The Great I AM

 

"We do not believe that the heavens are sealed over our heads, but that the same Father who loved and cherished the children of Israel loves and cherishes us. We believe that we are as much in need of the assistance of our Heavenly Father in the directing of our lives as they were. We know that in the day and age in which we live the seal has been broken, and God has again spoken from the heavens."

 

 

Not everything God asks us to do will make sense to us. His perspective is different from ours.

THUS saith the Lord your God, even Jesus Christ, the Great I AM, Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the same which looked upon the wide expanse of eternity, and all the seraphic hosts of heaven,

before the world was made . . .

His ability to see the future, combined with his love for us will occasionally (frequently?) cause him to ask us to do things whose purpose is indiscernible.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

God knew before the earth was ever created that it would be necessary for Adam and Eve to fall so they "would have seed." Thus, even before the earth was created, Jesus Christ had agreed that he would pay the penalty required by the law of justice for the transgression of the law that resulted in the fall of Adam and Eve. The scriptures refer to the Savior as "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world", and they indicate that Jesus Christ had agreed to bring about the atonement before the earth was ever created.

 

 

The Savior makes it possible for us to return to the presence of God, but Adam and Eve made it possible for us to come here to partake of mortality and to be tested and prepared for that return. Does anyone doubt that we were watching breathlessly through the veil while Eve and then Adam considered the fruit? What a cheer must have echoed through heaven when they both partook and opened the gate to what Eve called "the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient." We ought to give thanks for them and for the gift they have given to their posterity.