doctor’s appointment, and he was traveling to meet the doctor and he actually left his home with only enough time to arrive to the doctor, like only a few minutes before his appointment. So Buddy was on the road to the doctor, and he was actually almost there, when he noticed that there was another person who was driving near him, and he was driving quite oddly. He looked again to see what was going on and upon his closer inspection, he saw that the driver was actually not in proper control of his vehicle. The driver didn’t have control of his body. The driver actually was having a seizure. And so Buddy immediately pulls over, parks his truck off the side of the road, made sure to watch of course for other vehicles, and then he ran over to help the driver. As he got to the vehicle, he quickly got to the door, opened it and was able to get in, and he noticed, of course, that it wasn’t just the driver in there, there was his wife and all his family, his young children. And he noticed that the driver was unable to keep his foot on the brake, because of his seizure, it kept slipping off. And so Buddy reached across and he turned the key off, and this stopped the engine and stopped the vehicle and Buddy was able to help there from being any more damage, or any damage, anything that happened with the vehicle, to driver and his family. And he actually stayed there with the family for quite a while, until help came. Once help came, he got back in his truck and he continued on his way to the doctor. He now was probably going to be at least 30 minutes late, if not more, and so he arrived to the doctor’s office with thoughts that he’s probably going to have to reschedule his appointment. And then he gets to the receptionist, and before he even says anything, the receptionist apologizes for the delay, everything is fine now, the doctor will be able to get to you in a few minutes. And so Buddy was still able to go to his appointment.
I like this story because Buddy clearly displays that he has a charitable spirit with him. He was able to hear the will of God. He acted upon that, having trust in God, and God was able to use Buddy to help this family in need. Then Buddy, not only that, he helped the family and he still was able to get to his appointment and did not miss anything. And so it is a good example of hearing the will of God and having trust in God.
I have another example from the Mary Sisterhood, and I am just going to read from, they have a nice little book called Realities. Another one. I like that last part, “like the birds of Heaven, we lived from His hand, trusting solely in His fatherly love and care.”
Prayer, asking God to reveal His will, and this accompanied by faith, as the Mary Sisterhood, they rely on prayers on prayers and faith, their trust continues to grow and the fruits of the Spirit were always present. And the same for us, when we follow the will of God, this trust in the Lord comes from the faith we put in Him. Simply, we gain and strengthen our trust through our works of faith in following him.
This scripture here, from Ephesians 2:8, 9, and 10, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” It is grace or charity that saves. In fact, this charity is a gift of God... charity... gift... it comes not from serving yourself, but serving God through faith, trusting Him.
And where there’s faith, there must be hope. How can we have a sincere heart, with real intent, unless we have hope. And that reminds me of that scripture which is in Moroni 10, Right in the beginning of Moroni 10. So with charity, with faith, hope, we can have the will of God be manifested unto us. And then a little further down in Moroni chapter 10, With this message that Moroni gives us, we can see that we must have charity in order to be saved in the Kingdom of God. We need to have charity to hear the will of God. And of course, we cannot have charity without having faith and hope, they work together; charity, faith, hope, have to be all working together. I suppose each one plays their own part in charity, whether it’s called charity or faith or hope, if it’s in God, they’re all part of the same hoop, the same ring, the same circle. And back to Moroni 10, “By the grace of God, ye are perfect in Christ.” By having the grace the God, by having grace as He had it, by being charitable as He was charitable, ye are perfect in Christ. So what is this grace, what is this charity that we must do; the commandments, the virtues, the sayings of the Lord; do them, follow the Lord and give the gift of God, be one with charity, and we will hear the will of God. And I share these words with you in the name of Yeshua Messiah, amen.
Selflessness
Will: Hello everyone. Today, I would like to talk about selflessness. Everybody sort of knows what selflessness is, it is the opposite of selfishness and everybody knows that being selfish is a bad thing. If it was not, we would not have so many people trying to say it was a good thing. But what does it really mean to be selfless? Well, the word itself is kind of self explanatory. It is to think of yourself less, think of yourself less often, to focus on yourself less, to do things only for yourself less. And of course by less, I mean like the original meaning of the word, like sugarless. To have something that is sugarless, it means that there is practically no sugar in it. It does not mean that it is slightly less sugar than the average. Obviously so selflessness means to focus on yourself not at all, forget about yourself.
Of course that can be rather difficult. I, well not quite recently, but a few months ago I read a story on the internet, a fictional story, but it was about someone who had a number of mental health issues, one of them was that they had a very difficult time caring or empathizing with other people. They were extremely self-centered, they only cared about people in their tiny little circle of friends and family because they were theirs. It was very difficult for them to care about anyone else. Anyone else that they met, they did not care if they lived or died or were happy or anything; they did not care whatsoever. And of course, this caused them to have a number of problems when they were younger and they were doing things only for themselves, they got into bad situations, they did a lot of bad stuff. They got into drugs, they hurt people, they did a lot of damage. Eventually, in the story, they basically hit rock bottom and they had to make a choice. They made the choice that they were not happy living like this and they wanted to change, they wanted to get better. So they went back to their family, they went to their friend who actually ran an addiction clinic, in order to get better, to get off the drugs, and actually try to start getting better.
As the story goes on, as they start getting cleaned up and they start helping out at the clinic and just may help out in the kitchen, or they help out with fixing a few things, or just helping out with the other patients, and they slowly start working and they struggle and they start working and they start talking to the other people, they start getting to know them, they actually start caring about these other people. And as they start to care about them, they realize all the damage that they have already done. They start to feel very guilty about the all the harm that they have caused. They struggle with how they could ever possibly make up for all the damage they did. The truth is, is that you can never really make up for all the damage you did. You can certainly try and fix a lot of stuff, but you can never make up for all the damage that you have done.
What actually helped the main character realize this was that they thought of their friend that ran the addiction clinic, and he has helped hundreds of people, saved many lives, does that mean that he is able to take a baseball bat and go beat some people up and hurt other people, as long as he does not go over that number of the people that he has helped? It is pretty obvious that it does not work like that.
So what the main character eventually realizes was that even the guilt that they felt was as a result of being selfish and self-centered because the desire to make up for what you have done is still focusing on you. To guilt over your sins is still focusing on your sins, it is still all about you. What the main character eventually figured out was to take themselves out of the picture entirely. Say there is now this you-shaped robot where you are and it can still everything that you can do and all this other stuff, so how can this robot help somebody right now, in this situation you are in right now. How can this robot help however many people you can. And it works, once they take themselves out the picture, they are no longer focused on their own guilt and they can actually go out and help people, help other people who are in situations similar to themselves. You can still work on fixing the damage that you did, but without focusing on the guilt or the depression, that anxiety that comes with that guilt.
It is the same thing with the sons of Mosiah. They said that they were the vilest of sinners, they did so much damage to the church and the people of God and the Nephites and when they did eventually repent, they went around for, what was it, 10 years? I forget exactly, their first ministry among the Nephites. They spent 12 years just going among the Nephites and repairing what they did. And of course, they could not repair it all, they had plenty of people who spat on them, smacked them, and said, no way, we do not want anything to do with you or the church or anything ever again. And of course, they did not focus on their guilt, they did not collapse and say, “Oh woe is me, I will never make up for my sins!” Instead they said, “Well, let’s go over to those people over there who keep trying to kill us, let’s go convert them!” and spent another 14 years among them, because it was never about them, it was all about who could they help.
Of course, even helping people can be a selfish act. Remember the hypocrites who pray on the street corners and they want to be seen of men, seen to pray or seen to fast, you know, that is their reward, they are doing it for themselves. Or the rich man who gives lots of money to the church so that he can be known for his generosity.
The Lord says that my people shall have no poor among them, not because the rich just give the money to the poor, because that is still selfish, because now the poor are dependent on you for support. Rather, you are supposed to all work together, humble yourself and actually help with what they need.
I am sure you have all heard the saying, give a man a fish and he will eat for the day, teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life. I thought that was a pretty good saying. Say that there are 2 fishermen, the first one is a pretty good fisherman, he does good business, he catches plenty of fish, and every day, he takes half of his catch and he goes and he gives it to the poor, he either sells it and gives the money to the poor, or he makes a nice big fish fry for everyone to enjoy, and he does this every day for the rest of his life. So of course he is feeding people, he is still helping people, so the Lord blesses him with a good catch plenty of times, so he has always got more food to feed people. And people see him; he is always giving food to the poor, so everybody is always willing to do business with him, so he does pretty well. And he continues to feed the poor for the rest of his life.
The second fisherman maybe does not make quite as much money as the first guy, so instead of feeding the whole community, he finds one guy who needs a job, and he hires him. He teaches him how to fish, he introduces him to a decent little apartment that he can rent, and he teaches him everything that he knows. He teaches him the trade, teaches him where to sell the fish, everything that he needs to know. And of course, once he has learned the trade, now you have got two people working on this fishing boat, and so they hire a third person, and he does the same thing, he teaches him everything that he possibly can, gets him going, and so they hire a fourth person. Of course this fourth person get super seasick on a fishing boat and he cannot work out there, so instead, the first 3 fishermen, they invest and they help this guy set up a little fish processing place, just a place that cleans and guts and packs all the fish away, ready for transport to sale or whatever they need to be. So he gets his own little shop and of course the other fishermen are bringing him their catch every day, so he has got plenty of work, and he hires a second person; a second person who comes in starts helping clean the fish. And they are doing pretty well so other fishermen come in and also use that fish cleaning place. Then they get together and they hire another person, or they help another person buy a truck, and so they have another person who is trucking, shipping the fish back and forth, where ever they need to be.
Each person that they hire, they inform what their mission is, what they are trying to do. They tell them that this is not about making a whole lot of money or getting rich, this is about helping everyone get a job. Everyone is able to get a job, earn the money that they need and provide for their family. And everybody that he hires, that is the policy of this whole company, is to be able to employ as many people as possible.
So, they keep going. They hire another truck driver, and they help someone else get another fishing boat, so help them get started, they help someone get a little fish and chips shop up and running, or a restaurant, and sooner or later, the entire poor community, everybody in that community has a job, and is able to work and provide for their families.
And now, this whole group of people, this whole community, is all working together in this business, or related businesses, or whatever they need, and they all get together, and they say, well in this city over here, there is another community with a lot of poor people or homeless people or whatever, let us invest in a business there and get a business going there, with the same rules as this one, with the same goal and purpose, and get everybody there jobs as well. And of course because it is a whole community all pooling together and working together, they do not have to start with one guy, they can start up a whole company, or invest in a company that is already there, or whatever they need to, and it will get off the ground way faster.
Once the 2 fishermen, the first one and the second one, both of them get old and they die and they go before the Lord and the Lord is like, well, this is your life, look at what you have done. The first fisherman is like, I fed this whole community of people for my entire lifetime, but you know, after he died, they are still poor, they have not learned or grown or anything. The second fisherman, he can look back and he sees multiple thriving communities, or business, or churches, or whatever have you that he started, all working together and starting up even more. The first one certainly fed plenty of people, but he was always only focused on himself. He was always only focused on what he could do. The second one focused on others and he lifted them up to be able to help far more people and do even better than he could ever do by himself.
That is what the Lord wants for us, to grow and become even better than Him. So to become like Him, we have to do the same thing and help others to grow as well. The Lord tells us to be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves. Doing exactly what that second fisherman did, is how rich people get rich, except they are always focused on making money and making the biggest businesses they possibly can. If you turn that to the Lord’s purpose, you are able to accomplish the Lord’s purpose instead of accomplishing the world’s purpose.
In Matthew chapter 18, verse 19 and 20, it says, It does not say where one guy stands better than everybody else around him that is where God is, there are multiple people.
The difference between the two fishermen is one of them was focused on himself; he was like, I can do this, I can feed this community, this is what I can do. And the other one was focused on everybody, you can come and do this, and you can come and do this, and you can come and do this, and we can all get together and we can all do this. It is not like the first one is a bad guy, like he was still feeding the whole community, but he had that little bit of pride in him that made him focus on himself more than everyone else. Whereas the second one was humble enough to value what other people could do, more than what he himself alone could do.
I kind of look at it as … I am sure you have all heard of the parable of the talents, where the lord had 3 servants and he gave one of them 5 talents, which is a measure of gold, another one he gave 2 talents, and the other one he gave 1. The man with 5 talents worked hard and he got 5 more talents. The one with 2 talents worked hard and he got 2 more talents. The one with 1 talent, he went and he buried it out in the ground and then when the lord came back, he gave just a single 1 back to him. The lord told the last one, you did not do anything with it, you did not even give it to the money lenders to lend out and I could get the interest back. The way I see it is the man who was feeding people, he did not go and bury his talent, but he also did not double it. Instead, maybe he was the one who went out and gave it to the money lenders to just collect the interest. He kept people alive to give them their own chances.
I actually thought of this just at the last hour before the meeting, but imagine if you take the parable of the talents and instead of these servants that are over these measures of gold, the first guardian angel is in charge over 5 people, the second guardian angel is over 2 people, the third guardian angel is over the 1 person, and the first guardian angel goes and he gets the 5 people and they are all good and working together and he brings in 5 more people that also are all being good and working together and being selfless and such. The same thing with the second one, he has got 2 people and he brings in 2 more people who are willing to join up and work together. The last one hides his guy way over in a cabin in the middle of the woods, no contact with anybody, he is like, “See, he’s still good!” But it is like, you did not even let him find a wife and have children.
So, to increase your talents, the only way to really do that is to bring other people in, and you cannot do that if you are the special one, if you are the highest. If you have the need to be the highest and most important one in whatever group, then you are never going to be able to bring people up to be just like you, well, I mean you can, but that is not like a good thing. You are never going to be able to bring other people to the Lord if you have got that pride, if you are self-centered like that. You have to be selfless and humble; those two things go hand in hand, just like pride and selfishness. The only way to really increase your talents is to bring other people, because one talent is as valuable as another talent, one person is as valuable as another, so the only way to increase your talent is to bring more people in, bring more people and get them to work together just like the Lord wants us to.
That is all I had so I say these things in the name of Yeshua Messiah, amen.
Understanding The Scriptures
Ted: Today I wanted to talk a little bit about reading the scriptures, reading the Bible and the Book of Mormon and things like that, and how to make it a little easier to understand, and how to get the most out of it. The way I thought about it is I thought about comparing it to a textbook, a math workbook, for example. I do not know about all of you, but I have dealt with those and used those things and you go through the book and you solve the problems through the book and then you can check your answers at the end. But how many people take the math workbook and start at the beginning and read through it, bup, bup, bup, buppa, read through everything, read through the end where the answer sheets are and everything and now they are done... that is not exactly how it works and yes you can do that, it is perfectly possible, but you are not going to be learning the math, you are not going to be solving the math problems, you are not going to be working out the problems, and you may, after looking at the answers in the back of the book, you may know a few of the answers to the questions in the book, but you are not going to know the formulas and solutions, or the way to provide solutions on other math questions that may have not been in the book. So instead, you use the math book as the math book was intended, which means you start at the beginning of the book, and you have your pencil and whatnot, or your little notebook, and the math book, well good math books anyway, will start out with a few examples and a description on how to solve the problem. You know, it will tell you that say 2 plus 2 is 4 and then it will tell why that equals that, it is because the sum of both numbers presented equals the answer. Of course the further you work in a math book, or whatever school book you happen to have, the more and more advanced the questions get as you learn. They are also a bit repetitive, but that is what helps it stick in your mind, so you learn the actual formula and not just the answers to the specific questions presented.
See the point of the Bible, or the Book of Mormon or what have you, is not actually just to give you answers to the questions that you may have, or the questions that are presented in the Bible or the Book of Mormon, instead, it is done a little differently, it is done like the math book where it presents a problem and present the formula to find the solution to the problem. Of course, it is up to you, the reader, to actually work out what the solution is, and just like the math book, the scriptures kind of are repetitive to some degree, but they also go deeper and deeper and deeper, the more times you go over them.
In Matthew 7, it says, and that is Matthew 7, verse 7 to 8, I am sure all of you knew that. That scripture is pretty straight forward, but it is also a little bit repetitive if you are not looking very deep into the scripture, because it kind of says the same thing 3 times at first glance, not quite, but close, but if you break it down a little more, look at a little bit of the context of what was going on and why it was said, you can find that there is always a reason that it repeats itself. In the way I look at it, it seems when says to ask, ask and it shall be given you, it says to ask because, well, number one, you have to decide that you want it, you want an answer or you want something; you have to decide that that is what you are going to pursue and so you have to ask for it. God is not going to force anything on you that you have not asked for. To seek, that is the second part, and it means to actually do the things that you are shown when you ask; otherwise, asking and just getting the information is rather pointless, it is faith without works, in a sense. To knock means to do it for the right reasons. So you have to ask, which means to actually want it and pursue the answer; and to seek, which means to actually do the things that are answered to you so when it is answered or when you find the information, you actually apply it and do it; and then to knock, it is almost the reason behind why it is working, why it is being opened unto you, is because it is the reason why you are doing it, it is because you want to help someone or you want to improve, you want to help more people.
Let us go back to that math book kind of example. When you are a young child, the way it was with me anyway, you are told or shown to read the New Testament. It is rather straight forward, it is rather repetitive, it presents a problem and presents the answer. It is like watching a giant purple dinosaur sing on TV, 2 plus 2 is 4, over and over and over again until it is drilled into your mind. It is really only for the young children who cannot quite understand the formulas, but they need to know the most basic steps. Then when you are a little older, of course, you go back and you start reading, for example, the Bible from the beginning in the Old Testament, which is just a mess of questions and it gives you a question and it does explain the answers, it gives you things where it presents problems, like for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as it describes their lives, it presents problems and shows the answer how they proceeded and got through it. Some of them did really well, some of them did not do as well, but it is still telling a story and giving you information as the reader. But pretty soon after that, after Moses leads some folks out of Egypt, it starts getting a little more intense and a little more confusing; it is not as straight forward. It starts giving you, say, a part of the question, and then the answer for example, and then it is up to you to try to figure out what the other part of the initial question was.
An example… (from the other room “Algebra?”)… I meant an example from the Bible. Well, there are just so many in the Old Testament, take anything, take the story of David. Initially, he starts out as a relatively good person and a decent leader and he has this talent for kind of repenting of the dumb things he does, and he does a lot of them throughout his life, just an amazing amount of dumb things, but he does have a talent for repenting from some of them. He does some pretty nasty things later on and it may have just been the fact that he was the one that was having the records recorded at the time, and no one was willing to say that he was not doing everything up to par, but you get the idea. It says this is how to be good and what to do to be good, to follow God’s commandments so closely, then it shows the result, you know, David ended up helping get his country out of a bind, and things like that. But then it also gives you and answer and it says of all the bad things David did and it gives the wrong answer. It is then, at that point, up to you, the reader, to use the information that you got from the rest of the book, the formulas. We know the 10 commandments are pretty straight forward and we know that David broke a number of them, not one, not two, not even three, a number of them. But the interesting thing is it gives us the wrong answer at the end of the book because of reasons, and it is up to us to find what was the right answer and what the solutions to the problems that were presented should be, or are, from what we know.
That is one of the big, big perks of reading the Old Testament is it gives you a lot and a lot of examples of problem solving. It gives you a lot of chances to solve these problems that it presents in many different ways.
It is kind of a bit tricky at times and that, but again, that is why when you are young, you start in the New Testament and you learn the basics, then you start from the Old Testament and read through that a little later, when you can understand it. Then, of course, you can go through the New Testament afterwards and check your answers, and you will find out that a lot of the solutions that the book listed were wrong, especially in the Old Testament; there are a few odd ones in there.
Another thing I wanted to kind of touch on was the context of a lot of the Old Testament, it has been translated so many times, more times than the New Testament has been translated of course. The New Testament has been translated 4 or 5 times specifically. So this other thing I wanted to just mention a little bit and talk a little bit about was context, because of course through translation, things get lost and you have to remember that in a lot of the Old Testament, context was a big deal to understand what they were talking about, because not only is it so old and so small amounts of the actual stories and what not that we actually get, it has been compressed and translated and then compressed and translated so many times.
I did a little experiment and I took a basic word math problem, very straight forward word math problem, and I ran it through Google Translate into whatever modern language that Google had, I went from English to Hebrew to Arabic to Latin, and then back to English again, so that is only about 4 actual translations, and that is all in modern language that people use today.
The first question I put through was a math word problem, and I will read it here, It is pretty straight forward. I translated that through Hebrew, Arabic, Latin and back to English and it is very similar, it says, There are a few problems in it; you can still understand almost the same words, because it was a very simple problem with specific times listed, like, for example, the 10 commandments in the Old Testament, they are very straight forward, and so as many times as you can translate it, it will probably stay pretty close to what the original 10 commandments would have been.
Then I took a sentence that depended a little more on context, on societal, not quite, but societal context, and I translated it through the same 4 languages and this sentence is, If I told one of you, you would know to meet me at the local Subway sandwich restaurant for lunch, because of context. I translated that through those same 4 languages and it says, Suddenly, it says something very different from what you wanted to say, and a lot of the Old Testament was written by people who were depending a great deal on their specific context of their times, and so we do not get all the information and it is up to us to kind of decipher what it means.
A fun little example, to match a scripture to that last example of meet me at the Subway, was in the book of Judges, in the story of Samson, the Nazirite. We all know the story that he picked up the jaw of donkey, in so many words, and slew a thousand men with it. That is pretty straight forward what it tells you, that he may have found, well there is quite a bit in the story there, it says he found a new jaw bone of a donkey and put it forth in his hand and took it and slew a thousand men therewith. An interesting thing I have thought about in the past and other people have thought about and things, is that that sentence kind of depends on context of what you might have been talking about at the time. It does not necessarily mean that he actually took the skeletal remains of a donkey and beat up a bunch of people with it, it could have been that he took a particular tool or implement that was just nicknamed donkey jaw bone because it was shaped like that. You can imagine an old sickle for harvesting grain or one of those forward angle machetes that people use for chopping wood, both of those slightly resemble the shape of a jaw bone of a donkey or a horse or what not, and so it very well could have been referring that he picked up just a farm implement and used that. That is just an example of one of the things where context is kind of dependant on when it was written and then translated, it messes everything up.
So it is kind of up to us to figure out what it means. It is pretty straight forward on how to do that, again, you have to go through the solution that it gives you because the Bible does provide formulas to solve problems. It is the one thing is does do pretty well, at least in the New Testament and early in the Old Testament; it actually gives you several examples of people who did things right for the most part, and the New Testament has Yeshua and He did most things right, all things right technically, but that is being technical.
So it comes back to that same scripture in Matthew, You have to ask because you have to want it, you have to seek meaning you have to do something about it, because again, faith without works is dead. The particular quote from that is James 2:26, And you have to be knocking for the right reason, the reason it will be opened is because you are doing it for the reason, the reason being that you want to help other people and improve, because you want to be righteous, not because you want the reward or not because you just want to be seen on the street corners, like Will said, and you not just giving money to the church because you want the church to be happy with you.
So it all kind of falls back to that same scripture in Matthew, but if you use that system of using the formulas that are presented in the book to solve the problems, then you can ask the questions that you might be having in your life, the problems that you might be having, and you actually use the Bible, for example, to solve the problems. It becomes an effective tool and is no longer something that is maybe just inspiring or something that just lists a bunch of things that happened; now it is a functional tool for improving yourself, and especially for solving problems that you are having, now that you know how to work out the context and work out the solutions and to recognize when it is not exactly as straight forward as it said it was, like in David’s example.
That is all I had for that, and I say these things in the name of Yeshua Messiah, amen.
Announcements
Joseph: All right, thank you very much. You know, we have heard a lot of very good things already today and a lot of very good advice; it is definitely well worth listening to and some good thoughts to consider. I would like to stop and pause for a moment right here that we can talk a little bit about some announcements, a little bit of updates of things going on in the Church and things like that. We have been doing some updating on the Church web sites, so feel free to go check those out, and there is one announcement that I would like to make. A few weeks ago, the Church received a revelation that we must take care of our poor. The Lord has said that it is up to us to take care of our poor. Now everybody knows the teachings of the Saviour were to always take care of the poor, take care of the widows, take care of those who could not feed themselves or clothe themselves, visit the sick and afflicted, those in prison, and help out. Every time He gave advice, the Lord said: sell all thou hast, give it to the poor, then come and follow Me. And we received revelation that the Church is responsible to take care of the poor that are among us and that if we did not, then the curse of the poor would be then placed upon us. That means we would have to suffer the same kind of consequences that the poor have. That does not sound like the Lord is trying to threaten us or punish us or anything else, what He is trying to say is eventually, we are going to be poor, and we are going to have to go through the same things that they go through, but if we work together, we will not have to go through those things, because we will all be helping each other; which that type of unity is always what the Lord is after. The gospel is to take care of each other; that is the main gospel message of all time: is to take care of each other, to love each other, to love God with all our heart, might, mind and strength, and to love each other, take care of each other like we take care of ourselves, that type of taking care.
So the Church responded immediately and we set up a new donation platform for those who would like to share their tithing or make donations and stuff like that. We set up the platform with a company that does not charge extra or take their cut out of that donation. So we set up with a company that is very specific to make sure all of your donations actually make it to the Church, to the ministry. The donations are used very carefully to feed the poor, clothe the naked, house the destitute, provide medical care for the sick and afflicted. And to make sure everybody knows, nobody gets paid from this. This money is sacred; it is used for the things that the Lord said. The entire program is also subject to audit, it is done legally and lawfully and it is actually set up so that it can be audited very easily. The Church web sites are being updated with links and things like that to that platform and it is very important that we understand that. I know a lot of churches use that money for their own gain and stuff like that, and it is very important to realize that that money is going to those who are in need.
We would really love to thank everybody; we would like to thank everybody who has donated already. And most especially, we would like to thank those who do not even have enough to live on, and yet you have donated! And you are as the widow who gave all she had, you have given the widow’s mite and the Lord will bless you. And I would like to say, please do not, to those people who really do not have, do not feel pressured at all into donating, especially donating so much, you barely have enough to live on. But if you do feel moved to do so, please do so, but there is nobody pressuring you, and even the Lord is not pressuring you. So thank you very much for all of your kindness, all of your charity, everything. But let us work together, let us work together and let us make sure everybody has, and that nobody will suffer. And again, thank you very, very much.
We have had some really good lessons already, some great thoughts to think about, and I think maybe we should just jump right in and move right along. We have 4 more speakers, and so let us start with say Bill, then myself, then Kevin, then John will close us out. Does that sound good to everybody?
Covenant Blessings
by Bill Berrett
Bill: Last conference I spoke about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. I told about an angel named Moroni who had appeared to a seventeen year old farm boy in upper state New York named Joseph Smith in 1823. Today I am going to mention some more information that relates to that event.
In 1842 Joseph Smith wrote what is called the Wentworth Letter. In this article Joseph describes more of what happened when Moroni first appeared to him in September of 1823. This is what Joseph Smith wrote: So, God sends an angel to a newly called seventeen year old prophet in the Americas in 1823 to tell us what God was going to do with His work here on Earth.
Today I am going to discuss this part: That the "covenant which God made with ancient Israel was at hand to be fulfilled." We know of this covenant. It is the same covenant given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is the covenant which is taught in the Book of Mormon. We are here on Earth seeking these covenant blessings including the connection with our fathers.
We are in the process of preparing an edition of the Book of Mormon for the Family of Yeshua. In the preface to this edition it says this: The Angel Moroni taught Joseph Smith by quoting scriptures most of which were prophecies from the Old Testament. Moroni quoted some from the Book of Malachi which is the last book in the Old Testament. Some of the scripture language quoted by Moroni differed from how it read in the Bible.
Here are some parts of the scriptures that Moroni quoted to Joseph Smith: Moroni also quoted this from Malachi chapter 4: Remember that Moroni is the angel who showed Joseph Smith where to obtain the records which were then translated into the Book of Mormon.
These prophecies from the Book of Malachi must be important. Why? Well, for one, when the Lord, Jesus Christ, appeared after His resurrection on the American continent, He, the Lord, quoted these same scriptures from the Book of Malachi to the Book of Mormon peoples. (3 Nephi 11:3-4, p. 503) Who are these sons of Levi? These are they who shall hold the priesthood —the priesthood which would come to us by the hand of Elijah. These are they who shall make an offering unto the Lord in righteousness.
And so, an angel sent from God announces the latter-day work. The preparatory work of the restoration of the fulness of the gospel. The Lord's gospel will be restored so that the "promises made to the fathers will be planted in the hearts of the children." That is us, we are those children. If you are listening to this message you are one of Father's children in whose heart Father is placing His promises. This is so our hearts shall turn to our fathers.
Let's consider more of the language from 3 Nephi 11. It says: This statement can be applied to us. It suggests that we "offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness." What does this mean? To me, it sounds like what was taught by the prophet Amaleki which was spoken in the Book of Omni: We give the Lord our broken hearts and our contrite spirits. This is how we offer an offering unto the Lord in righteousness. Father has given us the Way. We offer our whole lives to Him, a complete dedication to Him and His Ways—for He is the Way, the only Way.
Let me just clarify here that Joseph Smith did start the work of restoration, the preparatory work necessary for us to now receive the fulness of the covenant blessings. We have learned in our previous church conferences from Joseph Rockwell himself, about the many experiences he has had with the Lord Yeshua. These experiences qualify him to teach us how we must receive these same blessings.
The initial Joseph Smith restoration attempt, which was initially controlled by Gentiles has now graduated to the great and marvelous portion of the restoration. The Lord's work is now being fully established by His servant, the repentant House of Israel.
And so, we know: That we have the same covenant that Father made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This work comes to us in fulfillment of ancient covenants. We have the Book of Mormon so that we might know the covenants of the Lord unto the House of Israel.
We can have confidence and rejoice that we can follow the Lord's path. We can do it. We got this. It is as easy as loving the Lord and keeping the commandments. I like our odds if we set our minds to it. I pray in the Name of the Lord that we can do this. Amen.
Learning New Doctrine
by Joseph Rockwell
Joseph: Well Brothers and Sisters, I have an experience to talk about this evening. I wanted to express how much that Heavenly Father loves and each and every one of us and I wanted to express how so many times we kind of get down on ourselves when we think we made a mistake and all of that, and we think that sometimes maybe we get a little discouraged and we think maybe God is not going to want us there in Heaven because we made so many mistakes and that sort of thing, and I want to assure, I want to share an experience with everyone that will help us understand that Heavenly Father looks at things a little different. He looks at our potential. He looks at what we could become, and He works very hard to help us to become the best that we can become. And for Heavenly Father, He does not always see the mistakes so much that we make, as much as he sees how we are developing and how we are become, how we improve. He loves it when His children improve, just like every parent here loves to see their child improve.
I have told this story before; I am only going to give a little synopsis of it; but one time when my daughter was around 5 years old, we got her a little bicycle, and we lived out in the countryside, so the ground was not flat and smooth, it was very rough and rocky, even the driveway was rocky, and it was very hard to find any place to learn to ride a bicycle, but she wanted to learn to ride a bicycle. And so, we got her a little bicycle, we got her the little training wheels on the bicycle and she would get on her bicycle and start pedaling and we would push her along until she got the hang of it. But because the ground was so rocky, the training wheels did not help, they kept getting caught on all the rough ground; so she demanded that we take those training wheels off that bicycle, they were stopping her from riding on the rough ground. Now I tried to explain that they help keep you up and then help you from falling over, but no, no, they keep getting caught and you have to take them off, so we took them off. Now that little girl, 5 years old you have to remember, is out on rock on top of rock and trying to ride this bicycle. And I would be out there for a while until I got tired of holding the bicycle up and going everywhere and she loved it. But then sometimes I get tired and say, “I gotta go sit down here.” And so I would try very hard, I would just sit on the porch and watch her, and she would try, she would go to the only smooth little spot on the rocks, and she would try. She would pedal 2 or 3 times, fall over, and of course, the ground being very rocky, she would have scratches on her head, on her hands, on her elbow, knees, and the bicycle would get caught in a hole and twist and she would end up with her stomach on the handle bar; it was just a horrible sight. But that girl would be out there for hours, trying it again and again and again. At the end of a couple of hours, she would come into the house and she had blood everywhere. Blood would be coming down her face and on her cheeks, her hands were all scarred up, her elbows were just torn to pieces and her legs and knees were just in terrible, terrible shape. And so we would have to wash all the blood off and clean all of these wounds, and there could easily be 20 wounds on her, and it did not matter; the next day, she would be out there, doing it again, all day long trying to pedal that bicycle across rocks. Finally, she would pedal and she would get 2 or 3 times around on the pedals and she would fall over and land on her head, and then she would jump up so excited though, “Daddy, did you see me? I got 3 pedals in!” And she would get more and more, till finally, one day she rode down a little rock and she was able to avoid the other rocks and holes, and she kept going, and she went just a little way and then before she finally fell over, she must have gone a whole 10 yards, and she fell over and she jumped up and she screamed, “Did you see? Did you see?” And of course what did I do now, I am not going to yell here, but I jumped up and I yelled, and I yelled at the Heavens, and I said, “Did you see that? Did you see my daughter?” Because I was so excited that achieved it. But this is days of falling down, of for real having many scars and cuts and bruises and damages to her body that would seem insane, but all I could see is that this girl kept progressing, kept getting better and better and better.
Now can you imagine any father not being happy with the progress of their child in that situation? Can you imagine? Would you ever jump up and say to your daughter, “You fell down, I’m never going to let you ride a bicycle again!” Would you do that? Would you ever take that bicycle and throw it away to keep your own child from progressing? Would any father do that? Or would you be thrilled that your daughter, even through all the hurts and all the pains, continued to progress and actually succeeded? Would you not be rooting for her and cheering for her? How dare we ever thing that Heavenly Father is not like that. How could we ever possibly think that He would throw us away because we fell off our bicycle? What kind of a cruel situation is that? Heavenly Father is not like that. When we make mistakes, He has a tear that comes down His cheek. When we do something wrong, He is very sad. When He sees us do something right, when He sees us, in other words, when someone yells at us and we respond in kindness, He cheers! He shouts and cheers, “Did you see My child?” When our Heavenly Father sees us make a mistake, it hurts Him like any of us are hurt. He has no desire to throw us away. His only desire is to help us improve. And when he watches us get back up, brush ourselves off, and learn to be humble, learn to be meek, learn to be patient, learn to be kind, He cheers; He cheers for us, He is so happy. Our Heavenly Father looks at us, at our progress.
Now this is not to make anybody complacent and say, ”Oh, I’m trying.” He did not like our trying; He likes our practice, where we actually do improve. We have to actually put in some effort and improve. And our Heavenly Father absolutely cheers for us and adores for us, to do better, and always when we succeed, He cheers.
Now when I was young, I was taught terrible things about God, I was taught that He was a mean person and that He was an extortionist, that He would punish you if you did not do right, but how many of us would punish our child for falling off a bicycle; we never would. And I was taught that God would... like He was very nepotistic... He would reward those who were at His feet and licking His feet. I was taught that that was the only kind of a person He was and I thought, this is a terrible person; this is a terrible God, because that is what I was taught. And so I was very afraid of that type of God; I was very afraid that all He wanted to do was punish you and torture you for eternity, send you to hell and all that stuff, and I hated that idea. And I lived through a difficult time, a little bit, when I was a child, and I was getting to the end, where I just wanted to give up. And so I actually started praying; I started praying so much. I wanted to get away from this God who was this mean person that would send you to hell. And finally, I got up my courage and I called out in prayer, I even spoke out loud, but I was so afraid, I spoke out loud that, “Is there any other God up there who understands, and who will be kind?” I really wanted to find a nice God; and so I asked. Of course right after asking, “Is there a good God up there?” I covered my head with my blanket, because I was too afraid of getting hit by lightening from that cruel God that actually I was told was always there. But eventually, I was able to ask again, and I wanted to find, I was begging to find a God of kindness, a God that wanted to help, a God that understood what it was like to be human, that understood that His children are just trying their best. And I promised that if that God would come, I would serve that God and I would be His servant forever. Now that is an important promise to remember here, but when I did call out in the desperation of my heart, and when I was willing to do anything and everything to have a better situation, in front of me, a veil of light appeared and a person came to the front of that light, and He introduced Himself as the Son of God, who was here to answer my prayer of finding a kind and understanding God. I asked Him why He was so terrible, why He was a God of extortion, why He wanted to send people to hell if they did not do what He wanted them to do. I asked Him why He would only reward and protect the popular, the rich, the talented, you know, all those chosen people; why He would protect the perpetrators and why He would punish the victims. Now, remember what I was taught, even though I had cried out for a kind God, and He came, I still asked Him why He was the mean God. But He told me, that Man who introduce Himself as the Son of God said that He was not that type of God, that He was none of those things, but that He was the God that I cried out for in desperation; that He was the God who knew what it was like to be human, who knew what it was like to be a victim, who had endless compassion on those who sought for peace and love and kindness. He taught me that He was there to help the victims, that he was the God of the oppressed. He taught me that He is a God of kindness and always wants to help people; that He is always trying to give the best possible advice that He can to help as many people as He can.
I am reminded of the scripture, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,” everybody knows that one, “That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” A very famous scripture. I learned that God actually did love us, and I learned that it was not the Son of God who did anything bad, but it was always us who called out for ... because I was taught about this crazy, mean God ... that is who I kept praying to, and I always called out for that evil, devil God. But people rarely called out to the kind God, to the nice God, to the loving God. I mean when you call out to a God and you think He is going to hurt you, which God are you praying to. So I had to learn to call out to the God who actually loves us and wants to help us, and so that is who I started calling out to. And if we think of God as a punishing God, or as a rewarder of the wicked, then that is who we are praying to. If we think of the Son of God, who came to show us love and peace and help us to overcome everything, then that is who will answer our prayers.
The Lord showed up to me many times again after that, after that time, and He continued to teach me many things. Mostly it was to correct the things that I had been taught and mostly it was to teach me that he was a person who was very kind. And one of the things that stood out was very important, remember I said that I promised that I would be His servant forever, that kind of thing; one of the things was that He did not want me to be His slave; Hhe did not want that, what I had been taught that that other God wanted. This God, the Son of God, said He was not looking for that. He wanted to teach me everything that He could so that we could become like Him. Now this was a very big difference, an incredible contrast to that God that I was taught that was not a God; that was more of a devil. This was a very nice man, this was a man who had lived here on the earth; he knew what it was like to be persecuted; he knew what it was like to be hurt. This was an amazing God and He wanted to actually help us. And when He said this, that He did not want us to be a slave, He just wanted to help us become like Him; that day, it bound my heart to His, and I began from that time to be his disciple. From that moment on, I always sought for this God of love.
Now there were lapses, there were times when I would fall back into that fear belief of a God who is going to punish me. It took a long time to get that out of me and out of all my thinking, but I kept holding on to that belief of what He said, that He is not like that, that He is there to help us and bring us home; He is there to help us to become better; He is there to help us to overcome everything, and I held on to that, to that promise that He would never let go. And so I have called on Him many, many times, and He has always been there, you know, to comfort, to teach, to show me the better way. Remember the Lord said, So we have to get rid of this terrible false belief, that false doctrine that a loving Father is really going to throw away His children; He is not going to throw away His children. Just like we would never throw away our children, our Heavenly Father would never throw us away. So we have to get rid of that belief; it is not true. Father is there to help us, to guide us, to teach us, to give us good counsel and help us achieve our goals. His main interest is that we grow up to become like Him and help Him in His work; it is that we can find that same joy and that everlasting eternal joy that He has, that joy of helping people. But Father, He does not force any of us, but He wants to help us.
So we have to get rid of that false doctrine that God is bad; He is not. So we have to be very careful. A lot of the scriptures, we have to remember, were written that God is bad because you have to remember what John the Revelator taught; he warned us, he warned us that, he says there in Revelations chapter 13, You know, he was there to deceive us. He looked like a lamb, but the doctrine he taught was that of the dragon, that of Satan. So we have to be careful, because they changed the doctrine to make people believe that God was this God of extortion that would punish us; they changed it. But the Lord always taught that He is here to help us, to find the lost sheep, to bring them home. Heavenly Father does not send us to hell; He wants us to get out of hell. He warns us of the dangers of doing bad things; like if you have a fire and your child goes to reach for the fire, do you not grab the child and say, “No, no, no, do not touch the fire! It will burn you.” Every parent teaches the child to be careful. But if the child touches the fire, who burned the child’s hand? It was really the mistake of the child; it was not God who burned it, it was not the parent, it was not us who burned it; we are trying to keep them out. And Heavenly Father is trying to keep us away from things that we will regret later, so He always teaches us to do things in the best way.
So I have another scripture here, it says, Heavenly Father did not send the Son of God to punish us; He sent the Son of God so that we could be saved.
Now, it is hard though, is it not? Learning a new gospel? It was hard for me. It was very hard for me because I had always been taught of this terrible, mean God who would send you to hell and torture you and stuff like that. It was hard for me to learn this new gospel, even though the Lord stood there in front of me and taught, it was still hard for me to learn it; it was hard for me to understand; it was hard for me to believe it every time, because bad things kept happening, so it was hard for me to believe. But after a while, I started to believe because I started listening to what the Lord was saying and I started doing it, and the more I started doing it, the more my life became easier and easier.
Can I make an analogy? Let me make an analogy. How many people here know basketball? Everybody knows basketball? Does anybody like sports? We all like basketball; well, not all of us, but some of us; we love basketball, because it is fun, it is lots of fun to play running around with your friends and all of that. And of course, how many of us dream of being tall like Michael Jordon where we can dunk the ball, fly from halfway across the court; it is a lot of fun. But let me talk about it; how do you learn basketball? Let me make an analogy of basketball and the gospel. But let me be careful here. If you wanted to learn basketball, what do you have to do? You have to do things, like you have to learn the game; you have to learn how to bounce the ball; you have to do physical conditioning; you have to get your mind understanding everything; you have to learn different strategies, right? You have to master like the basics; you have to know how to dribble the ball, how to shoot, how to pass, how to defend. You have to be always practicing these things every day. You often learn how to do one position better than the others; it is good to learn as many as you can, but you often get very specialized, and you could learn a position and you become very good at that position. You have to listen to the coach and make sure you know all the offence and defence plays; you have to learn all the strategies. You have to understand how the different tactics, and teamwork, how to play as a team. You have to get strong, you have to learn how to get very strong; you have to run very fast; you have to be able to move and twist and turn; you have to make sure that you know how to move very quickly, and how to move around somebody. You have to take care of your health, right? You need to be healthy; you need to eat the right things; you need to drink the right things; you need to exercise and be strong. You need to work on your mind. You have to be very tough, because people challenge you all the time when you are interacting in those kinds of games. You have to be very tough and you have to be able to handle when people yell at you and stuff like that. You have to be able to visualize things and know what is going to happen ahead of time. You have to be able to think three moves ahead, or more, right? You have to have different ideas and plans and contingency plans. You have to practice a lot, so you join different types of leagues, so you can play with this type of basketball and the other type of basketball; you have to join local leagues and even try to get on better and better leagues. You have to go to special basketball camps and learn new things; you have to really learn how to work with a lot of different people. And of course, you have to find good coaches and good mentors; people that will help you, give you the right advice, and this is really like Heavenly Father. The coach can give you good advice, but you still have to do it. And Heavenly Father can give you good advice, but we still have to be the ones to do it. I mean if He tells you do not touch the fire and you go and touch it, it is not Him who burned us; it is us. So He gives us good advice, but we have to follow that advice. If we want that advice to work, we have to follow it. And this is like the coaches, they always tell us how to play and how to do well, and if we follow their advice, we get better, we improve; so it is always possible.
Now, I have a question for you though. This sounds good and everything, but I do have another question. What happens if you grow up learning basketball? You do not think it takes so many different steps to learn because you are doing it every day, you are growing with it. And what happens if we learned a religion when we were young and we learned it and we learned how to do that religion, and then when we get older, we find that the Lord is nice, that the Lord is kind, which is what happened to me. Now how easy is it to learn a new religion when you already had one? It becomes more difficult.
So let us do our basketball player. Let us say you are a basketball player, you learned basketball since you were little, what happens now if you want to learn something very different, like learn how to play hockey, what if you wanted to be a hockey player? Now in Canada, hockey players, that is the best sport. Now what if you wanted to learn to play hockey, but all you have ever played was basketball? How difficult would it be to switch? I mean a lot of parts are the same, like a lot of the mental stability and the emotional stability, they are the same, but physical skills are very different; it is quite different. You have to learn to skate; you have to learn to handle a stick; you have to learn to handle a puck. You have to learn to keep things on the level. You have to learn to be tough and be able... you have to learn to be pretty tough in hockey games. Hockey games are very, very violent.
But this is like learning a new religion; it is very hard. I mean the love and devotion are the same, but there are lots of new doctrines to learn. So for a basketball player who wants to switch to hockey, he is going to have to learn different types of agility, and hand-eye coordination. He is going to have to learn how to make pretty quick decisions and know where your other players, where your teammates are, because you have to pass a lot in hockey, you cannot hold onto the puck, because you get squished up against the boards if you do. And you have to learn how to do a lot of quick foot work, a lot of skating, forwards and backwards and crossover; you have to learn how to stop on a dime. You have to learn how to pass and shoot and all that kind of stuff, and so you have to really change the way you exercise. The way you exercise for basketball is going to be different than the way you exercise for hockey, because you really need a lot of power in your legs for hockey, and it is really hard. And so the endurance and stamina is developed differently, a little bit differently; the same principles, but a little different, right? You have a faster pace, it is a really fast-paced game, it is not slow, and you have to make some pretty quick decisions. And so, it is very high speed, skating you go very, very fast, a lot faster than just running, so you have to really pay attention to the speed change.
So a lot of these things are very different, right? You still do the same thing, you attend camps, you find good coaches and you really get familiar with the sport. You learn all these new rules, new regulations, because you have to use those; you cannot use the same rules that you used in basketball to play hockey. You have to actually learn the different rules. So there are a lot of things similar, but the doctrines are so different that it takes a long time to develop the skills to use those doctrines.
So this is like learning a new religion. At first it seems difficult and very intense, but with time and practice, you can transition. But you really have to forget about the rules for basketball; forget about those doctrines from the previous religion; and you have to actually start repeating and learning and learning and learning the new doctrines, the ones that actually accomplish the goal.
Now this is one of the hardest things that for myself, I had to learn, because one of the things I did not learn at first or I did not catch on to, I did not catch on to what the gospel actually was. Now this is the problem here; I really did not learn the gospel was. At first, I thought it was all these new doctrines that I was learning, but that is like if you do not know the game. If you say I am going to learn hockey and you are learning all these rules, but you have never seen the game, how are you going to know? If you are reading a book about all the rules to hockey, is your vision of what the game really looks like in real time, is that accurate? Maybe some parts would be, but if you have never seen the gospel, or if you have never seen hockey, how would you know what it actually looked like just from reading the rule book? How would you know how it was to be a hockey player, if you have never even put on skates? How do you know?
The gospel and the gospel doctrine, or the game of hockey and rules to hockey, can you see the difference? So the gospel is like the game of hockey, or basketball if you like that better, but the gospel is like the game of hockey, and the rule book are the doctrines to accomplish that game.
Okay, so you have the gospel, now what is the gospel? The gospel is actually to love and take care, actually take care, not just pretend in your mind or in your heart, but to actually take care of people; to work together; to be a family; that is the gospel, that is the gospel. All the doctrines are to accomplish that in the best way possible. And Heavenly Father has been around for a lot of eternities, and He knows the best doctrines, the best way to accomplish the gospel. The gospel, and the doctrines of the gospel, right? The game of hockey, and the rules of the game of hockey. So we have to understand here; how would you know?
So I would really like to help people to understand that the gospel itself is actually to operate, that all of us are to operate as a very large family; that we are supposed to love and care for each other. And all the new doctrines, they are not there to argue against or to fight against or anything else; those doctrines are given to us by the Lord as the best way to accomplish the gospel; that is what the doctrines are for. That is why we cannot argue against the gospel doctrines, because those doctrines are there, sent to us by a Lord who loves us, who wants us to accomplish the greatest things possible. And when He says it is better if you are humble, than guess what? It is better if we are. It accomplishes the gospel of loving and caring for each other. It is better if you are meek. I wonder why? It is the best way to get along and work together. We have to learn these new doctrines and not fight against them so much.
So a lot of new things in your spiritual family, because once you are baptized and everything, you are in a brand new spiritual family and there are lots of nice things, like I mean you have an area now to place your love and devotion and dedication and compassion and all of that. I mean you have a chance now to work with other people, to uplift them and to give them positive feedback, and you can help them in their efforts, right? This is not a gospel where we go and we say: Well, what are you guys going to do for me? This is a family where we have to live the gospel as: How do we help take care of everybody? That is the gospel! The gospel is not: How does everybody help take care of me? The gospel is: How do I help others? So this is an important difference.
So we have this brand new family and environment, and we learn to uplift each other. We learn to help each other; we learn to help each other with our goals. I mean, it is just like your family at home, only we have to think of this as our new home. And so the Family of God goes beyond our current skill levels in interacting with our family at home. And Heavenly Father is looking for us to improve, and He wants to help us improve and become better. And how do we get better? Well, if your family all of a sudden expands to 100 people, you have a lot more crazy family to interact with, and so you can have a lot more practice. But you also have a lot of people to help; a lot of chances to prove yourself; a lot of practice. So with dedication and practice, we all have the potential to become valuable to the Lord; to become an intrinsic part of the Lord’s family. Remember the Lord looks at us as our potential; He wants to see our potential. He likes seeing, because He can see into the future; and Heavenly Father can see your future and He can see everything that you can become. So He is not there to yell at you; He is not there to send you to hell; He is there like any good parent, cheering us on when we do well. When your child gets a good grade in school, what do you do? You cheer, right? When a child wins a sports game, you cheer! When child learns to ride a bicycle, we all cheer! It is the greatest thing. This is the way it is with our Heavenly Father, He cheers for us. When we learn to be patient, somebody who maybe used to frustrate us, but now we are very patient with, Heavenly Father cheers! He sees that we are being more kind. He sees that we are not getting frustrated. He sees that we reach out and we make peace. He can see when we are trying, and this is what He looks at. Now if we just sit there and do not do anything, and we say we are trying, that is not good, because we are not improving. Heavenly Father is still not willing to send us to hell, He still wants us to come back to Heaven. But, would it not be nice to show up in Heaven being good and overcoming all those things, that we never get angry anymore? It is true, it is true!
To have the results that Heavenly Father has, to have the results that the Son of God has; remember, He was here. He came here, He lived His life, and they tortured him. He was here; He knows how. And when He says that it is better to be humble, it is better to be kind, it is better never to get angry at anybody, then He knows, because He overcame everything, and He is coming back to help us. Remember, after He died, after He was resurrected, He started coming back to teach the apostles, to teach His disciples. He is still coming back to teach us, and as we follow the Lord, we become a new person; we start living the virtues that the Lord taught.
So what are some virtues? We can name off a few like patience and kindness and forgiveness, humility, meekness, peacemaking, temperance, diligence, charity, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, pure love, stuff like that, lots of things that we can practice and work on. So we can help each other to progress and not be overcome by so many temptations.
One of the advice that Father gave so that we are not overcome by temptations is that we are instructed to keep bad things out, like not only bad things out of our bodies, do not eat bad things or drink bad things of course, but also keep bad things out of our mind. Do not be listening to bad music, watching bad movies, stuff like that, keep those out. Do not put the bad emotions in our heart, do not be holding grudges, or anything else. If we do not do those things, then when a temptation comes, we are not going to fall. So we should be strong and make sure that we do not put bad into our minds or hearts; we should put good in there so we can get stronger.
So the gospel is really to take care of each other. It means we have to get along and work together; that is what it means, that is the gospel. And it is a very big blessing to be a part of the family of God because we can always ask for help from each other. When we need a little bit of help, we need a little bit of advice, we can talk to each other. And if we work together like that, nothing will be impossible, everything is possible. And to Father, it is all about progress. It is never about the mistakes, but it is about repenting as fast as possible and moving forward, right? Overcoming. The gospel is to take care of each other, to do no harm to each other, but to take care and help each other. The doctrine of the gospel is the rules and regulations that will achieve the gospel in the best way possible. Heavenly Father has been around for a long time and He knows the best ways, so we need to follow His way and the Son of God came to teach us His way. So, for me, this is a great blessing, this is a huge blessing, a wonderful God who can do these great things.
So I just wanted to share that experience with everybody so that people can know that the Lord Himself is still real today; that He still comes and visits people today; that we can still trust Him and devote ourselves to Him because He is a kind and loving God. He will never send us to hell, He wants to get us out of hell and bring us home. So I think we should follow what he says; learn the gospel and learn the doctrines of the gospel and start living them, and we will have the best opportunities to grow and progress and overcome all things. You know, what a great God is that, right? That is pretty cool. He is a pretty nice guy.
These are my thoughts that I share with you from my Lord and Saviour, Yeshua Messiah, amen.
Creating The Family Of God
by Kevin Castro
Kevin: Sure, but I don’t know that there’s a whole lot that I am going to be able to say that’s going to be more meaningful than what you’ve already said. I appreciate the picture that you painted of Heavenly Father though, that He is somebody that really does love us and cares about us and He wants us to succeed just as any parent does. I mean, I have four girls and one boy and I love them; I live for them. And I love to see as they have grown up and as they have matured and they have become adults themselves and have children of their own, I love to see the interactions of them, and they’re good people, and I just want the best for them, and it’s so great that you have brought out this fact, that Heavenly Father just wants the best for us; He’s rooting for us; He’s in our corner the whole time. And really the gospel, and you’ve pointed this out, in it’s essence, is really nothing more than us loving each other and being kind to each other and taking care of each other.
Almost 3 years ago, as many of you know, I got sick and spent almost a month in the hospital and just about died from Covid, and it was a great thing to see my family rally in helping each other to cope with that, that I might not be around for much longer. Fortunately, the Lord was kind to me and he spared me, but I had my oldest daughter that was calling and speaking to my doctor in the hospital every single day. She was calling and talking to my nurse every single day and she would relay that information to her little sisters, who would in turn relay that same information as far as my condition and then when I was finally released from the hospital, I was very, very weak, could not walk very far at all, was on oxygen, using a walker, I was in bad, bad shape, and one of my daughters came down 250 miles from Salt Lake and she stayed with me for 2 weeks. She helped me regain my strength again. By profession, she was a nutritionist, and she put me on a pretty safe and sound diet and I just felt encompassed by love, from my children, from my wife, and it’s a wonderful thing just to be able to experience that, and I know that, you know, Heavenly Father, if we think about Him, magnify those same feelings by a billion times, we might be able to kind of get a picture of how He must feel about us and the great concern that He has for us. And I am grateful at my age to have been able to really find the truth and knowledge and understanding to know that there is a Father in Heaven and a Saviour that really do love and care about me, and that I and each of us, all of my brothers and sisters which is you and everybody else that walks on the planet, that He cares enough about us to focus and dedicate all of His time to us, and that He is not mean, He is not a vengeful God. But we really came together as a family to help me through it.
I’ve come to realize in the last few years that I have far fewer days in front of me, than I have behind me, and the importance of me getting it right, because the scriptures teach us that this life is the time for us to prepare to meet God; not the next life, this is time we prepare for it, and we don’t get to do any do-overs, and He is there to help us, He is willing to whatever it takes to bolster us up, to strengthen us, but we have to go to Him. As you’ve pointed out correctly, that there is effort that’s required on our part to see that __________ [2:16:25] place, and I know that as I have made effort and I still am full of mistakes and do knuckle-headed things from time to time, that He is forgiving, and He is loving, and I feel closer to Him than I ever have. But we’re always setting an example of one thing or another, either for good or for bad, and if we really do love our fellow man and we take care of them.
You know the good Samaritan, that story told so often in the New Testament, let me just read it real quick and then I am going to end with this because time is, I’m sure everybody’s bladders are full and people are getting hungry and probably have other things to do, but the Saviour’s out teaching one day, He’s teaching the people and so imagine this scene. He says, and this is in Luke chapter 10, He comes back to the lawyer and He asks him a question. and this is when he tells the parable, Now this was not good, this was a Jewish priest that was teaching among the people and teaching the people, These were his brothers. Well the Samaritans were a people that were at odds with the Jews, but they of the same basic lineage. So he gets off and puts him on his donkey or his horse or whatever it was that he happened to be riding and he walked, put this poor man that had been beat up by thieves on his own horse, So he didn’t just prop him up, he brought him somewhere where he could receive some help and some much needed care, because he was half dead, and set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn and took care of him. He had a relationship with the innkeeper. And this is true love, that he went above and beyond with a person that, you know, in their society, he had compassion upon, who was an enemy in effect, and decided that he was going to help him, he not only took him to some place that he could receive aid and comfort and medical attention, but he paid to have him put up in this hotel, as it were, he paid to have his food given unto him and to have treatment given unto him, and said, I’m going to give you some money, if you have to spend any more, when I come back, when you see me the next time, I will repay everything that you have to spend, please help this man. And it shows true brotherly love, and this is what Father in Heaven expects of each of us to show and to demonstrate towards each other.
I am grateful that I’ve come to understand that more clearly, both through example from my own family in helping me, and the example that the Lord has set for us and the compassion that He has upon us. I’m grateful for the gospel in my life and the wonderful changes that it’s brought. I want to leave my testimony with you that it is true, that the Lord cares about us deeply, and that we are everything to Him, and I leave that with you in the name of the Lord Yeshua Messiah, amen.
Selflessness And Unity
John: I do not know if there is anything left to say, I think it has just been covered by just about everybody.
Well, after everything that has been said, I guess I do not need to explain anything so I can just go right into it. The context has been given over the last hour and a half, I mean, two and a half.
So we all know that the first step in the North of the Sacred Circle is selflessness. Psalms 119, verse 36 says, Okay, so in the West, we already learned to take care of our families. We learned how to shape our environments, how to sacrifice what we wanted for our families, how to start anew, living just for them; how to get along with a spouse, how to work with a spouse to take care of children. There is nothing you are ever going to get out of it, you have to do it just because you love your children, except for teaching them to hate the things you hate, but ....
But now in the North, we have to take that a step farther, not just with our own family, but now our entire family has to do that with other families, and we actually have to be selfless together as a unit with other families, so that we can become a bigger family. In order to do this, we have to humble ourselves; we cannot be selfless if we are proud.
But why would we want to be selfless you ask. I heard somebody ask it, I think. Well, as Joseph said, it is for the gospel, to actually take care of one another, that is why we want to do it, that is our driving force that leads us to do any of these things. It is actually the love for one another.
So, what does being selfless give us? Being selfless makes it so that we can actually unite with one another; no one can unite if they are proud; no one can unite if you think you are better than anyone else. If you think that, then you are not actually capable of uniting with them. You might think, oh I can unite with God, this is between me and God, but that is not what God did. When Yeshua was on the Earth, He told his disciples that greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for his friends, and He says that a servant knows not what his master does, but I make you friends because I have revealed to you everything that has been made known unto me by the Father. So He humbled Himself; God humbled Himself to be the same as everyone else, He was not special, He was not proud, He became the same as all of us and united with other people, with everyone around Him, and He is willing to unite with us if we are willing to unite with each other. He says where two or more are gathered in My name, there will I be also, which is a pretty nice promise because all we have to do now is help themselves and unite with each other this same way He united with us. You know the commandment He gave us when He says to love one another as I have loved you and then He says greater love hath no man than this and continues on. So if we actually humble ourselves and make ourselves friends to one another, nobody being the master and nobody trying to make themselves better than someone else, no one thinking their job is greater than anyone else’s, no one thinking that their position is more important or that their gift from God is more important than another person’s. But just like Yeshua humbled Himself and was equal with everyone there and equal with us if we do these things, then we have to humble ourselves and be equal with each other and if we do these things in His name, He says that He will make us equal with Him. Which is a pretty nice promise, I think that it is not a hard thing to do really either. I can be equal with any of you guys. Only a couple people got that joke, but I should continue before I say more on it.
I thought it was a pretty nice promise that you can have that and all you have to do is give up all your own selfishness, all your own desires, all your own efforts, all your own work, it actually explains all this in the scriptures I have here. Philippians chapter 2, Pretty self explanatory, humble ourselves, lift up other people, do not be looking for glory or for your own pride, but love one another and actually be of one accord, one mind; which means none of this nonsense about we do not have to agree with each other, we do actually have to agree with each other, because how can we work together, how can we actually be united if do not agree with each other; we are not actually going to accomplish much of a goal. You can go to any job, any workplace anywhere, if there is somebody doing it one way, if they are mechanics, if one is working on it one way and somebody else decides to start working on something else, somebody is lifting the engine and somebody else decides that they are going to lift the whole cab up off of the vehicle, it is not going to work, you have to be of one mind, you have to agree with each other. You agree with each other by being selfless, which has been covered extensively in this conference. Okay, to continue, That does not mean to covet, it means do not just look out for yourself, do not just take care of yourself, but make sure your brothers actually have everything they need as well. That is pretty interesting, that it was not robbery that He was equal with God, but He still made Himself equal with men. [From outside “and a servant!”] Yes, and a servant. And some people might think that now Jesus has been esteemed, then highly exalted above everything and everyone is going to bow to Him, but you forgot that part where He humbled Himself below all things, and that if you are going to become equal with God, you have to humble yourself below all things, including you have to be humble enough beneath your own brothers. Yes, even the ones you know, even your actual, like, the brothers you grew up with, you may know them inside and out, you know every flaw they have, you know every goofy attitude they do, you know everything they did, you knew when they stole a piece of chewing gum and they ate it in Mrs. Joy’s math class in 6th grade. You might think that you are better than them, but you have to humble yourself below all things, including you have to be his brother, which means not means not thinking yourself better than him, actually taking care of him.
Okay, now we are back in John, it says, And what things has He done for us? Well He sacrificed everything; He sacrificed His own life, not only in death, but in life. Every day He woke up, He woke up for other people. When He was traveling, He traveled to teach other people. When He got food, He fed it to other people. When He had the gift of healing, He healed other people, He never healed Himself. He never did anything for Himself, He only ever worked for other people. He was completely selfless. He kept nothing back; He has no control over anyone. Everyone else in business or, well let us say back to the mechanic shop, the person who owns that mechanic shop and the guy who runs it, they are not going to be too happy with their two mechanics who are trying to do things separately. One or both of them are going to get fired, or they are going to have to shape up and listen to the guy in charge, because he is running it like a hierarchy, but God is saying that He will make us His friends, we will actually be His brothers if we keep the commandments. So, if two or more are gathered in His name and you ask something of the Father, what are you going to get? You are going to get what you asked for, that is what He said.
So, if that is where 2 or 3 are gathered in His name, what will happen when there are 13 people gathered in His name, or 20 of us, or 50 us all gathered in his name asking for something in the name of God? What is going to happen then? We are going to get it. If it was answered immediately with only 3 people, how fast is it going to be answered with 50 people? All keeping the commandments, all being selfless and taking care of one another, the actual point of the gospel.
So, we have selflessness so that we can be united, and united so that we can actually take care of people, take care of each other, take care of everyone, because this is the priesthood; this is the path of the priest, who is the great priest? Yeshua is the high priest and all he did all His life was take care of everyone else, never worked for Himself, He only took care of everyone else. So this is how we have power in the priesthood, we can actually be selfless, which means that we can unite, we can actually think and do things together, we can actually work together and we can accomplish helping each other and helping everybody. We can actually bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. As a matter of fact, it is the only way to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.
I have one more scripture here; it is a bit of a long one though, so you do not have to worry about it ending too soon. That last one was John chapter 15, verse12-17 I believe. This is Romans chapter 12. So your body is a living sacrifice, is your reasonable service, it is your work, what you are actually doing, everything you do. When you wake up in the morning, look at your hands all day, what are they doing? What are you actually working towards? This is your service; this your living body that is to be sacrificed. So in other words, you sacrifice your selfishness, your selfish wants, your selfish desires, and you work for each other, because anyone who is in the service of his fellow man, is in the service of God, which means actually taking care of each other, not for their selfishness either, but actually for what they need, both physically and spiritually, so that they can be fed so that they live long enough to hear the gospel, but also so that they can actually be comforted, not just upon their lusts, but just to be comforted and so that they can actually learn the gospel, and that they can actually take care, like Will was saying, that these people can actually learn to feed each other. The fisherman can actually teach other fishermen, and so that they can take care of their families and they can teach the next generation and they can actually go out forth and spread over the entire world. I think Daniel said something about that, but it is kind of funny, because in Daniel’s description of it when he says that the stone cut out of the mountain... Well, first he describes the kingdoms of men with gold on top and then a bronze body, it becomes less and less precious materials all the way until it is just dirt on the ground, but then when he describes God’s kingdom, it is like a stone cut out of the mountain without hands and keeps rolling until it gets so big that it consumes the whole Earth. Well here it is, this is the opportunity we have to actually be selfless with one another and actually put aside our own wants and desires and work together, unite with each other to actually accomplish the will of God, actually keep the commandments, actually take care of each other, and if we do it right, we will be united with God as well, He Himself will be with us. And it will continue to grow and grow and it will be completely unstoppable, no kingdom of the world can stop it, no army, no military, nothing can actually stop it. It will completely overcome the entire Earth with charity and kindness, politeness and please and thank yous.
Okay, that is your reasonable work, your effort, your time, that is your life you are actually sacrificing. So do not be proud of yourselves, do not be selfish, do not think that you are better than another person. So, instead, think about what you can actually do to help. Do not think about oh I have done this and I have done that, I am so much better. No, actually think about what you can do to help, like Will said about the fishermen, the one fisherman he only thought about how special he was and that he could take care of so many people, but the other one thought about how can I help other people, and he actually did. Everyone does not have the same job, but we are all part of the same family. So we are all one body with Christ and we are actually united because we are being selfless, because we actually take care of one another. Okay, pay attention, because he is getting into some important things. (Minor interruption) He is about to say something important. Remember this is to all the members of the church, all the members of the same family, people who have all been selfless and humbled themselves so that we can unite with one another just like we unite with God. So he just told us all of these different gifts, all of the different offices that he referred to earlier, all the different positions and ways we can help one another. Not all of us are going... Just because everyone is equal, not everyone goes to do the same thing, we do not all go to wash the dishes at the same time, there is only so much room at the sink. Nobody is above washing dishes, everyone who is married here knows that. Everybody knows there are many different positions, many different ways we can help, many different gifts of God. Some of us can cook, some of us cannot. Some of us can heal others, some of us can cheer other, we can actually raise their spirits, we can comfort others. So nobody is without their gifts, but no gift is above one another. Instead of being selfish and being jealous of something somebody else has because they have the gift of prophecy and you wanted to prophecy, you know, they prophesied it was going to snow and you have the gift of a snow shovel and you can go out and shovel the snow, so you are jealous. But that will not work, we actually have to be following that original core doctrine, the doctrine that we are actually doing it for each other and taking care of each other and we actually have to be selfless; it is not about who is special, it is not about how important you are to everyone else; it is about how you can serve others. To continue, These are the selfless things we can do, so slothful in business is selfish, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord is selfless. Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, these are selfless things. These things are all the things that are selfless, that we can do with one another. So do not put so much value on things that everyone else thinks are so high and mightly and important, but pay attention to everybody, including people who are considered lowly. After all, whatever you have done to the least of these my brethren, you have done it to Me. Because we know peacemakers will be the children of God. So you are not special, humble yourself and accept it. I think you are missing the point at that point. You do so because you actually love him and you want him to have what he needs. And the only way to be able to do that, to stand up to everyone who hates you, to everyone who has been attacking you, to not fall into this habit of being evil, of hurting other people, of taking your revenge, it is very easy to do and the entire world works this way and the only way not to do this is to actually be united with the other people who are being good. You can only be united by being selfless and giving up yourself, and you can only overcome all the evil and pressure that the world gives, by uniting. Otherwise, you will either be killed or you will end up being evil just like them. You cannot stand alone, no one can, that is why God told us to humble ourselves and unite together and be united.
But, it is a pretty simple explanation, I thought it explained things quite easily, that if we are selfless, we can unite towards each other. If we unite together, we can stand against the evil, not just all the evil other people are doing to us, but the evil that is in us that we would do to others, these are the things we actually have to be scared of, this is what actually should be making us afraid, is us doing something that could possibly hurt someone else, no matter what they have done. But God gave us the information so that if we humble ourselves and unite with one another, keeping the commandments, now we can overcome all things, we can overcome the rest of the world, we can be that stone cut out of the mountain... well, not us, but the doctrine, the gospel, will spread forth and it spreads through us. And then the words of Isaiah can be fulfilled, that the spirit of Elijah, that he will turn the hearts of the sons to the Fathers and the hearts of the Fathers to the sons. We can actually be united with each other and with all the Gods who have come before us, which is a pretty nice promise, I think.
Anyways, I say these things in the name of Yeshua Messiah, amen.
Conclusion: Joseph
Well this has certainly been a very enlightening conference, has it not? It is very good, very good, some amazing stuff presented here. Everybody’s talks went so well together that it explained the gospel extremely well. I think this is one of our more thorough conferences and talks about the gospel, about Heavenly Father, about the love of God and about our potential salvation, about becoming. Like you said, what more could actually be said? It is perfect; everybody’s talk went so well together. So, it is beautiful when the Spirit brings everything together. Well, it has been a long evening, not too long I guess, it has only been close to 3 hours, sometimes our church goes 3 hours every Sunday, no problem. So, this is beautiful. So I would like to thank everybody for coming. I think it is great to see everyone. We will get this posted, and a transcript of this video posted as well, and everything will be posted on the forum too and we are looking forward for everybody’s comments. So I would like to call Jamie forth to come and offer our closing prayer.
Closing prayer: Jamie
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you that we can communicate with our friends and family around the world. Thank you that we can have the gospel and thank you that we can learn it. Please bless that the knowledge that we have learned tonight will stick with us and that we will apply it to our lives. Please bless that everyone will have the Spirit with them. Please bless that everything will go according to Thy will. In the name of Yeshua Messiah, amen. |
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