/
RSS Feed
We wrap up our review of Lectures 6 and 7, which cover the law of sacrifice and the effects of faith. As with the other lectures, they teach principles that contradict those of the modern LDS church.
This was an interesting discussion for me to hear today because earlier, I was listening to a video by a man nicknamed “praying medic” who was explaining faith to his audience https://prayingmedic.org/2021/10/15/supernatural-saturday-october-9-2021-what-is-faith/
I have been following the comments on Praying Medic’s telegram channel recently because they are mostly other people’s testimonies of God’s healing through faith, similar to what you said is missing in the church today. This man started out as an atheist paramedic who, after becoming Christian, felt called by God to pray for the patients in his ambulance. And his results are about what we would expect from our own experience. However, every time he thought about giving up, he had another dream where he would pray and people would be healed. Now, he has so much experience seeing healing that he expects it. He has been talking about the importance of recognizing the presence of God in our lives, especially when we are asking for miracles because it is the presence of God that makes all the difference. He also teaches people how to hold on to their healing, even when it appears temporary or is not immediately manifest. Kind of like not plowing your garden just because you don’t see the carrots sprout for a couple weeks. If you know God has healed you, don’t revoke the healing by your impatient disbelief!
My point here is not to point you to Praying Medic, but rather to think about how God would manifest his presence in the last days. You have talked about the need for consecration and how that can be done individually when the opportunity for community-based consecration is unavailable. I have seen lives saved through internet gofundme efforts that remind me of the voluntary giving that took place in Acts. I see people testifying of healing power (not their own, but God’s power manifest through their faith) and wonder if these are the types of things that the lectures on faith were designed to teach the early saints to prepare them for the second coming and to have the ability to gather successfully. Praying Medic is teaching the basics of faith to an internet audience, and when people act with the faith of a child, they too are seeing results.
What would it look like if God were to begin his marvelous work? Would it start with a few believers called to increase faith in the world? I keep coming back to the verses from Luke 17:20-24:
“And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation; Neither shall they say, Lo here! or lo, there! for behold, the kingdom of God is within you. And he said unto the disciples, The days will come, when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it. And they shall say to you, See here; or, see there; go not after them, nor follow them. For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven; so shall also the Son of man be in his day.”
Is this saying that the seeds of the kingdom are already within the believers and that the appearance of the kingdom will be as gradual as the rising of the sun creates greater light on earth until it is undeniably here?
Just my thoughts for the day. I thought it was interesting that we live in a time when the lectures on faith are hard to access because of their removal from the canon of scriptures and the archaic language and grammar. However, there appear to be people in the general public who are teaching the fundamentals of faith in God and that miracles are being shared in hidden corners of the internet.