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• Understanding the Book of Revelation: Part 1 


• Understanding the Book of Revelation Part 2: The 7 churches 

 • Understanding the Book of Revelation Part 3: God’s People 

 • Understanding the Book of Revelation Part 4: Saints 



April 14, 2018
February 11, 2019
Blake
The Continual Atonement
We all have traumatizing experiences in life. The more dramatic they are the more lasting of an impact they leave on us. The most traumatizing experiences are usually pushed aside or suppressed in an attempt to live a sane life. Let me give a personal example.

Thunderstorms can be especially intense in Vermont. At least they always seemed excessive when I was a missionary—walking down rural dirt roads, out in the open, exposed to whatever stormy weather Mother Nature decided to send my way.
On a particular day, our ward mission leader’s wife called my companion and me to alert us to the fact that there were tornado warnings in the area. Of course 2 twenty-year-old guys aren’t going to be deterred by a tornado “warning”…so we set out to work.
Just as it was time for us to take our lunch break an intense storm rolled over us. Powerful winds blew so hard we could hear trees snapping and falling to the ground. The lightning was intense and the rain was torrential. Luckily we were only a few hundred yards from our car, no tornadoes came, and we safely made it to shelter with no harm, other than getting completely drenched from head to toe.
Since it was lunchtime we made the drive back to our apartment. We changed into dry clothes, ate some food, and decided it was time to get back to work. We assumed we had already ridden the “tornado storm” that we were warned about because the skies were blue again and the weather was nice. Besides, it didn’t even turn out to be a tornado, just a thunderstorm, so what was there to worry about in the first place?
Anyone who had a car on their mission knows about the predicament of running out of miles you’re allotted to drive in a month before the month is over. We were close to that threshold, and since the weather had improved we decided to make the 2-mile trek into town, by foot, to save miles on the car.

The walk into town was uneventful, but the moment we arrived to our predetermined destination we saw huge, thick, black clouds billowing over the hills toward us. Rather than seeking shelter in town (which would have been the rational thing to do) we decided to do the adventurous thing…walk double-speed back home to beat the storm! That idea worked about as well as our judgment had been functioning that day. We made it about half a mile.
First the wind came. Unimaginably strong. If you’ve ever been to Vermont you know that trees are everywhere. The wind howled through them, and the sound of huge trees breaking apart was all around us.
Next the rain started. The downpour was beyond anything I had ever been in before, but the sheer quantity of water wasn’t the bad part. It was the wind that came with the rain. The sheets of precipitation were blown so violently toward us that the rain was literally painful to be hit by. It felt like needles hitting my bare skin, over and over, without letting up.
Next came the lightning. There was no silence in the air—just one continual clap of thunder followed by another, one constantly overlapping the other, and continually pounding against us.
At this point I was in a literal panic. I couldn’t maintain level breathing patterns. Every time I would try to breath another clap of thunder would echo through the air, or another flash of lightning would spark, startling me into another gasp. Exhaling was never an option. My heart was racing at an incredible rate. My survival instincts had set in, and I was in a race to get to safety as soon as possible.
Suddenly I felt a hand grab on to the back of my shirt and pull me backwards. I turned around to see my companion holding my shirt. I immediately whipped my head back around just in time to see an enormous branch fall to the ground and land right where I would have been standing if he hadn’t intervened.
With the new fear of being taken out by a falling tree setting in, my determination to find shelter increased, but just as I took another step forward I saw a huge bolt of lightning strike the road just a short distance in front of us, while simultaneously splitting the air with the most intense thunder I had ever heard in my life. I had never seen a bolt of lighting strike at the exact same time that I heard the thunder, but this bolt was so close to us that we could feel the sound waves vibrate against us. I literally jumped up and backwards as fear traveled through my body.
My desperation was incredible. For the first time in my life I was literally afraid that I could die. I turned to my companion and shouted, “We need to say a prayer right now!”
We stopped walking, and he started praying. As soon as my companion spoke the first words of the prayer an overwhelming calm filled my body. I was a new missionary at this point. I had only been serving for 4 or 5 months, and I had spent every second of those months terrified, stressed, and anything but calm. But somehow, in this moment, when I was surrounded by the greatest chaos I had ever been in in my life, I was in a total and complete state of calmness. There was not an uneasy nerve in my entire body. The storm continued in my environment, but the storm within me completely cleared.

We eventually made it home. Not from walking, thank goodness, but because one of our investigators happened to be driving by as we were praying. Fallen trees and toppled power lines blocked all the roads that lead back to our apartment, blocking any route available, so he drove us to our church so we could stay there until we were able to get home.
Ultimately this experience built my faith and helped me trust in God more. It showed me that God is aware of and protects His missionaries, that he will put people in my life to help me when I need it, and that His peace can calm the storms inside me regardless of the chaos that encompasses me. It was an incredibly faith building experience and it deepened my relationship with God.
But it also traumatized me. Even to this day, more than a decade later, I cannot stay calm if I am standing outside during a thunderstorm. My heart races and my mind scatters as a mini panic-attack wells up inside me. It’s honestly a little embarrassing, but because of how traumatic that storm was I try to avoid being outside during thunderstorms at all costs.
Jesus Christ went through an unimaginably traumatizing experience for all of us. Gethsemane and Golgotha were the culmination of all traumas anyone would ever face, but they were all endured by a single person. I don’t know how He did what He did, but He did it. Not only did He do it two thousand years ago, but He also continuously faces Gethsemane for us, even to this day.
“See, I have engraved you on my palms; I have sealed you to be continually before me.” (Isaiah 49:16, Isaiah Institute Translation, emphasis added)
All things—past, present, and future—are present before God (see D&C 88:13). This means that even though the atonement was wrought in the past it is still presently before Him. Jesus didn’t walk out of Gethsemane to never return to it again. With His triumphant re-entry into eternity He was no longer bound by chronology like He was in the flesh. By so doing He sealed all events; past, present, and future, to be continually before Him.
Rather than escaping the trauma that He faced (like I attempt to do with thunderstorms) I believe He re-visits Gethsemane often. The process He went through while atoning for our sins is the price He paid, not just for our sins, but also to know you and me perfectly and exactly. It was during His most chaotic “storm” that He would ever face that He formed the most meaningful view of those He was suffering for, and for that reason it became one of the most sacred experiences He would ever encounter.
Let that sink in. Because of how much you mean to Jesus, He considers His most agonizing moments to be sacred, and He revisits them often—continually, as Isaiah indicates—so that He can always remember who you really are and never forget your worth to Him. In this sense His nail prints, eternally scaring His hands, feet, and side, serve not only as an indication to us of what He did on our behalf, but also an everlasting reminder to Him of the sacred time that He spent coming to know each of us in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Likening this to being stranded in a thunderstorm; it is the equivalent of me, rather than avoiding storms, spending time in them, standing in the epicenter to help me remember the peace that God brought me, and to remind me that He watches over me and protects me.
We mean so much more to Jesus than we could possibly realize. All of us. Your annoying co-worker that is always complicating your job means more to Him than you realize. Your rude and ill-tempered boss means more to Him than you realize. The homeless beggar means more to Him than you realize. The prostitute who sells herself for drugs and money means more to Him than you realize.

I believe that if we all comprehended just how much every person on this planet means to our Savior, regardless of who they are, we would walk much more softly around each other. We would be more patient with other people’s struggles and gossip would be repulsive. We would hold our tongues more often, swallow our pride more willingly, and extend a hand of fellowship more anxiously. We would never raise our hands to harm another, war and bloodshed would fill us with sorrow, and we would seek much more earnestly to proclaim peace. In short, if we realized just how much we all mean to Jesus, Zion would be attained.
When I visualize the Lord entering His Father’s Kingdom after atoning for our sins I don’t see throngs of people surrounding Him, celebrating His arrival, like I once did.
I visualise Him standing in front of me. Not a huge group of people—just me. I see Him putting His hand on the back of my neck, looking deeply into my eyes with the purest and most deep love I have ever seen, with tears in His eyes, knowing that He is seeing me as I really am. As I see Him looking into my eyes I also see Him revisiting the time He spent with me while He was in Gethsemane, being filled with love for me, understanding everything about me.
I don’t see Him doing this with only me. I see Him doing it with every person who would ever live, individually, because that is the type of Savior that He is.
I also see Him gazing similarly into the eyes of those who we consider to be the most vial sinners. I imagine deep sorrow filling His heart as He stands face-to-face with them, revisiting His time He spent with them in The Garden. I see His passionate eyes piercing theirs. Not looking on them with harshness or disapproval, but with the utmost sincerity and genuine love, with a stare of such intensity that the inaudible plea for them to come to know Him the way that He knows them is unmistakable. I see Him hoping, with all His soul, that they will realize that the purest love that has ever existed is standing right in front of them, longing for them to receive it.
The focus of this life should not be to “make it to heaven”, as we so often say. The focus of this life should be to come to know Jesus Christ in equal depth and measure that He has come to know us.
“And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” (John 17:3)
How is it possible to come to know Jesus as He knows us? The same way that He came to know us—by dying for Him.
Most of us would be happy to die as a martyr for Christ; or we at least hope to have that quality of faith. But the type of faith that is more often necessary is the faith to be a living martyr for Him, continually sacrificing the natural man within us to make way for the spiritual man to permeate.
“For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.” (2 Corinthians 4:11)
In effect, the way to life is paved by death. We cannot be alive in Christ until that which quenches life has been put to death within us.
“For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth.” (Hebrews 9:16-17)
This is true for both the literal martyrs and the living kind. Our convictions to follow Christ are not in full force while the carnal, sensual, and devilish man is still alive and well within us.
“Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” (Romans 6:6)
By allowing the old man within us to be crucified; the life of Jesus Christ rises from the tomb in our hearts, giving us new life. As His life is manifest in our lives we come to know Him more intimately. Once the natural man within us is completely crucified His life will be fully manifest in our lives, and we will know Him as completely as He knows us.
“Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.” (1 John 3:2-3, emphasis added)
The time has come for us to see Jesus Christ as He is. The day of learning about Christ needs to give way to the day of knowing Christ. He was enabled to see us as we are by making Himself an offering for us. In like manner we will come to know Him as He is as we lay ourselves on the altar as an offering for Him.
It is my deepest desire to one day enter the presence of my Savior and look into His eyes with the same gaze that He looks into mine–being literally at one with Him as we mutually perceive each other for who we truly are.

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One comment
1. David says: 
April 14, 2018 at 4:00 pm 


I love the things you said here about the testator and the need for his death. This all coincides with the purpose of water baptism, which is in similitude of the man of sin dying, being buried in the grave, and then raising from the grave unto a newness of life; a new man, who has covenanted to sin no more. And through the baptism of fire and receiving the Holy Ghost as his constant companion, this new man can now become a living testator. I love how you brought the two principles together.
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