Hey guys, what’s up? Derek here from BOM Socks back with another week of BOM Bites, where we feast upon the words of Christ, one bite at a time. So we’ve had the glorious opportunity for the last six months to study Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and it was a wonderful experience. I enjoyed it and I hope you did too. We are now starting the Book of Acts, which basically finishes up for the next six months, the rest of the New Testament. Now, let me pause for a moment. This last week, June 27, we commemorated the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith in 1844. Joseph and his brother, Hyrum. Now, that has a lot to do with where we are currently at in the New Testament. Now, let me explain where I’m going with this. Jeffrey R. Holland gave a wonderful talk back in the year 2000 to a group of seminary and institute teachers. It was a BYU symposium and the talk was called Therefore, What? I would recommend it. It is an amazing talk. But Elder Holland made an interesting comparison with that very, very difficult time in Church history to where we are currently at now in the New Testament.
Here’s what he said, The Book of Acts, which introduces the post resurrection portion of the New Testament, is technically called the Acts of the Apostles. We’re going to talk more about that tomorrow. That is an important Ecclesiastical idea in the book, namely that the Apostles were ordained representatives of the Lord Jesus Christ and were thus authorized to lead the Church. But consider what they faced. Consider the plight, the fear, the absolute confusion, the devastation of the members of the new little Christian Church after Christ was crucified. They may have understood something of what was happening, but they couldn’t have understood it all. The people must have been very fearful and very confused. The brethren had their hands full, trying to provide leadership. The only contemporary example, and here’s where we started today, I can think of, and please do not misunderstand the comparison, might be the confusion and fear that reigned in our day after the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith. No one had had to face such a thought before. No one no one had even considered the Church without Joseph as his prophet. And now this, it was a moment of almost spiritual bedlam in Nauvoo.
But God did something that taught a great lesson to the people. To counter Sidney Rigden and a few others vying for the prophetic office, the Lord made his will and power manifest in the matter as Brigham Young was transformed in visage and countenance before the people. You know the story very well. Brigham Young was up speaking. There was a little bit of a debate, for a lack of a better term, where Sidney Rigden was speaking and Joseph Smith was speaking. Sidney got up and spoke for an hour and basically explained how he needed to be the Guardian of the Church. And then you have Brigham, who is the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who more or less says, Look, I don’t care who leads the Church. I just want to do what God wants. I want to do the will of the Lord. And then at that moment, that’s where Brigham is speaking, they start seeing Joseph. And these two men looked very different from one another. And so at that moment, it was obvious of who was to lead the Church. By momentarily giving Brigham Young Joseph’s appearance and very manner of speech, quite literally his mantle, God said to the people, The keys of the Kingdom are with the 12.
Brigham is Joseph’s rightful successor in leading the Church. That is the obvious and very important declaration about Church governance that the Lord was making. But an even more important declaration was the manifestation of heavenly power itself. God’s might and direct involvement in this issue was the truly important thing that was conveyed here. Not that Brigham Young was to be in charge, or even that Joseph Smith had been in charge. The message was that God is in charge. Now, that is exactly the point being made in the Book of Acts. Your students, and again, he’s talking to teachers here with this, your students will not find that if you do not help them look for it. The direction of the church is the same. The location of the Savior has been altered, but the direction and leadership of the church is exactly the same. And that’s a great message for you and I as well as we see the passing of a mantle from one prophet to another. This is the same situation that was taking place in the Book of Acts as you have the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now they’re like, Who’s in charge?
Well, you have the Acts of the Apostles. I love that starting out this week just to let you know that, again, here we are. We have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John where Jesus was in charge. All of a sudden here we are in the Book of Acts and things have not changed. Jesus is still in charge. God is in charge. We are just working now through his Apostles. And we’ll talk more about that tomorrow as well. Thanks so much for watching. Thanks for subscribing. Thanks as always for sharing these messages. We are so grateful that you do that. And if you haven’t already, please go check out our amazingly comfortable Gospel theme socks at bomb socks. Com. You guys have a great day and we’ll see you tomorrow. Godspeed. Bye. Bye.
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dyejo
