December Week 2: The Second Coming / End Days

We Should Avoid 'End of Days' Hysteria
How many times and years has the "End of the World" been predicted?
About 50 times, going back to the year 500 AD
Second Coming Predictions (note the Thomas Müntzer item and cite Dan Carlin's jaw-dropping podcast about the Munster Rebellion called "Prophets of Doom" / listen here for free ... you'll need 4 hours to finish it!)

Statistically speaking, you have a better chance of seeing Christ after you die than you do seeing him come to earth again

When people pray for the 2nd Coming, what are they really saying?  Are they not simply saying "we've given up; it's so bad down here and we've screwed up so much, we need Jesus to come again and make things right."

It is a very "helpless" desire to pray for the Second Coming.  Rather, we should pray that we are prepared for our own death.  We should view this life, not in the context of the Second Coming, but rather in the context of meeting Christ (when we die).

Parable of the Ten Virgins
The Parable of the 10 Virgins is about the ability to be constant all the time.

Life is not about living the last 10 seconds or 10 minutes or 10 hours or 10 days in perfection; but rather it is about being ready (virtuous) all the time.

To put this idea in another way: which is better; to not live a virtuous life and then go through death-bed repentance or to strive to be better and live more virtuously all the time?

Is this not analogous to brushing your teeth?  Someone who thinks they can brush their teeth really, really good on Saturday night and think the dentist won't notice versus someone who constantly brushes their teeth well every day, three times a day.

The five foolish would have been ready had the bridegroom come on time.

The five wise were ready had the bridegroom come on time or had come late or had never come!

How did they know to prepare?

This was not their first wedding nor was it lost on them that the bridegroom might be late.

Is not the arrival of the bridegroom synonymous with death and meeting our maker?

And what is it that God wants of us?  Death-bed repentance?  Just-in-time virtue?  Or does he want us to by fundamentally different (better) than we were before we improved?

Is this life really just a onetime event in which case we have to "hold out" just long enough or does God want us to progress steadily and onward to perfection (perfection of virtues)?

Can We Become Perfect in One Lifetime?
We're about to go really deep here, perhaps into uncharted territory.

Thought experiment: you are immortal; you don't need to eat, your wounds heal, you never grow old.  What do you do?

Groundhog Day - a microcosm of what this life is about
Some might "eat, drink and be merry"  But to what end?  It won't make you content
Pursuit of money?
Pursuit of fame?
Pursuit of pleasure?
After all these failed pursuits, would you not try to escape this purgatory?

Phil, after chasing all of this, decides to shift his focus from himself to others; he pursues a life of virtue in making other people happy and he is no longer damned.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/03/reliving-groundhog-day/309223/

http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/01/health/groundhog-day-movie-wisdom-project/

Alternatively, the same idea and concept, can be learned from the much more action-packed movie Edge of Tomorrow.

We are already immortal - today is eternity
Draw timeline on board and the dot that represents this life.    We tend to think eternity and immortality is after some designated dot on this timeline.  We might think life kinda sucks and if I can just slog through this, and 'pass the test' then I can be immortal and everything just goes my way; I become a God and get all the powers in the universe.  But on a line that is infinite, what does eternity really mean?  If you are here or here, you are still on the same line, in which case you are already immortal.  We are immortal beings who are going through multiple iterations to be a better person.  Death is just another event; another experience.

Given the above thought experiments, it is evident that no matter how many iterations or days or weeks or months or lives we've lived, the ultimate pursuit is constantcy in virtue.

And since we don't know when we will die, eternity is now.  The only time that really belongs to us is now.  The past and the future do not belong to us; we have no control over them.

And assuming we had an infinite amount of days to "get it right" why not use now to start on it?

Eternity is now.

This is where the thought "carpe diem" (Dead Poets Society) comes into play.  We must live life - live each day - as if it were our last.

"To perform each of life's actions as if it were the last" means to live the present instant with such intensity and such love that, in a sense, an entire lifetime is contained and completed within it.  Most people are not alive, because they do not live in the present, but are always outside themselves, alienated, and dragged backwards and forwards by the past and by the present.  They do not know that the present is the only point at which they are truly themselves and free." (The Inner Citadel Pierre Hadot p. 135)

A Machine for the Making of Gods
To summarize, we are not in this world simply to hold on a bit.  We are here to progress.  The only thing you should focus on is "how do I improve each passing moment?  How do I become better in this moment from the previous moment?" "This is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." (Moses 1:39)

Interestingly enough, a gentleman by the name of Henri Bergson called the universe and this world a "machine for making Gods."

He says, "Men do not sufficiently realize that their future is in their own hands.  Theirs is the task of determining, first of all, whether they want to go on living or not.  Theirs is the responsibility then for deciding if they want to merely live, or intend to make just the extra effort required for fulfilling even on their refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of Gods." (source)

To flip your paradigm from a life in pursuit of pleasure, ease, fame, excitement, adventure and things going your way, to a paradigm that the world and this life you live in it, is a machine that takes raw material and turns it into something more valuable - this paradigm shift will cause you to fundamentally view your life differently.  And to have that realization and to execute that change within you, takes a lifetime and more of present moments.  Decide now; take action now.

Engaging, Capacity to Act and Feeling Love for Others

This selection comes from this talk.

6. We need always to make allowance in the kingdom for the fact that this is a divine church full of imperfect people! Indeed, “the net gathereth of every kind.” For instance, some members among us have an unfortunate and exclusionary condescension toward others, while other members have a quiet certitude that causes them to assert their testimonies humbly because the Spirit has witnessed to them; they witness to others to maintain their integrity; they tell others the truth of salvational things “as they were, as they are, and as they shall become.” These two kinds of members read the same scriptures, but one disengages, Jonah-like, almost with delight, while the other will not leave his post in “Nineveh” so long as there are any souls to be saved. Probably the differing response is rooted in the differing capacity to love. The presence of absolute truth or apocalyptic insights in one who lacks the capacity to love is likely to produce some behavioral anomalies. Love leads us into—not away from—Nineveh: into the fray, just as Jesus was involved with mankind, for as G. K. Chesterton observed, He carried his five wounds in the front of the fray.

Some want involvement without giving themselves. Some want the wonders of religion without the work—there is no way. Others want the thrills of theology without the hard doctrines—there is no way! When we are serious about change, it is “not enough to merely leave Egypt: one must also travel to the Promised Land!”

commentary: the above speaks of commitment and engaging others.  you either engage in service and the cause of helping others, or you don't.  the gospel is about action.  and what causes you to act?  keep on reading.

7. We must make place for the gospel and the Church more generously in our lives if we are to grow in our capacity to both feel and to act. Education, the media, and what we know from the scriptures have enlarged our circles of concern and feeling. But within each of our circles of concern, there is a much smaller circle of competency, and it needs to grow too.

C. S. Lewis observed, “The more often a man feels without acting, the less often he will be able to act, and in the long run, the less often he will be able to feel.” In countless ways the Church not only enlarges our circles of concern, but it also helps us to carry out the concerns we have. Significantly, Nephi, Paul, and Moroni—cultures and centuries apart—each observed that individuals and whole cultures can, by sin, reach a point where they are past feeling. Ironically, lasciviousness, which exploits sensuous feelings, results finally in a loss of a capacity to feel. In our own society the sad consequences of too much exulting in feeling—of sex divorced from love, and the emptiness of emotion without principle—will wash over us for generations. In the declining society of Moroni’s time, citizens were described as being without order, without mercy, without civilization, and past feeling after they had “lost their love, one towards another. …” (Moro. 9:5.)

commentary: love brings about wanting and desire.  love and desire should spur us to action.  but when we disassociate love and action, we begin to lose the capacity to feel.  when we don't feel, we don't care, when we don't care, we don't act and when we don't act evil triumphs.

8. We must be more quick to realize the enormous implications of the doctrine of immortality and how our knowledge of that reality will set us apart in this era. One can’t help but admire the cosmic heroism of those decent people who persist in goodness in spite of their agnosticism, but we still should see others differently because of this doctrine. Ours is no mere biological brotherhood with life as a brief encounter, but ours is a brotherhood that is fashioned in the realization that relationships will persist a million years from now, and more. Where we do not so relate to each other, we diminish the credibility of our commitment to this doctrine in the eyes of others. For a peculiar people, our friendships should be peculiarly rich.

commentary: to me, the above really hits home and answers the question - why the gospel?  if mankind is to become immortal, do we want immortal evil or immortal goodness running the universe?

In summary, we see the world, life, and death differently. This is not a random, mutant planet with people who will be enveloped in nothingness; it is a special place, a planet with a purpose, for, as Isaiah observed, the Lord created it to be inhabited. (See Isa. 45:18.)

We are all stewards, and we ought to approach this planet and its resources as carefully as Adam dressed the Garden. In seeking to establish dominion over the earth, it ought to be a righteous dominion. Still, this earth is not a place we need to be so reluctant to leave. As G. K. Chesterton wrote, Christian courage rests on a love of life that may need to take the form of a willingness to die; it is not the willingness to die that reflects a disdain or disaffection for life.

Without immortality there can be no real and lasting meaning to life. Jesus has not only immunized us against the lasting sting of the grave, but his teachings can also help us not to “look upon death with any degree of terror.” (Alma 27:28.) The same Jesus promised us, through one of his prophets, that if we could live according to his word, we would have, in this life, a knowledge of what is “just and true and render every man his due” (justice and discernment); we would live peaceably with others (peacefulness); we would rear our families without fighting and quarreling, teaching them to love one another (the capacity to love learned in happy homes); and we would care for the needy (a program for poverty). (See Mosiah 4.) In a sense, while others have the slogans, we have the solutions that, if applied, will carry us to “a state of happiness which hath no end.” (Morm. 7:7.)

2 Corinthians 4:17-18

For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;

While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.

I have heard in many Sunday School and seminary lessons about how this life is so short compared to eternity. When we think of roughly 70 or 80 years of life on this earth compared to the eternities, we quickly begin to grasp how short and how important this life is. Our afflictions then become light and are mere moments in the eternal scheme of things.

Perspective

We all need a little perspective in our lives from time to time. The next time you are having a rough day or if you are going through some adversity or trial, consider this statement from President Eyring:

"The very opportunity for us to face adversity and affliction is part of the evidence of Their [Heavenly Father and the Savior] infinite love. God gave us the gift of living in mortality so that we could be prepared to receive the greatest of all the gifts of God, which is eternal life. Then our spirits will be changed. We will become able to want what God wants, to think as He thinks, and thus be prepared for the trust of an endless posterity to teach and to lead through tests to be raised up to qualify to live forever in eternal life." (Henry B. Eyring, “Adversity,” Ensign, May 2009, 23–27)