Called To Serve Him...The Farewell Talk...

The Sunday before my son left on his mission he was assigned to give a talk in church.  The farewell talk.  After his talk we had a farewell party for him.  This is the cake that we had made for him.

Here is his talk from that Sunday....
     For those of you who haven't heard, I'm leaving on my mission in two days.  I am going to be serving in Mexico, Spanish speaking.  It is my pleasure to address you today before I leave.
     Today being Easter Sunday, we remember the great sacrifice and Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  What a better day to talk about Christ's great sacrifice for us, namely, the Atonement.  This brings us to my topic today, specifically, what is the atonement?
     On the surface this is a simple, yet broad question.  There are a lot of sources to read and gather information from, so I turned to the Bible dictionary to gather some information to start with.

Let's start with some Old Testament symbolism.  With the Old Testament Prophets and law of Moses, animal sacrifices were God's way of setting the way for Christ's ultimate sacrifice.  Animal sacrifices were to be made with young lambs, pure, and free of sickness and disease.  Symbolic of Christ, pure and clean, without blemish.  As the lambs were sacrificed by the faith of Christ's followers, in a similar fashion, the Son of God would be sacrificed for all mankind.  These sacrifices were made in similitude of Christ, preparing the wold for his holy ministry and his great work.
     What is the Atonement of Christ?  The actual act of the atonement is the suffering of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, his hanging on the cross, and his resurrection.  The Savior sweat drops of blood from every pore as he took the bitter cup, eventually being crucified for us and willingly giving up his spirit, to rise from the tomb three days later.  What makes this act so profound is that Jesus Christ, being the Son of God, was the only sinless person to live on this Earth.  His suffering made for a perfect atonement that covers all of mankind.  Christ stood in our place and suffered the penalty for all of our sins, and because of this, he is able to plead in our behalf to the Father and help us receive mercy.
     Something I find amazing is that because of Christ's atonement, all mankind will be able to receive a restored body of flesh and bone and be resurrected.  To quote 1st Corinthians chapter 15 verses 20-22 : " But now is Christ risen from the dead, and became the first fruits of them that slept.  for since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."  This is a free gift to all who walked, walk, and will walk this earth.
     At a glance, the Atonement of Christ could be simply defined by just the act, but there is a lot more to the Atonement of Christ.  There is not only the act, but the power of the Atonement, and it's application in our daily lives and modern times.
     To quote the Bible Dictionary: "The word describes the setting " at one" of those who have been estranged, and denotes the reconciliation of man to God.  Sin is the cause of the estrangement, and therefore the purpose of the Atonement is to correct or overcome the consequence of sin."......

My Son's talk was really long, and sorry to leave you with just the beginning, but at some point soon I will break into his computer, figure out the codes, save the talk on a flash drive and then copy and paste it into a new blog post... I have an issue with my right arm and typing the amount that it would take to put the whole talk on here was more than I could do in one sitting, and then the printed out copy of the talk went missing.  I've yet to crack the computer code, and decided I need to move on in this blogging.  The above photo is of my son and some of his friends on the Sunday before he left.  It was nice to see all these young men come out and support a friend before he left on a life changing event.

This was a good, goodbye day for us.  Not too many sad faces to be seen.  I'm always amazed at the faith of my children.  Their love of other people, and willingness to help others.
G.G.