February 13, 2017

Being in the South, there's lots of crosses. Many people (by many I mean everyone I've met thus far) focuses on what happened on the cross. Yes that is very important and I'm not bagging on other churches, but what's more important is what happened in the garden of gethsemane. I think I've met maybe two or three people (non-members) who can tell me when the Atonement was made and when Jesus took upon him the sins, temptations, and pains of the world. All they know is that he died. There's this "Action Bible," and it's basically a 750 page long dramatic comic book of the Bible with sprinkles of false doctrine and assumptions to make it more epic. But as I was skimming through it I saw 1/6 of a page mentioning the garden, the single most important event in history, and nine full pages about his death. So the great apostasy started to show when Jesus died which is why we see all these epistles written to the Corinthians, Galatians, etc from the apostles. So I view the cross as a symbol of apostasy. In an interview, Gordon B. Hinckley had, he explained why we don't have crosses. “I responded: ‘I do not wish to give offense to any of my Christian brethren who use the cross on the steeples of their cathedrals and at the altars of their chapels, who wear it on their vestments, and imprint it on their books and other literature. But for us, the cross is the symbol of the dying Christ, while our message is a declaration of the living Christ.’ “He then asked: ‘If you do not use the cross, what is the symbol of your religion?’ “I replied that the lives of our people must become the only meaningful expression of our faith and, in fact, therefore, the symbol of our worship. … “… No sign, no work of art, no representation of form is adequate to express the glory and the wonder of the Living Christ. He told us what that symbol should be when he said, ‘If ye love me, keep my commandments.’" Monday: Tuesday: Today just messed with my brain. It was so mentally draining, I won't get into the details, but let's just say I got home and originally designed to sit in a warm bath, it only spewed cold cold water, I sat in it anyways. I will share one part that kicked off my mentally draining evening...I'm soaked because it was pouring rain, but it'd died down a little. We went to go visit the homeless guy in the forest. It was a dark forest without a star in the sky due to the thick clouds and rain that dripped through the thick discombobulating fog. As we walked through blindly avoiding puddles the only light we could receive was the occasional passing car which shot illuminating rays amongst the silhouetted trunks of the dead, towering, moss-covered trees. Hearts racing, we pressed forward with our guards spiked knowing that no matter what might happen this night, we were on the Lord's errand, and if we were to die, we'd die nobly. However this did not matter, for we knew we had the more power than anything that might happen as we marched valiantly through that ominous wood- the power of God.  It was pretty sick, I wish I could've taken a picture, it was like a scene straight out of a zombie movie right before someone dies. But he wasn't there so we left a card. Wednesday: Thursday: We tracted all day. We met a lot of cool people. We met some ministers, pastors, and reverends, but the only one to bash with us was not any of them, it was just a normal lady. That's weird because usually it's those in higher rankings of their church are the ones anxious to bash. Friday: Saturday: Sunday: