What is the purpose?

LDS Business College Devotional

http://www.ldsbc.edu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=303:be-not-terrified-but-believing&catid=9:devotionals&Itemid=554

Be Not Terrified but Believing

Written by H. Aldridge Gillespie

Second Quorum of Seventy

February 9, 2005

We might wonder, “What is the purpose of these horrendous events in the Last Days?” The answer is simple. It’s because God truly does love us! When a man will not listen to the testimony of the Lord’s prophets or His servants (the Elders of Israel), he will sometimes turn to the Lord when he is brought down low due to tragedy, reverses, sickness, loss of loved ones, or other major problems in life. Every missionary knows, or should know, that some of the best contacts are those that have recently gone through a transforming event.

Opposition, trials and hardships are often the only way pride and arrogance can be changed to humility and submissiveness (see Mosiah 3:19). We must remember this is the last time the Lord will gather His people.

“And thus we see that except the Lord doth chasten his people with many afflictions, yea, except he doth visit them with death and with terror, and with famine and with all manner of pestilence, they will not remember him ” (Hel. 12:3). (See also Addendum # 2).

Not until every possible effort and opportunity has been expended to bring each son and daughter home, not until every prodigal son and daughter has experienced the guilt and torment of disobedience and the chastening of a loving and merciful God, with time to repent, will the Lord’s work be done. The fulfillment of the Signs of the Times may yet save millions of God’s children who would otherwise be lost eternally.