The Last Days, Lesson 21, 2008

Here's a different kind of post: This is an outline for a High Priests lesson from the manual Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith.
Here's an interesting mystery for you to uncover: Check out the outline and research the references.

I. Joseph Smith background
a. Page 249-50 revelations on Signs of Times
A. Wars, calamities, famines
b. Page 251, 252, his teachings
B. Neigh, even at our doors!
1. Story when I was about 13 or 14 and we studied about last days – wanted to be one of the two missionaries in Jerusalem.
a. I was sure the 2nd Coming would be in my youth.
b. Now I’m why past a half-century old.
c. When will it be? If anyone says he knows – what do you know about him? Page 253
II. How far into the Last Days are we? How close to the 2nd Coming?
a. Page. 254 … the hour of His coming is nigh.”
b. When we look around for signs, what do we find?
1. Wars, famines, earthquakes
2. What new? Greenhouse effect (melting of the ice caps, which is causing changes in the ocean temperatures, currents, weather pattern changes, more severe weather, such as bigger and more often hurricanes, flooding.
i. Page 252 … seas heaving beyond their bounds”
ii. I never recognized that one before!
c. Breakdown in moral bearings, like in the times of Noah and Sodom and Gomorrah.
II. Hymn comes to mind: “We Are All Enlisted Until the Conflict is Over.”
a. When will it be over? Millennium
b. Strategy for War, Elder Durrel A. Woolsey, 1995
c. Moral Values, Absolute Values, Elder Dallin H. Oaks, 1992
d. Battling against moral decay, Pres. Spencer W. Kimball (story of camel)
e. Enemy is Combined, Elder Neal A. Maxwell, 1993
f. Time to “Let Our Voices Be heard,” Elder M. Russell Ballard, 2003
1. Proposition 8 in California – Church and its members are being “blamed” for the passage of marriage being defined as that between one man and one woman.
a. Is that fight over? Protest at temples, including in Salt Lake
Conclusion: Will we let the camel into the tent? Will we tolerate and then embrace?
Pray that will we stay absolute in our moral bearings!