21 September 2009
Thesis: The most important thing and the most precious thing in the universe is a celestial family, consisting of a faithful husband and a faithful wife and faithful children united in the bonds of the New and Everlasting Covenant.
Antithesis: The thing Satan hates most is a faithful celestial family created through the New and Everlasting Covenant.
1. Jesus Christ (Jehovah) was chosen by our Heavenly Father to make the New and Everlasting Covenant possible through His Atonement, and to be the leader of the faithful.
Satan chose himself to try to destroy knowledge of and participation in the New and Everlasting Covenant, acceptance of the Atonement, and faith in Jesus Christ.
2. Our Savior, Jesus Christ, commends us to be honest.
Satan entices all to lie at every turn.
3. Our Savior commends to us to be true to our word and keep our covenants and contracts.
Satan entices all to do whatever seems advantageous at the moment.
4. Our Savior commends each of us to be absolutely chaste, to limit sexual relations to marriage.
Satan entices all to make sexual release a pastime, to be engaged in whenever and wherever, even with animals.
5. Our Savior commends to each of His servants to have good will to all men.
Satan entices all to hate everyone else.
6. Our Savior commends His servants to be strong in pursuing righteousness.
Satan entices all to be strong in pursuing selfishness.
7. Our Savior commends His servants to do good to all men, even to their enemies.
Satan entices all to take advantage of all others whenever possible.
8. Our Savior commends His servants to multiply and fill up the earth.
Satan entices all to commit abortion, infanticide, use contraceptives, groan at large families, and belittle those who have large families.
9. Our Savior commends to all His servants to be frugal in consumption, generous in charity. Satan entices all to consume all possible and at the expense of others.
10. Our Savior commends to His servants to be modest in dress.
Satan entices all to be immodest unto nudity, and women to show their cleavage whenever possible.
11. Our Savior commends His servants to eat moderately, and only healthy foods.
Satan entices all to gorge themselves on artificial sweets, fats, empty calories and drugs.
12. Our Savior commends His servants to carry their own weight economically.
Satan entices all to want everything for nothing.
13. Our Savior commends His servants to be married in the only true way, in the New and Everlasting Covenant.
Satan entices all to despise temple marriage, to despise marriage, to encourage homosexuality and homosexual marriage, anything but the true marriage.
We sealers do not create celestial families. We have the sealing power to open the door to parents and children to unite in the bonds of pure love. The sealing which we do comes from our having been designated to stand in the place of Jesus Christ himself. But even our Savior cannot create a celestial family. He also can only open the door (the gate to the celestial kingdom) and invite human beings to enter that gate and pursue the path. The grace of Christ makes entering the gate and continuing on the strait and narrow way unto the goal of eternal life and eternal lives possible. But only each individual soul, by exerting all of his heart, might, mind and strength to receive the grace of Christ can make that journey and be transformed by the grace of Christ from a natural man, a servant of Satan, into a just person made perfect. He who will not thus exert himself cannot inherit.
Only as each person recognizes the enormous task it is to defy Satan and keep the promises we have made under the New and Everlasting Covenant, and then throws himself or herself into the battle with all heart, might, mind and strength, enduring to the end through faith in Jesus Christ, can anyone overcome the world, which is to triumph over the temptations of Satan and be able to withstand the weight of glory which each human being is generously offered through the New and Everlasting Covenant.