In the scriptures, we are told you can't really understand happiness unless you understand sadness. You don't know pleasure if you don't know pain. It's part of life. So can you learn something from somebody who has gone from success to success to success? I don't think so.
Worldly influences would hinder use of our agency afforded through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. But we are agents who can act, and that affects everything in terms of how we live the gospel in our daily lives. It affects how we pray, how we study the scriptures, how we worship at church.
If you see anything, you see I post a lot of Scriptures.
It's the generally accepted privilege of theologians to stretch the heavens, that is the Scriptures, like tanners with a hide.
Satan tries to counterfeit the work of God, and by doing this, he may deceive many. To make us lose hope, feel miserable like himself, and believe that we are beyond forgiveness, Satan might even misuse words from the scriptures that emphasize the justice of God in order to imply that there is no mercy.
As I read the scriptures, it appears that those who receive the Savior's strongest reproach are often those who hold themselves in high esteem because of their wealth, influence, or perceived righteousness.
At the parish level, where the church lives and moves and breathes, that's where we need to be engaging our people much more in understanding the Word of God... the Word of God reflected in the traditional teaching of the church, the Word of God reflected in the scriptures, is as much a part of their lives as anything else.
Now Heaven and Earth are older than the temples, and older than the Scriptures.
The Scriptures bear ample and continuous evidence that the faith of the resurrection of the body lies in the faith that Jesus Christ died and rose again.
In reading the scriptures of truth, we often put wrong constructions upon them, and apply them improperly; and I apprehend it has often been the case in relation to this portion, particularly that part in relation to man's seeking out many inventions.
