Brothers and Sisters, I hope you have been doing well this part month and hope you are as excited as I am to hear from our beloved Prophet and other General Officers at General Conference in just two short weeks. This week the Gospel Doctrine is on 3 Nephi 8-11 which is titled “Arise and Come Forth unto Me”. The Nephites who lived nearly 2,000 years ago experienced three days of great tribulation and destruction immediately prior to the visitation of our Beloved Savior Jesus Christ to the America’s following his crucifixion and miraculous resurrection three days later. We too are living in a time of increasing tribulations long prophesied by past Prophets in the Holy Scriptures. In just the past several months, our nation has endured seemingly unprecedented lightning storms, fire tornadoes, flooding, earthquakes, hurricanes and windstorms, violent riots by hateful mobs inspired by the spirit of contention racking our cities and wildfires which have destroyed entire towns. At the same time we have been experiencing a deadly pandemic which has cost the lives of a couple hundred thousand of our fellow Americans and nearly a million people worldwide thus far.

Throughout scriptural history, when the Lord’s people have turned to worldly things and become lax in their adherence to His commandments, picking and choosing which ones they would keep and which ones they transgress, the Lord has sometimes used adversities including famine, pestilence and war to chasten us to turn back to Him as was the case with the Nephites in 3 Nephi 8-10 and as is the case in our time today. As Elder Jeffrey R. Holland has suggested, the increasing trials and tribulations we are now beginning to experience are meant by the Lord to provide the people of our nation and the people of our world with a spiritual re-awakening to prepare us to endure more devastating tribulations to come. These future tribulations might well resemble those that the righteous Nephites experienced in 3 Nephi 8. I believe our current tribulations are a tender mercy of the Lord to motivate us to turn to Him in prayer and to be ever more exact in our obedience to every single one of His commandments as President Russell M. Nelson counseled us to be in the April 2020 General Conference. If we do so, we will be strengthened spiritually to endure the tribulations many of us have been foreordained to pass though prior to the times of joy and happiness which will immediately proceed and follow the Second Coming of our Lord and Savior, which we have been promised will likely occur in our lifetimes.

In 3 Nephi 8-10, we learn that if we repent the Savior will gather protect and heal us even in the face of unprecedented adversities and destructions. As I have re-read the Holy Scriptures and relistened to the beautiful talks offered by the General Officers of the Church during this past April 2020 General Conference over the past several weeks, I have been impressed by how men and women of great faith and righteousness have been called upon by God in times past to endure great tribulations and adversity in their lives. Many of the Prophets even had to seal their testimony with their very lives and have been rewarded with eternal life for so doing. In 3 Nephi 9:20 and 22 it says that we must repent and come unto Christ as a little child and offer as a sacrifice a broken heart and contrite spirit and in verse 14 the Lord promises “if ye will come unto me ye shall have eternal life.” What a wonderful promise it is that every single person who has ever lived and ever will live on this Earth who comes to Christ can receive the greatest of all gifts God has to give which is eternal life, no matter how humble our circumstances, after receiving the saving ordinances of the Gospel either in this life or the next.

In these chapters, we are taught that the commandment to offer as a sacrifice a broken heart and contrite spirit replaced the Law of Moses which consisted of animal sacrifice as a similitude to the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. We have been told that Jesus Christ is not only the God of this world but, as Elder Neal A. Maxwell stated, the Lord of the Universe and the creator of worlds without number. In order to have a broken heart and a contrite spirit we must sincerely repent and feel remorse for our sins and we must humble ourselves before God and put His will above our own. Sometimes, answers to prayers are withheld until we follow our prayerful petitions to our Heavenly Father with the Savior’s own prayerful saying that “Thy will be done not mine.” Sometimes, the most difficult answers to prayer is the realization that not all of our prayers will be answered the way we want them to be in this life but if we exercise great faith and trust in the Lord, we can be assured that even if they are not answered in this life they may be answered in the life to come. We must trust in the Lord that He knows what is best for us even if we cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel.

We have been told that the Lord gives us adversities to test and to try us and to see whether we will keep His commandments and turn to Him for succor and support or turn against Him and blame Him for our troubles. President Nelson recently stated that “the Lord loves effort” and Church leaders have told us how important it is to follow Heavenly Father’s admonition to “Hear Him.” Sometimes it seems like it can take a lot of effort to receive personal answers to our prayers when we need Him most, but if we turn to Him in fervent prayer, the Lord will bless us with spiritual, emotional and physical healing and will enable us to continue to grow spiritually and become more like Him. No one suffered more adversity in their life than the Savior Himself. We have been told that because He not only suffered for the sins of all those who ever lived and ever will live but endured all of our pains as well, He knows how to succor us in our times of trials because he has personally experienced every single one of them. Just as when the Savior’s light dispelled the thick darkness which encompassed the more righteous Nephites who survived the destruction of their cities by virtually every natural disaster imaginable, so His light can dispel the darkness that now surrounds us in the world today. We just need to turn to Him in fervent prayer and righteous living so that we might transform our homes into Holy Temples and places of refuge where it is known the Gospel is lived and taught to our families.

In 3 Nephi 11:1-17, we learn that Jesus Christ is the Light of the World. In 3 Nephi 11:7, the people heard the voice of our Heavenly Father declaring “Behold my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, in whom I have glorified my name—hear ye him.” Then the Savior descended from Heaven proclaiming Himself the light and life of the world and showing forth the wounds which he suffered during the Crucifixion and the Nephites fell down and worshipped at His feet.Think of how wonderful it would have been to be among the more righteous Nephites who were blessed to see the Savior in person at that time and begin 200 years of righteousness as described in 4 Nephi during which Satan had no power living in a pre-Millennial society. I believe that the Lord is using our increasing tribulations today to prepare us to live during 1,000 years of Millennial peace and joy here on Earth following His Second Coming during which we will be protected against all temptation and our bodies will be changed to protect and heal us from all sickness and physical, mental and emotional disabilities. How I wish this Millennial Day of happiness would come sooner rather than later but I know there is much for us to do and many more prophesies to be fulfilled before that blessed time.

Think of what experiences have given you a witness of Jesus Christ as your Savior. Sometimes, we may doubt our testimony but if we remember all the times that we have felt the Holy Spirit in our lives when we attended Church or the Temple or were diligent in keeping the Lord’s commandments, it is those very experiences that witness to us that the Lord lives and that this is His Restored Church on the Earth today. In 3 Nephi 11:10-41, we see that Jesus Christ established His Doctrine and His Church. President Nelson recently underscored the importance of calling the Church after His name. While other Churches focus on His crucifixion, Church leaders have taught that we should focus on His resurrection and the living Jesus Christ. While visiting the Nephites following His Resurrection, the Lord taught the importance of priesthood authority in administering the saving ordinances of the Gospel including baptism and the Sacrament. He also taught the importance of being united as one in purpose as he is united and one in purpose with our Heavenly Father. The Lord taught that the spirit of contention and division which we now see so pervasive in our country today is of the devil. He also taught that faith, repentance and baptism are necessary for us to enter the Celestial Kingdom and avoid eternal damnation.

I am so grateful that the Lord inspired Joseph Smith to restore His Church and bring forth the Book of Mormon so that we would have these eternal truths revealed to us. I am also very grateful to have a living Prophet in our day President Russell M. Nelson and pray that we will all pay special heed to the divinely inspired counsel of the General Officers of the Church at this upcoming October 2020 General Conference. I know that if we remain strictly obedient to the counsel of the living Prophet, we will be warned, protected and safeguarded against the difficult trials and tribulations which await us here on Earth in the near future. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.