It is regrettable that a Dostoyevsky did not live near this most interesting of all decadents (Jesus Christ) - I mean someone who would have known how to sense the very stirring charm of such a mixture of the sublime, the sickly, and the childlike.
You hate Jesus because someone from the North Country said He was the Son of God. But you hate one another because each of you deems himself too great to be the brother of the next man.
Arabia was idolatrous when, six centuries after Jesus, Muhammad introduced the worship of the God of Abraham, of Ishmael, of Moses, and Jesus. The Ariyans and some other sects had disturbed the tranquility of the east by agitating the question of the nature of the Father, the son, and the Holy Ghost. Muhammad declared that there was none but one God who had no father, no son and that the trinity imported the idea of idolatry.
If all it took was someone proclaiming I believe Jesus Christ and that he died for my sins, and that was all there was to it, people wouldn't have to keep coming to church, would they.
I think it's for me with regards to this issue I believe in justification at the point of salvation; I believe in sanctification at the point of salvation. That doesn't mean that we don't continue to mature as believers in Christ. But I believe that we are justified and we are sanctified. But sin resides, the power of sin resides in our flesh. It will always try us and it was always tempt us and therefore we always need to be submitting our mind, will and emotions to the lordship of Jesus Christ.
In truth we gaze but do not see, and hearken but do not hear; we eat and drink but do not taste. And there lies the difference between Jesus of Nazareth and ourselves. His senses were all continually made new, and the world to Him was always a new world.
I was like you are. I thought Jesus came and died on the cross. Jesus' being here was about his death and dying on the cross but it really was about him coming to show us how to do it. To show us the Christ-consciousness that he had and that conciousness abides in all of us. That's what I got. That's what I got.
The church of Jesus needs to wake up from the exile of passivity and embrace liminality and adventure or continue to remain a religious ghetto for culturally co-opted, fearful, middle-class folk.
You have heard that Christ said, 'My words are spirit and they are life'. So are my words spirit and life; they will burn their way into your brain and you will never get away from them!
How do we find the Lord? I believe we have to seek Him in simple things. I believe we have to seek Him in personal prayer. I believe we must seek Him in personal service. I believe we seek and find Jesus when we follow His example.
I know men; and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires, and the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not exist. There is between Christianity and whatever other religions the distance of infinity.
I would hope that we would not lose the real objective of our cherished opportunities to serve. That objective, that eternal goal, is the same spoken of by the Lord and found in the Pearl of Great Price: "For behold, this is my work and my glory-to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." May we ever remember that the mantle of membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not a cloak of comfort but rather a robe of responsibility. Our duty, in addition to saving ourselves, is to guide others to the celestial kingdom of God.
There are many eyes that can detect and honor the prudent and household virtues; there are many that can discern Genius on his starry track, though the mob is incapable; but when that love which is all-suffering, all-abstaining, all-aspiring, which has vowed to itself, that it will be a wretch and also a fool in this world, sooner than soil its white hands by any compliances, comes into our streets and houses,--only the pure and aspiring can know its face, and the only compliment they can pay it, is to own it.
One thing I gained in my life is just the need for more Jesus in my life. You never come to a place in your walk with Jesus where you feel like you've had enough. That's a dangerous feeling to have.
The immense step from the Babe at Bethlehem to the living, reigning triumphant Lord Jesus, returning to earth for His own people - that is the glorious truth proclaimed throughout Scripture. As the bells ring out the joys of Christmas, may we also be alert for the final trumpet that will announce His return, when we shall always be with Him.
Do you who are a Christian desire to be revenged and vindicated, and the death of Jesus Christ has not yet been revenged, nor His innocence vindicated?