The “True Light”

www.kevinhinckley.com

Well, that’s not good!

A Little History

Babylon Jerusalem

GreeksAlexander

Seleucus(Syria)

Ptolemy(Egypt)

Antiochus Antiochus

MattathiasMaccabees

Roman Empire

Hasmonieans

Pompey

Hanukkah

323 BC 301 BC 198 BC 167 BC

63 BC

Pro-Hellenized groups

Anti-Hellenized groups-Zealots

-Essenes

Question

What is the purpose of the New Testament?

C.S. Lewis

I am here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say

about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.”

That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.

But, let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

Mere Christianity, p. 41

John’s Witness

John 1:9

The Savior is “the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world”

LightDarkness

True Light

FalseLights?

Question:How would you define a “false light”?

George Q. Cannon

…if any of you have felt in your hearts that you would follow what I call false gods—, false lights, false

teachers; if any of you have felt to weaken in your attachment to the work of God and to entertain doubts concerning its validity—I ask you this afternoon to repent truly and sincerely of that, and turn to God with full purpose of heart and with a determination to serve Him all the rest of your days.

I say to you that Satan would tell you nineteen truths and would perform nineteen miracles to get you to accept one untruth and to take a wrong step. That is the kind of power he exercises. Do not be deceived, my brethren and sisters. Try the spirits, and see whether they are of God or not. Cling to the authority of the Priesthood, which God sent His messengers to bestow upon man. If you do so, I will assure you, as a servant of God, you will be led back into the presence of God and the Lamb

(Brian H. Stuy, ed., Collected Discourses, 5 vols. [Burbank, Calif., and Woodland Hills, Ut.: B.H.S. Publishing, 1987-1992], 3: .)

Isaiah 61Works of a “True Light”

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to:

preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are

bound?To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and

the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion… the

oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness,