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The gospel requires you to know greater darkness. These topics are described and explained in my book, The Glory of God is Intelligence and you can find links for that in uh various formats, free PDF Amazon print and Amazon Kindle at upward thought.blogspot.com. Uh a while ago, the Lord told me that the amount of light that we acquire is determined by how much darkness we're willing to endure. And that was a mystery to me and I had to parse it out. So I'd like to share with you what I've learned about this and hope that it helps you to learn more about reality and about God and to draw closer to Him and have more happiness in life. We're going to start by talking about King David in acts 1322. The Lord is quoted as saying, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfill all my will. So David is a man that had high standing in the eyes of the Lord uh because of his character and the caliber of his character and the content of his heart. So in knowing this, if you go and you read uh Psalms, for example, there, there's quite a bit of literature that comes from or is about David. And when we read the Psalms, for instance, these are effectively prayers from David to God and they're very illustrative of what's going on inside of him and how he thinks about the world and about the Lord. And we can learn a lot about how the Lord wants us to think about him by reading these passages. If you've never done that, I highly encourage you to do it. It's a really effective study and it's something that you can derive value from uh no matter how often or how many times you do it. I think it's something that ought to be. It's a, it's an exercise that ought to be done regularly, I think. Anyway, the question is this, um there are some strongly worded passages in , in Psalms uh regarding how David feels about his enemies. So here are just a few of them. He says, and, and again, he's praying and asking the Lord to do these things. He says, break thou the arm of the wicked and the evil man seek out his wickedness till thou find none arise. O Lord, save me, o my God for thou hast smitten all my enemies upon the cheek bone. Thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly, destroy thou them. O God. Let them fall by their own counsels. Cast them out in the multitude of their transgressions for they have rebelled against thee. Arise o Lord in thine anger, lift up thyself because of the rage of mine, enemies and awake for me to the judgment that thou hast commanded. These are not peaceful uh verses, they're very violent, break the teeth, break the arm, cast them out, et cetera. Um The question is, how is this a reflection of the character of God, the heart of God, the mind and will of God. And we can learn a lot by realizing what this is all about. The thing is as you come to learn more about God's character, you will see more light. And I don't think that many people dispute that although I think most people think that it's just kind of a light switch and that's not right. It's a progressive source of light gets brighter and brighter. But I think what they don't realize is that when you get more light, you also get more darkness. And what that means is is not that there's more darkness in you, but that you perceive the darkness that's both in you and around you to a much clearer level. And when that happens, what you see as evil, it's almost like there's a much broader gradation of that. So if we're talking about colors, you would see deeper colors, but we're talking about good and evil. And what happens is your, your spectrum of good and evil broadens , you see deeper evil. You also see deeper, good and that's important. But uh we're going to talk about the other side of that as well and, and how it affects the whole process. The Apostle John wrote and the light shine in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not. And um, I've made the point in other presentations that light is all around us, whether we perceive it or not, the fullness of God's light is everywhere. But we, we vary in how much we perceive and receive it. The same is true for darkness. So we are all sitting in the darkness and we don't perceive the depths of it. Part of getting to uh no God or acquiring and perceiving the light is perceiving the darkness. In fact, you can't perceive and receive light without separating it from the darkness. And so this process is, is it's all one and the same. And as you come to better understand the, I guess, better articulate the difference between the light and the darkness that that is one and the same with acquiring more light. And it's wrong to think about this as a one sided process where you're just going to go and acquire more light. You also have to perceive more darkness. And, um, it's important to understand that for, for many reasons, one of which is the difficulty of the process, it's going to hit you. And if you're not prepared for that, it's going to hurt a lot more, it'd be harder. And the other is, is that, uh, I, I, if you don't know the other side of the coin, you just won't be as effective, you won't be able to do this as quickly as you need to. So the principle that explains all of this, uh, is this idea that there's opposition in all things. And second Nephi 211, it says for it must, needs be that there is an opposition in all things, if not. So my first born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore all things must, needs to be a compound in one wherefore if it should be one body, it must needs remain as dead, having no life, neither death nor corruption, nor inc corruption, happiness, nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility. And again, the idea here is that the more good you become, the more evil you become aware of. It has to be that way. Here's a picture of it. So suppose you are where the red star is as you acquire more light, your awareness of both good and evil will grow. And God represents the broadest expanse of awareness of these two concepts. You'll notice that the rate of change changes as you increase in light. And we'll talk more about that as proof of this idea. The best example is the Lord Jesus. He obviously did not live a life of puppy dogs and rainbows. In Isaiah 53 we read he is despised and rejected of men. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid as it were our faces from him. He was despised and we esteemed him. Not surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. So you can pull out all the words . Here. He was despised, rejected man of sorrows. He wasn't esteemed or he wasn't seen as worth anything. He he bore our griefs. He carried our sorrows, he was stricken, smitten of God, afflicted, et cetera, right? In DNC 88 6, we read He that ascended up on high as also he descended below all things that he comprehended, all things that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth. The Lord ascended and descended uh beyond what we do. This is important, right? It's that growth in either direction. He had the greatest and has the greatest joy, but also the greatest sorrow. These things grow together. He said in John 77 to his disciples, the world cannot hate you but me, it hate sorry that this was to his brethren, not his disciples. This specific verse, the world cannot hate you because they didn't believe in him. But me it hates because I testify of it that the works thereof are evil. So anyone who realizes the evil in the world and tries to do something about it will be hated by the world. It's just a principle you can't get around it. He said uh to his disciples again, I say unto you, go ye into the world and care not for the world, for the world will hate you and will persecute you and will turn you out of their synagogues. In Luke 622 he says, blessed are ye when men shall hate you and when they shall separate you from their company and shall reproach you and cast you out, cast out your name as evil for the son of man's sake. So uh if you decide to follow in the Lord's footsteps, this is what awaits you. Without exception, you will be cast out, you will be hated and uh you will be called evil by the public that Solomon wrote for in much wisdom is much grief and he that increases knowledge, increases sorrow. Solomon is regarded as the wisest man that ever lived . And yet he said that the more wisdom you have, the more sorrow you have, the more knowledge you get, the more you suffer that follows this pattern that I'm trying to establish here. OK. Let's shift gears a little bit. We're gonna talk about a principle uh called God in a box. So if you talk to 100 people who consider themselves Christians and you ask them to describe God, you will probably get 100 different descriptions and almost all of them are going to be positively skewed. Meaning. Uh they will talk abundantly about how God is great and everything is happy when you're a Christian and it's so great to not have to worry about sinning anymore. And life is just full of blessings and everything is awesome. Right? My experience has been that when people, when I've, I've talked to other people about God and my experiences with God and the things that he's taught me, they say something like the Lord seems to be much more punitive with you than he is with me or wow, you must have had a really rough life or your God seems different than my God. And the problem is that these people have gotten to know only a subset of God. So I believe firmly that everything we think we know is either incorrect or incomplete. And that's as true for me as it is with anyone else. But what I've noticed in these people's impressions of how God is is that they've only identified a subset of how he really is. And in over focussing on that limited subset, they're missing out on quite a bit. And this has real impacts . And I'd like to spend a couple of minutes talking about what happens when we put God in a box or we limit his character and attributes only to a subset of how he really is. So here's this picture again, of good and evil and how both our, our awareness of both increase as we acquire more light. And again, God has more light than we do. And uh His awareness of good and evil exceeds our own. When you put God in a box, what you do is you limit how much of His good and or his evil you can become aware of. Because eventually, as you learn more about Him, you'll hit one of the walls in your box and this isn't good because it limits the amount of light that you can acquire. By definition, the more light you acquire the, the more you're going to learn about his good and about the evil that exists that doesn't fit in the in the box. If it fit in the box, you'd know it already because the box is um described by finite borders that are known, right? That's why it's a box. Boxes aren't infinite on any side. They're defined, they're just right there. That's the wall. So what most people do is when they learn that they have a box, they say, well, I got to get out of this box. Actually, most people don't do that . They stay comfortably in their box. But the few that want to break out of it say, OK, I'll get out of this box and what do they do? They just make a bigger box, they don't learn the meta lesson, which is that the problem isn't the specific walls, you've set up in your box. It's the fact that you have a box. It's the fact that you're limiting God and you're, you're placing limits on how he can be instead of trusting him and trusting that he is the definition of good. And therefore anything you try to define as good is going to be a limit on how he really is. And you need to let go of that and just trust him and let him tell you what's good and let him tell you what the limits of evil are. So what happens when we put God in a box on that negative side of the graph? In, in DNC 84 we read about the greater priesthood which administer the gospel and holde the key of the mysteries of the kingdom and the key of the knowledge of God. It describes to us the power of Godliness or manifests to us, the power of Godliness, et cetera and beyond the power of Godliness. Uh This is associated with seeing the face of God, even the Father. But what happens is in verse 24 it says that when Moses tried to teach these things to the Children of Israel, they rejected it. It says they hardened their hearts and could not endure his presence. And so what happened? Well, he took Moses out of their midst and the holy priesthood also. And in verse 26 it says the lesser priesthood continued and when we put God in a box , what happens is we remove ourselves from greater experiences with Him from AAA more full understanding of His power and experience of His power. And what happens is we end up with something lesser and that's not good. Joseph Smith taught that the things of God are of deep import and time and experience and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out. He said thy mind o man, if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation must stretch as high as the utmost heavens and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss and the broad expanse of eternity. Thou must commune with God. Joseph Smith understood the principle that I'm trying to teach you today. If you want to commune with God, you have to stretch in both directions, not just on the right side of the graph, but your awareness has to include more of the left side. There is no other way, there's opposition in all things and this is not a light or an easy thing to do. It's incredibly important and it's a deep concept and it takes a lot of time and experience and a lot of thought. God reveals himself to the extent that we allow him to. If you have a box, the only thing he will be able to do. There are two things. One is fill the box which is good and two is to help you get outside of the box. He can bombard you with experiences to try to show you that your box is inadequate to explain reality. That is never pleasant. It can be completely awful. And there's a limit even to how much of that He can do because you can be overcome. But that limit is much greater than you probably think because you're condemned already. If you have a box, that might seem like a strong statement, but God's glory is eternal, there is no limit to its growth. And those who uh those who become joint heirs with Jesus Christ and receive all that he has must likewise have no limits to their growth. If you have any lines in the sand or sacred cows or any of that sort of thing. And you've got God in a box because there are things that in your mind He would never do. He would never ask you to do et cetera. It means that you are already lost because you cannot inherit that limitless growth because you have limits. And incidentally, this is just, I've talked about this in other presentations, but this is just a manifestation of a lack of trust in God or a limit to your trust in Him. If you believe that God's just puppy dogs and rainbows and cotton candy, and uh life is just magically wonderful. The second that you start to quote unquote, believe in Him, then uh that's all you're going to see and why did I put believe in him in quotes. Well, if you believe that he's just puppy dogs and rainbows, you don't actually believe him because the scriptures are very plain, that there's more to it than that, that there is a, an evil side to reality. And if you don't understand that, then the degree to which you don't understand it is the degree to which you don't believe God and you don't understand him. Reality has another side and you absolutely have to grow in awareness of it if you want to want to grow in awareness of the light. So the cure to this is to just trust God to stop putting limits on what He can reveal to you about himself. So let's talk about some boxes. These aren't all of them. These are just a few. The first one I call Buddy Jesus, which I took this reference from a movie that I do not recommend. But here's a screenshot of the Buddy Jesus. And this is a surprisingly popular tradition that Jesus is just your, your chum, your gym buddy. He just wants to make everything awesome for you. He wants to spare you from any kind of suffering and uh make life heaven on earth for you and everything's great and oh, he's so funny and he just smiles all the time and it's wonderful. I don't know where this idea comes from. It's, it certainly doesn't come from the scriptures and it's completely antithetical to what's in the scriptures. Um And it certainly doesn't match my experience with him either. So, I'm not saying that these people are liars or that they've been deceived by Satan or anything else. But I will come out and say that their understanding of God is a subset of who God really is at a minimum. And in order to progress, they absolutely need to know the rest of the story. If you think that God is a buddy, Jesus, you'll never understand who he really is or why he does what he does. You can't explain the things that he has done in the past and the things he's doing in the present and what he will do in the future, you won't be able to explain . And because of all this, remember how I said it, the way He helps you out of your box is by bombarding you with reality that can't be explained by your box. You're going to be exposed to situations where your faith is inadequate. This is the danger because you only have two choices when that happens . One choice is to say, well, I've been grossly incorrect my whole life and now I have to change and rise to this deeper understanding. That's hard because I've based all these beliefs in my life on this thing that was incorrect or incomplete. The much easier outcome, which is also much more popular is that you will say that there is no God, you will say these things do not um do not agree with my box and therefore there can be no God. And that's obviously a very bad conclusion to reach the fact is that only the real God can explain all of reality. And inasmuch as your idea of Him is limited or incorrect, your a your ability to use it to explain reality will be limited as well. Then there's the prosperity Jesus. This one might be even more popular. So prosperity Jesus is the idea that if you believe in Jesus, then everything in your life will be carnally pleasing. So you'll have tons of money , you'll never get sick. Everything will be just be great. You'll never get divorced, you'll never lose a child. It's, it's just this idea that he's going to prosper you in the ways of the world. If you're faithful to him. In first John 215, John wrote love, not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the father is not in him. If this world seems like a beautiful place to you and heaven on earth, you're, you're, you're misunderstanding quite a bit and you don't see a great deal. I'm not saying that there isn't anything beautiful in this world. You can see the sunrise over the mountains and it can be one of the most breathtaking things that you've experienced. You can have wonderful moments with the people that you love, et cetera. But this world, it's one of the, the variant of hell. It's not heaven, it's not meant to be heaven. And the more light you have, the more abundantly obvious this is to you and the less light you have, the more you can be confused and, and, and think maybe that it's a lot better than it is. It's, it's not good. This is not a good place. It's a bad place. I mean, it has a purpose and the purpose is beautiful because of what we can become by being here. But this is not a, a desirable place to be uh because of the evil of man. It's an awful place in many, many ways. And if you love the world, then the love of the father is not in you, his knowledge is not in you. You have no idea what reality is and that's not good. So the solution to this one is to seek him and have him teach you the gospel doesn't remove our suffering. If anything, it actually increases it, what it does is it transforms uh it transforms suffering by giving it purpose. So, avoidable suffering is removed by the gospel. You learn the causes to the effects that you're experiencing. And because of your uh learning the laws upon which reality is based, you can navigate it to better ends. But while you're reducing that amount of suffering or that source of suffering in your life, you're increasing another source of suffering which is the special kind of suffering that comes for the benefit of others. And this kind of suffering just keeps growing and it doesn't go away, it just keeps growing. But that kind of suffering lies outside of your control because you can't control other people. You can just give yourself for their benefit and try to inspire them, persuade them to, to be better. So that gives you purpose and purpose can, can transform suffering into joy in a sense. Uh The scriptural phrase is swallowed up in Christ. It can, it can give you purpose and meaning to your pain, but it doesn't take it away. Um You will encounter more suffering , the more truth you acquire not less but your purpose in suffering increases. There is no purpose in avoidable suffering other than to get you to the point to finally listen and open your eyes and conquer it by changing the way you act and believe so. In Ecclesiastes eight, we read though a sinner do evil an 100 times in his days, be prolonged yet surely I know that it shall be well with them. That fear God, which fear before Him, but it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall He prolong his days, which are as a shadow because he feare. Not before God. There is a vanity which is done upon the earth that there be just men unto whom it hath according to the work of the wicked. Again, there be wicked men to whom it hath according to the work of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity. Then I commended mirth because a man hath no better thing under the sun than to eat and to drink and to be merry for that shall abide with Him of his labor, the days of his life which God giveth him under the sun. I love the book of Ecclesiastes. And the funny thing about it is the book is chock full of wisdom, but so few people get it. And uh it's one of these chicken egg problems where if you don't understand the wisdom in the book, you can't see the wisdom in the book. But it's to those who don't have the wisdom already that it ought to be most valuable, but it's not valuable at all to them because they don't get it anyway. What's this passage all about? Well, this is the classic dilemma of what's the point of being good if good people suffer in this life. And I see evil people that have a lot of uh quote unquote blessings. So I see evil people having a great time and I see good people suffering. So why would I be good? That's the, the problem that's expressed in this passage. And what the writer is saying is uh no matter what looks imply, it will be well with them that fear God and it's not going to be good for those that are wicked. And uh even if his days are prolonged, it doesn't matter. They're as a shadow. It's all just an illusion. A temporary blip in a long uh arc of justice , I guess, divine justice. We're not here to eat, drink and be merry. And when Solomon says, a man hath no better thing under the sun than to eat and to drink and be merry. The key phrase, there is a man. If you're a son or daughter of God, and you acknowledge that your life does not end at death, then surely there's a better way to go. And that doesn't mean that all of your reward is postponed. Until after you die. There is tremendous benefit during this life to living uh according to the wisdom of God and the knowledge that He has and that He will give to you. If you trust him and seek him and uh prosperity, Jesus, it's an illusion and it's a lie. If you follow this belief, you will not have a pleasant time in this life and you'll have a much worse time afterwards. It turns out that life is a diverse amalgam of experience. There's a time to laugh and there's a time to weep and there's a time to joy and there's a time to sorrow. There's a time to receive and there's a time to give. And with all of these opposites and many more, besides the important idea is that you get to decide the balance, you get to decide whether you're going to spend your life laughing or spend your life crying, whether you're going to experience your joy here and now, or if you want to defer that for the benefit of others by suffering for their benefit, you get to decide whether you're going to be a taker in this life or a giver and this decision ought to be based on your faith in and your knowledge of God. And I'll talk about that a little bit more in terms of investment. But I think the takeaway is that you have to realize that when you experience pain in this life, typically, it's a signal that there is information that you lack your understanding of the things that, uh, of the way things work is limited or incorrect in some way. And so you have two choices. You can either run away from that pain, which is what almost everyone does. And if you do that, it's going to come back and smack you again and it's probably gonna be a lot bigger and harder than it was the first time or you can run into it. And that seems crazy , but it's actually exactly the right thing to do when you open up the blinds and shed as much light on that pain as you can and, and see God in trying to understand why only two things can occur. The first is you'll be shown the divine purpose in it, that's positive and the pain won't go away, but it will be swallowed up in Christ and you will be able to endure it and move forward with faith. The other outcome that's possible is that you will be shown the cause of this pain and you will be able to change your beliefs and your actions so that it goes away and it never comes back again. Neither of those two things can happen when you run away from it. So just suffering or consequences from a lack of information. That's uh the kind of pain that comes from behaviors or beliefs that are incorrect or incomplete. That's a call to action to learn more from God and have greater trust in Him. But that unjust suffering, the suffering that comes for the benefit of other people. That is actually a what you could call a divine investment by enduring suffering that we have not merited willingly. We ratchet our relationship with God to the next level because God is a just God. And when we willingly submit to experiences that are for the benefit of others, but cause us suffering, we accumulate this divine justice. And a lot of times I'm just going to try to describe this briefly, but it's in the books, it's in other presentations too. A lot of times we see divine justice is a bad thing. It's always a bad thing. Well, that's just not true. It's only bad if you're meriting punishment. But if what you're meriting is blessing, then divine justice is a wonderful thing. And it is the mechanism through which we receive greater blessings from God. He gives us the means to um encounter the positive side of divine justice and use it to leverage a better relationship with Him. When the scriptures talk about seeking the kingdom of God first. Um uh That's a phrase we could talk about for a long time, but for our purposes, we should think about that as building your principle in terms of an investment. So if you keep saving money and there's a decent interest rate, you kick off compound interest and your principal or the amount of money you have in the bank just keeps growing. Um The, the Prosperity Gospel teaches that uh it's kind of like deficit spending where you're going to get something for nothing, you're going to get free money. Well, there's no such thing, but what there is is there's a possibility through suffering for the benefits of others that you can accumulate sufficient principle that you can actually live off of the interest. And what I mean by that is that you are able to keep your eyes on the Kingdom of God and keep your intent focused on His will in all things which will eventually devolve into how you think and act towards, think about and act towards your fellow man. Um And by doing that, what you'll, what you'll end up kicking off is a process where his blessings flow to you without you actually seeking them and they flow to you in a way where your principle continues to grow. But uh he cannot deny you of certain blessings because you're, you're, you're willingly suffering so much for the benefit of other people. Now, when you do this, it's always with the intent of just seeking God. It's not like you're trying to trick him or you know, invoke some divine loophole. But I'm, I'm just trying to make the point that when you lose yourself to find yourself, it's, it's actually not a loss at all. You actually gain much more than you lose. And that's, that's the mystery, right? The mystery of Godliness is that as you lose yourself, you do actually find yourself anyway. The actual passage here from Matthew six is uh therefore take no thought saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink or wherewithal shall we be clothed? For? After all these things, do the gentiles seek. And I would add to that and the believers of Buddy Jesus and the believers of the prosperity gospel for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things but seek ye first, the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you. If you keep your eye single to the glory of God. He will take care of you in every way that is for your benefit and that is a divine promise. So alternatively, you can choose to cash out your chips as you get them. And this is not a good way to live either temporarily or spiritually, it's always best to live off of less than what you make, right? So uh in the same chapter, the Lord said, when thou dost thine alms do not sound a trumpet before thee as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets that they may have glory of men. Verily, I say unto you, they have their reward. You don't want to live in such a way that when you die. God says , well, you had a great life and you have your reward. And this is not just an imaginary idea. Uh The Lord told the story of Lazarus and the rich man and the rich man uh died and he went to hell and he saw this leprous beggar and uh he had denied this person the a share of the money and the good, good life that he had while he was living. And now uh when they both die, Lazarus goes to heaven and this rich man goes to hell. And the rich man says, well, uh can I go back and warn the people that I care about that they need to turn around and uh the Lord or Abraham who he's talking to says, well, they have the law of Moses. And if they don't listen to Moses, why would they listen to you? But the point of the, one of the points of the story is that he had a good life while he lived, he chose to cash out his chips while he lived. And because of that, his eternal experience was um less than delightful . In Mark 833 the Lord was talking to Peter and he rebuked him and he said, thou savors not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men. It's not a good idea to make your North Star in life, the blessings that life has to offer you in terms of a nice house or a nice car or a trophy spouse or some other thing like this that people, the gentiles quote unquote seek for quoting from Matthew six. Um You know, we can experience blessings here and that's a good thing, but they're meant to be only a small portion of the interest on our investment, so to speak. I don't want to take that analogy too far, but the justice of God is just that you reap what you sow. And uh again, I mean, we started this whole conversation in Psalms. If you want an interesting scripture study, go through Psalms and read every time that David says, search my heart and give me what I deserve. It's a, it's a, it can be a frightening thing to think about that. But it can be a very empowering thing to think about transforming your life. So that when you pray, you can pray to God and say, search my heart. And if I'm evil in any way, give me the just fruits of an evil man. But if I've been faithful to you, then bless me with a blessing that comes to those who are righteous. Um It's a powerful thought. The, the sad thing is that we think that there could be some other way and that somehow because of what the Lord did, we can be blessed while sinning, it just doesn't work that way. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a means to become the kind of person who doesn't sin and thereby through the justice of God encounter, the things that come to those who don't sin. It's not a way of somehow bypassing the way that things work. It's a way to escape from your own ignorance and lack of capability, but it doesn't happen by magic anyway. Um So in Mark eight, the Lord says whatsoever will come a whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me for whosoever will save his life, shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake. And the gospels, the same shall save it for what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul. I don't know if I'm doing a good job of trying to make these two channels clear. But there's a channel that is temporal blessing. The things after the, the after which the gentiles seek. And there's another channel which is make your eyes single to the glory of God seek the kingdom of God in all things that you do and you will suffer a lot. But God's blessings will flow to you in a way that is more permanent and real than anything you can get from the world. All right, one more box. This is the genie Jesus box. So I stole this off the internet. But the idea is that um you can just ask God for whatever it is that your vain imaginations conjure up and He will give it to you. Um These kinds of people say and think things like I wish reality was different. I wish sin was the same as righteousness. I alluded to this before. I wish I could be saved in my sins. I wish I could avoid the negative consequences of my actions and enjoy the pleasures of sin. So you see what I'm getting at here. This is not an exhaustive list. These are people who think that by somehow acquiring the fickle divine favor, they can change reality, they can change the way things really are and somehow experience a life that violates all of the the rules of reality and of course, this is not possible. Faith is not wishing if you want to learn more about faith. I, I had a presentation on this and I've talked about it extensively on my blog. What is faith it's obtaining and submitting to the knowledge and will of God. It's not imputing the knowledge and will of God or in other words, making it up or trying to change the mind of God to something that you just conjured up in, in your own mind. It's not wishing it's learning. So the truth is things as they really are. The truth comes from God. It doesn't come from your own mind. It's not things as we wish they were. There's a line in the, in the scriptures that says wickedness never was happiness. What does that mean? These are different ideas, wickedness and happiness. They're different paths. They don't cross, you can choose one or the other in every situation. The Gospel is not about changing wickedness into happiness. It's about showing you what happiness is, what that path entails and giving you the means to getting on that path. It doesn't change the paths, the paths are set, you get to choose which one you walk and the Gospel is about helping you get on to the right one that will lead to greater happiness. Ok. So enough about the boxes, let's talk about contradictions. There's this quote that Joseph Smith uh wrote in lectures on faith. He said the Sun descended in suffering below that, which man can suffer or in other words, suffered greater sufferings and was exposed to more powerful contradictions than any man can be. I've never seen this idea written in more clarity than here, which is why I'm quoting it. What does this mean? What does it mean that the sun descended in suffering below that ? Which man can suffer and suffered greater sufferings and was exposed to more powerful contradictions than any man can be. Well, um we'll get to the graph in a moment but it, it harkens back to this graph. I showed you earlier and Paul wrote this and I think that this is this passage is a great example of what we mean by contradictions in Second Corinthians six. He said by honor and dishonor by evil report and good report as deceivers and yet true as unknown and yet well known as dying and behold, we live as chastened and not killed as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing as poor, yet making many rich as having nothing and yet possessing all things. So I'm going to zoom out for just a second and tell you that this is one of very many examples in the scriptures where you get sort of a meta level lesson. Paul is not teaching a principle here, but he's evidencing that he knows it. You see this many times in the scriptures, either with events that are happening or with things that people say where they manifest that they understand a principle. If it's something they're saying, or that reality works a certain way if what you're seeing is an experience unfold, but it's not in every case that they stop or the, the text stops and explains this principle. You actually have to be perceptive about this and, and ask questions and God will show you things who actually show you the principle that's underlying this. But this is a passage that evidence is this principle that I'm getting at, which is this idea of contradictions, the more good, you know, the more evil, you know, that's a contradiction, the more uh the more joy you experience, the more sorrow you will experience and so on. So in this graph, the wider your line is OK, you get one side and you get the other and this plays out in many, many ways . Uh Only very few of which we will talk about. Um This is probably a good point to transition to this idea that fire is fire. So fire is one example of the contradictions that happen. Um uh Let me just back up for a half a second. So when you think about the Lord, we quoted the passage from Isaiah, we talked about his sufferings. Has anyone experienced more joy born in this world than Jesus Christ? No, definitely not the joy he has with the father is greater than anything anyone has ever experienced in his life. So where he is on the good curve is higher than anyone else who's ever gone. But where he is on the awareness of evil is also higher and I'm not saying he's evil, that's not what this graph means, by the way, it's about awareness. Um Jesus is better than anyone else who's ever been born on this world because he embodies the good. But he's also aware of more evil than anyone else that's been born on this world. And as you rise on this graph, the same thing will happen to you. And here's an example of how these contradictions, these opposites work. Um Fire is fire is the principle. I was going to say more about that. I won't in Mormon 95, we read for behold, when ye shall be brought to see your nakedness before God and also the glory of God and the holiness of Jesus Christ. It will kindle a flame of unquenchable fire upon you when you die. This is, this is a point that's elaborated on in the book, Seek ye this Jesus. And the chapter is called terrible or glorious. When you die, you will be given a complete awareness of the truth pertaining to this life and that will exceed what you have if you're a normal person. And what happens is this awareness is described as an unquenchable fire because it's completely overwhelming. And that might seem like a completely left field idea that you've never heard about before. But very briefly, I want to show you how you've had a taste of it in your life and then invite you to imagine that uh to a much greater degree that maybe is beyond what you can comprehend. So I want you to think of the last time you were absolutely, completely overwhelmed . And I don't just mean that you were stressed out. I mean, that you really felt like you were losing it and you were completely undone by depression, anxiety, worry, uh just completely overwhelmed by life. And odds are that this event was triggered by some observation that completely knocked out some central pillar of your belief structure. And I don't mean just religion, although that might have been it. So for instance, you were married for 25 years and you thought everything was great and then you realized your spouse had been having affairs for the last 10 or your life was going on great. And then all of a sudden one of your Children were killed or everything was great. And then you got fired from your job out of nowhere. And it triggered this year of absolute misery because you couldn't find another job and then unemployment ran out or whatever. So you can go on and on with these things . But I think you get the point right? That feeling, that feeling that everything you thought you knew could be wrong and you're completely unprepared for it. If you magnify that by some large number. That is what it's like when you die and you're not prepared because you haven't acquired sufficient light and truth to overcome the world. That fire isn't necessarily a bad thing though because the same fire that comprises the suffering of hell is also the same fire that purifies the joy of heaven. So I have a picture here of the burning bush. You know, Moses saw this fire. God dwells in everlasting burnings. He dwells in the purity of an awareness of all things and his glory, his knowledge and intelligence is what allows him to persist in his perfect character in spite of all of that awareness and that is what we seek and that is what the gospel gives us a path towards is the ability to overcome this awareness, which would otherwise overcome us. As I was preparing these slides, I was told to do this one too. Um There is a divine purpose in our being aware of more and more and this includes being aware of more evil. And those who are bombarded by experiences that reveal the inadequacy of their belief systems can respond by finding better belief systems or they can respond by trying to shut down the signal. And one popular way that modern people shut down the signal is through drugs and alcohol uh among other things. And some of those drugs are prescribed and they can be intentionally mind altering or uh they can be mis, I guess, repurposed drugs that have other purposes like painkillers. And what I wanted to, to express here, what I've been told to express is that this idea that there is a pill for that is not a good idea. You have to overcome these things in this life because after this life, you'll be exposed to this and more and there is no pill after this life to kill the signal. If you choose to mute these signals, showing you that there's a better way what you'll do is you'll trap yourself in a limited range of awareness and you avoid the purpose for which you were born. So I would think very carefully if I were you and you're in this position about how you're choosing to spend your life and what you are missing out on by doing so and also what is coming when you die and what you ought to be doing to prepare for that. Again, your, as your awareness increases, you'll be bombarded by signals that your present understanding of things is insufficient for you to overcome that level of awareness, the evil you're aware of um shows you what you need to learn more about and the good that you become aware of reveals to you the ways that you need to grow in your character to become a better person. And I encourage you to make the most of the time that you have here because it is limited. And you will have to deal with the consequences of who you've become or who you've failed to become after this life. So more about that in second Nephi 914, uh we're told that when we die, we will be given a perfect knowledge of all of our guilt and our uncleanliness, uncleanness and our nakedness. Uh This doesn't refer to lack of clothing, it means uh your character and what who you really are deep down inside in this life. Many people have become expert at lying to themselves and others about who they really are. But that lie doesn't persist after this life where it's taken from us, like you could take clothing away from someone and it reveals what they really look like without all the the fancy adjustments made by modern clothing we read later in that chapter. Well unto him that has the law given . Yeah, that has all the commandments of God like unto us and that transgress them and that waste the days of His probation for awful is his state and in fine woe unto all those who die in their sins for, they shall return to God and behold his face and remain in their sins. A lot of people believe that somehow who you are will fundamentally change after you die. And that's a lie. If your religion or your belief system does not have the power to transform you here. And now why would you believe that it has the power to magically transform you after you die. There's no reason to believe that. And it's a, it's, it's not an effective belief because it's not going to happen. If you believe in a God who's mighty to save you, he ought to be mighty to save you here. And now, not just later. OK? OK. I'm gonna skip that slide. I was going to talk about it, but I'm gonna skip it. Um The things that remain are of a higher order, they are revealed to those who acquire more light and those who acquire more light will reform their lives and their belief systems to conform with these things. And those are the things that will remain after God reveals more of reality to you. The things that are of this world and of the lower order will be shaken or destroyed or removed. Uh after this life, the purpose of the Gospel is to sanctify us or provide a means through which we can acquire more knowledge of things as they really are. If we acquire that light, we, we become sanctified through it or we become of a higher order ourselves by acquiring and living by these higher order laws or understandings of cause and effect. In DNC 84 we read they who are not sanctified through the law which I have given you, even the law of Christ must inherit another kingdom, even that of a terrestrial kingdom or that of a celestial kingdom. So a mid grade or low grade. And again, verily, I say unto you that which is governed by law is also preserved by law and perfected and sanctified by the same. I'll stop here and interpret this. We are preserved by, perfected by and sanctified by the principles that God possesses, that he is willing to teach to us if we trust him and seek him and obey Him, continuing the quote that which bringeth the law and abideth not by law, but seeketh to become a law unto itself and wille to abide in sin and altogether abideth in sin cannot be sanctified by law, neither by mercy, justice nor judgment . Therefore, they remain filthy still. So either we acquire the principles required to overcome the fire or we will suffer in the fire. So uh maybe parts of this presentation, have you wondering, why would you ever want to do that? Why would you ever want to suffer more? Why would you ever want to be more aware of things that can be described as fire? Well, the the answer is that these things come together. So we've come full circle now to, to come back to this idea of opposition in all things. God knows all things, all things are before Him continually. If you think of the awful things that happen to people, sometimes in this life, losing a child, suffering from a terminal disease, be in great pain, emotionally or physically, all of these unexpected things happening to you and, and how that makes you feel. Well, all those triggers are before God continually. There is no break and they're not irregular or infrequent for him. Everything is before him continually. And so the belief system that he has the set of knowledge, the the quantity of understanding that he has is sufficient to endure all of those things and yet enjoy greater joy, greater light, greater happiness, greater power than any of us have . And that is the power of the Gospel. You can't avoid the negative things. We have a small share of them in this life and through his grace, they're limited in most cases to being sort of emitted to random seeming people at random seeming times. It's a small share of life's experience to be hit with these things. But there will come a day when that bubble pops and we're exposed to things as they really are. And this life is a blessing. It's an opportunity to prepare ourselves for what comes after and in doing so both here and hereafter, we will learn to enjoy much greater happiness and joy and everything that's positive. In spite of everything that's negative, it doesn't make the negative things go away. But the Gospel is a framework to give us purpose and see the point in, in those things and to have understanding of why it has to be that way. And it's a pathway at the same time to encounter much greater portions of happiness and joy and everything that's positive. The life from the beginning has been that there is some other way, Satan is the great deceiver and he's called by the Lord a liar from the beginning. This isn't because he just doesn't tell the truth all the time. In fact, Satan tells the truth quite often. He just mixes it with error to uh turn us off the path. But um this description is more about his modus operandi or his his fundamental belief, which is a lie. So the lie from the beginning is that there is some other way that somehow we can reform reality to the way we wish it would be. That's a lie from the beginning. And if you believe it, you will never acquire the light and truth that God wants you to have, that's necessary to navigate things as they really are. The truth is there is no other way. And why would you bother with any of this? Because there is no other way you are going to be exposed to all of reality. It's not an option and there's absolutely nothing you can do to avoid that. So if you know that, why not be exposed to all of God? Because all of God is the key to the greatest level of enjoyment and happiness, given the inevitability of an awareness of everything , including all evil. Yeah. In acts 42, it says neither is there salvation in any other than Jesus Christ. For there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. This is the point of it. All the disciples said after Jesus asked them, will you leave me too? He said, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life and there is no other way.