118: True Vine, Part 3

This is Part 3 of a special series on the "True Vine", where Denver answers the question, "Why is Christ referred to as the 'True Vine' in scripture, and what can we learn from this analogy?" Transcript We’re enacting ancient events. We’re part of a process that began a long time ago and is going on still. You read, what is it, Genesis chapter 49, the patriarchal blessings of the various patriarchs, you look at the lives of those men in the flesh. We’re just reenacting them on a grander scale, and with more of us, to be sure, but the patterns are there. The records of the prophets are not just history. As the Book of Mormon demonstrates very ably, it’s not history. It’s highly edited, very limited, highly selected. At one point they estimate less than one percent of their history even gets alluded to, material that has been selected on account of prophetic foreknowledge of our circumstance. And so it constitutes not merely a history but a prophetic pattern, in which they try to get us to see the process that we ought to be reenacting in our lives to do the things that they did that brought them to know the Lord. Nephi couldn’t have been more plain if he had said, “Here’s my guidebook. Here’s my rule book. Here’s my pattern recognition sequence. You go and do likewise.” He’s trying to get us to get our hands around, as Joseph Smith put it, the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ involves the path to and through the veil into the presence of God, becoming joint heir, becoming a son of God. [In the] Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith page 375, he refers to (I don’t have a copy of it with me but I think I can quote it) “sons of God who exalt themselves to be God even before they were born, and all can cry Abba, Father.” Joseph wanted us to take the religion that he restored to the earth rather seriously and to search into and contemplate both the heavens and the darkest abyss. In a... I don’t want to use the word “evangelical”, I’ll use “evangelistic”. In a proselytizing church, in a church in which at any given moment the largest segment of the adult population are novices, introductory novices to a faith, you should never expect the church to forfeit the interests of the novices who rightly need to be fed and nurtured for the interests of those who are maybe a little more mature and have a little more robust comprehension of what the Savior was trying to teach us all. And it’s probably rightly so that the Church makes no effort to really address that, and rightly so that you’re left to your own. We have the scriptures. When the rich man said to Abraham in Christ’s parable, “Well send Lazarus back so he can warn my brothers,” Abraham’s response in Christ’s parable was: “They have Moses, and they have the prophets, and if they won’t believe them they won’t believe Lazarus, even though one rise from the dead,” which is a very interesting foreshadowing of how people would treat the Lord. Here’s the problem: People do not believe Him even though He rose from the dead, period. Today, us, you and I, do not believe Him even though He rose from the dead. It was not intended to be a one off event that occurred in the meridian of time. It was intended to be a gathering. The little seed grows up into the great mustard plant into which the birds, or as Joseph put it, the angels, were intended to come and watch. It was intended to be a super structure for housing contact between the divine and the mortal. It was intended to be the moment of intersection between all that is in eternity and the life of the mortal. It was intended to be the journey into the Holy of Holies, into the presence of God. In the ordinances as they have been restored in the temple today everyone who enters in is expected to come to the veil possessing certain knowledge, capable of identifying themselves as having been true and faithful, and be received in an embrace and then welcomed into the presence of God. It’s a normal and expected part of the ordinances as they have been restored. Those ordinances are supposed to be teaching us something. They are the Lord’s way of shouting in a multimedia presentation, “Here is how I did what I did, and what I would like you to do in the process of you becoming like me, a son of God, a daughter of God, a member of the household of faith, and part of the church and kingdom of the Firstborn.” You have to become the Firstborn. You have to become one with Him. You have to become part of that, not in an organized group think kind of way, in an individual way in which you connect up with Holiness, in which you become a vessel of Holiness. You are someone to whom sacred things have been entrusted and you become, in turn, sacred as the bearer of them. The Law of Moses prescribed the death penalty for a variety of offenses. One of the ways to avoid the execution of the penalty was to go to one of the safe harbor cities. Another way was to go and to come in contact with the altar because if you came in contact with the altar it was considered most holy. Things that are most holy communicate holiness. You can’t profane them. If you come in contact with them and you are unholy, you don’t make it unholy, it makes you holy because it is most sacred. Part of the rites in the temple are intended to communicate to you things that are most holy. They are intended to make you holy. They are intended to make you a suitable recipient for an audience. They are intended to make you a suitable companion for a walk down a dusty road with the risen Lord who is trying to get you to notice exactly who it is that speaks to you. It’s intended to have you understand that He lives, and that He’s willing to associate with you. And that it’s not, as Joseph Smith put it, relying on the words of an old book, the people who lived once long ago, that’s going to save anyone. It’s the dialogue that you engage in with Him now. It’s the living, breathing, vital–He uses the figure of the living vine and you have to connect to the living vine, and He’s the vine and you connect to it, and you get life through that. Words could not be more plain. What does it mean to be connected up with the vine and to derive sustenance from it? You have to be alive, which is not inert or an object that you move from there to there. If it’s alive it’s going to grow. It’s going to increase. It’s going to improve. It’s going to have connection with. Christ was extraordinary in His selection of the things that He wanted to use to communicate to us what He intended the gospel to be. We read them and say, “That’s cool. I’ll pay my tithing, I’m connected. I got a card, I’m connected.” It’s intended to be more than that, and the way that it becomes more than that is an individual journey in which you receive from Him and become a part of Him, and He does His best to try and use analogies and parables and stories to make it clear to us. The history of the events that are recorded in scripture are intended to try and make it clear to us but at the end of the day it’s up to you to have the aha moment and realize He really is talking to and inviting you. You, individually, whoever you are, wherever you’re at, whatever your confusion, whatever your doubts, whatever your uncertainties, He wants to talk to you about them. I do not like the gentile reaction to the word or understanding of “not lawful” or the term “forbidden.” I think those words convey an idea that today can be easily misunderstood. I think I would prefer those words to be understood that: it is not wise to tell gentiles because they will abuse it when they learn it. It is because of that potential for abuse why man is not capable of making it known but is only to be understood by the spirit. When it comes to a person by the power of the spirit, it comes to them in a way that helps them understand who our Lord is and what He is about. Likewise, the word “dominion” in the understanding of the gentile can convey the impression of a prison warden who is exercising control over captives. I think the word “dominion” should be understood instead to convey the idea of a gardener who is responsible for making the garden thrive and grow and bear fruit. To be clear, the three greatest examples of wielding “dominion” in the correct manner that we should understand it are, first: Christ, who is probably without any peer, unquestionably the greatest example of one holding the greatest dominion, and who also likewise showed the greatest example of how to wield dominion. He beseeched people to believe. He pled with them for their own good. He knelt to serve them. He denied that He had a kingdom of this world. He tried to prepare people for a better one. But He was more intelligent than they all and He was the greatest of them all, unquestionably holding the greatest dominion and He wore it as a light thing. His yoke was easy. Adam likewise, after Christ in this world, held the greatest dominion. But Adam taught and pled and instructed but did not abridge the agency of his children, even when one of his sons killed another of his sons. Adam did not execute Cain. Cain was sent away. Adam held dominion, but he exercised that like our Lord, pleading for the best interest of others, inviting and enticing them, hoping for their best interests. Then there is Moses, who is called in scripture “the meekest of all men,” and gentiles depict him as a bully and a strongman. Yet Moses saw no reason to be jealous when others were out prophesying; would that all men would do that. Moses, like Adam, like Christ, is an example of how the word “dominion” should be understood. All three were gardeners responsible for trying to make their garden thrive, grow and bear fruit. In reality, those who have held the greatest dominion given by God have all lived lives of meekness and service. They were the opposite of what gentiles regard as a strongman, the opposite....