Behold, I Speak Unto You As If Ye Were Present

Shortly after high school, I went to Weber state University to begin my undergraduate degree and was there on an academic scholarship and was also working part time to get ready for a mission. Due to the load, I decided not to attend my institute class. One day when I was studying, a young lady that I had known from high school came by and mentioned she had seen my name on the roll for the institute class she was enrolled in, but she hadn’t seen me there. And she put her arm in mine and said “Come on, let’s go to institute.”

In the class that day, the instructor was covering Mormon chapters eight and nine and in Mormon eight verse thirty-five, Moroni is speaking after his father Mormon has been killed and he says, “Behold, I speak unto you as if ye were present, and yet ye are not. But behold, Jesus Christ hath shown you unto me, and I know your doing.”  Verse thirty-six “And I know that ye do walk in the pride of your hearts; and there are none save a few only who do not lift themselves up in the pride of their hearts.” Well that certainly seems to define our day.  He then asked us, “If I were to give you the opportunity to go skiing all day with a free ski pass at a local resort, how many of you would be interested?”  Well, I raised my hand.

He then changed the topic and said, “If I were to offer you an opportunity to go to a local nursing home and chat with and care for the elderly, how many of you would go?”  My hand wasn’t quite as quick to come up on that question. Then we went to verse thirty-seven,

“For behold, ye do love your money and your substance, and your fine apparel, and the adorning of your churches more than ye love the poor and the needy and the sick and afflicted.”  Boy that was like a dagger to my heart. The things that seemed to matter most according to Moroni were not things at all. They’re people and the gospel. In that moment, I began to sense that maybe, by letting my institute class slip that I had not been focusing on things that mattered most 

Verse thirty-eight: “O ye pollutions, ye hypocrites, ye teachers, who sell yourselves for that which will canker, why have ye polluted the holy church of God? Why are ye ashamed to take upon you the name of Christ? Why do we not think that greater is the value of an endless happiness than that misery which never dies—because of the praise of the world?” Now verse thirty seven, it talks about churches, maybe we could rationalize that it’s other religions, but in verse thirty eight, it mentions that the holy church of God has become polluted because of mispriorities because those who are members are not focusing on things that they should .

            And then finally, verse thirty-nine: “Why do ye adorn yourselves with that which hath no life, and yet suffer the hungry, and the needy, and the naked, and the sick and the afflicted to pass by you, and notice them not?” I decided to never miss institute class again unless I was really sick or there was an emergency  for the next four years of my undergraduate work, I made sure I attended institute and made sure I put the things of God first and then tried to make and application in my life with what I was learning. What are your priorities?

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