0:00:00 - 0:00:25 We're going to talk about the theme of good and evil in Moona seven verse 12, wherefore all things which are good cometh of God and that which is evil cometh of the devil. For the devil is an enemy unto God and fight against him continually and invite and entice to sin and to do that which is evil continually 0:00:24 - 0:00:48 but behold that which is of God, invite and entice to do good continually. Wherefore everything which invite and entice to do good and to love God and to serve him is inspired of God. Wherefore take heed my beloved brethren that ye do not judge that which is evil to be of God or that which is good and 0:00:47 - 0:01:07 of God to be of the devil. For behold my brethren, it is given unto you to judge that ye may know good from evil. And the way to judge is as plain that you may know with the perfect knowledge as the daylight is from the dark night. For behold, the spirit of Christ is given to every man that He may know 0:01:07 - 0:01:26 good from evil. Wherefore I show unto you the way to judge for everything which invites to do good and to persuade, to believe in Christ is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ. Wherefore you may know with the perfect knowledge. It is of God. But whatsoever thing persuade men to do evil and believe 0:01:26 - 0:01:50 not in Christ and deny him and serve not God. Then ye may know with a perfect knowledge. It is of the devil for after this manner doth the devil work for he persuade no man to do good. No, not one, neither do his angels, neither do they who subject themselves unto him. And now my brethren seeing that 0:01:49 - 0:02:12 ye know the light by which ye may judge which light is the light of Christ. See that ye do not judge wrongfully for with that same judgment which ye judge, ye shall also be judged wherefore I beseech of you brethren that ye should search diligently in the light of Christ that ye may know good from evil 0:02:12 - 0:02:41 . And if ye will lay hold upon every good thing and condemn it not, he certainly will be a child of Christ. So uh let's go through this. So starting at verse 12, what do you think it means that He uses this word continually uses it several times both to describe the uh efforts of God and the efforts 0:02:40 - 0:03:13 of the devil. But we read elsewhere in the book of Mormon that uh we are enticed to good and enticed to evil in all things. There's opposition in all things and uh this continually, it's not just a question of how often, but in what and toward what. So, if I had, let's say you're an X ray technician 0:03:12 - 0:03:36 in a dentist's office, if you are being bombarded daily by radiation, you will probably not have a problem the first day because the patients are getting blasted by that and they don't just die of cancer right there on the chair. Um so you probably won't have a problem the first day, but the second day 0:03:36 - 0:03:57 , you also won't have a problem and maybe the fourth week, you won't have a problem. But sooner or later, if you're not standing behind the lead wall, you're going to have some problems. Why? Because at first it wasn't noticeably so bad, but you were exposed continually over time and it got worse and 0:03:57 - 0:04:20 worse now, it was never really good. I mean, you use it in that case for the, the patient looking at their teeth and I don't want to get into the subtleties just yet. But the, the point is that it got worse over time. The devil is not going to entice you to do some horrifically terrible thing. Right 0:04:20 - 0:04:50 . This second, unless you're already a really horrifically terrible person, it's always the next step. And with God, here's the surprise in this chapter. If you haven't thought about it before, it's also always just the next step. The thing about God is that he's holy and the thing about holiness, holy 0:04:49 - 0:05:13 means different and better. That's the literal definition. If you look up the Greek and Hebrew, it's holy. Holy means different and better. So it's different. Uh And it happens to be better. But my question is, are you going to recognize it as such if God took you to the highest heaven? Right. This second 0:05:12 - 0:05:38 , how would you react to that? I think uh the uninformed would say, wow, that'd be great, right? And I've read scriptures where Alma saw the throne of God and he rejoiced and he longed to be there. Uh OK, but Isaiah saw the throne of God and it almost uh he said, I'm undone. He, he um it was a real problem 0:05:37 - 0:05:59 . It was not a comfortable situation. What about Daniel? Daniel was so righteous that God used him as an example of righteousness in talking to others. And yet when he saw an angel with glory and it was an angel, it wasn't even God. He fell on the ground and he struggled greatly until he was ministered 0:05:59 - 0:06:24 to. And he only had uh strength to get up on his hands and knees at that point because he said my comeliness has become corruption as in Daniel Tanner. In other words, everything good about me in the face of something so much greater than I ever imagined has become dross. And so it is true that being 0:06:23 - 0:06:52 uh exposed to great holiness is the best outcome that can be, but there has to be a preparatory process for you to come up to that. Or else it will be a terrible experience in the true sense of the word. So it's always the next thing and we'll get to this later. But the point is, um what we're going 0:06:52 - 0:07:18 to explore here in this section is good and evil. They're not set lists of stuff, they're both a progression and I know that word gets a lot of flak because of the political connections. I'm talking about progress in the literal sense of the word which means to improve, to draw closer to God. I'm not 0:07:17 - 0:07:49 saying change means progress. They're not one and the same change just means something different. It doesn't mean something different and better. That's what holiness means. So, um picture yourself as a pendulum and you're starting as an innocent child and you're hanging down flat. God wants to pull 0:07:49 - 0:08:16 you towards one side. Satan wants to pull you to the other and life can be as back and forth as you allow it to be, but those forces will operate on you until the end. So let's keep going. Verse 13. Um Again, talks about this continually. So God's trying to entice you to one way devils trying to entice 0:08:15 - 0:08:43 you to the other. And Mormon uses these words good and evil. Here's something very interesting. I'm not sure if you've ever noticed this before. Mormon does not define the words, good and evil directly. How does he define them? Well, um I'm skipping ahead a little bit but he describes them not with a 0:08:43 - 0:09:14 fixed definition but with a description of their effect. So, um the issue is it's not easy to list out for someone what it means to be good or evil in terms of descriptions of specific actions. In other words, what we think of when we hear the word commandment, although that word is much more expensive 0:09:13 - 0:09:39 than that. But just here's a sentence that says, thou shalt, here's a sentence that says thou shalt not and that's good. And this is evil and that's that, it's not that simple, it's actually much simpler than that, but in a very different way. So as we read, and we'll get back down to the way to judge 0:09:38 - 0:10:05 between good and evil is as plain as the, the day is from night, daylight, from dark night. Ok. That's in verse 15. But what I want to stress to you is what says in verse 14, uh it's, we have a tendency to judge that which is evil to be of God and that, which is good and of God to be uh of the devil 0:10:05 - 0:10:36 if that weren't. So he would never have written that right? The natural man is an enemy to God. Mosiah 319. And part of that is that by nature, we see what is good as evil and we see what is evil as good tree of life and the tree of knowledge. And one's sweet and one's bitter and we get them reversed 0:10:35 - 0:11:04 . And part of our task here is to sort that out. So how is it that the way to judge is as plain as daylight from dark night? It's so easy that you can have a perfect knowledge as easily as you can tell the difference between daylight and the dark night and all the time. You hear people say, well, I mean 0:11:04 - 0:11:29 , I want to do what's right, but I'm not sure what's right. Well, this is what you're missing. Um Let me read to you another uh verse and we'll tie it in and it's crystal clear. Second. E 5 32 3 angels speak by the power of the holy ghost. Wherefore they speak the words of Christ. Wherefore I said unto 0:11:29 - 0:11:55 you feast upon the words of Christ. For behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do. What are the words of Christ words? We could get into some Greek and Hebrew here. I, I'm just gonna skip it. I'll tell you, I'll jump to the chase words can mean commandments, outward actions 0:11:54 - 0:12:25 and inward character of Jesus. In other words, it's your idea of who and how Jesus is. That is your way to judge and it is as plain as judging between the daylight and the dark night. Now, maybe you say, ok, but I don't know everything there is to know about Jesus. Yet you're absolutely right. And we 0:12:25 - 0:12:55 will get to that. Um Part of the reasons reason that angels are speaking in the first place is because part of their job is to reveal the words of Christ Mormon is acting as an angel in writing this chapter. And just as we went over in the last video, uh B A three was it, it was the moon I three that 0:12:55 - 0:13:21 this is the duty of priests and teachers is to know something more about Jesus and to share that with others who don't and critically to be that themselves, that's critical, but don't wanna get too far out of scope here. The way to judge is plain now, even though you don't know exactly how Jesus is just 0:13:20 - 0:13:51 yet, you have a shockingly clear idea of who he is. It's not perfectly accurate, but it is crystal clear. In other words, we could look at anything in your life right now no matter how specific it is to you. And I could ask you, is this something that you could imagine Jesus doing? And immediately you 0:13:51 - 0:14:26 would be able to say yes or no. Right flipping all of this over. Another way of looking at this is to consider your life and consider the absolute best behavior or desire in all things that you do and don't do think of what the absolute best is that you can imagine. That is your model of Jesus Christ 0:14:25 - 0:14:49 . The funny thing about that is how we started explaining this. Now, I'm making this video for someone who accepts the book of Mormon as the word of God, which presupposes you believe in God and some other things too. But that what I just described to you is fully accessible to all people, even if they 0:14:49 - 0:15:18 don't believe in Jesus yet, they don't know what his name is, but they already have an idea of how he is and just like you and just like me, there's more to know, but there's already a, a set model to start from and that becomes very important here. OK? So in, in 16, the spirit of Christ is given to 0:15:18 - 0:15:41 every man that he may know good from evil. Now, a lot of times people misinterpret this and they think, well, yeah, because of the fall, we know the difference between good and evil. No, that is not true at all. We have access to grow in discernment of good and evil amongst many other things because 0:15:41 - 0:16:11 of the fall. But we do not fully know good and evil because of the fall. There is an increment given to every man. We have a baseline understanding that God gives us as a tool to discern between good and evil at some level as we exercise, that it grows as we reject or ignore that it diminishes so we 0:16:11 - 0:16:37 could go deeply into that. But I'm trying to stick to the text here. So um now let's go to D and C 93. So the spirit of Christ is in fact given to every man that he may know good from evil, but not all at once. It comes by degrees. You start with the baseline and you get that for free and you progress 0:16:36 - 0:17:09 in that, sorry, you progress in that through exercising heed and diligence or effort and obedience. So let's pop down to DNC 93. Here I have um I haven't edited this in the sense of changing anything but I have put in some ellipses um just to cut it down for time. Uh But I highly encourage you to reread 0:17:09 - 0:17:33 the section often and study it deeply and live according to what it says, at least up to verse 39 it gets personal towards other people after that. So 19, I give unto you these sayings that you may come, you may come unto the father in my name. What do you think it means to come unto the father in the 0:17:33 - 0:18:05 name of Christ. Jesus said, no man knows the father except through me to come unto the father. In the name of Christ means as you learn more about how Jesus is and you live that way yourself. You will also learn more about the father and you will become more like him. Continuing verse 19 and in due time 0:18:04 - 0:00:00 , receive of his fullness. There you go. You do not have a fullness of the Father from the start. How do we get there? Verse 20? For if you keep my commandments, you shall receive of his fullness. Pause which commandments it can't be all of the commandments. Because if you knew all the commandments, 0:00:00 - 0:18:52 you would already have a fullness of the Father. How can you prove that? Well, uh elsewhere in the doctrine of covenants, it teaches very, the Lord teaches very clearly that we are sanctified by the, by the law that we have and live. In. Other words, your degree of glory depends on the degree of law 0:18:51 - 0:19:12 that you have and live. OK? So if Jesus says is saying here, if you keep my commandments, you'll receive of his fullness. It means the commandments you have right now are not all the ones that there are. If that were true, weren't true, you would already have his fullness, which you don't. OK? But he's 0:19:12 - 0:19:36 gonna tell us how this works continuing and be glorified in me as I am in the father. In other words, he's saying this is the path that I walked. And if you want to come up to where I am, you have to walk in the same path continuing. Therefore, I say unto you, you shall receive grace for grace. In other 0:19:36 - 0:20:06 words, this is how grace for grace works. This is what it means. Verse 26 we're skipping a few. The spirit of truth is of God, I am the spirit of truth. This is a very important verse. But for our purposes, we're gonna limit uh what we pull from this, that the spirit of truth existed with the father 0:20:05 - 0:20:34 before the son obtained it. But he obtained so much of it that he could truthfully say in the end, I am the spirit of truth verse 27. And no man receives a fullness unless he keepeth his commandments. he that keepeth his commandments receive truth and light until he is glorified in truth and knoweth 0:20:34 - 0:21:04 all things. So he said the father was and is the spirit of truth. The spirit of truth comes from the father. I am the spirit of truth because I obeyed the commandments I had and then I received truth and light until I was glorified in truth and knew all things going back to how we started all this that 0:21:04 - 0:21:33 you may come unto the father in my name and in due time receive of his fullness continuing in verse 31 behold, here is the agency of man and here is the condemnation of man because that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them and they receive not the light. This is a highly rich and 0:21:32 - 0:22:03 dense verse. But one thing we can extract from this is that all mankind are born with a sense of good and evil in initial quantity of light. In the beginning, it is plainly manifest unto them. And they receive, not the light. They do not live according to the light that they have all men sin because 0:22:02 - 0:22:31 they turn away from that light. And that is why we need Jesus as our savior and redeemer. But his forgiveness of our past sins is only the gate. It is not the path, it's just the gate of the path. The path is to receive more light, to receive truth and light until you are glorified in truth and know 0:22:30 - 0:22:56 all things until you receive a fullness through keeping His commandments, the commandments you have now and by doing that, he will give you more and more and more line upon line until in due time, you receive of his fullness and his fullness is nothing separate from his commandments. They are one and 0:22:56 - 0:23:24 the same 32 and every man whose spirit receive not the light is under condemnation for man is spirit. And uh let's just keep reading the elements of the Tabernacle of God. In other words, they house this spirit. Yeah, man is the Tabernacle of God. Even temples, the glory of God is intelligence or in 0:23:24 - 0:23:46 other words, light and truth, light and truth, forsake that evil one. Ok? So now we get back to this pendulum as you go closer to one side, you go away from the other, but they're both fighting for you and they're both trying to make continuous progress in the direction they want you to go 38 every spirit 0:23:45 - 0:24:04 of man was innocent in the beginning. And God having redeemed man from the fall, men became again in their infant state and has sent before God. It's just what I said. And the wicked one cometh and taketh away light in truth through disobedience from the Children of men because of the tradition of their 0:24:03 - 0:24:26 fathers. So when you turn away from light and truth, or you do not receive light and truth offered to you additional light and truth, you necessarily move closer to the wicked one and you lose the light that you had at least a portion of it. And that's its own topic. I don't wanna get too much down that 0:24:26 - 0:24:52 road. Ok. But we come up to here. So, you know, good from evil, you have a baseline already, you're already instructed sufficiently to know how to act right now according to your present understanding of Jesus and to come up to a greater understanding, the only way is to obey everything, you know right 0:24:52 - 0:25:28 now. OK. So more about this perfect knowledge of whether something is of God or not, if it persuades you to believe in Christ and it invites you to do good. Well, how do you know if you don't know God fully yet? How are you supposed to know if it's uh inviting you closer to him or not? Right. Well, uh 0:25:28 - 0:26:00 we'll get to that in a minute. But basically the question is very simple. Does it lead you to be better? Now, your definition of better is gonna vary depending on your understanding. But that's the question, what is the best that you can think of? And that is what leads you to uh believe in Christ, to 0:26:00 - 0:26:30 invite you to do good and anything, anything less than that, persuade you to do evil and to believe not in Christ and to deny him and not serve him. Do you understand? It has to be the absolute best or it's evil. So, um this is really important because there's this verse in 2nd 85 28 8 that everyone 0:26:30 - 0:26:47 knows there shall be many, which shall say, eat, drink and be merry. Nevertheless fear God. He will justify in committing a little sin. Ye lie a little, take the advantage of one because of his words, dig a pit for thy neighbor. There's no harm in this and do all these things for tomorrow, we die. And 0:26:46 - 0:00:00 if so be that we are guilty, God will beat us with a few stripes and at last, we shall be saved in the kingdom of God. In other words, just do your best. God understands God knows your heart. That is an abominable doctrine from Satan. It's dressed up to be from God and it is not from God. It's very, 0:00:00 - 0:27:33 very opposed to what Mormon is saying here and everything else you will find in the word of God. If you say that, what you actually mean is I can envision something better than what I'm doing, but I don't feel like doing it and God understands and I will not miss out on anything for doing less than my 0:27:33 - 0:27:55 actual best. If someone says I'm doing my best, what they mean is I'm doing the worst than the best that I could imagine. But I don't want anyone to give me flak for it. Here's the key folks because they say, oh, you shouldn't run faster than you have strength. No one's saying that no one's saying that 0:27:55 - 0:28:18 they're saying you have to run as fast as you can. If you were running slower, you would absolutely not feel guilty about it. And you wouldn't say I'm doing my best to try to defend yourself. Right? You would actually just be doing it and you wouldn't feel guilty at all because you'd know that you're 0:28:18 - 0:28:44 doing everything that you can. Your best ceases to be the, sorry, the best ceases to be the best possible when you actually factually cannot do it. Right. So, if you say, well, the best I can imagine doing is, uh I'm going to read the scriptures 26 hours a day. Well, no, that's not the best you can imagine 0:28:43 - 0:29:06 because it's not possible. Right? If you say, well, you know, uh I want to fast uh for six months straight and give all my money to the poor and that's the best I can imagine. No, it's not because you can't do that, right? So we say one thing and we mean another and we try to hide behind it. But actually 0:29:06 - 0:29:26 what you're doing is you're just fulfilling this scripture, you're saying eat, drink and be merry. Nevertheless fear God, but he'll justify in committing a little sin. Just try your best. And he understands there is no element of DNC 93 that says just make an effort and he makes up the difference. There's 0:29:26 - 0:29:47 nothing there that says that what you will find laced throughout the book of Mormon in particular is the idea that what God tells you to do. You have the power to do. He will never reveal to you a path that's greater than what you can do in terms of being His will, his commandments. He's never gonna 0:29:47 - 0:30:09 command you to do something that's greater than you have the capacity for. In other words, your vision of what Christ is, it's not actually what Christ is. It's that filtered according to your capability. Your understanding comes from God through his spirit and he controls that and he's never going to 0:30:08 - 0:30:36 uh cause your mind to understand Him to be more than you can handle right now. So if you believe sincerely that He would do something in your place, that is a commandment from God that not only holds you accountable to do it, but also proves you have the power to do it. And so no matter how hard it might 0:30:35 - 0:31:02 seem, lean on him and trust in him because he knows better than you and you have the power he's given it to you already. Ok. So, um, I guess there is this idea here that's important, which light is the light of Christ. That's the light in which we judge things. That's how you see what is good and what 0:31:01 - 0:31:19 is evil. Now, you have to search in this light. That's what it says. Search diligently in the light. It's not something that just whacks you over the head, whether you like it or not, you actually have to think about it. God gave you your brain. So, what are you supposed to think about? Well, you have 0:31:19 - 0:31:39 to try to figure out what the will of Christ is. What would he do in your situation the way you do this is you yield to what you already know. You have to obey what you already know. And then what happens is He will expand. Maybe there are things in your life where you're like, I don't know what breakfast 0:31:38 - 0:32:07 cereal. God wants me to eat. And now, like people laugh about that and they say God doesn't care what cereal you eat. Yes, he does. Yes, he does. God, God's will applies to every single thing there is. Now it might matter a little or a lot, but he does care. There are reasons for everything. So, uh you 0:32:07 - 0:32:26 need to think a lot about God and learn more about Him because you need to know what his will is in all things. And uh this will make some people's heads explode because they're like, I already feel stressed out. You're just making me making it worse. Well, he said, come unto me and take my yoke upon 0:32:25 - 0:32:50 you and you'll find rest. And as crazy as it sounds, that is the path to become free from the burdens of this world. And I know that's true. So if you feel stressed out and burden, it's not because he's telling you too much, it's because you're listening too little, stop being an obstacle to his life 0:32:49 - 0:33:15 and he will, he will take your burdens away through your taking up his burdens. In other words, as you turn into his will, you'll have other things to worry about and he'll take care of you like a chick going under the wings of a hen. And as you do this, he'll expand what you your model of God covers 0:33:14 - 0:33:35 and how accurate it is. And that's how you'll know good from evil. So to sum all this up right now, you have an understanding of God. And right now you have an ability to know good from evil at that scope of your understanding again, in doctrine and covenants, it says all truth is independent in the 0:33:35 - 0:34:02 sphere, in its sphere. So at your scope of understanding there is right and wrong and you can assign everything in your life into one of those categories. And as you follow that 100% at all times, he will teach you more and raise your awareness. So now we're going to shift into laying hold of every good 0:00:00 - 0:00:25 We're going to talk about the theme of good and evil in Moona seven verse 12, wherefore all things which are good cometh of God and that which is evil cometh of the devil. For the devil is an enemy unto God and fight against him continually and invite and entice to sin and to do that which is evil continually 0:00:24 - 0:00:48 but behold that which is of God, invite and entice to do good continually. Wherefore everything which invite and entice to do good and to love God and to serve him is inspired of God. Wherefore take heed my beloved brethren that ye do not judge that which is evil to be of God or that which is good and 0:00:47 - 0:01:07 of God to be of the devil. For behold my brethren, it is given unto you to judge that ye may know good from evil. And the way to judge is as plain that you may know with the perfect knowledge as the daylight is from the dark night. For behold, the spirit of Christ is given to every man that He may know 0:01:07 - 0:01:26 good from evil. Wherefore I show unto you the way to judge for everything which invites to do good and to persuade, to believe in Christ is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ. Wherefore you may know with the perfect knowledge. It is of God. But whatsoever thing persuade men to do evil and believe 0:01:26 - 0:01:50 not in Christ and deny him and serve not God. Then ye may know with a perfect knowledge. It is of the devil for after this manner doth the devil work for he persuade no man to do good. No, not one, neither do his angels, neither do they who subject themselves unto him. And now my brethren seeing that 0:01:49 - 0:02:12 ye know the light by which ye may judge which light is the light of Christ. See that ye do not judge wrongfully for with that same judgment which ye judge, ye shall also be judged wherefore I beseech of you brethren that ye should search diligently in the light of Christ that ye may know good from evil 0:02:12 - 0:02:41 . And if ye will lay hold upon every good thing and condemn it not, he certainly will be a child of Christ. So uh let's go through this. So starting at verse 12, what do you think it means that He uses this word continually uses it several times both to describe the uh efforts of God and the efforts 0:02:40 - 0:03:13 of the devil. But we read elsewhere in the book of Mormon that uh we are enticed to good and enticed to evil in all things. There's opposition in all things and uh this continually, it's not just a question of how often, but in what and toward what. So, if I had, let's say you're an X ray technician 0:03:12 - 0:03:36 in a dentist's office, if you are being bombarded daily by radiation, you will probably not have a problem the first day because the patients are getting blasted by that and they don't just die of cancer right there on the chair. Um so you probably won't have a problem the first day, but the second day 0:03:36 - 0:03:57 , you also won't have a problem and maybe the fourth week, you won't have a problem. But sooner or later, if you're not standing behind the lead wall, you're going to have some problems. Why? Because at first it wasn't noticeably so bad, but you were exposed continually over time and it got worse and 0:03:57 - 0:04:20 worse now, it was never really good. I mean, you use it in that case for the, the patient looking at their teeth and I don't want to get into the subtleties just yet. But the, the point is that it got worse over time. The devil is not going to entice you to do some horrifically terrible thing. Right 0:04:20 - 0:04:50 . This second, unless you're already a really horrifically terrible person, it's always the next step. And with God, here's the surprise in this chapter. If you haven't thought about it before, it's also always just the next step. The thing about God is that he's holy and the thing about holiness, holy 0:04:49 - 0:05:13 means different and better. That's the literal definition. If you look up the Greek and Hebrew, it's holy. Holy means different and better. So it's different. Uh And it happens to be better. But my question is, are you going to recognize it as such if God took you to the highest heaven? Right. This second 0:05:12 - 0:05:38 , how would you react to that? I think uh the uninformed would say, wow, that'd be great, right? And I've read scriptures where Alma saw the throne of God and he rejoiced and he longed to be there. Uh OK, but Isaiah saw the throne of God and it almost uh he said, I'm undone. He, he um it was a real problem 0:05:37 - 0:05:59 . It was not a comfortable situation. What about Daniel? Daniel was so righteous that God used him as an example of righteousness in talking to others. And yet when he saw an angel with glory and it was an angel, it wasn't even God. He fell on the ground and he struggled greatly until he was ministered 0:05:59 - 0:06:24 to. And he only had uh strength to get up on his hands and knees at that point because he said my comeliness has become corruption as in Daniel Tanner. In other words, everything good about me in the face of something so much greater than I ever imagined has become dross. And so it is true that being 0:06:23 - 0:06:52 uh exposed to great holiness is the best outcome that can be, but there has to be a preparatory process for you to come up to that. Or else it will be a terrible experience in the true sense of the word. So it's always the next thing and we'll get to this later. But the point is, um what we're going 0:06:52 - 0:07:18 to explore here in this section is good and evil. They're not set lists of stuff, they're both a progression and I know that word gets a lot of flak because of the political connections. I'm talking about progress in the literal sense of the word which means to improve, to draw closer to God. I'm not 0:07:17 - 0:07:49 saying change means progress. They're not one and the same change just means something different. It doesn't mean something different and better. That's what holiness means. So, um picture yourself as a pendulum and you're starting as an innocent child and you're hanging down flat. God wants to pull 0:07:49 - 0:08:16 you towards one side. Satan wants to pull you to the other and life can be as back and forth as you allow it to be, but those forces will operate on you until the end. So let's keep going. Verse 13. Um Again, talks about this continually. So God's trying to entice you to one way devils trying to entice 0:08:15 - 0:08:43 you to the other. And Mormon uses these words good and evil. Here's something very interesting. I'm not sure if you've ever noticed this before. Mormon does not define the words, good and evil directly. How does he define them? Well, um I'm skipping ahead a little bit but he describes them not with a 0:08:43 - 0:09:14 fixed definition but with a description of their effect. So, um the issue is it's not easy to list out for someone what it means to be good or evil in terms of descriptions of specific actions. In other words, what we think of when we hear the word commandment, although that word is much more expensive 0:09:13 - 0:09:39 than that. But just here's a sentence that says, thou shalt, here's a sentence that says thou shalt not and that's good. And this is evil and that's that, it's not that simple, it's actually much simpler than that, but in a very different way. So as we read, and we'll get back down to the way to judge 0:09:38 - 0:10:05 between good and evil is as plain as the, the day is from night, daylight, from dark night. Ok. That's in verse 15. But what I want to stress to you is what says in verse 14, uh it's, we have a tendency to judge that which is evil to be of God and that, which is good and of God to be uh of the devil 0:10:05 - 0:10:36 if that weren't. So he would never have written that right? The natural man is an enemy to God. Mosiah 319. And part of that is that by nature, we see what is good as evil and we see what is evil as good tree of life and the tree of knowledge. And one's sweet and one's bitter and we get them reversed 0:10:35 - 0:11:04 . And part of our task here is to sort that out. So how is it that the way to judge is as plain as daylight from dark night? It's so easy that you can have a perfect knowledge as easily as you can tell the difference between daylight and the dark night and all the time. You hear people say, well, I mean 0:11:04 - 0:11:29 , I want to do what's right, but I'm not sure what's right. Well, this is what you're missing. Um Let me read to you another uh verse and we'll tie it in and it's crystal clear. Second. E 5 32 3 angels speak by the power of the holy ghost. Wherefore they speak the words of Christ. Wherefore I said unto 0:11:29 - 0:11:55 you feast upon the words of Christ. For behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do. What are the words of Christ words? We could get into some Greek and Hebrew here. I, I'm just gonna skip it. I'll tell you, I'll jump to the chase words can mean commandments, outward actions 0:11:54 - 0:12:25 and inward character of Jesus. In other words, it's your idea of who and how Jesus is. That is your way to judge and it is as plain as judging between the daylight and the dark night. Now, maybe you say, ok, but I don't know everything there is to know about Jesus. Yet you're absolutely right. And we 0:12:25 - 0:12:55 will get to that. Um Part of the reasons reason that angels are speaking in the first place is because part of their job is to reveal the words of Christ Mormon is acting as an angel in writing this chapter. And just as we went over in the last video, uh B A three was it, it was the moon I three that 0:12:55 - 0:13:21 this is the duty of priests and teachers is to know something more about Jesus and to share that with others who don't and critically to be that themselves, that's critical, but don't wanna get too far out of scope here. The way to judge is plain now, even though you don't know exactly how Jesus is just 0:13:20 - 0:13:51 yet, you have a shockingly clear idea of who he is. It's not perfectly accurate, but it is crystal clear. In other words, we could look at anything in your life right now no matter how specific it is to you. And I could ask you, is this something that you could imagine Jesus doing? And immediately you 0:13:51 - 0:14:26 would be able to say yes or no. Right flipping all of this over. Another way of looking at this is to consider your life and consider the absolute best behavior or desire in all things that you do and don't do think of what the absolute best is that you can imagine. That is your model of Jesus Christ 0:14:25 - 0:14:49 . The funny thing about that is how we started explaining this. Now, I'm making this video for someone who accepts the book of Mormon as the word of God, which presupposes you believe in God and some other things too. But that what I just described to you is fully accessible to all people, even if they 0:14:49 - 0:15:18 don't believe in Jesus yet, they don't know what his name is, but they already have an idea of how he is and just like you and just like me, there's more to know, but there's already a, a set model to start from and that becomes very important here. OK? So in, in 16, the spirit of Christ is given to 0:15:18 - 0:15:41 every man that he may know good from evil. Now, a lot of times people misinterpret this and they think, well, yeah, because of the fall, we know the difference between good and evil. No, that is not true at all. We have access to grow in discernment of good and evil amongst many other things because 0:15:41 - 0:16:11 of the fall. But we do not fully know good and evil because of the fall. There is an increment given to every man. We have a baseline understanding that God gives us as a tool to discern between good and evil at some level as we exercise, that it grows as we reject or ignore that it diminishes so we 0:16:11 - 0:16:37 could go deeply into that. But I'm trying to stick to the text here. So um now let's go to D and C 93. So the spirit of Christ is in fact given to every man that he may know good from evil, but not all at once. It comes by degrees. You start with the baseline and you get that for free and you progress 0:16:36 - 0:17:09 in that, sorry, you progress in that through exercising heed and diligence or effort and obedience. So let's pop down to DNC 93. Here I have um I haven't edited this in the sense of changing anything but I have put in some ellipses um just to cut it down for time. Uh But I highly encourage you to reread 0:17:09 - 0:17:33 the section often and study it deeply and live according to what it says, at least up to verse 39 it gets personal towards other people after that. So 19, I give unto you these sayings that you may come, you may come unto the father in my name. What do you think it means to come unto the father in the 0:17:33 - 0:18:05 name of Christ. Jesus said, no man knows the father except through me to come unto the father. In the name of Christ means as you learn more about how Jesus is and you live that way yourself. You will also learn more about the father and you will become more like him. Continuing verse 19 and in due time 0:18:04 - 0:00:00 , receive of his fullness. There you go. You do not have a fullness of the Father from the start. How do we get there? Verse 20? For if you keep my commandments, you shall receive of his fullness. Pause which commandments it can't be all of the commandments. Because if you knew all the commandments, 0:00:00 - 0:18:52 you would already have a fullness of the Father. How can you prove that? Well, uh elsewhere in the doctrine of covenants, it teaches very, the Lord teaches very clearly that we are sanctified by the, by the law that we have and live. In. Other words, your degree of glory depends on the degree of law 0:18:51 - 0:19:12 that you have and live. OK? So if Jesus says is saying here, if you keep my commandments, you'll receive of his fullness. It means the commandments you have right now are not all the ones that there are. If that were true, weren't true, you would already have his fullness, which you don't. OK? But he's 0:19:12 - 0:19:36 gonna tell us how this works continuing and be glorified in me as I am in the father. In other words, he's saying this is the path that I walked. And if you want to come up to where I am, you have to walk in the same path continuing. Therefore, I say unto you, you shall receive grace for grace. In other 0:19:36 - 0:20:06 words, this is how grace for grace works. This is what it means. Verse 26 we're skipping a few. The spirit of truth is of God, I am the spirit of truth. This is a very important verse. But for our purposes, we're gonna limit uh what we pull from this, that the spirit of truth existed with the father 0:20:05 - 0:20:34 before the son obtained it. But he obtained so much of it that he could truthfully say in the end, I am the spirit of truth verse 27. And no man receives a fullness unless he keepeth his commandments. he that keepeth his commandments receive truth and light until he is glorified in truth and knoweth 0:20:34 - 0:21:04 all things. So he said the father was and is the spirit of truth. The spirit of truth comes from the father. I am the spirit of truth because I obeyed the commandments I had and then I received truth and light until I was glorified in truth and knew all things going back to how we started all this that 0:21:04 - 0:21:33 you may come unto the father in my name and in due time receive of his fullness continuing in verse 31 behold, here is the agency of man and here is the condemnation of man because that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them and they receive not the light. This is a highly rich and 0:21:32 - 0:22:03 dense verse. But one thing we can extract from this is that all mankind are born with a sense of good and evil in initial quantity of light. In the beginning, it is plainly manifest unto them. And they receive, not the light. They do not live according to the light that they have all men sin because 0:22:02 - 0:22:31 they turn away from that light. And that is why we need Jesus as our savior and redeemer. But his forgiveness of our past sins is only the gate. It is not the path, it's just the gate of the path. The path is to receive more light, to receive truth and light until you are glorified in truth and know 0:22:30 - 0:22:56 all things until you receive a fullness through keeping His commandments, the commandments you have now and by doing that, he will give you more and more and more line upon line until in due time, you receive of his fullness and his fullness is nothing separate from his commandments. They are one and 0:22:56 - 0:23:24 the same 32 and every man whose spirit receive not the light is under condemnation for man is spirit. And uh let's just keep reading the elements of the Tabernacle of God. In other words, they house this spirit. Yeah, man is the Tabernacle of God. Even temples, the glory of God is intelligence or in 0:23:24 - 0:23:46 other words, light and truth, light and truth, forsake that evil one. Ok? So now we get back to this pendulum as you go closer to one side, you go away from the other, but they're both fighting for you and they're both trying to make continuous progress in the direction they want you to go 38 every spirit 0:23:45 - 0:24:04 of man was innocent in the beginning. And God having redeemed man from the fall, men became again in their infant state and has sent before God. It's just what I said. And the wicked one cometh and taketh away light in truth through disobedience from the Children of men because of the tradition of their 0:24:03 - 0:24:26 fathers. So when you turn away from light and truth, or you do not receive light and truth offered to you additional light and truth, you necessarily move closer to the wicked one and you lose the light that you had at least a portion of it. And that's its own topic. I don't wanna get too much down that 0:24:26 - 0:24:52 road. Ok. But we come up to here. So, you know, good from evil, you have a baseline already, you're already instructed sufficiently to know how to act right now according to your present understanding of Jesus and to come up to a greater understanding, the only way is to obey everything, you know right 0:24:52 - 0:25:28 now. OK. So more about this perfect knowledge of whether something is of God or not, if it persuades you to believe in Christ and it invites you to do good. Well, how do you know if you don't know God fully yet? How are you supposed to know if it's uh inviting you closer to him or not? Right. Well, uh 0:25:28 - 0:26:00 we'll get to that in a minute. But basically the question is very simple. Does it lead you to be better? Now, your definition of better is gonna vary depending on your understanding. But that's the question, what is the best that you can think of? And that is what leads you to uh believe in Christ, to 0:26:00 - 0:26:30 invite you to do good and anything, anything less than that, persuade you to do evil and to believe not in Christ and to deny him and not serve him. Do you understand? It has to be the absolute best or it's evil. So, um this is really important because there's this verse in 2nd 85 28 8 that everyone 0:26:30 - 0:26:47 knows there shall be many, which shall say, eat, drink and be merry. Nevertheless fear God. He will justify in committing a little sin. Ye lie a little, take the advantage of one because of his words, dig a pit for thy neighbor. There's no harm in this and do all these things for tomorrow, we die. And 0:26:46 - 0:00:00 if so be that we are guilty, God will beat us with a few stripes and at last, we shall be saved in the kingdom of God. In other words, just do your best. God understands God knows your heart. That is an abominable doctrine from Satan. It's dressed up to be from God and it is not from God. It's very, 0:00:00 - 0:27:33 very opposed to what Mormon is saying here and everything else you will find in the word of God. If you say that, what you actually mean is I can envision something better than what I'm doing, but I don't feel like doing it and God understands and I will not miss out on anything for doing less than my 0:27:33 - 0:27:55 actual best. If someone says I'm doing my best, what they mean is I'm doing the worst than the best that I could imagine. But I don't want anyone to give me flak for it. Here's the key folks because they say, oh, you shouldn't run faster than you have strength. No one's saying that no one's saying that 0:27:55 - 0:28:18 they're saying you have to run as fast as you can. If you were running slower, you would absolutely not feel guilty about it. And you wouldn't say I'm doing my best to try to defend yourself. Right? You would actually just be doing it and you wouldn't feel guilty at all because you'd know that you're 0:28:18 - 0:28:44 doing everything that you can. Your best ceases to be the, sorry, the best ceases to be the best possible when you actually factually cannot do it. Right. So, if you say, well, the best I can imagine doing is, uh I'm going to read the scriptures 26 hours a day. Well, no, that's not the best you can imagine 0:28:43 - 0:29:06 because it's not possible. Right? If you say, well, you know, uh I want to fast uh for six months straight and give all my money to the poor and that's the best I can imagine. No, it's not because you can't do that, right? So we say one thing and we mean another and we try to hide behind it. But actually 0:29:06 - 0:29:26 what you're doing is you're just fulfilling this scripture, you're saying eat, drink and be merry. Nevertheless fear God, but he'll justify in committing a little sin. Just try your best. And he understands there is no element of DNC 93 that says just make an effort and he makes up the difference. There's 0:29:26 - 0:29:47 nothing there that says that what you will find laced throughout the book of Mormon in particular is the idea that what God tells you to do. You have the power to do. He will never reveal to you a path that's greater than what you can do in terms of being His will, his commandments. He's never gonna 0:29:47 - 0:30:09 command you to do something that's greater than you have the capacity for. In other words, your vision of what Christ is, it's not actually what Christ is. It's that filtered according to your capability. Your understanding comes from God through his spirit and he controls that and he's never going to 0:30:08 - 0:30:36 uh cause your mind to understand Him to be more than you can handle right now. So if you believe sincerely that He would do something in your place, that is a commandment from God that not only holds you accountable to do it, but also proves you have the power to do it. And so no matter how hard it might 0:30:35 - 0:31:02 seem, lean on him and trust in him because he knows better than you and you have the power he's given it to you already. Ok. So, um, I guess there is this idea here that's important, which light is the light of Christ. That's the light in which we judge things. That's how you see what is good and what 0:31:01 - 0:31:19 is evil. Now, you have to search in this light. That's what it says. Search diligently in the light. It's not something that just whacks you over the head, whether you like it or not, you actually have to think about it. God gave you your brain. So, what are you supposed to think about? Well, you have 0:31:19 - 0:31:39 to try to figure out what the will of Christ is. What would he do in your situation the way you do this is you yield to what you already know. You have to obey what you already know. And then what happens is He will expand. Maybe there are things in your life where you're like, I don't know what breakfast 0:31:38 - 0:32:07 cereal. God wants me to eat. And now, like people laugh about that and they say God doesn't care what cereal you eat. Yes, he does. Yes, he does. God, God's will applies to every single thing there is. Now it might matter a little or a lot, but he does care. There are reasons for everything. So, uh you 0:32:07 - 0:32:26 need to think a lot about God and learn more about Him because you need to know what his will is in all things. And uh this will make some people's heads explode because they're like, I already feel stressed out. You're just making me making it worse. Well, he said, come unto me and take my yoke upon 0:32:25 - 0:32:50 you and you'll find rest. And as crazy as it sounds, that is the path to become free from the burdens of this world. And I know that's true. So if you feel stressed out and burden, it's not because he's telling you too much, it's because you're listening too little, stop being an obstacle to his life 0:32:49 - 0:33:15 and he will, he will take your burdens away through your taking up his burdens. In other words, as you turn into his will, you'll have other things to worry about and he'll take care of you like a chick going under the wings of a hen. And as you do this, he'll expand what you your model of God covers 0:33:14 - 0:33:35 and how accurate it is. And that's how you'll know good from evil. So to sum all this up right now, you have an understanding of God. And right now you have an ability to know good from evil at that scope of your understanding again, in doctrine and covenants, it says all truth is independent in the 0:33:35 - 0:34:02 sphere, in its sphere. So at your scope of understanding there is right and wrong and you can assign everything in your life into one of those categories. And as you follow that 100% at all times, he will teach you more and raise your awareness. So now we're going to shift into laying hold of every good 0:34:02 - 0:34:05 thing. That's the next video. So I hope you join us.