As I was walking to work in the high snowfall, I wondered what scripture I should start off with. As I sometimes do, I started an informal prayer or discussion with Heavenly Father in my mind. These inward discussions are one of the two main ways I try to keep a prayer in my heart all the day long. (The second way is thinking, humming, or singing hymns). By the time I walked over the train tracks, I figured out that Moses 1:39 from the Pearl of Great Price would be my scripture for this week.
God's Purpose:
"For behold, this is my work and my glory---
to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man."
In other words, God's purpose is that of a Father encouraging the Human Family, His children to come home.
Knowing this to be God's purpose, one might ask why we left home in the first place. We left home in Heaven because it was part of our plan in progressing to become like God. This plan, known as the Plan of Happiness or the Plan of Salvation, was something as pre-mortal spirits we chose to follow- we chose to be born into a world where we would gain physical bodies and be tested on how we live in faith. How we live and how we would accept the gospel change what degree of heaven or what degree of immortality we choose (and are judged by Christ) to obtain after this mortal life. In order to live in the part of heaven that our Heavenly Father dwells, one must choose to believe in and live as Christ did-- making and keeping the commandments and covenants to prepare to live where God lives.
I am grateful that I have the knowledge from the scriptures to know God wants us to obtain His greatest blessings by keeping His covenants that we can be the happiest that we can possibly be in the eternities that follow mortal death by returning home to be part of an Eternal Family.
Because of this knowledge, I know what God is like and how he wants me to be/ what he wants me to do in order so that I can live to the fullest and be unafraid of death's veil. Because of the knowledge from the scriptures and the direction from prophets with God's priesthood/authority, I can live by faith and not with fear. Faith and trust in a benevolent God/Heavenly Father involved in the details of my life (and every one of His children), rather than fear of a distant unforgiving god that is a guise for Satan's vast attempts to pull us into misery.
Because I have knowledge of Jesus Christ's Atonement, I know that all of us who chose to follow the Plan of Happiness (all of His children who chose to follow Christ and were born into a world where we live by faith or agency: having the ability to choose if we will still follow Christ in this life)-- everyone who lives, has lived, or will live on one of God's infinite worlds have been promised immortality: living with both our spirit and a perfect body after mortal death.
[Not everyone chose to follow Christ in the pre-mortal world: Satan and one third of the hosts of heaven chose not to follow the Plan of Salvation and because of that they will never have a body or be able to return to one of Heaven's kingdoms].
Because of the scriptures, God's prophets, and personal revelation (to know from the testimony of the Holy Ghost if the scriptures are correct and if the prophets are truly speaking the words of God upon the Earth today), I don't need to live in confusion in a world riddled with disasters and Satan's influence. I know there is not a Fountain of Youth in order to avoid a void of sorrow. I know that God is really there and here for us, that Jesus Christ is the son of God, and that the Holy Ghost testifies of what is true. For God's light, truth, and glory will always be true yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
The importance of the individual, gender, marriage and family is better expounded or explained in "The Family: A Proclamation to the World", a revelation given from the First Presidency and Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to the entire world.
The book of Moses is "An extract from the book of Genesis of Joseph Smith's translation of the Bible," (quoted from the introduction of the Pearl of Great Price).
The need for this translation was to restore truths that had been lost through the years (when God's church was no longer upon this Earth) from the Bible (after Christ and the Apostles with God's authority or priesthood to lead His Church were killed). Joseph Smith was the prophet that God called and had chosen to be an instrument in restoring these truths back to the Earth. He did this by first translating a record of scripture written by the prophets among the ancestors of Native Americans through God's divine authority into English, known today as the Book of Mormon. Later, after The Church of Jesus Christ was once again established on the earth (and we know by revelation it is the last time the gospel will have to be restored in these last days before the Millennium, which is why the full title of the church is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), Joseph Smith began to work on translating the bible (the King James Version).
A compilation of the larger portions of divinely corrected truths from the Bible (that Joseph Smith translated- the smaller pieces can be found in the footnotes and the back of the King James Bible in a section called 'Joseph Smith Translation', along with a few other translated revelations, a portion of Joseph Smith's official testimony and history and a summery of basic doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints make up the book known as the Pearl of Great Price. The Pearl of Great Price is typically found in the triple combination scriptures with the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants.
