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
No comments:
Post a Comment