Neal A Maxell on a Universe Pulsating with Divine Purpose & Life / Lloyd

Elder Neal A. Maxwell through videos & quotes invites us to consider words of ancient prophets juxtaposed with the baffling scope of the universe.

As we consider the vastness of God's creations, it is significant to consider that we are the sole purpose of His existence: "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man."

We cannot possibly appreciate the majesty and the complexity of the ongoing duties of galactic governance that rest upon Jesus Christ; but as the Shepherd, He did not merely create other worlds and then abandon them.

Even so, as the omniscient Creator, He does not rush to tell us things about these other worlds that we neither need to know nor could appreciate. 

Instead, what He tells us is what we need to know, including that which can reinforce us in our spiritual determination.

As immensely important as the truths about the physical universe are, they are not now that which we most need to know. 

Nephi had the proper sense of proportion: "I know that [God] loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things.

Does not God even describe the immensity of the galaxies, the planets, and the stars, in lovable as well as understandable ways? 

Though He might do so in sweeping technical and astrophysical terms that we could not even understand, He asks us to think in a familial way about faithful Abraham's posterity one day being as numberless as the stars in heaven. 

What is presented is beckoning rather than overwhelming.

Further, we are asked to view the cosmos as evidence of "God moving in his majesty and power," attesting that, in God's work, souls matter most!

God's work is unimaginably difficult work. It is very real, very relentless and repetitive. His course is one eternal round, He has said. 

But His work is also His glory. And we, His children everywhere, are His work. We are at the center of His purposes and concerns. "We are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand."

Moreover, in the Pearl of Great Price, we read that "millions of earths" would be just a beginning to the number of the Lord's creations. 

However, as Enoch beheld them "stretched out" into space, his awe did not spring from the numerical or spatial dimensions of God's creations but, rather, from the implications underlying those numbers.

Enoch responded movingly and with awe—but it was over God's attributes, not His "acreage": "Thou art there [actuality], . . . thou art just; thou art merciful and kind forever [personality]"!

We cannot determine by using radio telescopes . . .  that there is a plan of salvation operating in the universe, helpful as radio telescopes are for astrophysical purposes. Salvational truths are obtainable only by revelation.

Please Note: All italics in text above are emphasis added - Lloyd

My Dad Liberated A Nazi Concentration Camp / Judy

While Lloyd is working on the Garden of Eden, I'd like to go into the more recent past. You may have seen the current news item about a study that revealed an even more staggering scope of the Holocaust.

The lead editors on the project said as they began to document all the concentration camps in Europe, they thought there were about 7,000 of them. (I read an old article that said there were 1500.) Then they began their research and soon the number went to 11,000, then an astonishing 20,00. Finally, they have cataloged about 42,500 such camps! They include prisoner-of-war camps, killing centers, brothels, and forced labor camps.

The article said, "What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust."

I was reminded about the part in my Dad's story where, as an Infantry lieutenant in World War II, he came across one small concentration camp late in the war. Here then is what my father, Lieut. H.G. Wight, related:

We resumed driving through Germany, fighting our way through woods and towns. One day we were advancing slowly through a section of forest against moderate resistance when the firing slowed, then stopped completely. The Germans in front of us seemed to evaporate. At first we suspected a trap and continued to advance cautiously. After about an hour of marching through silence, we came upon something that looked like a prison camp with high walls, guard towers and barbed wire. It turned out to be a small concentration camp consisting of just a few barracks buildings.

Photograph courtesy of Google Images

As we carefully approached the entrance, we saw the gates were wide open. The guards and even the combat troops in the area had left. I assumed none of them wanted to be caught anywhere near this place. Even before we entered the gates, we were met with a terrible stench--like a combination of death and excrement. Inside, we came upon a few men sitting in the open yard in black and dirty-white striped uniforms, with a big yellow star on their shirts.

I approached them and said, "Zie zint frei." (You are free.) They just stared at me, their mouths hanging open and drooling a little, their eyes totally blank, as if there was no one inside. They seemed barely alive. They looked like skeletons inside their loose prison clothes. I had a K-ration in my pack, so I opened it and offered it to them. It took a few minutes for them to realize this was food I was offering, but when they did, they grabbed it and wolfed it down. Almost immediately they began retching. I assumed real food was too much for them.

Taking a few of my men, we entered one of the barracks.

Photograph courtesy of Google Images

I can scarcely describe the horror of the inside of that building. Rough wooden bunks lined the walls, with men, or what had once been men, lying in them.Obviously many of these people hadn't been out of their bunks in days. In fact, several of the occupants were dead and evidently had been for some time. I could hardly bear to look around and I felt like crying.

I realized Germany was short of food for their own people late in the war, but they had apparently just stopped feeding the prisoners in this camp. There was no evidence of poison gas or other ways of killing here. They were merely starving them to death.

One of our radiomen called back to headquarters reporting what we'd found and requesting medical assistance. We stayed a couple hours, trying to comfort the living and get a start on cleaning up the place. We removed the dead from the barracks, laying them out in rows and covering them with whatever we could find.

Soon a few of our trucks came up with some supplies and medical personnel. As they took over we moved out and resumed our march through the woods.

I was angrier than I'd ever been in my life--angry and grimly determined to beat this enemy that had so little regard for human life. In addition, I was grateful to be doing my part to prevent this obscenity from reaching America. And I wasn't the only one who felt like that. After that day we had no trouble motivating our men to fight.