Okay everybody as I was thinking about you all week, a quote from President Thomas S.
Monson caught my attention and it's been on my mind all week long.
Here it is.
Heavenly Father loves you, each of you.
That love never changes.
It is not influenced by your appearance or by your possessions.
It's not changed by your talents and abilities.
It is simply there.
It is there for you when you are sad or happy, discouraged or hopeful.
God's love is there for you whether or not you feel you deserve love.
It is simply always there.
Hello everybody and welcome to Redeemed Through His Blood, a podcast where we discuss hope,
healing and redemption through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
I'm Scott Durfee and it's my great pleasure to introduce to you my partner on this project
and our great teacher, Brother David Durfee.
Thank you Scott.
That's such a great quote to start our episode out today.
Thank you.
I have always loved that quote.
In other words, according to President Monson and all the prophets, the love of God can
never be earned.
Our value and worth is always there.
He always loves us.
His love is eternal.
His love is infinite.
We don't always feel it and it breaks my heart when I have members of the church who have
told me that they have never felt the love of God in their life.
I can't understand that.
We've talked about that a little bit before, but I know that God does love all of His children
infinitely, eternally, and that if we would try to live according to His laws and commandments
and that we would focus on having a relationship with Him, that that love would just flow into
our lives and it's what makes really all the difference.
Yeah, it absolutely is.
And you know what?
I've experienced that in so of you and I know that many of our listeners have as well and
there are many that have maybe forgotten that experience.
And hopefully, you know, this is an opportunity to re-invite that experience again in your
lives.
Hey, we want to just say thanks to everybody for your emails, your correspondence and communication.
They have just been wonderful, encouraging us.
You've had some great questions and comments and even some suggestions.
We welcome those, invite those really.
We're learning as we go here too and trying to make this the best experience possible
and we just don't know what you're thinking unless we hear from you.
So we're grateful for that.
Speaking of, we don't know what you're thinking unless we hear from you.
I have an email that was sent, Dave, just recently and this is an email I think that
there's not a question here, but there's a real feeling of inspiration, I believe, as
I read this.
I don't know if I read the whole thing, but maybe just a few pieces of it.
So this is sent to us from a sister who says, I have a privilege of being a Relief Society
presidency in a county jail somewhere here in the United States.
She says, we work with sister inmates who are struggling to know who they are and they
are searching for peace and for hope.
Sometimes we struggle to understand what they are going through and how to help them.
On Tuesday, it was this person's turn to teach and she says, I was teaching from Elder
Uke Dorf's 2007 talk, The Point of Safe Return.
Great talk.
And I would recommend listening to that to all of our listeners.
Elder Uke Dorf has, as do they all, the 12 and the first presidency have such an insight
to this stuff that is so amazing.
I just listened to your podcast and that was podcast number four.
Of course, I'm back to the letter.
I used it in my lesson.
I even played parts to the sisters and they were so touched by the message you shared
and how they were able to understand the way they were thinking.
So shout out to those sisters incarcerated in whatever facility that is.
Our love goes to you.
We know that you're experiencing glimpses of our Heavenly Father's love for you and
hopefully that becomes indelibly inscripted upon your hearts.
As you go through what you go through, God bless you and our prayers are with you for
a complete and successful rehabilitation spiritually, physically in all other ways.
So last week, Dave, we had a great discussion around the, another great discussion around
the fall where we talked about so much.
We talked about the events of the fall.
We talked about the effects of both the spiritual and the physical death and we even brought
in maybe where there's some combination of both of those probably in all things.
There's some combination of the effects of the spiritual and the physical death.
We know that from that it becomes necessary for us to have the Atonement of Jesus Christ
and the effects of that in our lives so that the complete plan of happiness, the complete
plan of redemption that was set forth before the foundation of this world can be accomplished.
So as we begin that, we're really excited to start moving into those types of things
today, Dave, as we move into kind of, I think we're going to start talking about the events
of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, right, Dave?
And before we do, as I listened back to our episode last time about the unconditional
redemption from death that Jesus brought about through His Atonement, I don't know if I
gave enough evidence from the Scriptures in regards to the unconditional aspects of Christ's
Atonement in overcoming the spiritual death.
We all have no problem believing, I think in the church at least, we're one of the few
churches that believe in a universal resurrection and I don't think as members of the church
we have any challenge with that, we all believe that, that's well documented, but we haven't
talked enough in the church, in my opinion, about how Jesus unconditionally overcomes
spiritual death, being cut off or separated from the presence of God.
And I just feel like, Scott, to reinforce this, that I wanted to read another Scripture
from Jacob.
I used only one Scripture last week as evidence of how Christ overcomes spiritual death, and
that was in Helaman chapter 14.
There are several in the Book of Mormon, but I read this one again recently, and I wanted
to just share it with our listeners again.
This is again evidence from the Book of Mormon, how Christ unconditionally overcame spiritual
death.
This is Jacob in 2 Nephi chapter 9, his amazing discourse on the Atonement of Christ, and
he writes, this is verse 15, it shall come to pass that when all men shall have passed
from this first death or resurrection unto life, in so much as they have become immortal,
they must appear before the judgment seat of the Holy One of Israel, meaning we will
go back to the presence of God to be judged, and that unconditionally overcomes spiritual
death because we'll be in the presence of God.
And then later in the same chapter, chapter 9, 2 Nephi verse 38, he says, after describing
the wicked, woe, the kind of the nine woes, woe this, woe that, woe unto the liar, woe
unto the murderer, woe unto those that worship idols, woe unto those who die in their sins,
for they shall return to God and behold his face and remain in their sins.
Even the wicked, the most wicked, murders, I said that last time, but I wanted to reemphasize,
the most wicked will return to the presence of God and behold his face.
That's verse 38.
And then in verse 41, it says, I still remember President Eyring quoting this verse years
ago on conference, and it's been one of my favorite since.
Verse 41, 2 Nephi 9, all that my beloved brethren, come unto the Lord, the Holy One, remember
that his paths are righteous, behold the way for man is narrow, but at lieth in a straight
course before him, and the keeper of the gate is the Holy One of Israel, and he employeth
no servant there.
I just really love that, Scott, that there will be a judgment, it'll be face to face,
will return to the presence of God, and there will be no servant there to carry out that
judgment.
And I believe again that if we would ponder that more, if we would think about that more
in our daily decisions and choices, it would influence our behavior.
So I just want to again as a review, say how grateful I am and how grateful we should all
be understanding that Christ's atonement unconditionally overcame both physical death and spiritual
death.
And today we'll talk more about the events of the atonement.
And I'm so glad you brought that up.
To recap those things really gives us some impetus in towards moving into what we're
going to be talking about today.
Those things are so vitally important to what you just talked about is so vitally important
to the trajectory that this conversation takes, because if we didn't have that knowledge,
if we didn't understand that all of us will return to our Heavenly Father, there will
be some differences based on that.
Our attitudes change or should, right?
If we are truly aligned and so much of what we talked about here as we remember is about
aligning ourselves through broken heart and contract spirit, aligning ourselves with the
will and care of our Heavenly Father as we completely understand Him.
But understanding Him really requires that knowledge of that too.
Understanding that His love for us is so great that He will bring us into His presence regardless
of our experience here, regardless even of our own participation in our experience or
level of participation in our experience here, regardless of that.
He's not going to have somebody else at the gate say, go check, make sure, screen that
guy, you know, make sure he's, no.
It goes back to the quote that I just read from President Monson.
He loves us and that is the ultimate consummate display of that love is to allow us or to
bring us back into His presence.
Now what happens from there?
That's also going to be an extension of His love.
There's no question.
Well, I think, I think hell, the greatest definition I've heard of hell is to return
to the presence of God and remain in your sins.
I know that to go back there, to see His face, President Benson again, telling us how shocked
will be by how familiar his face is to us, going back to Him, seeing Him, feeling His
love, Scott, seeing the look of compassion and maybe to some degree, grief that may be
on his face if we die in our sins and remain in our sins.
I think for an individual to have to leave his presence, understanding that love that
he has for each of us, that would be hell.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's no question.
It would be hell for me.
I do know that.
Well, so as we talked about that and we've established all of that through our discussion
last week, this week we begin to move into some really important, and I say that every
week.
I'll probably say it every week in the future too because it's nonetheless true.
Everything we talk about here is so extremely important.
But today we're going to be moving into the Atonement of Jesus Christ, the events of the
Atonement of Jesus Christ.
We'll start touching on the effects of the Atonement of Jesus Christ in subsequent episodes.
There's no question.
And I really look forward to that as well.
As we though dive into these events of the Atonement, I think they have so much of Christendom,
Christianity, I believe that there's so many of us within Christianity that have an understanding
that may be semi-limited around the events of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
We know about Gethsemane, we know about Golgotha, and we know about the Garden Tomb and how
all of those play into the events of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
But it really is, we were talking earlier, you and I, and a great discussion.
I believe and you believe and you've taught me that really the Atonement of Jesus Christ,
the events of the Atonement of Jesus Christ are really more outreaching than that.
Wouldn't you say so too?
Well, we know that Atonement comes through blood, that it had to be a bloody Atonement.
We know that.
And Gethsemane and Golgotha and the Cross are kind of the harder center of it.
But I agree, Scott, I think that we would be better served and that it would be more powerful
and effective in our life if we saw Jesus Christ's life as part of his Atonement or
Atonement and reconciliating us with God.
For example, his birth, his terrible, sad, poor, wretched events of his birth through
his childhood, which must have been so difficult, the threat on his life because Herod killing
the babies.
I think Jesus is a, we think Jesus is probably one or two years old when that happened because
Herod is killing everyone who is under three years of age.
So Jesus might have been one or two.
I think Jesus would have maybe felt some of the stress of Mary and Joseph in getting him
out of the city of Jerusalem alive and going to Egypt and suffering the events, the travel
and the events that may have occurred in Egypt, not knowing how long they were there.
Sometime before his 12th year, coming back to the ancestral home of Mary and Joseph,
probably skirting around Jerusalem, I don't know, but going back to Nazareth and then
maybe being a new kid in a new school or church or whatever, you know, I don't know again
how hard that may have been for him, but I know it wasn't easy.
And we just don't have enough record of his life to really, I think, fully understand
and appreciate the suffering that he went through throughout his life as an infant,
as a child, as a teenager, as a young adult, the family problems they must have had.
Most people accept the fact that Joseph died long before Jesus began his ministry at the
age of 30.
We know that Jesus was kind of a stepchild and that some of his brothers and sisters
may have struggled with Jesus.
I think there would have been challenges in his family life.
I believe there were challenges throughout his life that doesn't necessarily bring about
the reconciliation or redemption that we're going to talk more about when we talk about
Gethsemane and Golgotha, death and resurrection.
But Scott, it definitely, all that he experienced, all that he suffered, helped him to know us,
for a God to come down to this earth in a fallen state, to have flesh and blood and
because of Mary to fill all the pains and sicknesses and torment and anguish of mortality.
I think Jesus felt it to a greater degree than most of us will ever feel it.
And as a result, it helps him to know us and to succour us and to have this gift of divine
empathy, which Alma talks about.
And maybe we should read that verse, Scott, if you'd like to.
Yeah, Alma, Alma chapter seven versus, versus 11 through 13.
And I've got it right here.
And maybe read that and then maybe let's comment about it.
Seven through 13.
Seven through 13 describing the overall effects of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, which I
think begins from his birth until his death.
And so this is Alma seven versus 11 through 13.
And he shall go forth suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind.
Let me just pause.
Of what kind?
Of every kind.
That leaves nothing out, brothers and sisters, ladies and gentlemen, nothing out.
And this was in going back to the Scripture and this was that the word might be fulfilled,
which sayeth, he will takeeth upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.
I'm just going to push pause right there for just a second.
And I want you to consider the pains and the sicknesses.
Again, this goes back to as part of the spiritual and physical death.
So I want you to consider what pains and sicknesses of his people, meaning you, do you want him
to be able to take upon him?
So he went forth and suffered those pains and sicknesses of the people.
Now verse 12, and he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which
bind his people, and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be
filled with mercy according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how
to succor his people according to their infirmities.
Now the Spirit knoweth all things.
Nevertheless, the Son of God suffereth according to the flesh, that he might take upon him
the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the
power of his deliverance, and now behold, this is the testimony which is in me.
That passage of Scripture is, that alone, Scott, is probably worth the life and death
of the Prophet Joseph Smith.
We understand some things about the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
In fact, every aspect of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, that other Christians do not
fully understand or appreciate because of the revelations and restoration of the Gospel
in these latter days.
I had an experience where the, I won't use his name, but a doctor of theology, we invited
him to come to the Institute here at Utah Valley University to speak to our faculty
and to share some thoughts and feelings about Jesus with our students.
He was, he's a friend of the church, friendly, and we, in our faculty meeting, we were talking
about a little bit about what we have in common and what are some of our differences.
And I made the comment to him that it seems to me that the heart of the difference that
we have is that we believe in an infinite Atonement and that you believe in an Atonement that is
limited, that's their word, limited, that's according to Calvinism.
They believe that the Atonement is limited, that it's only for believers.
Well when you read this passage in Alma 7, that he took upon him all the sins and all
the sicknesses of everyone and that all of that that he suffered for all of God's children.
In fact, Scott, he had a Book of Mormon and he actually read this passage to our students
in an devotional.
He said, this is one of my favorite passages from your Book of Mormon.
And this was so sad, but he said, I wish I could believe that.
And he says, I hope someday that I can.
I hope someday that all of God's children can believe in this verse.
He says, for now, I just have to put it on the top of a shelf and leave it there.
And I was kind of heartbroken by that statement.
How blessed are we that we have the fullness of the Gospel and that we understand more
about the Atonement of Jesus Christ than anyone else.
And that doesn't make us better than anybody else, Scott.
No, in fact, it makes us more responsible.
That gives us much more responsibility to be able to access it, apply it, and it gives
us more responsible ability to share it.
Yeah.
To share it with others.
And we share it in so many ways, right?
We can share it by being evangelical about it and there's nothing wrong with that.
Absolutely we can share it that way.
But one of the best ways we can share it is through our own love, empathy and forgiveness
towards others.
Yeah, absolutely.
Because, you know, as we begin to learn this and contemplate and consider Christ's life
as being an important part of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, not through the redemption,
not through the justification, but by way of suckering us, which was obviously one of
his great, great roles that he still plays today.
But to understand that and to know that because we have that love and that ability to have
that suckering, it gives us responsibility.
But it also gives us more hope.
I think it should, you know, we of all people should be people of hope.
And we do realize that, you know, we're going to get tripped up.
Life's going to get in our way.
We're going to have struggles.
We're going to have hard times.
And it doesn't matter if we're a member of what church or what race we're from or what
have you, we are all subject to the effects of the fallen world.
But to know that his life throughout his life was a teaching and an opportunity for him
to learn to sucker us.
So that means he must have felt pretty much everything.
And I don't think, you know, all along day before, I thought maybe he felt that during
the 40 day fast and in preparation prior to his ministry.
I thought maybe that's where he felt all that.
But as I've been considering this over the last several, couple of years, I believe that
really, you know, when you said, when he was exiled into Egypt or not exiled, but when
his family moved to Egypt for protection and he and all of the trials that you talked about
just a few minutes ago, refugees, all of this plays into his being able to sucker us through
his experience.
And because of who he is and because of who we are and because of whose we are, we should
be able to benefit and have blessing in our lives because of his life.
He not only suffered all the negatives of the fall and not only suffered for all of
us, all the negatives of the fall, but I think if we had a more complete record of his life,
Scott, we would see that he experienced those things personally in a personal sort of way,
which allows him to even have greater divine empathy for us.
So as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we should, because of
what we believe about the Atonement of Jesus Christ and that him taking upon himself all
the pains, all of the sins and sicknesses.
This isn't the only place it's taught in the scriptures, Scott.
It's also taught by Jacob in that discourse I referred to earlier in 2nd Nephi chapter
9.
We should, when we see pain and we see suffering, we should not only run to someone's aid and
try to succor them, but we should think of Jesus Christ.
When we watch the news and we watch the suffering that we see every night, every day on the
news throughout the world and in our communities, where should our minds go?
We should look to Christ.
That's the injunction he has given us.
Look unto me, he said, in every thought, behold the wounds in my side and the prints of the
nails in my hands and feet.
When we see suffering, we should automatically think of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and
know that Jesus suffered it.
I think it not only helps us to develop a closer relationship with Jesus Christ, but
it should help us to grow, to draw closer in our relationships with our fellow men,
or even our own family members who suffer, knowing that Jesus suffered it and that we
can help them to understand that and that as they understand that, they will feel some
healing, some hope, some relief, some peace and spirit knowing that a God suffered what
they suffered, not only suffered it, but suffered for them in his suffering.
So that's part of, I think we're talking a little bit today, not only about the events,
but the effects as we talk about this.
So let's begin to talk about the events of the Atonement.
And again, I think we should consider the Atonement as being fulfilled as part of Jesus
Christ's entire life, not just the Passion Week or the last few events of his life,
specifically Gethsemane and Golgotha, but all of his life and all of the suffering and
all the pains and sicknesses that he would have experienced.
Part of the Atonement required, Scott, a sinless life.
And I don't think we have any idea how difficult that would have been, the sacrifice that must
have been required, and the suffering that Jesus experienced in the temptations that
were thrust upon him by Satan and his legions.
And we experience much of that here too.
And so, you know, we get back as we go to the beginning of his life up until that point,
and all of those things that he suffered, and even as part of that ministry that began
there, you know, all of that as we go through our lives, and we've all said this, and I
don't know if really we all have, but many of us have said this.
It's just, I just don't understand how he could understand how I feel.
You know, there's a separation.
There's just a separation that comes in our minds between humanness and divinity.
We believe that, which is true, that divinity is pure, that it's sanctified, that it's
holy.
We see ourselves in our own lost and fallen states.
And so that in our minds creates a division that often can be misinterpreted.
I've misinterpreted it.
For much of my life, I believed that when I did wrong, we talked about this in our very
second episode, that when I did wrong, God was mad at me.
You know, that when I was, when I had bad things, or when I behaved out of the way I
should be behaving, even though it may have been because of the result of something in
my past or something along those lines, I believed and I believe a lot of us believe.
And I know some of you out there are believing this right now, and we need to stop it, that
when we do that, that our Heavenly Father can't love us because we can't come back to
Him, because we've eliminated the opportunity to be in His presence, to have His Spirit
with us.
And so at some point, many of us think, why do we even try and throw our hands in the
air and give up?
But when we understand that He went through, and in our minds, if we can start considering
some of the possibilities of His own life, what He went through in Egypt, what He went
through as a teenager, you know, and all those things that you mentioned, those things start
bringing to real life an empathetic God that I can feel like really does love me when I
feel those things.
I mean, and we talked about last week, in the week prior, that that's facilitated through
the Comforter, through the administration of the Atonement, through the Comforter or the
administrator of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, which is the Holy Ghost.
And I'm grateful to know that He did that.
I'm grateful to know that because of that, Heavenly Father and Jesus really love me enough
to welcome me back, and they've given me this way to do that.
Not just to get back there, though, but to have peace and joy in this life, right?
Yeah.
So, as we think about Jesus' life, I think it's really easy for many people to think,
well, He was a God, that He was the Son of God, that His life was somehow protected,
or that He had these extra powers or whatever.
And as we speak about all the events of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we should remember
that His Godhood was never, never called upon to eliminate any pain or suffering.
In fact, just the opposite, His Godhood allowed Him to feel more pain and suffering, to endure
greater temptation throughout His life than any of us can ever experience or understand.
His Godhood made His life worse and yet protected Him throughout His life from ever succumbing
to temptation, even though He suffered it, or succumbing to death, until He willingly
volunteered, gave up the ghost, and willingly died.
I think that we sometimes don't understand that Jesus really felt all the temptations
that we feel.
The scriptures are clear.
He never yielded, that's quote, yielded, or doctrine comes, section 20, never gave heed
unto them.
But I love what Hebrews says, the author of Hebrews, who I believe was Paul, wrote, Jesus,
the Son of God, touched with the feeling of our infirmatives, was in all points tempted
like we are, in all points, tempted like we are, yet without sin.
That's Hebrews 4, 14 through 15.
So I don't know what tempts you, Scott, I think we all have the same temptations, all
mortal men, women have the same temptations.
But that means Jesus would have been tempted by lust, He would have been tempted by pride
and selfishness, greed, laziness, procrastination, worry, and fear, jealousy, and envy.
He would have been tempted by every possible sin, even though He didn't sin, that Satan
could throw at Him, and He never yielded.
But what strikes me, Scott, is that for a holy, guiltless, pure individual like Jesus
to fill those experiences, to the depth that we probably do not feel them.
And I think that's an important point out.
Yeah.
I'm going to revisit that.
He not only felt all the temptations we feel, and then some, but to a greater depth than
we can feel them.
How painful must that have been for Him to fill those and to not yield?
I think that maybe a quote from C.S. Lewis.
Yeah, before you do that, can I just give a real quick experience?
This is the other day I was having a conversation with somebody as a member of a recovery program.
For those of you who maybe haven't been with us, I'm a recovering alcoholic.
I have 23 years of sobriety.
It'll be 24 on October 26, and I'm actively involved in recovery programs.
We talk so much about in recovery, and I don't want you to forget your quote, so don't.
But we talk so much in recovery about there's three really important steps, and it seems
like I visit these every week, I'm going to do it again today.
Number one, we admitted we were powerless over whatever in our lives, and in this case,
it's alcohol.
Okay, but whatever we're powerless over in our own lives, and that our lives have become
unmanageable, I think that's an easy admission for most of us.
Number two, that power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
That power that can restore us to sanity is what we're talking about right now.
That's our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, through His atonement, through His blood,
through His redemption, through all the things that we're talking about.
That's how that is facilitated.
And then finally, number three, we actually decide, and that's where the broken heart
and contrite spirit comes in.
That's when we actually decide to turn our will and our life over to the care of God
as we understand Him.
Now, having said that, we talk about how important it is that Jesus went through all of this
experience so that He could experience what we went through to succour us.
I'm explaining this to a young man in his 30s recently, just the other day, literally
just a few days ago.
I'm explaining this to him, he felt what you felt.
He says, he couldn't have felt it the way I felt it because he was God.
And I think that there's a misconception there that because he was, you know, his description
to me was, you're telling me that Jesus had cravings for alcohol or understood these cravings
for alcohol like I understand.
And I can't respond to him.
I know exactly everything that Jesus experienced in detail and individually, but, and I'm just
going to call him Joe, but Joe, he suffered it all.
He does know, and he does know to the depth.
Now I can say that and we can talk about that, you know, academically, but to have a real
life experience with that is such a gift, such a blessing.
And I've had that.
I've had that gift.
I've had that because I struggled that without myself, David.
You know, I was told, Heavenly Father and Jesus, they understand it, Scott, what you're
going through, they understand.
And I don't know if this was a time when I was going through my divorce or if this was
a time when I was looking at maybe some legal issues or maybe a time when I was, had been
excommunicated from the church and was working my way back to activity or back into the church.
I don't know when any of this took place, but I do remember having this conversation
and having somebody, my dad, who's been a great teacher to me all my life, say, Scott,
this atonement works for you.
And in my head, I'm thinking the same thing that, you know, I called him Joe said to me
just a few days ago, I'm feeling the same way.
So I can't reconcile this stuff on paper.
I can't reconcile it in a book.
And I can't even reconcile it listening to a podcast.
How I have to reconcile this is I have to ask.
I have to kneel down or however I approach my Heavenly Father and say, Heavenly Father,
is this true?
Is did this really happen?
And I promise you in the name of Jesus Christ that by the power of the Holy Spirit, He will
make known to you the truthfulness of this concept because it is true.
He did suffer.
He does know not just to the depth that you went through, not just to the depth that I
went through, but I think Dave's going to explain to us here in just a second why, but
even a greater depth perhaps than what we could ever know.
Well, I appreciate your invitation to call out to God and to ask and to pray.
And that's how they can know.
But there's also another way to know, Scott, and that is to really study these things.
And I hope that our readers will take time when they're not driving in their cars and
they're not busy by all the things that we have to do in our lives to actually find some
quiet time to go read Matthew 26.
Go read Mark 14.
Read Luke 22 and read John and read what the gospel authors and writers have said about
these events.
There's a power about that.
There's authority.
There's a witness of the Spirit.
And reading and the power of the word that can have as much influence and maybe in some
ways more influence on their life before they call out to God.
I mean, I mean reading it would and then calling out to God would even be more powerful.
I totally agree.
As we're reading this, he will begin to through the Holy Spirit, through the Holy Ghost, the
Mount Ferdinand, the teacher of all things will bring all things to our members.
This included.
He will begin to lay foundationally brick upon brick, if you will, an understanding that
will speak to our spirits.
And as that's happening, please, please pay attention to the way that you're feeling
and maybe even record those feelings so that you can go back to them during times of discouragement
to maybe help with some encouragement again in our lives.
Okay.
Second Nephi chapter two, second Nephi chapter nine, King Benjamin's amazing discourse on
the atonement in Mosiah chapter three and four and a benediced witness in Alma chapter
34 on the infinite atonement.
Alma's discourse to Zezerim in Alma chapter 12.
I mean, they're just, that's where they will fill the spirit and get a vision of these
events of the atonement of Jesus Christ.
But back to the sinless life of Jesus, as you were telling us about Joe Scott, my thought
went to again the life of Jesus.
And I know Jesus never experienced sin like Joe did in his mortal life.
And he never experienced addiction like Joe in his mortal life.
However, we're going to talk more about this probably in part two of the events of the
atonement that in Gethsemane and again on the cross, all of the sins, all of the addictions,
all of the effects and feelings and negatives of all sins were heaped upon him.
So even though Jesus never sinned, Jesus knew sin.
He felt it.
Even though he never had an addiction, he knew what it was like to fill the pains of
addiction.
And those events occurred in Gethsemane and on the cross.
In speaking of his sinless life, though, I want to again emphasize, Scott, the suffering
that that would have caused Jesus the power of saints temptations, which would have begun
in his youth.
Again, we know nothing except a verse or two about from age 12 to 30.
We have like one verse and he grew in stature and wisdom before God and man.
That's about all we know from ages 12 to 30.
I'm thankful for that one little verse that Luke shares with us in Luke chapter two.
But we know nothing about the pains and suffering of his temptations throughout his life until
he begins his ministry at 30 when he goes into the wilderness to be with God, according
to the Joseph Smith translation.
And he fasts and he prays and he has this experience with God.
And then God allows Satan to be thrust upon him, to attack him, to tempt him with these
amazing personal, personal temptations of lust and of greed and of power and the major
temptations that Satan throws at all of us.
Anyway, it begins there and then throughout his ministry, I know that he's tempted.
I twice in the scriptures, Benedict teaches it.
And again, it's taught in Hebrews and I'll read the Hebrews chapter two, verse 18, it
reads, for in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to sucker them that
are tempted.
So Jesus suffered temptations.
Not only did he suffer them the way we suffer them, but he suffered them to a greater extent
than we can suffer them because he was a God.
And I want to read this quote by C.S. Lewis.
No man knows how bad he is till he has been, till he has tried very hard to be good.
A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means.
This is an obvious lie.
Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.
After all, you find out the strength of an army by fighting against it, not by giving
in.
You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down.
A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would
have been like an hour later.
That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness.
They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.
We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside all of us until we try to fight
it.
And Christ, because he was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only
man who knows to the full extent of what temptation means.
Jesus Christ, C.S. Lewis writes, is the only complete realist.
That's from mere Christianity.
And I've always loved that quote.
And it helps me to appreciate this aspect of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, that a sinless
life was required.
And that, Scott, may have been one of the most difficult aspects of the Atonement that
Jesus fulfilled, and that it wasn't easy, and that he did suffer, suffer temptation.
And that's a part of the Atonement of Jesus Christ that I think we don't talk enough about
or appreciate enough.
And I think that's the part that really endears those of us who suffer, which is all of us,
from the effects of the fall, the physical and the spiritual and death.
I think that that part of it has an endearing component to it, to those of us who feel semi-detached
or somewhat detached for parts of our lives because of sin, either of ourselves or because
of others or misunderstanding or many, many other things, to know that because of his sinless
life, he not just understands our sufferings the way we've suffered them because none of
us have suffered them completely.
Whatever level we have suffered, there's a next level.
I don't care who we are and I don't care what it is.
And I know that's a bold statement, but I'm making it nonetheless.
Whatever we have suffered, there's more suffering.
There was, if you suffered a one million, you can suffer a one million and one.
I mean, it's just possible.
And if that's the case, none of us have suffered that completeness.
It seems to me, and I think C.S. Lewis makes this point, an observation, it's not his point
to make, it's an observation for him to make, though.
The point, though, is, and it has been made by prophets, that he suffered in ways we can't
even begin to.
I mean, we think that we suffered with, you can call it whatever.
Say you suffer with an addiction.
Say you suffer because of sexual abuse from your childhood.
Say you suffer from any of that.
And as dark and as horrible as that seems, because of his sinless life, he actually understands
that suffering even to a deeper level than we do.
And he may have suffered all of those physical things like abuse and all of that.
I mean, Jesus was abused by all of those who persecuted and taunted and he felt all of that.
But you're right, as far as his understanding would have been so much greater because of
the extent to which he was tempted and to the extent that he suffered.
I think there's some other applications knowing about his sinless life and the cost, the
price, the sacrifice he made in not yielding to temptation, filling the full extent of
it.
I think one application is knowing that the full force of all temptation which we are
subject to throughout our life, and then some was felt by Jesus and that he fought that
fight too.
I think also this is such an important point, Scott.
God, Jesus Christ in this case, Jehovah, the Son of God was tempted.
Scott, it's wrong of us, and I had so many students who I had to correct on this, who
would come into my office and say, I must be so bad.
We kind of talked about this before when we talked about the fall.
I must be so bad because I was tempted in the temple or I was tempted here.
Yeah, we think sometimes that living a righteous life means we don't have sin or temptation.
Yeah, right.
That's one of the greatest myths not only in the Gospel but in life.
Jesus was tempted.
He felt lost and pride and all of that because of the temptations that he experienced and
never yielded to it.
So this is important.
No temptation we experience should be mistaken for our worth, our value, or our identity.
In fact, Scott, maybe the closer we get to God, perhaps the greater temptation.
I think that's an important application in this.
Well, and I think that there's a lot of us that have pictures to go with those words.
And so it's been my experience, and I think it's probably been the experience of a lot
of people that it seems as though, and we've heard this, I've seen as though the closer
I get, closer I get to doing what's right, the harder sometimes it becomes to do so.
Or it feels as though the gates of hell sometimes are unleashed against us.
I mean, we've all had an experience, many of us have had an experience where it's darkest
before the dawn, right?
And so it seems as though that knowing that he suffered and understands all things that
we go through and that as we get closer to sometimes doing the things that are right,
that sometimes those things become harder for us to go through, Dave.
Well, we have a scriptural example of that, Scott.
Not only think of Jesus as experience, being with God, fasting for 40 days, and then right
after that, he's attacked by Satan.
Think of Moses.
Moses sees God in Moses chapter one, Prolegate Price.
He sees God, has an experience, knows he's the Son of God, knows he's created after the
Smilitude of the only begotten Son, and then he's attacked by Satan.
Think of Joseph Smith.
The order is a little bit different, but here's Joseph Smith is first attacked by Satan.
Overcome, can't speak, powers of darkness he describes.
And then he sees God.
So honestly, I remember a few of these experiences in my office teaching Institute of individuals
telling me about their struggles, including some of their temptations and saying to them,
well, you must be getting really close.
You must be on the right path.
You must really be doing the right thing.
And how that would kind of change their perspective to see that being tempted or experiencing
the temptations of evil in your life may actually be a really positive sign that we're headed
in the right direction and Satan is doing everything that he can.
Sometimes all he has to do is distract us.
But in some cases, Scott, in all of our lives, he not only distracts us, he attacks us.
And those, those I've experienced that in my life, I've experienced direct attack of
Satan in tempting me in ways that I that I haven't always been great at handling, that
I haven't always called upon the power of God or the Atonement of Jesus Christ to deliver
me like Moses did or Joseph Smith did or others.
So I know that that Satan is real, that temptation is real, and that Jesus experiencing that
in in ways and to a degree that we will never experience it.
And yet never succumbing to it, never being thrown off course by it.
That was a really critical, important part of what we call the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
And maybe in future episodes, we can begin to talk about the physical, emotional, mental,
anguish and blood that Jesus shed, suffered and shed for us as being a continuation of
our discussion about the events of the Atonement.
And I look forward to that.
I do too.
What a great day.
We've run out of time, and we're getting really close to being out of time.
And I just want to say thanks, Dave, for the opportunity again to be with you and to be
with our listeners as we expand on such an important topic.
I look forward as we begin next week, I think, to start talking about the effects of the
Atonement as we bring in the blood component of it to the extremely insightful and important
things that we're going to be talking about there.
Ladies and gentlemen, as always, it's been our pleasure to be with you today.
Remember to send us your comments, your questions to heredeemsusatgmail.com.
It's been a great day.
We again just want to once again thank you for your participation.
Thank you for being with us.
And as you go through your week this week, we invite you to invite Heavenly Father,
Spirit to be with you, to testify to you the truthfulness of the things that we've been
talking about today as they truly are true and important.
And they make a difference, not just in eternity, which is important, but they also make a difference
to us in our lives today.
Please don't forget to send us your emails with questions and comments, maybe some suggestions
to heredeemsusatgmail.com.
That is, heredeemsusatgmail.com.
Special thank you to Cherie Curtis for our social media.
We want to thank Ann Matthews for our music and a special thanks to Mr. Joseph Brickie
for the use of his artwork in our podcast logo.
My name's Scott Durfee.
Along with Dave Durfee here, it's been our pleasure to be with you.
We look forward to seeing you next week.