2.352 Cry from the Morning, even until the Going Down of the Sun

In Matthew 5:13, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth, a bold reminder that our lives are meant to carry his flavor, his truth, and his love to the world. Join me each day to explore one verse of scripture and one thought, striving to stay full of savor and truly live as savory salt. Hello, my friends.

It is great to have you with me. Today let's be anxiously engaged in a good cause and bring to pass much righteousness. You know, when it comes to the list of Book of Mormon heroes, Ether's not high up there, but he should be.

We are reading this week "The Family: A Proclamation to the World", as well as Ether chapters 12–15 and Moroni 1. And while we may get back to the family proclamation, we're going to shift gears and dive into Ether 12 here. Primarily from a scripture that I kind of came across.

I was reading while I was in the temple and kind of settled on it. And I thought, well, I want to share that one on Savory Salt. And so here I am sharing it on Savory Salt.

We're going to take a look at Ether 12, which is our introduction to Ether as a prophet. So we finally get the guy who the book is named after. And we find out here just right off in verse 2 that he cannot be restrained.

The Lord has basically been like, "You are filled with the Spirit, go and preach, brother!" And so we get this view of Ether. Now we know that Ether's preaching is in vain to a certain degree in that his preaching does not get the people to repent, and ultimately they lead to their own destruction through their choices and hatred and wickedness and such. But the reason he gets kind of the hero label for me is inside of verse 3 here.

And I want to be like Ether. And I think in some way, you might want to be like Ether, too. Verse 3 says, "For he did cry from the morning even until the going down of the sun, exhorting the people to believe in God unto repentance, lest they should be destroyed, saying unto them that by faith all things are fulfilled." And then we get some awesome, you know, by faith moments in some verses inside of there, kind of like Hebrews does as well.

Like, here's a reminder of what faith can do. Ether's time on the earth is interesting, quite different from our time, because in order for him to share his testimony, he's got to do it live. He's got to do it in person.

So you'll notice he did cry from the morning even until the going down of the sun. Now why that settled with me differently is honestly because of Savory Salt, the podcast, the concept of it. You see, we in season two here, we're on the tail end of season two.

We're at 715, I think. This might actually be the 715th or so episode, maybe 716, something like that. And something that I found fascinating as I went through this process of making this podcast was I started to realize that people anywhere on earth could access this podcast at any time.

I didn't have to be awake. I didn't have to be doing the podcast live. My voice carries and my voice is on demand anytime.

And so while Ether is on the earth at a time where he needs to wake up and go and preach and keep preaching until the sun goes down and then wake up and do it again. My friends, we have been blessed with amazing technology that allows us to capture our testimonies and bear them. Now, I am not saying every one of you listeners needs to start a podcast.

You know, I've said this before. I am not calling you all to like podcast production repentance. Okay, that is not the idea here.

What I am saying is, how are you using technology to capture and bear testimony so that your voice can be shared from morning even until the going down of the sun? That could be video recording just inside your family. I know there are books you can buy now where it like gives you a prompt and you speak to the prompt and you tell a story to your family.

That's an opportunity to bear your testimony. You can use voice memos on your phone. Those voice memos can now be transcribed with transcription services.

My friends, do we have more than ample opportunity to bear our testimony from the morning even to the going down of the sun as Ether did? Yes, we do. What an amazing opportunity and blessing for the Lord to give us to be on the earth at this time, a chance for our voices to be heard from morning even to the going down of the sun.

I bear testimony to the truth of this gospel. I bear testimony that Jesus Christ lives and loves us, and I hope that that testimony is heard from sunup to sundown in all corners of the earth. You have the same opportunity to bear that testimony even if it's just with your loved ones.

To have basically a testimony on demand. So let's share it. That's all for today, my friends.

Lift up your hearts and rejoice. Cleave to the covenants you have made and together we will be savory salt.