This is a script I used as a basis of this video.
--
O that I were an angel, and could have the wish of mine heart, that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with a voice to shake the earth, and cry repentance unto every people! (Alma 29:1)
Alma was not sinning in his desire to do more for the kingdom of God. We all ought to earnestly desire to be more capable of contributing greater value in God’s kingdom, which means being more capable of sacrificing ourselves such that it renders this world or someone or something within it into something more closely resembling its full potential in the eyes of God, which is the same as living in the way that yields the most valuable improvements you are capable of enabling. Alma’s “sin” was that he was desiring the outcome independently of the path to obtain it. He was allowing his wish to make a greater contribution to overtake his desire to make whatever sacrifice was necessary to render him capable of doing so. We sin when we desire what contradicts the law of cause and effect, either by insisting we receive outcomes for which the price has not been paid, or insisting on following causes we desire whose effects we do not desire.
The ironic thing about this is that Alma was on the exact path to the fulfillment of this promise, paying the exact price needed to receive it, and he continued on his path. And this is how it works: You ask what you desire, God puts you on the exact path to it, and you endure to the end. It’s like a package sent from far away. You know it is sent as soon as you order it, but you don’t know when it will get there, because it’s dependent on people and other factors you can’t see or control.
An intriguing comment was made on my channel about how the value of gospel ideas is greater than Elon Musk-kind of money. I completely agree, and I will tell you that it is worth even more. There are costs that exceed all the money in the world, and the truths God has and does share with me, which I pass along to you as fast as I am able, are worth and cost far more than that. The problem, of course, is that you can’t know value beyond the greatest price you’ve ever paid, and until you have paid the greatest price you can, you are very far from even the faintest idea of the value God offers to you and everyone else.
Jesus demonstrated that a person can revelatorily experience the dregs of hell without anyone else noticing. In Gethsamane, only three disciples accompanied him, who preferred to sleep in spite of the gravity of the situation even from an external and uninformed perspective. Their accounts were given not from their own eye witness, but revelation from others after the fact. There was only one external witness to Gethsamane, and that was the single angel qualified to be there with Jesus. But this was not the beginning or end of Jesus’ exposure to the dregs of the wrath of God. He carried this burden from the moment of his birth until the moment of his victory, when he promptly released his spirit in order to prevent the revelation of what would bring the end of the world had he stayed. I have just shared with you several extraordinarily valuable keys to mysteries never revealed since the foundation of the world, and you should replay and ponder them, asking God to help you formulate the questions they answer.
There was a cartoon called Dragon Ball Z where the characters had a magical room where time passed much slower than outside the room. Whenever some new threat beyond their present capacity arose, they would retreat to that room in order to train, even for years, and emerge just days later prepared for the fight. If there were such a room, I would retreat into it for ten years or more in order to complete the tasks of revealing and reducing to writing all of the ideas God has given me access to. Another ten years of my life is a price that would easy for me to pay, being far less than sacrifices I have already made, and the benefit of making these truths communicable being so much more valuable than the cost I have already paid to obtain access to them in the first place.
And yet, as Alma, I “sin in my wish” because the outcome I seek (that all people have available to them everything they need to receive everything they desire, which is the culmination of God’s purpose in creation) is not available in the path of me absconding myself for years and returning with a series of about 7,000 pages of curated text. If it were, I could easily make provision for my family, as Moses did, and walk off into the woods with a solar panel, a laptop, a copy of the scriptures, and a knife, and see you in ten years. The problem is that that would only produce a ladder rung to which no person can presently reach. All progress with God is progressive, sequential, and successive. You would be no more capable of receiving those books in that way than I could write them were I standing in your shoes.
Above all else, you must make the changes to conform to your sincere idea of how God is and what he would do, say, think, and feel in your situation. You have to learn to value what he values, and by how much he values it. While you are under appreciating what you already have, you will certainly undervalue what is far better than what you already have. And with failure to appreciate comes limits to joy and loss of light.
Line upon line, precept upon precept, you will proceed toward God as you live up to how you already believe him to be. There are intermediate waves of light and truth that you must be exposed to and react to between here and there, which is why I make these videos and write blog posts.
There are also many more exposures you require to the things I have already written, which is why I constantly invite you to finish reading the essential books (Repentance, Through Faith, Men are that they Might have Joy, and the Glory of God is Intelligence) or to reread them, or to make videos where you share your own perspectives on the ideas they touch on.
I know there is a lot of content. I know you are overwhelmed. Find strength in pacing yourself on the pace of those faster than you. Know that it they do can run faster, so can you. Don’t succumb to the temptation to believe it is easier for them. Every increment cost more than what came before. Those who run faster than you do not have it easier. They have it much harder. If you think it is too difficult to process what is generated for you, consider the cost of generating it, which is much greater. You’ll have to use your imagination, because the cost exceeds what anyone other than those who pay it can comprehend.
While you are yet unwilling to do these things, you are unprepared to be exposed to further light and truth that will require much greater sacrifices. You may say that you desire eternal life, but while you have not yet learned the value of what has already been made available to you, you are “sinning in your wish.” The price of eternal life is everything else. While you will not even invest the price of reading, learning, and living what cost much more than the limits of your imagination to receive and write, how can you consider yourself prepared for what cost far more still, and requires far more still to read, learn, and live?
The end times process is described, in part, as a stone cut from the rock, rolling down the mountain. And so it is. But another facet of the process is a lot more like rolling a stone up a mountain, which is a task that gets more difficult with every step, even if the burden is fully established from the first. The glory of God includes limitless patience, long-suffering, courage, and strength, such that one becomes so unassailable that the heaviest burden moves, the greatest challenges are overcome, and the darkest abyss yields light. But it must be done in the Lord’s way, for in and through him alone is all glory, power, light, and love. May his love be found in me and you in the day when he again returns to rule and reign in his kingdom, that we may rejoice in his glory, be blessed by his power, and live in his light, forever.