Moroni saw me daily
Mother's day is coming in the next week. This upcoming Mother's day is a hard one for me because it will be the first one that I will honor without the mortal presence of my mother, Catherine Bazin Oliver, who passed away on July 11, 2018 in our home due to heart complications. Loosing a loved one never truly heals with time, if we're honest. What happens in time is we adjust to a new normal. When a person is no longer present who occupied a significant portion of your life, you do not get over that, as people like to claim. There is only adjustment and acceptance, which does not equal getting over. Included above are pictures of my mother, Catherine Bazin Oliver, and Lilly Bell Phillips Bazin. Due to a few house fires, I don't have man pictures of my grandmother. These two women are directly responsible for my physical existence, even though they are not the only women who have mothered me. When I think of love and home, these images come to mind because they will never grace my face in mortal existence again. Knowing that they are waiting on the other side of mortal life, helps me patiently wait to see them again as glorified beings of light. Now, to some this wish of mine is a mere fairytale. Death is death. Once the body of the dead enters into the ground or the urn, there is nothing else but a memory to live on as reminder of that person ever living. That, a memory, is enough for a time to some. Not for me. There are people out here who want us to believe that there is no life after death or any such thing as God or devils. Some want us not to spend our days thinking of a glory beyond this existence, rather focus on what we have now. And we should focus on this life. We are here. We are NOW. Religion was once said to be the intoxication of the masses of wretched souls who have no hope for better faire in this life, so they need an escape to a future life where all will be perfect. No eyes will cry, not pain will exist, no hunger will ravish, and sickness will cease. "Yes," they say--the realists, non-theists. "All these things are true because all will die, with no way to suffer any more. There will be no tears if there are no tear ducts to cry them. There will be no pain with no receptors to signal the brain. There is no hunger with no stomach. There is no sickness with no body." What, then, I say, is the point of hoping for a better life when most of us on the planet will not have one? Why go on living if there is no hope for which to strive? What is the point of continuing to exist when existence means, as some say, nothing, ultimately? Life is a cruel divorce sentence, then. Every person we love ceases to function by operational error or outside trauma until we ourselves cease to exist. That is the end. I humbly say, no. It is not a delusion to have an understanding that life does not begin at birth and does not end at death. Because it does not fit into the neat package of current science, some of us want to dismiss it. I, submit, that science will catch up to reality one day. Until then, we use our faith and hope that life continues beyond mortal death. All it is, is faith. There is no proof for the world to see yet, but it will come. The Moroni Perspective Knowing that one day there would exist those of us who would call to question the good news that Jesus brought to the tiny nation of Israel in 33 a. d that life is everlasting, God inspired Moroni to inscribe, "I speak also concerning those who do not believe in Christ. "Behold, will ye believe in the day of your visitation—behold, when the Lord shall come, yea, even that great day when the earth shall be rolled together as a scroll, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, yea, in that great day when ye shall be brought to stand before the Lamb of God—then will ye say that there is no God?" Mormon 9:1-2 His incredulity in this modern age of post-religionism caused him to burn with sorrow because of us when he, Moroni, knew that Jesus lived and lives. He saw Him. Moroni even ministered as a resurrected being himself, on the word of Joseph Smith saying, "I am a messenger sent from the presence of God to you. My name is Moroni. God has a work for you to do. “There is a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this [the American] continent, and the source from whence they sprang. The fulness of the everlasting Gospel is contained in it, as delivered by the Savior to the ancient inhabitants." Adapted from The Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith History 1:33 I will see Mother. You will see your lost loved ones. Billions of testimonies claims it. Moroni saw us. He saw that his words, by the power of God, would bring hope to people like me who lost loved ones, mothers, daughters, sons, spouses, etc. There is God in the heaves. There is life beyond this one. To know it, we must have the faith to act on it by living the principles of the gospel, and asking the Creator of the Universe for a witness, a personal one. Moroni promises that we will get one, if we have faith. Read Moroni 10. It give the key. What has Moroni seen of you? |
Rodric AnthonyWriter of the Book Moroni Saw Me and Father of Seven. Archives
November 2021
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