Everlasting Gospel

“ God has shed upon us the light of eternal truth, he has revealed to us the everlasting Gospel, and that Gospel brings life and immortality to light. We are seeking to walk in that light, to enjoy these privileges ourselves and to impart them to others, that others with us—the living and the dead, those who have been, those who are and those who are to come, may rejoice with us, that we and they may obtain exaltation in the celestial kingdom of God. ”

“ We are here occupying a peculiar position. The Lord has called us from the nations of the earth, and he has restored to us the everlasting Gospel, and that Gospel is calculated to elevate us in time and throughout eternity. ”

“ We have partaken of the Spirit of the living God, which has flowed unto us through obedience to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Our minds have been, as it were, torn from the grovelling things of time and sense, and we feel as though we are eternal beings, associated with an eternal religion, with everlasting principles, sustained by an eternal God who governs, controls and manages all the affairs of the human family on the face of the earth, and will in the world to come. ”

“ Some of you now say in your hearts, we have the everlasting gospel contained here in this book, the New Testament, and we have had it for some eighteen centuries or more, and consequently what was the use of another angel having the same everlasting gospel to commit to the children of men when we already had it? ”

“ Gospel Principles Eternal.—The Everlasting Gospel is not an empty phrase. It means just what it says. The principles underlying it are eternal. "Intelligence or the light of truth was not created or made, neither indeed can be." [8] The same is true of faith and repentance. God did not make them. They are self-existent. Such ordinances as baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, and the laying on of hands for the gift (giving) of the Holy Ghost, might indeed be created, and doubtless were ”

“ The obtaining an union with Christ, is the one life and immortality brought to light by the gospel; but this immortality unavoidably requires, and necessarily implies the perpetual duration of the soul’s natural life. For nothing but an ever-enduring creature, is capable of enjoying an everlasting gift.
Therefore the gospel, tho’ never once expressly asserting, yet continually demonstrates the natural immortality of the soul. ”

“ How will perfection be obtained? By all persons in the kingdom of God living so as to be revelators from the heavens for themselves and for all they preside over, that everything they have to perform in this life—every worldly care and duty, and all their walk and conversation before each other and before the Lord, may be marked out by the spirit of revelation. Is this the way to perfection? It is. This is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; this is the Gospel of life and salvation. Who can dispute it? We must destroy the Bible before we can dispute it with any hope of success. ”

“ I recollect reading in one of the revelations, in the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, where the Lord says—"If a man, inasmuch as he is an Elder, has a desire in his heart to preach the Gospel, he it is that is called to preach the Gospel." ”

“ Thus it seems to me that these reformers, good men as they were, had not the authority to introduce into the world a gospel that had been practically lost, the only gospel on earth at the time being one in a very mutilated and changed form indeed. The true Gospel, with its organization and all its mighty powers of prophecy, healing, and other miracles, could not be brought again to the earth except by the hand of an angel of God. ”

“ Where there is, amid whatever darkness, a mind seeking after truth and right, some ray of light is given, some gleam of a better hope by which the soul may draw nigh to God,—coming whence or how perhaps none can tell. The gospel of Christ finds in every new land souls waiting for God’s salvation. Such a preparation for the Lord, in hearts touched and softened by the preventings of grace, its first messengers discovered everywhere,—a remnant in Israel and a great multitude amongst the heathen. ”

“ I will take the Lord Jesus every time. Why? Because his doctrine is so pure and holy. I love it, because in it there is life; because it will endure; while all error, falsehood, lies and liars will be cast into hell; and when they shall be utterly destroyed and wasted away, truth will live and it will endure for ever. I think I will hold to it. Had not we better all do so? Do you not think that the Latter-day Saints had better keep their religion and hold on to the faith of the holy Gospel? ”

“ But only an example of multitudes who have become near-sighted and unfruitful through a so-called new evangelism that is not new. While giving good works their proper and important place, let us never forget that to save the individual soul for eternity through the gospel is the chief work of the church, and that it must ever subordinate the temporal and material to the spiritual and eternal. ”

“ Thus the evangelists stand before us as absolutely reliable witnesses to the truth. And herein consists the secret of the beauty, simplicity, sanctity, and indestructible power of the holy Gospel. It is not the soul, the mind, the gifts of the writers that we find in them, but the soul, the mind, the thoughts, the maxims of Him who forms the subjects of their writings. Jesus lives in the gospels; He acts, He speaks, He touches the heart, He enlightens and sanctifies. Venerate, therefore, these wondrous pages ! Read them in a spirit of faith and with a heart overflowing with the love of God ”

“ The question whether religion can be independent of history is really just the old question whether we need a gospel. The gospel is news that something has happened—something that puts a different face upon life. What that something is is told us in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It is the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. ”

“ If we make not a just estimate of these things, it is in vain that we attempt to say, "Lord, Lord," because we do not the things which He says. Every thing associated with the Gospel of salvation is eternal, for it existed before the "morning stars sang together for joy," or this world rolled into existence. ”

“ The arguments by which you appear to be driving miracles into non-existence—expelling them first from profane history, then from the Old Testament, then step by step from every part of the New—cannot make a stand at your convenience, so as to except the Resurrection. Yet even St. Paul makes the Resurrection of Jesus the basis of his own belief and Gospel. ”

“ An angel, great saints or apostles raised up to the Church in those days, brings the Gospel to every nation. Despite the powers of hell it shall overcome all enemies and endure forever: it is an eternal Gospel. ”

“ These should be the feelings of every Elder that goes forth to preach the Gospel to the nations.
Put it down in your memories, let it be written on the tablets of your hearts that, outside of the religion we have embraced, there is nothing but death, hell and the grave. Every excellency, blessing, comfort, happiness and light, and everything that can be enjoyed by an intelligent being, is for us, if we live for it. ”

“ We, as Latter-day Saints, have embraced the Gospel of Jesus Christ. What is that Gospel? It is faith in God; it is an avowed confession of the existence of a Deity, that there is a supreme intelligence that not only governs, but built the universe, the great architect of the heavens. We believe in his existence; that he is a rewarder of all them that diligently seek him. ”

“ This Gospel reveals to us, as it did in former days, the light and intelligence of God. It opens up the visions of eternity; it places us in communication with the Lord. It prepares us for life and for death and for exaltation, and we are going to go on with our temples and administer in them in the name of the Lord. ”

“ Men dream of the Gospel advancing with even, [p. 95] steady pace to its triumph, without the vicissitudes of decline and revival but the thought finds ground neither in the Bible nor in church history. The great revivals in the past have been epochs in which the Christian world has risen to clearer apprehensions of Divine truth and a higher elevation of Christian life. They have constituted the Divine process by which the Gospel has burst through the errors and sins of men and has found a more complete development in the consciousness and life of the churches of Christ. ”

“ Great and glorious as is the boon of Redemption from the grave, greater and more glorious as are the conditions prescribed for the soul's Salvation, the revealed Gospel of Jesus Christ provides yet more transcendent blessings in the plan for Exaltation, whereby resurrected man may advance from one stage of relative perfection to another, with powers of eternal increase and never ending progression. ”

“ Well, one reason why the whole New Testament pours out such contempt upon the smooth life and exalts hardness, is because only hardness can make a great soul, and the end of the Gospel, the end of life, was the growing of souls. ”

“ Is there, or can there be, any well grounded hope of eternal life but what comes through the Gospel? In vain has the ingenuity of man tortured itself for more than 5000 years, to find out some method of mending the human heart: none has been discovered that even promised any thing likely to be effectual. The Gospel of Christ not only mends but completely cures and new makes infected nature. Who is duly apprised of the infinite excellency and importance of the Gospel? ”

“ I never read the Bible a minute in my life. I never went to church in my life. Oh, pray for me that my soul may not be lost." I sat down on the side of his bed and told him of man's fall, of God's loving kindness, of our redemption through Christ, and that whosoever believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and that whosoever will may come. ”

“ In this respect it differs from everything else we know of; it satisfies every want of man's nature. Is there a want you can think of, is there anything, in fact, connected with man's existence here, spiritual or temporal, mental or physical, that the Gospel of Jesus Christ does not satisfy? If there is, I have failed to discover it. It comprehends everything; it gives light and it gives intelligence, it gives wisdom upon every department of human life, it satisfies every longing desire of the soul. ”

“ Because of that hope which is within your bosoms, which blooms with immortality and eternal lives. You have asked this question to yourselves, "Who am I, and what is the design of my existence?" and the Gospel has unfolded these things to your understandings. You feel that you are eternal beings: you feel that you are living for eternity and not for time only.
I have heard it recommended, by some poor fools in the shape of editors in the United States, to send missionaries here to convert the people. ”

“ Hence a constant conflict between heart and brain, while you are forced again and again to ask yourself, "Must I be dishonest in order that I may persuade myself that I am happy? And even if I can honestly believe in the material resurrection to-day, how do I know that some new evidence—the discovery of some new Gospel for example—may not overturn my belief to-morrow?"
But the life and doctrine of Christ, the conversion and letters of St. Paul, the growth and victories of the Church, and the present power of Christ's Spirit are facts that can never be overthrown ”