The Crucifixion

Why do we need the crucifixion? 

We know that Christ suffered in Gethsemane, that he took our sins, and the suffering he endured for us was beyond our own ability to endure. At this point once having already suffered, the God who saved us, could have just given up his life and avoided the cross, instead he endured again and allowed himself to be scourged, and hung. Only after being crucified did he voluntarily give up his soul and die. He could have just laid down his life peacefully in his sleep. So why after enduring so much did he choose to endure again? I think the answer is the same as the answer to why he endured Gethsemane, he did it for us. It is beyond our ability to understand the atonement, so he gave us and the people of his time something they could understand, the crucifixion. He gave us a physical manifestation of part of what he endure so we would always understand his sacrifice, we can never understand his pain for us completely, the atonement was never in our ability to suffer, but we with our limitations can understand the physical pain of the act of being crucified. It is another sign of his love for us that we are given a sample of the pain he endured by his enduring and overcoming something we physically understand, human physical pain.

09:03 PM

Like it is.....here goes the speel..

Thinking about resurrection and the difference between it and a restoration of life as in Lazarus, both are done thru the power of the priesthood. 

In the same thought, I was thinking obviously there is nothing a woman adds to the type of priesthood function that restores life or heals (other than chicken soup and the warm hug). But what part do women play in resurrection or are we just by standers? 

What is required for resurrection? We have only one example in the scriptures. 

So let's look at it:

Christ's Resurrection requirements

1. Resurrection requires the priesthood

2. Resurrection requires perfection or a perfect individual to mediate

3. Resurrection requires faith, repentance and observance with the law

Keeping in mind the basics, resurrection being the uniting of spirit and body

4 Resurrection requires a spirit

5 Resurrection requires a body

 6 resurrection requires pain , I think even with all Christ has done living and leaving this life can often mean suffering at times. His resurrection required great pain so as the example I think we will not go thru it without some form of it ourselves but thanks to Him not the full measure.

I am probably missing a few, but I think we hit what I need.

So what is a woman's role in resurrection.

1. A body is required, and without a woman's participation even in this world of genetic engineering, no body comes into it without some woman being part of that. ( I had to check but a sexual altered individual will become unable to bare children, or sterility in men. Just as it is required to place a fetus created in laboratory conditions, into a viable womb in order to complete it's entrance into the world)

 Wikapedia "For IVF to be successful it typically requires healthy ova, sperm that can fertilise, and a uterus that can maintain a pregnancy. "

 Just silly. No success in a laboratory, can compensate for failure in the womb

2. Along with birth, comes some pain, women sit between heaven and earth during birth, no man can do that. Her body is literally the door way into life.

3. At birth we start the progress of resurrection since without a body we cannot be resurrected.

4. There is no doubt in my mind that although restoration of life can be performed without a woman thru the priesthood function of healing, no resurrection can occur without a woman.

5 It is by faith and reason alone, because I have no true knowledge of this, but I have faith that the birth of spirits requires both male and female, for how could it be otherwise. For why else create women if they were not required.

So without women there is no resurrection, there are no spirits created and there are no spirits born into this world, what power the priesthood has without us is the only the power to restore what was, the power to create and resurrect belongs to the combined powers of heaven, male and female. I can't see it being otherwise.

General Conference Oct 1996 Women of the  Church

President Gordon B. Hinckley

First let me say to you sisters that you do not hold a second place in our Father’s plan for the eternal happiness and well-being of His children. You are an absolutely essential part of that plan.

Without you the plan could not function. Without you the entire program would be frustrated. As I have said before from this pulpit, when the process of creation occurred, Jehovah, the Creator, under instruction from His Father, first divided the light from the darkness and then separated the land from the waters. There followed the creation of plant life, followed by the creation of animal life. Then came the creation of man, and culminating that act of divinity came the crowning act, the creation of woman.

Each of you is a daughter of God, endowed with a divine birthright. You need no defense of that position.

********

From a devotional address given at Brigham Young University on 13 March 2001.

Ensign Apri 2002

M.  Russell Ballard 

Women of Righteousness 

There are those who suggest that males are favored of the Lord because they are ordained to hold the priesthood. Anyone who believes this does not understand the great plan of happiness. The premortal and mortal natures of men and women were specified by God Himself, and it is simply not within His character to diminish the roles and responsibilities of any of His children.

As President Joseph Fielding Smith (1876–1972) explained, “The Lord offers to his daughters every spiritual gift and blessing that can be obtained by his sons” (in Conference Report, Apr. 1970, 59; or “Magnifying Our Callings in the Priesthood,” Improvement Era, June 1970, 66). All of us, men and women alike, receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and are entitled to personal revelation. We may all take upon us the Lord’s name, become sons and daughters of Christ, partake of the ordinances of the temple from which we emerge endowed with power, receive the fulness of the gospel, and achieve exaltation in the celestial kingdom. These spiritual blessings are available to men and women alike, according to their faithfulness and their effort to r

eceive them.

The basic doctrinal purpose for the Creation of the earth is to provide for God’s spirit children the continuation of the process of exaltation and eternal life. God said to Moses:

“And I, God, created man in mine own image, in the image of mine Only Begotten created I him; male and female created I them.

“And I, God, blessed them, and said unto them: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Moses 2:27–28).

The Church’s proclamation on the family confirms that God has not revoked or changed this commandment. The First Presidency and the Twelve Apostles “solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children” (“The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” Ensign, Nov. 1995, 102).

Today I remembered my wonderful grandmother who no matter how dead they looked always put our violets in water after we spent the day picking them.

So When asked to pray for a sick newborn I couldn't seem to pray for a complete recovery so I prayed she'd be old enough to pick violets.