How to Tie Applications Back to Doctrine

1. How to Tie Applications Back to Doctrine By Roy Huff

2. Scenario 1 • Application: • How: No Tattoos • Principle: • What: Our Body is a Temple • Doctrine: • Why: Becoming as God is, knowing who we are.

3. We have Responsibility for Body When we take precautions to protect ourselves from hazards, accidents, death, we are thinking not only of saving ourselves from suffering, from pain, from expense, but to preserve our bodies for their eternal destiny. The body goes through many changes. Cells divide and growth follows. We grow from pudgy infancy, through fast-growing childhood, through gangling youth to full maturity, and finally to the shrinking furrowing, stiffening old age.

4. A soul can continue to develop mentally and spiritually through these changes, but the body reaches a summit from which it traverses a declining path. The body resurrected will be neither the unbalanced body of immature youth, nor the creaking, wrinkling one of many years, but when it is restored and resurrected it will undoubtedly return in the bloom of its greatest mortal perfection. Some sectarian peoples minimize the body and look forward to freedom it. Some flail and beat and torture the body, but the gospel of Jesus Christ magnifies the importance of the body and the dignity of man. The body will come forth in the resurrection. It will be free from all imperfections and scars and infirmities which came to it in mortality which were not self-inflicted. Would we have a right to expect a perfect body if we carelessly or intentionally damaged it?

5. We shall have our resurrected, perfected bodies through the eternities. They were given to us – we had little to do with getting them. It then becomes our duty to protect them from hazards, from mutilation or disfigurement. We should treat them well, building them with proper foods, proper rest, and proper exercise and keep them strong, robust, beautiful, and undamaged and live on and on until called home by our Lord. (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, p. 36)

6. The Body Has Great Importance All of us, even the child who dies in infancy, have received a body, which is an absolute necessity toward maximum growth and development. For the body, though disintegrated in death, will eventually be literally resurrected and our eternities will be spent in a body; but it will be one of flesh and bone and spirit, the corruptible blood being replaced by a finer substance giving life to the body. And thus, in the resurrected state, free from limitations of space and gravity and other forces to which we are subject here, our bodies, like that of the resurrected Redeemer, will be free to do much that the mortal body cannot do. (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, p. 36)

7. “What a glorious thought it is…that those from whom we have to part here, we will meet again and see as they are. We will meet the same identical being that we associated with here in the flesh – not some other soul, some other being, or the same being in some other form, but the same identity and the same form and likeness, the same person we knew and we associated with in our existence, even to the wounds in the flesh. Not that a person will always be marred by scars, wounds, deformities, defects or infirmities, for these will be removed in their course, in their proper time, according to the merciful providence of God. Deformity will be removed; defects will be eliminated, and men and women shall attain to the perfection of their spirits, to the perfection that God designed in the beginning. It is his purpose that men and women, his children, born to become heirs of God, and joint heirs with Jesus Christ, shall be made perfect, physically as well as spiritually, through obedience to the law by which he has provided the means that perfection shall come to all his children…

8. “What else would satisfy us? What else would satisfy the desire of the immortal soul? Would we be satisfied to be imperfect? Would we be satisfied to be decrepit? Would we be satisfied to remain forever and ever in the form of infirmity incident to age? No!...From the day of resurrection, the body will develop until it reaches the full measure of the stature of its spirit, whether it be male or female” (Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine, pp 23-24)

9. Scenario 2 • Application: • How: Avoid Pornography • Principle: • What: Keeping ourselves unspotted • Doctrine: • Why: Revelation

10. Scenario 3 • Application: • How: Being “Alone in a crowd” This is a skill - not a principle. • Principle: • What: Being worthy of the companionship of the Holy Ghost. • Doctrine: • Why: Revelation

11. Scenario 4 • Application: • How: Alcohol or Drugs • Principle: • What: The Word of Wisdom • Doctrine: • Why: Receiving Revelation

12. Scenario 5 • Application: • How: Working on Sunday • Principle: • What: Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy • Doctrine: • Why: Becoming as God is, knowing who we are.

13. Elder Boyd K. Packer(1993 CES Doctrine and Covenants & Church History Symposium) “Our youth need to know how to mark the scriptures… “Whatever course you teach, a brief overview, even in outline form, can form a framework upon which our youth can place the truths that you will present. Many of which come at random. There is one framework which fits every course you teach. Elements of it are everywhere in the scriptures: “A brief overview of the ‘plan of happiness,’… if given at the very beginning of the course and then revisited occasionally, will be of immense value to your students.”

14. The Law of the Harvest • If you keep a commandment—you get a blessing. • If you break a commandment—there is a penalty. • Galatians 6:7 • “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

15. The Law of the Harvest • President Spencer W. Kimball said: • The wicked may prosper for a time, the rebellious may seem to profit by their transgressions, but the time is coming when, at the bar of justice, all men will be judged, ‘every man according to their works’ (Rev. 20:13) No one will ‘get by’ with anything. On that day there no one will escape the penalty of his deeds, no one will fail to receive the blessings he has earned…there will be total justice,” The Miracle of Forgiveness p. 305

16. The Law of the Harvest • President James E. Faust: • With reference to our mortal acts and the Atonement, President J. Reuben Clark Jr. contributed this valuable insight when he said: • "I feel that [the Savior] will give that punishment which is the very least that our transgression will justify. I believe that he will bring into his justice all of the infinite love and blessing and mercy and kindness and understanding which he has. . . . • "And on the other hand, I believe that when it comes to making the rewards for our good conduct, he will give us the maximum that it is possible to give, having in mind the offense which we have committed."

17. The Law of the Harvest • "To believe in God is to know that all the rules are fair and there will be some wonderful surprises." Elder Marvin J. Ashton

18. The Law of the Harvest • Doctrine and Covenants 59:4-5 • And they shall also be crowned with blessings from above, yea, and with commandments not a few, and with revelations in their time—they that are faithful and diligent before me. • Wherefore, I give unto them a commandment…