BYU (Brigham Young University) is operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often mistakenly called the “Mormon Church.” BYU students take nearly a semester of spiritually uplifting, stimulating religion classes.
In this series (see below), students enrolled in scripture study classes have shared their thoughts, insights, and reflections on the Book of Mormon in the form of letters to someone they know. We invite you to take a look at their epiphanies and discoveries as they delve into the scriptures.
In publishing these, we fulfill their desire to speak to all of us of the relevance, power and beauty of the Book of Mormon, a second witness of Jesus Christ and complement to the Bible. The Book of Mormon includes the religious history of a group of Israelites who settled in ancient America. (The names they use are those of prophets who taught the Book of Mormon peoples to look forward to the coming of Christ—Nephi, Lehi, Alma, Helaman, and other unfamiliar names. We hope those names will become more familiar to you as you read their inspiring words and feel the relevance and divinity of their messages through these letters.)
Let us know if you’d like to receive your own digital copy of the Book of Mormon, and/or if these messages encourage and assist you spiritually as well.
Mormonism: A Sure Foundation
There is a famous scripture in Helaman chapter five, verse twelve. It gives the thesis of the whole Book of Mormon, the whole point of this Church, and basically sums up what I aspire for in my life. It’s all about remembering what is really important in times of trial:
And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.
This is a powerful scripture; it really hit me this time around. For a long time now, I have been reading my scriptures with a particular friend in mind, looking for anything I can do to be a better friend while she is going through a lot of hard trials. I wish I could fix her problems for her, take away her pain, and guarantee that she will be okay, but I can’t. She has to take that leap herself and depend on Christ, “the only sure foundation,” and she “cannot fall.” When it’s not easy, when life gets difficult, when we can’t see how it could possibly work out, we need to depend on Him. We can’t give in to what would be easier. We have to fight to come out on top. And He will help us. We have to remember that.
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