All Things Witness

Thoughts on the mission and power of Jesus Christ

Monthly Archives: January 2017


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Our Modern Altars

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I’ve written about the Sacrament on a couple of occasions before. The last time more than 18 months ago, and in it I promised my next posts would be looking at this wonderful ordinance in more detail. Ahem… well, a lot has happened during those 18 months. Sorry for the delay.

And as I sat in my Church meetings today and listened once again to the words of the Sacrament, I felt I needed to continue on from that post so long ago.

For us in the LDS faith, the Sacrament consists of the communal sharing of broken bread and cups of water, and is directly derived from the Last Supper. In other faiths it may be called the Eucharist or Communion. They all share similarities. Thus, although I am focussing my discussion on the LDS sacramental rites, many aspects may hold meaning for other faiths too.

The New Testament account of the Lord’s Last Supper in the Gospel of Matthew is short:

“And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” (Matthew 26:26-28)

We’ll look more closely at these words in a later post. But for the moment it is worth reminding ourselves that this was the last act Jesus took with his chosen Disciples before He went to Gethsemane. It was the culmination of His teachings to them. Continue reading →


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High Council Sunday

So, here’s some humour for your Sabbath day.

In the LDS Church we have a lay ministry. All of the local leaders of the Church, teachers, and others are asked – or called in our terminology – to serve in a particular way for a (usually unknown) period of time. It can be daunting. It can be frustrating. It can be exhilarating and incredibly spiritually uplifting. It’s one of the ways we worship and serve the Lord, by doing what we are asked to do to teach and uplift others.

One of the things men can be called to do is to serve on what is called the High Council. Twelve men will be called into these positions at any one time, and the role is basically to help leaders organise different elements of the Church across several of our congregations.

Accompanying these responsibilities is usually the requirement to also attend a different congregation one Sunday each month to give a sermon. Now, it should be noted, that men are virtually never called to serve on the High Council because of their ability to address a congregation. And the result of that Continue reading →


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Depression and Church service.

© Copyright Intellectual Reserve, Inc. Christ taught the importance of both faith and works

© Copyright Intellectual Reserve, Inc.
Christ taught the importance of both faith and works

I was very blessed to have been born into a Christian family. My parents never wavered in their testimonies or Church attendance, and I grew up learning from them the importance of it.

I’m not sure at what point I began to understand the difference between the Church and the gospel – the earthly (though divinely mandate and approved) organisation through which gospel ordinances are performed in our day, versus the eternal principles by which our future happiness is governed.

At some point I did, though. And at about the same time, I also began to notice other principles we often conflate within the Church. Believing versus faith. Doing versus becoming. Reading  – or even studying – versus feasting.

Whichever set of words you look at, they’re both necessary: essential even. But our ultimate aim is always the second. We strengthen our belief until it grows into faith. We study the scriptures until we come to a point where we love them: our soul “hungers”, as Enos put it, and we desire to feast (see Enos 1:4). We do the things the Lord commands until we become a people who would naturally choose those things anyway – even without commandments, and without thinking about it.

It wasn’t until my darkest time of despair, however, that I realised my understanding of these things was intellectual only, a mere grasp of the theory. Continue reading →