Jesus Christ is Central to All Human History The Fall

Messiah from the Bible Project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dEh25pduQ8

Messiah from the Bible Project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dEh25pduQ8

How did Lucifer become Satan? (Hint: Moses 4:1-4) Why a snake? Was there one plan or two plans presented?

Heavenly Father’s Plan One Plan or Two Plans? “Although we sometimes hear it said that there were two plans—Christ’s plan of freedom and agency, and Lucifer's of compulsion—such teaching does not conform to the revealed word. Christ did not present a plan of salvation nor did Lucifer. There were not two plans up for consideration; there was only one; and that was the plan of the Father: originated, developed, presented, and put in force by him. Christ, however, made the Father’s plan his own by his willing obedience to its terms and provisions.” Elder Bruce R. McConkie Plan 1 Heavenly Father’s Plan Plan 2 Lucifer’s Plan

Fallen Spirits Moses 4:3-4 “Every person who desires and strives to be a Saint is closely watched by fallen spirits that came here when Lucifer fell, and by the spirits of wicked persons who have been here in tabernacles and departed from them, but who are still under the control of Satan. Those spirits are never idle: they are watching every person who wishes to do right and are continually prompting them to do wrong.” Brigham Young

Where was the tree planted? (Moses 3:9) Two Commandments Moses 2:28, Moses 3:16-17 (Three explanations)

Why give them commandments they can’t keep? “The Lord said to Adam, here is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you want to stay here then you cannot eat of that fruit. If you want to stay here then I forbid you to eat it. But you may act for yourself and you may eat of it if you want to. And if you eat it you will die.” Joseph Fielding Smith Idea Two: “Yet” Idea Three: The Wording of the Commandment “Fall—Atonement—Resurrection—Sacrament” [address given at LDS Institute of Religion, Salt Lake City, Utah, Jan. 14, 1961]).

So what happened next? Before After

Why give them commandments they can’t keep? “The fall had a twofold direction—downward, yet forward. It brought man into the world and set his feet on progression’s highway.” Orson F. Whitney Cowley and Whitney on Doctrine, comp. Forace Green [1963], 287

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, However Long and Hard the Road, p.6 Alma 34:9-10 “We ought to fall on our knees and thank our Father in heaven that we belong to a church and have grasped a gospel that promises repentance to those who will pay the price.” Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, However Long and Hard the Road, p.6

Alma 34:8-10

Alma 34:32-34

“I knew a man, now deceased, not a member of the Church, who was a degenerate old reprobate who found pleasure, as he supposed, in living after the manner of the world. A cigarette dangled from his lips, alcohol stenched his breath, and profane and bawdy stories defiled his lips. His moral status left much to be desired. “His wife was a member of the Church, as faithful as she could be under the circumstances. One day she said to him, ‘You know the Church is true; why won’t you be baptized?’ He replied, ‘Of course I know the Church is true, but I have no intention of changing my habits in order to join it. I prefer to live the way I do. But that doesn’t worry me in the slightest. I know that as soon as I die, you will have someone go to the temple and do the work for me and everything will come out all right in the end anyway.’ “He died and she had the work done in the temple. We do not sit in judgment and deny vicarious ordinances to people. But what will it profit him?” (Elder McConkie, “The Seven Deadly Heresies,” in 1980 Devotional Speeches of the Year: BYU Devotional and Fireside Addresses [1980], 77).

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell chose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.” C. S. Lewis The Great Divorce, pp.72-73

Alma 34

Alma 34

Jesus Christ is Central to All Human History The Fall

President Henry B. Eyring, Do Not Delay, October 1999 Alma 34 “In youth we may have thought: “There will be time enough to worry about spiritual things just before my mission or before marriage. Spiritual things are for older people.” Then, in the early years of marriage, the pressures of life, of jobs, of bills, of finding a moment for rest and recreation seem to crowd us so closely that delay in meeting obligations to God and family again seems reasonable. “It is easy to think, “Perhaps there will be more time for that in the middle years.” But the compression of time does not ease in the years that follow. There is so much to do, and time seems to shrink. “And so Satan tempts with procrastination. Any choice to delay repentance gives him the chance to steal happiness from one of the spirit children of our Heavenly Father. President Henry B. Eyring, Do Not Delay, October 1999

President Henry B. Eyring, Do Not Delay, October 1999 Alma 34 “One of the questions we must ask of our Heavenly Father in private prayer is this: “What have I done today, or not done, which displeases Thee? If I can only know, I will repent with all my heart without delay.” That humble prayer will be answered. And the answers will surely include the assurance that asking today was better than waiting to ask tomorrow.” President Henry B. Eyring, Do Not Delay, October 1999