What a difference 27.5 years make. Here we have an Evangelical evangelist on campus @ BYU, making an open appeal for mostly Mormon students to come forward and dedicate their lives to the true Christ.
27.5 years ago, an Lds apostle (Bruce McConkie) came on that same BYU campus and advised Mormon students NOT to seek a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Not very long ago, it used to be that a person could still go to the BYU online speech area -- specifically http://speeches.byu.edu/reader/reader.php?id=6843 -- and click on McConkie's speech. Obviously, somebody @ BYU has elected to deactivate it. (The title of that anti-Christ devotional was "Our Relationship With the Lord." -- you can easily still find excerpts from that devotional online)
I would hope and pray the Lds students who came forward would investigate and come to fully know the Jesus who is Lord and Savior of Nick Vujicic.
From the article: The event was sponsored by Standing Together, a Christian organization that strives to unite the Christian community in Utah. It also supports conversations between Evangelicals and the LDS church. Vujicic was scheduled to bear his testimony on Sunday at the Tabernacle on Temple Square.
Vujicic will become only the third evangelical to present a message @ the Mormon Tabernacle in the past century.
A reason to rejoice.
This guy is both a really good speaker and a great young man. I would urge anyone to give him a listen. He has the typical Aussie sense of humour too!
Mel
I'm sure he complains sometimes. He's a human being who needs a Savior as we all are. Thank God that Nick knows who that Savior is!
“...The title of that anti-Christ devotional was ‘Our Relationship With the Lord...’”
I think it’s unfair to refer to McConkie’s speech as an anti-Christ devotional. I remember the speech a little, and I think the point he was trying to make is that some members were neglecting to worship the Father by focusing almost exclusively on the Son. Jesus himself told us to pray to the Father, and I think McConkie was reminding church members to pray to the Father in the name of the Son, not to pray directly to the Son. The Holy Trinity consists of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and none of the three should be overlooked.
bookmark
Thank you for posting this!
“I have arms and legs and still complain. He has no arms and legs and lives life to the fullest,”
Today, my goal will be to not complain, but give thanks.
Sadly, I forget that too often.
I could make a LOT of sick jokes in THIS thread; but I restrain myself.
First, the speech is still online right at the URL you said it was no longer at. http://speeches.byu.edu/reader/reader.php?id=6843
Second, you take Bruce R. McConkie out of context. He did not say we should not have a relationship with Christ, he said our relationship with Christ should not be elated above our relationship with God the Father or our relationship with the Holy Spirit. Here it is in his own words from that very speech:
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Thus there are, in the Eternal Godhead, three persons--God the first, the Creator; God the second, the Redeemer; and God the third, the Testator. These three are one--one God if you will--in purposes, in powers, and in perfections. But each has his own severable work to perform, and mankind has a defined and known and specific relationship to each one of them. It is of these relationships that we shall now speak...
Our relationship with the Son is one of brother or sister in the premortal life and one of being led to the Father by him while in this mortal sphere. He is the Lord Jehovah who championed our cause before the foundations of the earth were laid. He is the God of Israel, the promised Messiah, and the Redeemer of the world.
By faith we are adopted into his family and become his children. We take upon ourselves his name, keep his commandments, and rejoice in the cleansing power of his blood. Salvation comes by him. From Creation's dawn, as long as eternity endures, there neither has been nor will be another act of such transcendent power and import as his atoning sacrifice.
We do not have a fraction of the power we need to properly praise his holy name and ascribe unto him the honor and power and might and glory and dominion that is his. He is our Lord, our God, and our King.
Our relationship with the Holy Spirit is quite another thing. This holy personage is a Revelator and a Sanctifier. He bears record of the Father and the Son. He dispenses spiritual gifts to the faithful. Those of us who have received the gift of the Holy Ghost have the right to his constant companionship.
And again, if it were proper--and I repeat, it is not!--to single out one member of the Godhead for some special attention, we might well conclude that member should be the Holy Ghost. We might well adopt as a slogan: Seek the Spirit. The reason of course is that the sanctifying power of the Spirit would assure us of reconciliation with the Father. And any person who enjoys the constant companionship of the Holy Spirit will be in complete harmony with the divine will in all things..
Now I know that some may be offended at the counsel that they should not strive for a special and personal relationship with Christ. It will seem to them as though I am speaking out against mother love, or Americanism, or the little red schoolhouse. But I am not. There is a fine line here over which true worshipers will not step.
It is true that there may, with propriety, be a special relationship with a wife, with children, with friends, with teachers, with the beasts of the field and the fowls of the sky and the lilies of the valley. But the very moment anyone singles out one member of the Godhead as the almost sole recipient of his devotion, to the exclusion of the others, that is the moment when spiritual instability begins to replace sense and reason.
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Third, Mormons dedicate their lives to the true Christ at the time of their baptism. The gesture of coming forward at the end of a meeting like that is in no way a rejection of the commitment, in fact it would indicate just he opposite.