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| Bob Field 1930 - 2012 |
SCRIPTURE: "... and now, as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another's burdens, that they may be light;
"Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life-"
"Now I say unto you, if this be the desire of your hearts, what have you against being baptized in the name of the Lord, as a witness before him that ye have entered into a covenant with him, that ye will serve him and keep his commandments, that he may pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon you?"
-- Mosiah 18: 8-10
The people there clapped their hands for joy and exclaimed "This is the desire of our hearts." The members of my ward family found joy in serving Bob and me during his last weeks on earth.
PONDERING THE ETERNITIES
It is during these very poignant times that one ponders Who We Really Are. As I told you on my post of April 28th, I found out who Bob really was during an epiphany experience that I had before we were married in the summer of 1978.
THE EPIPHANY
While talking with Bob, whom I’d never met, on our
second phone call, the Holy Ghost descended upon me, enabling me to see or know
Bob as God knows him. I beheld his eternal nature. I was humbled that this great soul would select me to be his
eternal companion…and yes, at that moment I knew that he would indeed ask me to
marry him, and we would be sealed together in the temple for time and all
eternity.
Needless to
say, I didn’t apply this vision to myself. I just knew how great Bob was. I’d
seen him in the pre-existence, saw how he agreed to the circumstances of this
life he was to live here on earth, and then I was privileged to see him in the
eternities as God saw him.
While our
family was living on the island of Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands
(1990-1994)
An LDS friend shared with me that she was of the literal
seed or descent from Jesus Christ. Whether this was real revelatory knowledge
or was stated in her patriarchal blessing, I cannot remember. But it gave her
strength to carry on during times of trials and hardships as well as during
physical distress or illness. It matters not whether she is indeed literally
his heir, because it stands as a symbol of her divine nature and how Christ
helps her during trails while here in mortality. The reality is that Christ’s
sacrifice helps bring her into at-one-ment with God, both now and after death.
Doesn’t this reality apply to all of us?
HOW THIS RELATES TO ME
This shared view of her reality suddenly brought into focus what I’d
learned about Bob’s eternal nature as it related to me. I, too, must be endowed with this same
nature. Because I had “seen” Bob’s past, present and future knowing that he had
selected and agreed with the family and circumstances he was born into because
it was for his own good or growth, I then must assume that I also had agreed in
the pre-existence to my own life. Since God loved Bob (and I had felt His great
love that he had for this son) perfectly and could see everything about him
from the beginning to the end, I had to draw the logical conclusion that not
only was Bob great, but so was I. Now that thought was a little tougher to
swallow. I couldn’t quite bring myself
to accept this totally. In 1999 while living in Guadalajara, Mexico, I came
across a perfect description of just exactly what I had experienced in my epiphany
in a book called “Spiritual Progression in the Last Days” By Blaine M.
Yorgason.[1]
This is the
exact moment in my life that I gained an understanding of my eternal nature and
true identity. I want to share these passages from his book with the hope that
it will awake in others the knowledge of who they truly are. It is what I was
searching for all of my life. This is the knowledge that banishes all fear. Now
I quote Yorgason:
“Unfortunately,
based on my own limited experience in discussing the issue of spiritual
progression with others, I am forced to conclude that not many will press
forward—not because we can’t, mind you, but solely because we won’t. Why?
Primarily, I believe, because we fear.
“We know
something of our own carnal natures – the natural man we all inherited at birth
– and we fear that we can not put it behind us. And even when we actually
overcome the natural man by being born again, we continue to fear like Laman
and Lemuel, that the Lord will make no such glorious things known to us as He
has promised .”[2]
“I have
pondered long on this, and I believe that such paralyzing fear, while
satanically inspired, stems almost wholly from not understanding our eternal
natures and identities. I also believe that many of the difficulties we
experience in mortality could be avoided or at least made lighter if we could
only come to such an eternal understanding more quickly.”
“As
President John Taylor taught: This is the reason why we are here, and kicked
and cuffed around, and hated and despised by the world. The reason why we do
not live in peace is because we are not prepared for it. We are tempted and
tried, driven, mobbed, and robbed; apostates are in our midst, which cause
trouble and vexation of spirit, and it is all to keep down our pride and teach
us to honor the God of Jacob in all things and to make us appear who we really
are.” [3]
“Even when
we hear of those who will inherit the celestial kingdom, we desire to be one of
them and have met the requirements to be such, yet many of us continue to say,
‘But that isn’t me God is talking about. It can’t be! I know myself too well,
and I’ll never make it that far – at least not in this life.”
IS THIS YOUR THOUGHT? IT WAS MINE
Yorgason continues, “If you
find yourself entertaining such thoughts, which are more typical than you might
imagine, then please consider the following which I have found helpful. On
Christmas day in 1844, W.W. Phelps wrote a letter that was published in the
Times and Seasons 5:758, wherein he spoke of the meaning of eternity.”
“Brother
Phelps wrote: That eternity (the one during which Christ’s doings have been
known), agreeable to the records found in the catacombs of Egypt, has been
going on in this system … almost two thousand five hundred and fifty-five
million of years.”
“Elder
Bruce R. McConkie, who quotes a small portion of this letter, adds: That is to
say, the papyrus from which the Prophet Joseph translated the Book of Abraham,
to whom the Lord gave a knowledge of his infinite creations, also contained
this expression relative to what apparently is the universe in which we live,
which universe has been created by the Father through the instrumentality of
the Son.”[4]
“Thus,
Jehovah began His eternal reign some two thousand five hundred fifty-five
million years ago, or, said another way, two and a half billion years. That was
when. But how, where, and why did Christ’s eternal reign begin?”
“In answer,
Joseph Smith spoke of ‘the head of the
Gods’ calling a ‘council of the Gods’ to arrange for the creation and peopling
of the earth[5] as well as
of ‘the grand council of heaven’ in which those destined ‘to minister to the
inhabitants of the world’ were ‘ordained’ to their respective callings.[6]
It was one of these councils, held only a little less than 2,555,000,000 years
ago, that Jehovah offered himself as the one to go down to earth and bring to
pass the Father’s plan of salvation through His own life and death and
resurrection.”[7]
WE WERE IN ATTENDANCE AT ONE OF THE COUNCILS IN HEAVEN As Yorgason continues, “What astounds me, is that each of us was also in attendance at least one of those councils on that long ago date, offering a sustaining vote in our Savior’s behalf, rejecting Lucifer’s counterfeit plan, and being absolutely certain of our own identities as we did so. And once Jehovah had been sustained as God and Christ, we who had thus kept our first estates were foreordained to our own future mortal assignments, and set about learning how to accomplish them. Elder McConkie writes[8] that: Since men are foreordained to gain exaltation, and since no man can be exalted without the priesthood, it is almost self-evident that worthy brethren were foreordained to receive the priesthood. And so we find Alma teaching that those who held the Melchizedek Priesthood in this
life were ‘called and prepared from the foundation of the
world according to the foreknowledge of God.’[9]
“Remember –
the foundation of the world was 2.5 billion years ago. And Joseph Smith said,
‘Every man who has a calling to minister to the inhabitants of the world, and
this includes all who held the Melchizedek Priesthood, were ordained to that
very purpose in the Grand Council of heaven before this world was. I suppose that
I was ordained to this very office in that Grand council.’[10]
YORGASON'S CONCLUSIONS CHANGE HOW I VIEW MY FELLOW MAN
“Therefore,
I conclude that despite the fairly negative pictures most of us have of
ourselves as struggling and usually failing weak mortals (which picture is
based on satanically inspired doubts as well as an incredibly brief span of
time here on earth that we are allowed to remember), we are all, in reality,
ancient beings filled with glory, light and knowledge. And we acquired those
godly traits by exercising ‘exceeding faith and good works’[11]over
at least two and a half billion years of time.”
“With that
mind-boggling fact before us, consider these questions:
1)
Since I know that I had an eternal pre-mortal identity
separate from what I am today, what do I suppose my name was during that lengthy
life we call our first estate?
2)
Is not that glorious and ancient identity more properly the
“true” me than the one I know now, which is at best no more than a few decades
old?
3)
Is two and a half billion years sufficient time for me to have
become acquainted not only with Christ and our Father, but also with all the
holy angels such as Gabriel, Raphael, and Michael?
4)
Is it not possible that I not only knew such great beings but
also mingled among them as an eternal equal, even with similar assignments? And
…
5)
Since I successfully kept my first estate for at least two and
a half billion years, isn’t it foolish and shortsighted for me to doubt my
ability to keep my second estate for a mere seventy or eighty years?
“It is no wonder that the devil, who has an intimate
knowledge of our true identities, tries so hard to convince us that we are
without spiritual merit. If he can’t, then he knows he has lost, and we will
never be miserable like him.”
“Jesus
Christ lives and stands waiting with outstretched arms to ‘take up his abode
with us,’ and He will do so as quickly as we are willing to put aside the world
and give our hearts and lives wholly to Him.’
NOW IT IS MY TURN TO SEE IF I CAN DO THIS ALONE
Is the "true" me willing to keep my second estate until the end as did my eternal companion? Yes. I am not really alone. Heavenly Father is intimately aware of me and my needs both large and small. Often he meets these needs through the tender mercies of the members of my ward family. He allows me the comfort in knowing that Bob is serving on the other side of the veil, through impressions that I have have received. And he has given me a daughter, Brianna, who loves me and spends time with me. Her husband Ricky promised Bob that he would look out for his "girls" for him; and he has been doing just that. I feel loved, not lonely.
[1] “SpiritualProgression in the Last Days” by Blaine M. Yorgason, 1994, Deseret Book,
epilogue.
[2] 1 Nephi
15:8-10
[3] John Taylor,
Times and Seasons, 6:1, 100-101.
[4] Bruce R.
McConkie, The Mortal Messiah, Book 1, 1979, Deseret Book, p. 32-33,
footnotes.
[5] See D&C
121:30-32; Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp 348-349.
[6] Teachings p
365
[7] See Abraham
3:27; Moses 4:1-2; Isaiah 14:13-14; see also The Promised Messiah, p 48.
