Sunday Lesson: Mar 13th

Chapter 5 from our Howard W. Hunter manual was our lesson this past Sunday, Joseph Smith, Prophet of the Restoration. 3 weeks after becoming President of the Church, Pres. Hunter traveled to Nauvoo for the 150th anniversary of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. In a meeting Pres. Hunter said: "The responsibility I feel for the work the Prophet Joseph inaugurated fills me with a determination to do all I can in the time and season allotted to me. Surely Joseph was faithful and true to his time and season!" Are we true to our time and season? Are we doing what the Lord has asked us to do?

God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith to initiate the Restoration. The gospel was lost off the earth once again, and in 1820 the Lord appeared to the boy Joseph. Said Pres. Hunter, "This prophet...could testify of his own positive knowledge that God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, a Resurrected Being, separate and distinct from the Father. He did not testify as to what he believed or what what he or others thought or conjectured, but of what he knew. How has your testimony of the 1st Vision influenced your life?

Jesus Christ reestablished His Church through the Prophet Joseph Smith. Humble, ordinary men and women gathered the day the Church was organized. "None of them laid any claim to special learning or significant leadership. They were honorable people and respectable citizens, but were virtually unknown outside of their own immediate neighborhood." Joseph Smith received divine revelation and therefore had already published the Book of Mormon. "Part of the divine revelation [Joseph Smith received] was instruction to reestablish the true and living Church, restored in these modern times as it existed in the day of the Savior's own mortal ministry." Subsequent evens were also restored in their fullness through the Prophet Joseph Smith: the priesthood, modern revelations, and the gospel in it's fullness. What blessings have come to your family because of the restored Church?

Praise to the man who communed with Jehovah. Joseph Smith not only communed with the Lord, but also with other personages of heaven. Joseph was tutored, visited and taught by many in these latter days. The Prophet Joseph also received hundreds of revealed scripture during his short lifetime. Pres. Hunter said of this, "It has been estimated, more marvelous pages of scripture passed through him than through any other human in history." We also praise Joseph Smith for not only enduring his many trials, but for "enduring them well" (D&C 121:8). He went through so many persecutions, imprisonments, deaths of many loved ones including his own children. He always looked to the Savior to whom he listened ever since Heavenly Father first instructed him saying, "This is My Beloved Son, Hear Him!"

Pres. Hunter shares his testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith: "I am grateful for this man, for his teachings, for his revelations, for what he has left for us, for it was through him that the gospel was restored to the earth. I think there is no more beautiful story in all of history than the simple, sweet story of the lad who went into the woods near his home, kneeling in prayer and receiving heavenly visitors.....It is my prayer that as we commemorate this great prophet and reflect upon his life, that we have gratitude in our hearts for the things which have come into our lives by reason of his seership and his revelation to us - a choice seer, raised up by the Lord to guide us in these latter days, that we might turn our footsteps back to those paths which will lead us to exaltation and eternal life."