Elder Harold B. Lee once visited a leper colony on the Hawaiian Islands. There is a branch of the Church in the colony and the members there told Elder Lee that if they had to choose between being a leper or being a member of the Church they would choose to stay in their afflicted condition and remain members of the true Church.
This awesome commitment to the restored gospel raises some compelling questions :
Do all Latter-day Saints feel this same commitment to the kingdom of God?
Why do these lepers feel this way?
Do all religious people feel this way toward their own religion?
Let me add one more question:
Are we not all lepers?
Tainted by sin, from "earth stains", as we sing in "More Holiness Give Me", afflicted and spotted with the consequences of being born into a fallen world, we are in some trouble. Do we recognize it?
Consider this : when we play with mud, it is not the mud that gets glovey. . . . Or fingery. It is the fingers, or the gloves that get muddy. The Fall of Adam and the subsequent devastating state of the human family are, like gravity, a law of existence here in this world. It is a severe condition. It is one from which fallen man is powerless to rescue himself. He needs a Savior, a Redeemer, a Deliverer.
Nephi said: "Wherefore, all mankind were in a lost and in a fallen state, and ever would be save they should rely on this Redeemer."
The power to save himself is not in fallen man. That is part of his affliction. It is deliberate, according to the great plan of the Eternal God. It has a purpose. Like gravity, it is relentless, and it is real.
As Rodney Turner said in 1988, As natural man, "we are hopelessly lost unless a higher Nature overwhelms and transforms our fallen nature. This higher Nature with its attendant powers is found in Jesus Christ." To confirm this profound statement from Brother Turner, it is a marvelous insight to learn, from the Prophet Joseph Smith, that the Greek word baptiso literally means to overwhelm, as well as to immerse or bury (see Teachings, pp 262, 314). Baptism is a rebirth, not just a temporary fix.
We are in a lost and fallen state and we do not know of ourselves how to get out of it. In our natural, fallen state we protest at this statement and insist that we are OK, that we have it all under control. We even think that if we are kind and nice and loving we will be fine. But that will just leave us as kind, nice, loving natural, fallen man. As well might a skilled surgeon attempt to do brain or heart surgery on himself. Or a dentist perform his own root-canal work. Or a man baptize himself. . . . He needs help!
Well, help is on its way. It is found in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, "if it so be that they are built upon [and teach] my gospel" (see 3 Nephi 27:8).
In ancient Israel, the healed leper must be cleansed within as well as without. He would go to the priest for a ritual cleansing. See Leviticus chapter 14. In an elaborate ritual the priest would take two little live birds, cedar wood (think of a cedar chest that is used to keep things clean and free from decay), a scarlet cloth, and a sprig of hyssop (verse 4).
One of the birds is killed over running water (v. 5), and the other bird is tied to the hyssop and cedar stick with the red cloth (v. 6). (Can you see where this is going yet, and how it is a type of the Atonement?)
The priest then dips the living bird --- as a live paintbrush, if you will --- into the blood of the dead bird and the running water. The priest then sprinkles the mixture on to the cured leper seven times and releases the live bird ("with healing in his wings", see Malachi 4:2; compare carefully 3 Nephi 25:2).
The cleansed leper then washes himself and his clothes, shaves all his hair and beard, including his eyebrows (vv. 8--9), and after further animal sacrifice is pronounced clean (v. 11).
Do you see the point? In his washed, cleansed, shaved condition, do you see he now is born again; he even looks like a baby, with no eyebrows.
Now, . . . Are we not all lepers? In our fallen, natural state, in need of a thorough cleansing from earth stains through some type of blood and water --- from somewhere, if we can only find it!
Surely it is appropriate to discuss these things on the Sabbath --- as a Sabbathought --- for He who is Lord of the Sabbath said in a revelation to fallen man, "And that thou mayest more fully keep thyself unspotted from the world, thou shalt go to the house of prayer and offer up thy sacraments upon my holy day . . . and pay thy devotions unto the Most High" (Doctrine and Covenants 59:9--10).
The Sabbath is a celestial law, given to us on a telestial earth. It will take strict observance to keep it holy (as strict as the law of the cleansing of the leper), surrounded as we are by telestial and terrestrial influences. More on this Law of the Sabbath later.
Your thoughts and insights are eagerly encouraged.
Steve
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