#42 This is My Gospel

3 Nephi 27-30 & 4 Nephi

*Pass out papers and pencil to everyone so they can write their names on it and put in the basket. While everyone is doing that we are going to go through and summarize chapters 27-30 of 3rd Nephi.
In Chapter 27 the Nephite apostles are traveling city to city preaching. Christ has long since gone-but remember in 3 Nephi 26:13 it says He still came back often to instruct, teach, and brake bread. This is one of those times. The apostles are praying about what to name the Church. Christ tells them to name it the church of Christ; ours is the same charge (D&C115:4) (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
27:24-26-All the scriptures or records that have been kept in our day shall they be judged by. I’m willing to take an educated guess that the brethren in our day are also keeping a record of our day and part of that record, I believe, is called the Ensign-we probably will be judged by it-according to this scripture.
-Keep this in mind because we will return to this thought in a moment.
Ch 28 talks about how 9 of the apostles of that day desire to come immediately to dwell with Christ when they die; Christ grants their desire. The remaining 3 apostles desire to roam the earth until Christ comes for the 2nd coming to preach the gospel,(28:6-7) much like John the Beloved is doing. They are given many experiences and blessings. In 28:17 Mormon states he doesn’t know how their bodies change, but by 28:39 He finds out that their bodies did change so they could live here, but satan has no power over them.
Joseph Smith clues us in even deeper to this, in Teachings of Joseph Smith p170-171, it states that their bodies are not in a resurrected state but a terrestrial body, which is the same state as the ministering angels. They can come and go as they please-or as the Lord allows and can make themselves seen or not, they also hold the power of heaven to control elements and whatever else the Lord allows.
Ch 29 basically tells us that the Book of Mormon coming forth is a major sign of the 2nd coming and when we see that it has come forth we better take note that Christ will come soon.
Therefore, in ch 30 Mormon begs us to repent and return to Christ which brings us to our lesson.
In 4th Nephi let’s read the chapter heading. All people are converted to church, all things are great, and they had all things common among them. But it doesn’t take too long for that to dwindle away, 2 centuries in fact. The people turn wicked-this is what we are going to examine a little closer. We are going to split up into 10 groups of 8. I will pull out 8 names and tell you where to sit then we will quickly move and you will have a scripture to read in this chapter plus an ensign article out of this last conference issue (Nov 2008). I have a question sheet with 2 questions to answer and discuss in your groups then we will discuss as many things as you find until we run out of time. With the scripture you are assigned you need to figure out what it is that the people did or didn’t do that brought them down to destruction. With the Ensign article, you are to examine it for the advice they give as to how we can either prevent or fix this already occurring problem in our own lives so that we don’t end up in their same situation; remember we will be judged by these words, so how are you doing? Is the question you should continually ask yourself as you learn. The more I talk to friends and family and read the scriptures the more we are convinced that the 2nd coming is closer than we think and we need to be ready. Ready Spiritually! The brethren, if you’ve noticed have stopped telling us about getting our food storage, they have now- at least in the last few conferences have really been focusing on our spiritual readiness. So hopefully what this lesson will do for you is to help you examine where your individual readiness is. What you could take home as a goal to work on to help you get ready, repent and return for the Lords coming.

*Move seats
Scriptures Ensign article
1- 4 Nephi 1:24 (Pride) p41 Pray Always Elder Bednar
2- 4 Nephi 1:25 (People got greedy) p106 Until we meet again Pres. Monson
3-4 Nephi 1:26 (divide into classes, other churches built) p 44 Honor the Priesthood Elder Scott
4- 4 Nephi 1:27 (wickedness thrives) p50 Winning the War against Evil Elder Hamula
5- 4 Nephi 1:28 (iniquity in church) p 60-67 To Learn, To Do, To Be Pres. Monson
6- 4 Nephi 1:29 (Persecute good members) p 72 Christian Courage…Elder Hales
7- 4 Nephi 1:31 &34 (harden hearts against prophets) p88 The Test Pres. Packer
8- 4 Nephi 1:38-40 (teach kids to hate gospel and others) p 32 Even a Child Elder Aidukaitis
9- 4 Nephi 1:41-45 (no difference between church members and nonmembers) p78 Return to Virtue Sis. Dalton
10- 4 Nephi 1: 46 (robbing, materialism) p7 Let Him Do it with Simplicity L. Tom Perry









Questionnaire to be handed out:
1-What did the people of Christ back then, do or not do, that brought them down speedily?
2-What counsel did you pull from the Ensign article that they feel we as a people need to work on to combat the above issue?

I want to give you an example of how to do this:
4 Nephi 1:30 (Threw Prophets in Prison) This is what helped to bring the people down. In the opening address from Pres. Monson (p4-6) he urges us to pray for the work, pray for them, pray to open the doors of foreign countries to be taught the gospel. If we are listening to the prophets and doing as they suggest, we are in a sense freeing them from the ‘prisons’ we put them in by shutting them out of our lives. Not to mention as we continue the work, Christ will come that much quicker.
So what is our part? Listen to the prophets, pray, can we pray? Have we prayed for that since he issued that plea?

*You have about 10-15 minutes in your groups to discuss and then we will open up your learning to everyone.

Conclusion: I know that the 2nd coming is speedily coming, I know that we can make it come sooner if we take the prophets counsel and work it into our daily lives. I know that we can stay strong. We don’t need to fall like the Nephites did, if we constantly are working on different areas where we could improve. I testify of these things as well as the things you have brought forth in our lesson in the name of Jesus Christ Amen.