Page 6--Quoting from Elder Richard G. Scott, “To Establish a Secure Foundation for Life” 4-5
“I energetically encourage you to establish a personal plan to better understand and appreciate the incomparable, eternal, infinite consequences of the perfect fulfillment by Jesus Christ of His divinely appointed calling as our Savior and Redeemer….Please establish for yourself a must-be-accomplished goal to acquire a better understanding of the atonement….
“…As an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ—and I do not use those words lightly—I testify that your understanding of the Atonement and the insight it provides for your life will greatly enhance your productive use of all of the [other] knowledge, experience, and skills you acquire.”
Page 42
“Clearly there is more to the atonement than redemption from sin: the atonement completes and perfects physical things, including the human body, and each example of ruptured, defective, or diseased physical bodies is symbolic and points, to a greater or lesser extent, to Jesus Christ and his atonement.”
Page 87
“Elder Bruce R. McConkie wrote: ‘No doubt there are many events in the lives of many prophets hat set those righteous persons apart as types and shadows of their Messiah. It is wholesome and proper to look for similitudes of Christ everywhere and to use them repeatedly in keeping him and his laws uppermost in our minds’.”
Page 92—In reference to the Israelites murmuring against Moses for being thirsty in the wilderness.
“The people were contending with Moses in a legal sense; in essence, they were accusing him—and the Lord—of breach of contract. The argument was that the Lord would deliver them from Egypt
“In response to the accusation, the Lord invited Moses to take his special rod, the one he used to strike the Nile River
“In this story, the Lord was falsely accused. The people were rebellious and unrighteous. They were doubting God and ready to stone the prophet. Yet ‘in all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old’ (Isa. 63:9). He ‘gave [his] back to the smiters (Isa. 50:6). The rod that had turned water to blood was now used to draw water from rock; it was used to provide the healing, sustaining waters of life from the great Source of such water.
“Thus, this story contains another layer of meaning that points to the atonement. Just as Jehovah in the desert, innocent of offense, nevertheless accepted the punishment for sins resulting from the choices of the rebellious people, so did Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane
Page 120—In reference to the parable of the Unmerciful Servant
“The servant in the parable owed ten thousand talents. This was an astronomical figure. One denarius was a day’s wage for a common laborer, and it took ten thousand denarii to equal one talent. Thus, if a common laborer worked all year, taking only the Sabbath and a few holidays off, and if he saved all his money, it would take him thirty-three years to purchase one talent. It would take more than three hundred thousand years to purchase ten thousand talents.
“For context, a year’s combined taxes paid to Herod the Great by all of Judea, Idumea, Samaria , Galilee , and Perea in the year of his death (4 B.C.) came to only eight hundred talents.
“How could the servant have accumulated so much debt? The answer is that it would be impossible—if we were talking about early debt. But the Lord intended us to see beyond the early example to the heavenly truth. Our debt to God is beyond measure and really beyond all reckoning.
“In the parable, the king did the unexpected: he had compassion on the servant. (In the Greek, the word, used means godly compassion.) In boundless and incomprehensible mercy, the king forgave the entire debt.”
