Ian R Harvey

Two Pearls of Unimaginable Price Jesus's victory over death at Golgotha is a well-known pearl of his Gospel. What is less understood is how Christ also defeated hell in Gethsemane. In John's Witness, author Ian R. Harvey illuminates this missing pearl to deepen our understanding of God's boundless love. John was the sole eyewitness to the events in Gethsemane, and yet his own pearl of the account is altogether absent from his Gospel. In piecing together John's missing story, we structurally rely on nested flashbacks to Gethsemane during John's anxious dash to visit Jesus's empty tomb on that third day. We learn with John as he ponders Gethsemane's deep meaning. The biblical angel there provides him with added context and special visions of Eden that clarify Jesus's atoning work. Because of Eden we must have Gethsemane. Without Gethsemane there could be no Golgotha.

As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become. --Lorenzo SnowChristians: you mostly got it right. God was/is ever righteous from eternity to eternity. Mormons: we mostly got it wrong. That statement only applied in Eden prior to the Fall.As man chose, God for us weeps; as God is, man may still choose to become.(Sorry, not as pithy as Elder Snow's couplet but accurate and scripturally supported)Humans are not inherently evil; nor is the Fall of Adam good. But both our first parents were given the same test of moral agency that we now face.For Mormons it's frankly embarrassing to realize that the LDS temple is at once the sacred House of The Lord while also serving as the secret host of Lucifer and his greatest and oldest Lie. But that is no different than the first temple in Eden. And the test for us today is no different than the one our first parents faced. So let's deal with it and move on. It's only embarrassing as long as we realize that in the temple we are not only making sacred covenants with God, but--as long as we persist in the traditional practice of believing The Lie in preference to that which God commanded--we are also unwittingly making covenant with Lucifer: Its name--The Lie (as prophesied by Paul) Its sign--partaking of the forbidden fruit (or any other act of betraying God) Its token--the fig apron he commanded as a symbol of his ownershipFor Christians, this book is an enlightening bridge between the Fall in Eden and Jesus' atoning work, accomplished through a surprising (especially for Mormons ) peek into changing LDS thought, scripture and temple ritual. You get to witness first-hand the changing of a false and deeply entrenched Mormon paradigm.Comfort for Christians and Mormons accustomed to beating themselves up over perceived imperfections because, here, for the first time, do we truly understand sin and God's reasonable expectations for our "perfection."God is "in charge" only insofar as He gave humans the moral agency to choose our own way, to act according to our own choices and to fully own and experience the natural consequences of those choices. Of course He stands by to offer hope, rescue, relief and comfort, when asked.God's great plan is for Humanity to individually and freely own the ability to face options and to make choices--to choose life and eternal joy precisely because we also legitimately have the option to choose and experience the opposite--utter failure: sorrow, misery, death.A satisfying demonstration that exalting experiences of challenge, opposition and maturation do not require the fallen actions of betrayal and sin.