Well...Saki and the kids are sick, so our Easter wasn't what I had hoped, but I really enjoyed 3 quiet hours or church today :) Most of all these last two weeks before Easter I was grateful for some time I was able to take to study Passover and Easter and the fulfillment of many of the promises the Savior made to his people! I enjoyed a Seder plate with Saki on Passover and we discussed some of the things I had learned about Christ. I am always amazed and the precision and foresight in all our Father undertakes to do. It is beautiful to see how covenants and promises were made in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New Testament and beyond, and it always brings tears to me when I see how many times we have been taught and told things and yet like some of the Jews during Christ's time we are still blinded by our own pride and weaknesses and are unable to see the Lord's hand and doings in our lives and others. I know that Christ did come to earth and atone for our sins. I know He was resurrected that all might be resurrected. I am grateful that God fulfills the covenants with his people and continues to speak with all people today through prophets and apostles! What I love most about the gospel is that it encompasses ALL people. It is not a select few who can be saved it is ALL who ever have lived, now live, and ever will live. ALL of God's children at some point in time (or multiple :) can CHOOSE if they want to return to live with Heavenly Father, be like Him and enjoy all the wonderful blessings of exaltation! God loves EVERY child of his. The only question is how much do we love Him?
"No words in Christendom mean more to me than those spoken by the angel to the weeping Mary Magdalene and the other Mary as they approached the tomb to care for the body of their Lord: “Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen” (Luke 24:5–6).
With this pronouncement, those who have lived and died, those who now live and one day will die, and those yet to be born and yet to die had just been rescued.
As the result of Christ’s victory over the grave, we shall all be resurrected. This is the redemption of the soul. Paul wrote:
“There are … celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.
“There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.
“So also is the resurrection of the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:40–42).
It is the celestial glory that we seek. It is in the presence of God that we desire to dwell. It is a forever family in which we want membership.
Of Him who delivered each of us from endless death, I testify He is a teacher of truth—but He is more than a teacher. He is the exemplar of the perfect life—but He is more than an exemplar. He is the great physician—but He is more than a physician. He is the literal Savior of the world, the Son of God, the Prince of Peace, the Holy One of Israel, even the risen Lord, who declared, “I am the first and the last; I am he who liveth, I am he who was slain; I am your advocate with the Father” (D&C 110:4).
“Oh, sweet the joy this sentence gives: ‘I know that my Redeemer lives!’”
Of this I testify." President Thomas S. Monson
