Abraham visited by the three Angels.
There are some fundamental doctrines that need to be understood before we understand the need to be morally clean.
The first of these is in regards to who you really are. You are a child of deity. God the Father is the Father of your spirit. The Prophet Abraham stated that " ...the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones; and God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good; and he said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born.
And there stood one among them that was like unto God, and he said unto those who were with him: We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell; And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them;....." (Abr chp.3 22-25)
You were one of those who were gathered there in that meeting. When the Great Plan of Salvation was presented, and Jesus Christ stepped forward to be the one chosen to be the Savior, you elected to side with him. Satan stepped forward in that meeting also, being an Angel at the time, and offered to force us to choose to be like the Father, and his plan was rejected. Many people there, 1/3 actually, sided with Satan, stating that the plan was unfair, and too difficult. That there would be too many who would fail and therefore be unable to return.
But to force someone to do what is right is to work against the plan of salvation itself.
26 For behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward.
27 Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness;
28 For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward.
What good would the ultimate reward of being in the presence of the Father and assisting in the creation of worlds and spirits be if the person who receives the reward has no desire to be like the Father? God is God because you can trust him, because you can place your faith in him. If he is not trustworthy than he is not God. We know that when we take upon ourselves the name of Christ, that salvation is associated with and tied up in that name. That that name is worthy of our trust.
In a marriage, a woman takes upon herself the name of the man she is marrying. Together they place a name on their children. How that couple acts, and how their children act become forever associated with the family name they bear.
How often in your own life do you say, "Oh the Robinson family..." or "Oh, the Tuckers were all out doing ..." this or that?
It is not hard to think in your mind of family that you admire, and familys you know to be a poison in your community. In a community a goverment can do nothing to legislate civic mindedness, or duty to God and country. These things are taught in the home, and if they are not then the children are not instilled with these ideas. And if a parent does not know these morals and ethics, they cannot instill them in their children.
The Wikipedia defines virtue like this:
Virtue (Latin virtus; Greek ἀρετή) is moral excellence of a person. A virtue is a trait valued as being good. The conceptual opposite of virtue is vice.
According to its etymology the word virtue (Latin virtus) signifies manliness or courage. Taken in its widest sense virtue means the excellence of perfection of a thing, just as vice, its contrary, denotes a defect or absence of perfection due to a thing. In its strictest meaning, however, as used by moral philosophers and theologians, virtue is an operative habit essentially good, as distinguished from vice, an operative habit essentially evil. The four cardinal (hinge) virtues are Justice, Courage, Wisdom, and Moderation. These were enumerated by the Greek philosophers. The three supernatural virtues of Faith, Hope and (unselfish) Love are part of the tradition of Pauline Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Both the natural and supernatural virtues depend on a person's understanding that truth can be discovered. Modernist views are at odds with this idea.
"The strengthening of family ties should become the rallying cry for Latter-Day Saint families everywhere," proclaimed Spencer W. Kimball. "So also should a return to Chastity, our most valuable possesion. Chastity and virtue are 'most dear and precious above all things' (Moroni 9:9), more valuable than rubies or diamonds, than herds and flocks, than gold and silver, or than automobiles and land. But sadly, in many cases they are on sale at the cheapest shops and at the cheapest prices.
these virtues cannot be purchased with money, but may be enjoyed by all people, even those of humble birth and humble circumstances as well as the rich, as much by the high school student as by those who are professors of the universities. Everyone may enjoy these great blessings by living for them.
The lack of Chastity, fidelity, and virtue - fast becoming great, worldwide sins which need to be repented of - causes rivers of tears to flow, breaks numerous homes, deprives and frustrates armies of innocent children. Loss of virtue, as oyu know, has toppled many nations and civilizations. Moral decadence is a villian, and his is branded with the words dishonesty, bribery, irreverence, selfishness, immorality, debauchery, and all forms of sexual deviation.
each of us is a son or daughter of God and has the responsibility to measure up to a perfect, Christlike life of self-mastery, finally returning to God with our virtue." (Conference report, October 1979, p.6)
It is a unique doctrine in the Latter-Day Saint church that the Body and the Spirit are the soul of man. And it is important that we as parents create the greatest enviorment possible for the rearing of a child, who is sent to us from the presence of the Father, to appreciate both the responsibilities of honoring and nurturing both their bodies and their spirits.
Satan and the 1/3 part of heaven that followed after him to an everlasting hell, were denied the right to have a body because of their rebellion. They covet ours, and seek to entice us to defile the ones that we have received. These same bodies that are destined to rise with us in the resurrection.
So when we speak of defileing ones body, of turning it into a simple object of desire, we are in actuality speaking of our soul.
To quote Jeffrey R Holland:
So partly in answer to why such seriousness, we answer that one toying with the God-given and satanically coveted-body of another, toys with the very soul of that individual, toys with the central purpose and product of life, "the very key" to life, as Eider Boyd K. Packer once called it. In trivializing the soul of another (please include the word body there), we trivialize the Atonement that saved that soul and guaranteed its continued existence. And when one toys with the Son of Righteousness, the Day Star himself, one toys with white heat and a flame hotter and holier than the noonday sun. You cannot do so and not be burned. You cannot with impunity "crucify Christ afresh" (see Hebrews 6:6).
Exploitation of the body (please include the word soul there) is, in the last analysis, an exploitation of Him who is the Light and the Life of the world. Perhaps here Paul's warning to the Corinthians takes on newer, higher meaning:
Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body•... Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid ....
Flee fornication ....He that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.......Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?
For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which
are God's. (1 Corinthians 6:13, 15, 18-20, italics added.)
Our soul is what's at stake here-the spirit and the body. Paul understood that doctrine of the soul every bit as well as James E. Talmage did, because it is gospel truth. The purchase price for our fullness of joy-body and spirit eternally united-is the pure and innocent blood of the Savior of this world. We cannot, then, say in ignorance or defiance, "Well, it's my life," or worse yet, "It's my body" It is not. "Ye are not your own," Paul said. "Ye are bought with a price." So in answer to the question, "Why does God care so much about sexual transgression?" it is partly because of the precious gift offered by and through His Only Begotten Son to redeem the souls-- bodies and spirits-people too often share and abuse in cheap and tawdry ways. Christ restored the very seeds of eternal lives (see D&C 132:19, 24), and we desecrate them at our peril. The first key reason for personal purity? Our very souls are involved and at stake.
In the Latter-Day Saint church a couple is more than married, they are sealed. Some use the term welded for time and all eternity. In such a marriage a woman, a virtuous woman, is the crown of a man. (Prov. 12:4) She represents that mans character, how he treats and respects that which he has placed his name upon. It is this same woman, and the children she rears in her husbands name, that will be the ultimate witness on his day of judgement.
Again, to quote brother Holland:
But such a total, virtually unbreakable union, such an unyielding commitment between a man and a woman, can only come with the proximity and permanence afforded in a marriage covenant, with the union of all that they possess-their very hearts and minds, all their days and all their dreams. They work together, they cry together, they enjoy Brahms and Beethoven and breakfast together, they sacrifice and save and live together for all the abundance that such a totally intimate life provides such a couple. And the external symbol of that union, the physical manifestation of what is a far deeper spiritual and metaphysical bonding, is the physical blending
that is part of- indeed, a most beautiful and gratifying expression of-that larger, more complete union of eternal purpose and promise.
As delicate as it is to mention in such a setting, I nevertheless trust your maturity to understand that physiologically we are created as men and women to fit together in such a union. In this ultimate physical expression of one man and one woman they are as nearly and as literally
"one" as two separate physical bodies can ever be. It is in that act of ultimate physical intimacy we most nearly fulfill the commandment of the Lord given to Adam and Eve, living symbols for all mar-tied couples, when He invited them to cleave unto one another only, and thus become "one flesh" (Genesis 2:24).
Obviously, such a commandment to these two, the first husband and wife of the human family, has unlimited implications-social, cultural, and religious as well as physical-but that is exactly my point. As all couples come to that moment of bonding in mortality, it is intended to be
just such a complete union. That commandment cannot be fulfilled, and that symbolism of "one flesh" cannot be preserved, if we hastily and guiltily and surreptitiously share intimacy in a darkened corner of a darkened hour, then just as hastily and guiltily and surreptitiously retreat to our separate worlds-not to eat or live or cry or laugh together, not to do the laundry and the dishes and the homework, not to manage a budget and pay the bills and tend the children and plan together for the future. No, we cannot do that until we are truly one-united, bound, linked, tied, welded, sealed, married.
-You must wait-you must wait until you can give everything, and you cannot give everything until you are at least legally and, for Latter-day Saint purposes, eternally pronounced as one. To give illicitly that which is not yours to give (remember-"you are not your own") and to give only part of that which cannot be followed with the gift of your whole heart and your whole life and your whole self is its own form of emotional Russian roulette. If you persist in sharing part without the whole, in pursuing satisfaction devoid of symbolism, in giving parts and
pieces and inflamed fragments only, you run the terrible risk of such spiritual, psychic damage that you may undermine both your physical intimacy and your wholehearted devotion to a truer, later love. You may come to that moment of real love, of total union, only to discover to your horror that what you should have saved has been spent, and mark my words-only God’s grace can recover that piecemeal dissipation of your virtue.
Elder James E. Talmage stated:
It has been declared in the solemn word of revelation, that the spirit and the body constitute the soul of man; and, therefore, we should look upon this body as something that shall endure in the resurrected state, beyond the grave, something to be kept pure and holy. Be not afraid of soiling its hands; be not afraid of scars that may come to it if won in earnest effort, or [won] in honest fight, but beware of scars that disfigure, that have come to you in places where you ought not have gone, that have befallen you in unworthy undertakings [pursued where you ought not have been]; beware of the wounds of battles in which you have been fighting on the wrong side.
Our Father in heaven has given us a way to repent from trangression, and he stated it thus:
"For I will forgive you of your sins with this commandment - that you remain steadfast in your minds in solemnity and in the spirit of prayer, in bearing testimony to all the world of those things which have been communicated unto you."
As a man and a woman, we share with God the ability to create life. At no time are we more liek God than when we act a parents, creating and nurturing life, instructing and guiding our offspring to become the best they can be. This is why we as parents must act like Gods ourselves and be worthy of total trust, both to our children and our spouses. If we do not, then we miss out on critical life lessons that can only be gained in this life.
Gaz