1. What things testify that there is a God?
a. The incredible complexity of the human body
(Slide presentation)
(Following pictures, received in an email package from Phil Lindhardt, Oct. 2009, captured using a scanning electron microscope.
Incredible details of 1 to 5nm (nanometer) in size can be detected.)
Red Blood Cells -- They may look like little cinnamon candies, but they're actually the most common type of blood cell in the human body - red blood cells. They have the tall task of carrying oxygen to our entire body. In women there are about 4 to 5 million per micro liter of blood and about 5 to 6 million in men. People who live at higher altitudes have even more red blood cells because of the low oxygen levels in their environment.
Split End of Human Hair -- Regular trimmings to your hair and good conditioner should help to prevent this unsightly picture of a split end of a human hair.
Hair Cell in the Ear -- Here's a human hair cell stereo cilia inside the ear. They detect mechanical movement in response to sound vibrations.
Tongue with Taste Bud --This color-enhanced image depicts a taste bud on the tongue. The human tongue has about 10,000 taste buds that are involved with detecting salty, sour, bitter, sweet and savory taste perceptions.
Human Egg with Coronal Cells -- This is a purple, color-enhanced human egg sitting on a pin.
Villi of Small Intestine -- Villi in the small intestine increase the surface area of the gut, which helps in the absorption of food.
Alveoli in the Lung -- This is a color-enhanced image of the inner surface of your lung. The hollow cavities are alveoli; this is where gas exchange occurs with the blood.
Blood Clot -- Remember that picture of the nice, uniform shapes of red blood? Here's what it looks like when those same cells get caught up in the sticky web of a blood clot. The cell in the middle is a white blood cell.
Purkinje Neurons -- Of the 100 billion neurons in your brain. Purkinje (pronounced purr-kin-jee) neurons are some of the largest. Among other things, these cells are the masters of motor coordination in the cerebella cortex.
2. The marvelous variety and beauty of the Earth
a. Slide presentation of Fall Colors at Butchart Gardens, Victoria, BC, Canada
b. Alma: 30:44 -- "... ye have the testimony of all these thy brethren, and also all the holy prophets? The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the bearth, and call things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its dmotion, yea, and also all the eplanets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator."
c. The ever-expanding knowledge that there is so much more out there in the Universe
(Wordpress google search)
(Milky Way IR Spitzer -- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
1. What was the scientific belief of life on other planets at the time Joseph Smith spoke of worlds without number that have been created by God?
(CNN) – (Oct. of 2009) Thirty-two planets have been discovered outside Earth's solar system through the use of a high-precision instrument installed at a Chilean telescope, an international team announced Monday. The existence of the so-called exoplanets -- planets outside our solar system -- was announced by a consortium of international researchers, headed by the Geneva Observatory, who built the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, or HARPS. The device can detect slight wobbles of stars as they respond to tugs from exoplanets' gravity. With the discovery, the tally of new exoplanets found by HARPS is now at 75, out of about 400 known exoplanets, the organization said.
iii. (NPR) (Dec. of 2009) A newly discovered planet orbiting a small, nearby star appears to be a "water world," with a surface that might be covered with liquid water. "This is certainly the first planet around another star which we think is mostly made of water," says David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., who led the research team that found the new planet, named GJ 1214b. If you could ride a spaceship to this planet — which you couldn't, because it is 40 light-years away — you would first approach the small, feeble red star that the planet orbits once every 38 hours, Charbonneau says. Then you'd see the planet, bigger and heavier than Earth, and probably enshrouded in an alien atmosphere.
3. How is God “The Great Parent of the Universe”?
a. God is the Great Creator – through Jesus Christ our world and countless other worlds have been created.
b. God oversees his creations c. As our spiritual Father or parent, he wants us to obtain all that He has – to become like Him; and He sent his Son, Jesus, who is like Him, to set an example for all mankind and to make it possible for all men to be saved.
c. Moses 1:39 -- “Behold, This is My Work and My Glory to bring to pass the immortality and Eternal Life of Man” a.
4. What are the two things he wants us to obtain?
a. Immortality – to live forever, which all Mankind have received through the resurrection of Jesus Christ
b. Eternal Life – which is the kind of life God lives, and thereby receive all that he has.
5. As a father, what is it that we want for our own children?
Robert D. Hales (Nov. 2009)
“Some wonder, why is belief in God so important? Why did the Savior say, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent”?2
Without God, life would end at the grave and our mortal experiences would have no purpose. Growth and progress would be temporary, accomplishment without value, challenges without meaning. There would be no ultimate right and wrong and no moral responsibility to care for one another as fellow children of God. Indeed, without God, there would be no mortal or eternal life.
If you or someone you love is seeking purpose in life or a deeper conviction of God’s presence in our lives, I offer, as a friend and as an Apostle, my witness. He lives!
Some may ask, how can I know this for myself? We know He lives because we believe the testimonies of His ancient and living prophets, and we have felt God’s Spirit confirm that the testimonies of these prophets are true. From their testimonies, recorded in holy scripture, we know that “[God] created man, male and female, after his own image and in his own likeness.”3 Some people may be surprised to learn that we look like God. One prominent religious scholar has even taught that imagining God in the form of man is creating a graven image and is idolatrous and blasphemous.4 But God Himself said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”5
The use of the words us and our in this scripture also teaches us about the relationship between the Father and the Son. God further taught, “By mine Only Begotten [Son] I created these things.”6 The Father and the Son are separate and distinct individuals—as any father and son always are. This may be one reason the name of God in Hebrew, Elohim, is not singular but plural….
In matters of personal belief, how do we know what really is true?
I testify that the way to know the truth about God is through the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost, the third member of the Godhead, is a personage of spirit. His work is to “testify of [God]”19 and to “teach [us] all things.”20
We are then ready to ask our Heavenly Father sincerely, in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ, if the things we have learned are true. Most of us will not see God, as the prophets have, but the still, small promptings of the Spirit -- the thoughts and feelings that the Holy Ghost brings into our minds and hearts—will give us an undeniable knowledge that He lives and that He loves us."
6. How can we learn the true nature of God?
a. Understand that He is like us – but perfected and glorified.
b. What would man be capable of if he had a perfect body – and, especially, a perfect mind, using 100% of its capacity instead 10%?
i. What if he had a perfect temperment -- a perfect spirit?
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
"What a piece of work is a man!
How noble in reason!
How infinite in faculty,
in apprehension how like a god."
7. How can we come to know God? How can we establish a spiritual relationship with our Father in Heaven?
a. Believe first that He exists and that He loves us
b. Study the scriptures and learn of Him
c. Pray to Him and want to know him as you would know your own Earthly Father
d. Follow His Example – Live the kind of life his son, Jesus, did.
e. Obey all His commandments as best we can
President Gordon B. Hinckley, Ensign, Nov 2006
Brethren, you look like a shirtsleeve priesthood. You look all dressed in white, ready to go to work. And the time has come to go to work.
What a remarkable sight this is. This great Conference Center is filled to capacity, and our words are flung across the world. This is probably the largest gathering of priesthood men that has ever occurred. I congratulate you on your presence tonight.
I recently listened on television to a concert by the BYU Men’s Chorus. They sang a stirring number entitled “Rise Up, O Men of God.” It was written in 1911 by William P. Merrill, and I discovered a version of it is found in our hymnbook, although I never remember singing it.
The words carry the spirit of the old English hymns written by Charles Wesley and others. The text reads:
Rise up, O men of God!
Have done with lesser things.
Give heart and soul and mind and strength
To serve the King of Kings.
Rise up, O men of God,
In one united throng.
Bring in the day of brotherhood
And end the night of wrong.
Rise up, O men of God!
The church for you doth wait,
Her strength unequal to her task;
Rise up, and make her great!
Rise up, O men of God!
Tread where his feet have trod.
As brothers of the Son of Man,
Rise up, O men of God!
(Hymns, no. 324; third verse in The Oxford American Hymnal, ed. Carl F. Pfatteicher [1930], no. 256)
The scriptures are very plain in their application to each of us, my brethren. … The words of Lehi are a clarion call to all men and boys of the priesthood. Said he with great conviction: “Awake, my sons; put on the armor of righteousness. Shake off the chains with which ye are bound, and come forth out of obscurity, and arise from the dust” (2 Nephi 1:23). There is not a man or boy in this vast congregation tonight who cannot improve his life. And that needs to happen. After all, we hold the priesthood of God.”
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