|
"The Endowment"
by Earl R. Curry
Characteristic No. 6: There shall be an endowment of the ministry of angels.
Who are angels?
They are beings as yourselves, but on a higher level of existence.
They are noble beings who have lived in days that are past, and who now,
because of that nobility, dwell in that marvelous place where God is.
They have a higher comprehension of things divine than do we.
They love the Heavenly Father with a deep and abiding love.
They also love all that He stands for,
and are profoundly aware of His high purpose for life.
They are ministers of salvation to those on the earth who are of great faith.
As God, in His mercy and wisdom, wills they may
show themselves to the heirs of salvation and
share with them part of the glory and vision of their enlarged experience.
Sometimes, in order that the hearts of men may be melted,
or that their minds may be opened to the perception of the larger spiritual
vistas,
or that man may have a very great testimony of things to come,
or that there may come the most blessed of assurances--
sometimes angelic choirs appear before men, as they did the night Jesus was born.
Who can express the total character of their ministration,
or the extend of spiritual uplift and illumination that results from communion
with angels?
Nevertheless, you may broadly understand if you search the scriptures and the
records of their visitation.
Is it not recorded of Nephi, one of the chosen disciples of Nephite times,
that angels ministered to him daily?
Now, since God the Father will throw all His boundless resources into the great
struggle that is intensifying even now,
even so will He cause the angelic instruction to come to his servants in the time of
endowment.
From time to time angels will help in the solution of vexing problems.
Angels will also be the means of disclosing the future,
just as a mighty angel stood before Daniel, and
just as John saw the unfolding future thru the instrumentality of
strong and mighty angels.
By the ministry of angels shall you know the reality of the, to you, unseen.
Part of what is meant by the phrase, "God shall open the windows of Heaven"
is that you may
see,
mingle with, and
be ministered to
by these His marvelous messengers.
All this ministry must increasingly have its part in preparing God's earthbound
ministers
to rise above the limitations of their worldliness,
to fire their hearts and souls with the vision of what the Eternal Father
would do thru them,
to share with them a vision of things to come, and
to purify, enable, and
to make strong in mighty faith, and in loving outreach,
ere He can safely delegate, to these His servants,
vast spiritual powers of endowment.
One hundred years and more ago angels graced this your Temple.
How much more will they bring their testimony in these days soon to come!
You are inspired and
lifted up as you associate with good men who are your brethren,
especially when those men are deeply spiritual men.
This being true, think you now,
how great shall be your blessedness of uplift
when you shall be privileged to associate face to face with angels
who are sent from the Holy Realm where God dwells.
Not only shall they speak out of the breadth and glory of their own
experience and understanding,
but they, more than any mortal, shall speak as the Great Father gives
them utterance.
Not only shall they minister to you in vision,
but in the utmost of reality shall they stand in your presence.
That which they bring, therefore, will have
depth of meaning,
breadth of inclusiveness,
heaven-born intelligence, and
other great qualities which are above that of
any possible association with yourselves alone.
They will, therefore, be gracious testimonies
of Christ's loving, yet powerful, outreach and
of the tremendous fact that He lives, and
that He has set His hand for the last time
to recover His covenant people, and
to fulfill His age-old promises.
Now, therefore, remember that which has been held before you as your privilege as
ministers and
co-laborers and
friends of the Most High,
even as found in the record of the prophetic utterances of this
Restoration age, that which is written in D.&C. 104.
Yet,
that you may be made to know where you stand, and
that you may be made humble,
how many of you have sought the great blessing of the Spirit that are
your blessed privilege if you will seek in great faith?
How many of you, either of the Aaronic or Melchisedec priesthoods, have
sought and received the ministry of angels?
How many have gone on to seek for, and receive, the greater experiences
that are indicated as being possible in this scripture?
In view of these facts,
your lack of faith to try, and that
not many of you have traveled far up toward the mountain of the Lord's
House,
you are encouraged once more by the daily pleading of the Holy Spirit
to rise up in these matters,
to so live and seek, that you, in this field of the ministry of angels,
may have increasing experience,
so that you may not come to the day of endowment as mere babes,
but rather as those who have, step by step, proceeded from simpler
to ever growing, expanding experiences.
There is a vastness you do not yet comprehend to the promise that, in the process of
endowment, God shall richly minister to you by His angels.
|
