Today I read Mark 13 where the Savior gives the signs of His Second Coming. The JST manuscript states that Mark 13 originally read the same as Matthew 24 and so the JST version is the same as the JST Matthew 24, which we previously covered as part of the Pearl of Great Price. The way the test currently reads does not really add anything new to the knowledge we already have about the Second Coming but there are a couple of items that stood out to me today in my reading.
The Savior mentions that before the end comes, the Gospel must first be published among all nations. This of course has not currently happened. Although there is speculation as to what constitutes the Gospel being published in other nations. I am not that old, but I am old enough to remember the last part of the Cold War. I remember the feeling that never, in a million years would the Gospel be allowed into Russia or East Germany. Then, what felt like overnight to a nine year old anyway, the Berlin wall came down completely unexpectedly and again what felt like overnight to me being so young, we became friends with the Russians and the Germans. No one could believe it. And yet, here we are, 20 years later. Two of my best friends in the whole world, one is married to a Russian girl and the other to a German girl. It would have been almost unthinkable in my parents day, or even my older brother's. But the Lord is able to overcome barriers when He is ready to do so. No one thought that the Iron Curtain would ever fall, let alone as quickly as it did. And yet it did.
Some, including myself, theorize that the reason we are not in the Middle Eastern countries or China itself yet, as far as missionary activities are concerned I should say, is because we are not ready to preach the Gospel there yet. When I was a missionary about 10 years ago, there were a little over 60,000 missionaries world wide. China at the time had a little over 1.5 billion people in it, about 1/6th the entire world's population. 60,000 missionaries is not nearly enough to effectively preach the Gospel in China. I sometimes wonder if 60,000 missionaries would be enough just to cover Beijing and Shanghai! But even though we do not have a missionary presence over there, we have members of the church who live in China. There are a couple of branches in China. There are people who get baptized here that move back home. I myself baptized several people from Mainland China who have since returned back home. The Gospel is being preached, just not in the traditional proselyting sense. And most of that I am convinced is because we as a church are not ready to handle the responsibility. When we are ready, the Lord will move just as quickly as He did with the Berlin wall and we will be reeling with how fast events moved.
I also think that we as members of the church need to do a better job of sharing the Gospel with those around us. We are often accused of "shoving our religion down other people's throats" by those not of our faith. And yet there are so many people who when they find out I am a Latter-day Saint just ask me question after question after question. And they are always positive questions and genuinely curious to know what we believe. It is very rare indeed that I get asked how I can sleep at night or another antagonistic question. It does happen, but I would say it is only 1 out of 100 questions I get asked. It really is very rare. The fact of the matter is, people are curious about what we believe and who we are. When I was in high school I once gave a presentation on Latter-day Saint theology that was supposed to last about 15 minutes and went on for an hour and 30 minutes because of questions my classmates asked.
As we get better about opening our mouths and not being shy about who we are, or as Paul puts it, being ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, then we will have more missionaries and more countries will open up. I firmly believe the Lord is waiting on us as a people to be ready before He opens those countries to us because He will not give us more than we can handle. It is up to us to be prepared and to prepare our children in whatever way we can. As we do that, we will see amazing things happen. Remember, the Lord can bring down the Berlin wall in a day, He can certainly overcome other political barriers. It's all up to us. Until tomorrow.
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