Gospel age

“ We live in the Christian era, and it is not yet finished. If we are to understand the world, our life, ourselves, we must refer to Christ. Every age must re-write its own Gospel. More than any other, our own age has so re-written its own Gospel, and therefore the author ought perhaps to justify himself for having written this book. ”

“ This is one of the events that will transpire in the latter day.
The Gospel of Christ has to go to the Gentiles until the Lord says "enough," until their times are fulfilled, and it will be in this generation. Forty years have passed since the revelation I have read was given to the sons of men. We are living in a late age, although it is true there are a great many vast and important events to transpire in these days. ”

“ We could turn to many other passages of Scripture, alluding to what I have in my mind with regard to the inhabitants of the earth. It is believed, or has been, for I have often heard it taught by the Elders of Israel, that every person of accountable age, who did not believe in the Gospel of the Son of God, as it is written in the New Testament, and practise it in their lives, would be damned; or in other words, if a person does not become a Saint, or what we call a Saint, he must be damned. ”

“ We take our young men who have been brought up in this community, and I care not whether they can read a chapter in the Bible or not, if they will repent and seek diligently for the Spirit of the Lord, and send them out into the world to preach the Gospel, and if they are faithful, they will be able, ere long, by the blessing of God, to confound the great and the wise of the age in matters of theology. "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." ”

“ However, you should understand that, when this gospel of the kingdom shall have been proclaimed to all the world for the salvation of all peoples, and when the fullness of the age has come to pass, the Father will send you another dispensational bestowal, or else the Son of Man will return to adjudge the age. ”

“ I have seen many aged persons converted, and therefore I would encourage other old folks to believe in Jesus. I once read a sermon in which a minister asserted that he had seldom known any converted who were over forty years of age if they had been hearers of the gospel all their lives. There is certainly much need to caution those who are guilty of delay, but there must be no manufacturing of facts. ”

“ Fifty-one years ago tomorrow, as I have said, I entered this Church, the Church then being confined to a small district of country in the State of New York. The knowledge of the Gospel, and the doctrines which we have taught, had not spread forth except within a very small limit of country. What a contrast between then and the present! To-morrow—if I live till to-morrow—I shall be 70 years of age, which is said to be the average old age of man. They are the years appointed to man. ”

“ What, it may be asked with all reverence, would have been the success of the Apostles in evangelizing the Gentile world, if the gospel of Christ had been offered to the heathens of that age, under the same disadvantages with which men of the present age prefer to clog and impede their missionary efforts? ”

“ 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." ”

“ This age has reached, by slow and patient thought, a comprehension of this truth which is its inspiration. The ages to come will only add to it new illustrations as they follow its mighty sweep. This truth is what seems at times to put this age into antagonism with the spirit of Christ. It is really the offering which the thought of the age brings to Christ. ”

“ It was four thousand years before Jesus came into the world; but the nineteen hundred years of the Christian era are more than a match for those old four thousand years in beneficence, in brotherhood, in love, and in purity. What great work of goodness was ever done under the Old Covenant which can compare with what the Gospel is doing every day in our time, both on Christian and on heathen soil? What large and extended blessedness was ever carried through all the earth, to all the sons of men, by any religion before Jesus came? ”

“ Understood rightly, Christianity might truly be spoken of as being old as the Creation; for the Son of God was the eternal life and light of men, quite independently of the infinitely blessed revelation of Himself afforded in the Gospel. There is a Gospel Christianity, which is as the possession compared with the expectation. ”

“ I rise to explain one principle to Elders who are in the habit of preaching the Gospel to the world. Not but what their views coincide with mine, not but what they fully comprehend the matter, but all have not the power and faculty to develop what is in them; some are at a loss to explain that which they understand. ”

“ The Christian, too, becomes more reconciled to the long delay in his Master's return by the thought that in the interval the acceptable year of the Lord is still running its course, and that by the preaching of the gospel multitudes of souls are being gathered into the company of the redeemed, to the praise and glory of Him who died to save them. ”

“ He bound them, not to such ceremonious observances as were imposed by the tradition of the elders, but to change their mind, and change their way, to cast away from them all their transgressions, and to make them new hearts and to live new lives. The design of the gospel, which now began, was to make men devout and pious, holy and heavenly, humble and meek, sober and chaste, just and honest, charitable and kind, and good in every relation, who had been much otherwise ”

“ 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. ”

“ Almost any Elder in this Church can preach the Gospel, if he is humble before God; he can tell all that the wicked would need to hear from the Old and New Testament. Many of the Elders are scholars, and when they preach we expect to hear almost a Bible and a half preached before they get through ”

“ No questions have stirred more deeply the heart of the age than those which have to do with the person and the office of Christ. The answers to these questions shape the aspect in which he stands to the age, and become therefore parts and elements of the power by which he acts upon the world. But this statement does not exhaust the twofold relation of which I speak. That which the age gives to Christ is not merely its thought about him. The secular thought and life of the age bring their contribution, they are themselves a contribution to him. ”

“ Gather in the strong, the vigorous, the young, the able-bodied, who have the spirit of the gospel in their hearts, to fill up the ranks of the Seventies, that we may have ministers to preach the gospel to the world. ”

“ Well, these are some of the reflections that pass through our minds as elders in preaching the Gospel. We pray that the blessing of Israel's God may rest upon his work, and upon the elders who are abroad preaching the Gospel, that they also may be permitted to return in peace, in the name of Jesus. ”

“ Do not contend or argue much, but pass along peaceably and preach the first principles of the Gospel—faith in God and in his Son Jesus Christ, and teach the people to repent of their sins and be baptised for the remission of them, and they shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost through the laying on of the hands of the Elders. It is often the case that some wish to preach about things of which they have little or no knowledge. ”

“ If this Gospel of the kingdom had been preached in its simplicity by all the Elders, there would have been a thousand in the Church now where there is one. But the Elders preach everything to the world but what they are sent to preach. ”

“ When the apostle desires that God’s praise may resound in the Church “throughout all ages,” he no longer supposes that the mystery of God may be finished speedily as men count years. The history of mankind stretches before his gaze into its dim futurity. The successive generations gather themselves into that consummate age of the kingdom of God, the grand cycle in which all the ages are contained. ”

“ We must except, too, some of the works of those High Churchmen of the old type, who lived on into the eighteenth century, but who, in their lives and writings, reflected the spirit of a past age—a spirit which breathes in every prayer of our Liturgy, but which is very rarely seen in the eighteenth century, or, for the matter of that, in the nineteenth. ”

“ Age by age the evidence of experience is accumulating, and growing stronger, and for a soul to distrust the revelations made unto it, and the divine leading of the human race, is as though the eye should disbelieve in the sun shining at mid-day. We recognize the Bible as a precious boon to man, the gift of the Great Father above. ”

“ Whatever that minister might think, or even observe, my own observation leads me to believe that about as many people are converted to God at one age as at another, taking into consideration the fact that the young are much more numerous than the old. It is a dreadful thing to have remained an unbeliever all these years; but yet the grace of God does not stop short at a certain age; those who enter the vineyard at the eleventh hour shall have their penny, and grace shall be glorified in the old as well as in the young. ”

“ Some of our sons, for instance, are as old as we were ourselves when we went forth to preach the Gospel, and we see around us a multitude of young men and women who were baptized when they were eight years old, and who, almost unnoticed, have arrived at years when they begin to think and act for themselves. ”

“ Can, little children reason, think, repent, and bring forth fruits meet for the kingdom of God? Can little children be instructed to obey the Gospel in their infancy? To all these questions every rational man would answer—No! Well, then, what have we to do with the Gospel as it pertains to little children? ”

“ If we send an Elder to preach the Gospel and he travels the earth over, when he returns we know where he has been and what he has been doing, and if he has been guilty of that crime to which the world is so much addicted he can not keep it ”

“ We have seen before how impossible this is, for the Bible teaches us that this age is an evil age, and there is not a single passage which promises an improvement. On the contrary, everything in the Word shows that as the age ends, and its real end comes, all the evil conditions present in this age come to a head and climax. We find therefore a great deal said in the Scriptures about the end of the age. The Lord Jesus speaks of it in His parables in Matthew xiii. ”

“ On one occasion I was preaching the glad tidings of salvation through the finished work of Christ, when a middle-aged man stood up, and testified before his assembled countrymen to his faith in the power of the Gospel. ”

“ The Latter-day Saints realize that there is no period of man's existence not incorporated with the plan of salvation, and directly pointing to a future existence. Consequently, when we stand here to speak to the people, let every man speak what is in his heart. If one of our Elders is capable of giving us a lecture upon any of the sciences, let it be delivered in the spirit of meekness—in the spirit of the holy Gospel. ”

“ Matthew again relates His generation as a man, saying, 'The Book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham;' and also, 'The birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise.' This, then, is the Gospel of His humanity, for which reason it is, too, that the character of an humble and meek man is kept up through the whole Gospel. ”

“ The individual elder is left largely to the guidance of the spirit of his calling, with which he should be imbued. If he fail to cultivate that spirit, which is the spirit of energy and application, he will soon become torpid, indolent and unhappy. Every missionary should strive to devote part of {455} each day to study and prayerful thought on the principles of the gospel and the theology of the Church. ”

“ To the Latter-day Saints the Gospel of life and salvation is worthy of particular attention. In my reflections upon the great work that the Lord has commenced, its operations appear marvelous to me. I look upon those who have separated themselves from sin with a great deal of pleasure and delight; they are a very peculiar people. When the elders go and preach the Gospel, all who have the privilege of hearing, with a very few exceptions, are convinced of its truth in a greater or smaller degree. ”

“ If you can show me a boy who frequently receives the Holy Sacraments, it will be enough to convince me that he will pass through the years of youth, reach the age of manhood and maturity, and, if God so disposes, arrive at a venerable old age, and all during that time will be an example to those who know him. ”

“ Gospel times are and should be times of reformation,—of clearer light as to all things necessary to be known,—of greater love, inducing us to bear ill-will to none, but good-will to all, and to have complacency in all that are like God,—of greater liberty and freedom both of spirit and speech—and of a more holy living according to the rule of the gospel. ”

“ Christianity, with its self-restraint and its exhortations to all, and especially to the young, to be chaste and temperate and to subdue the animal passions, has a direct tendency to conserve physical vigour; and Christianity, by the inspiration that it imparts, the stimulus that it gives, and the hopes that it permits us to cherish, has a direct tendency to keep alive in old age all the best of the characteristics of youth. ”