Each and every one of us here is a prisoner of time. We exist on a world that is both the bringer of joy and pain. We live out our days one by one wondering what tomorrow will bring. The world into which we have descended by birth from the heavens, with all its cycles, times and seasons, is a highly complex one that reminds me a little of an old-fashioned watch with its cogs and wheels. There are numerous heavenly as well as earthly influences that for the most part impinge upon us unconsciously. Our moods rise and fall, sometimes incomprehensibly. Without any conscious explanation we may find ourselves in the depths of depression one day and in the heights of ecstasy the next. Our body chemistry, which in part shapes our moods, is strongly influenced by various heavenly cycles. We are aware of the effects of the moon upon us, not to mention animals whose behaviour and mating patterns are often influenced by it. The moon and the sun, being the largest and closest heavenly bodies to the earth, influence us in a strong way. Many of the enzymes in our bodies vary in their activity according to lunar cycles so for the best digestion possible, eat on the full moon! Trypsin, which is one of the enzymes that aids the body in the digestion of proteins, is at its most active on the new moon.

In a similar way but working on an independent bodily cycle, the enzymes and cofactors responsible for coagulating blood that form a clot when the flesh is wounded is at its most active at a certain time on an eight-day cycle. It is for this reason that males in Israel were circumcised on the eighth day after their birth according to the old Mosaic Law because this is the time when the coagulating enzymes are at their most active point. We therefore understand the intelligence of the heavens in instituting this ordinance at this time, for the biological protection of new-born males. There is purpose in the ordinances, but not only on one particular level or plane of existence, but on all of them, for we understand from the Scriptures that the eighth-day circumcision was a type or foreshadowing of the eighth-year baptism of the children of the Covenant of Israel (2 Abraham 34:3; D&C 68:27/68:4).

As we become progressivley more sanctified and spiritualised through the mediation of the grace of Christ, so we begin to ascend out of matter towards the heavenly realms, and in so doing progressivly weaken or lessen the effect of the physical cycles upon us. That is not to say that we transcend them altogether, for so long as we remain in the flesh we will always be influenced by them. Rather, it is to say that spiritual or heavenly cycles dominate the earthly ones until we become exclusively controlled by the heavens.

Let me give you an example. The weekly cycle has been a part of man's lot for many thousands of years. We are told in the scriptures to work six days and rest on the seventh day. If you have met anyone who works a seven day week you will know that eventually such activity wrecks havoc on the health. And those who have to change over from night to day shifts, and vice versa, have all kinds of problems. Although it is true we can readapt to different cycles, these can often be very disorientating and harmful at the beginning -- and even in the long term can cause problems. Astronauts who spend prolongued periods in space, separated from normal gravity and other natural cycles, soon become disorientated and may suffer biological illnesses of one sort or another, like abnormally low blood counts.

Our bodies need rest one day in seven and for the most part the nations of the world hold Sunday as a day of rest, or some other day. And to rest our bodies thus is healthy and beneficial. And yet I look back and wonder when I last had a restful Sunday, for as you know God's people are pretty busy people generally. They have to be, for the only time they can labour for the Kingdom is after a day's work or at the weekends. In more ways than one we work a seven day week -- five days at the office or factory and two days on Church business. And if you are a mother you are automatically working seven days a week, for children do not go away or cease needing attention and care one day out of every seven.

In ancient Israel and in those religions and churches where a Mosaic-type law still prevails, some interesting codes of bevaviour have been developed for Sabbath day worship, where physical labour is kept to a minimum. And this is as it should be for the obvious purpose of allowing as much time as possible to be centred on the Lord without needless distractions. And where physical labour is absolutely required, such as in the preparation of Sunday meals.

In February of this year the Lord explained that the sabbath day belongeth unto the law of works but ye are now under the law of grace, if ye would but receive it. I am Jesus Christ, and I am the Lord of the Sabbath. I am the Sabbath, for I am your rest. Therefore whosoever hath My peace and My rest through obedience and faith in My Name hath the Sabbath, and the Sabbath is within him. He that liveth in Christ liveth the Sabbath, and receiveth the reward of the Sabbath (NC&C 102:34-38).

Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. He is the master of all cyclical activities. As we are told in Section 88 (RDC 85) of the Doctrine & Covenants He is the controlling power of all heavenly bodies, whether sun, earth, moon, stars or even empty space (D&C 88:7-10/85:2). One of His titles, which appears in numerous places in the Scriptures (principally the Bible and D&C), is the Lord of Sabaoth which, the Lord explains, means that He is the creator of the first day, the beginning and the end (D&C 95:7/92:1). What was the beginning of time? It was the first day of creation. And what is the end? It is the millennial sabbath of a thousand years. And of course He is Lord of everything inbetween the two.

In the worlds of spirit there is no time. As you move further and further away from the coarsest matter towards where God dwells, time becomes constricted. One day on with God is equivalent to a thousand years on earth. But at the very Throne of God, which is the centre of both the physical and spiritual universe, being the centre of the Light of Christ, there is no time. God and Christ dwell in a timeless dimension where all things, past, present and future, and continually before them (D&C 130:7). Thus Christ is called the Beginning and the End, and Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last (Rev.1:8; 2:17). Spiritualy speaking this is the Sabbath because in Heaven there is perpetual inner rest and peace. Though the Heavens never rest outwardly (to my knowledge angel ministry occurs on Sunday as much as any other day!) they are at rest inwardly.

Birth into this sphere is birth into time and into cycles that do not exist in Heaven. And why are we sent into a dimension in which time exists? Because time allows us to partition sin and to allow us to deal with it piecemeal. We are first and foremost here on this world to develop faith, to mature into the stature of Christ, and to learn through opposition. We are here to mature our spirits so they can become greater vessels of love...to spiritually grow up. But none of this is possible without time, because in the process of growing up we make mistakes -- we sin. We are too immature to deal with sin in one go -- only Jesus was able to do that at Calvary. All the boundaries were removed and in a matter of hours He dealt not with the sins of one man but of all men...billions of them, from the most innocent sin to the most deliberate and bestial sin. He dealt with sin in a timeless way as only a timeless being, God, can, even though He Himself was immersed in time by virtue of the flesh.

When Jesus came in the flesh the Covenant people were in bondage not only to the physical rhythms and cycles of nature and the physical cosmos, but to the rhythms and cycles of the Law of Moses. There aren't many people who wade through the first five books of Moses with a view to understanding all the intricacies of that Law, and those that do soon feel the weight of them. Just reading them can be crushingly boring, and living them must have been worse. Such a reaction in not unnnatural or sinful but is rather a testimony of the oppressiveness of that Law. Israel deserved it, as we know, and suffered under it.

The Law did two things for man. Firstly, it convicted him of his sins and his helplessness in doing anything about them. Secondly, it pointed toward the Person who could do something about their sins, namely Jesus Christ. Paul said: Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned -- for before the law (of Moses) was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the One to come (Rom.5:12-14, NIV). He adds: The law (of Moses) was added so that trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom.5:20-21, NIV).

The death of Jesus Christ at Calvary was the completion of the process of atonement that allowed grace to blot out the Law of Moses. Today we commemorate the death of Christ. That death, which also included three days in the grave, marked the end of the decline of the material universe and the beginning of its spiritualisation. Before that moment there was no hope for man. He was trapped in a world of time with numerous cycles from which he could not escape. There was no hope of a resurrection because death had never been conquered. We shall look at the resurrection on the third of April when we commemorate the rising of Jesus from the death and all that that implies. But for the present let us look more closely at the meaning of Christ's death.

From the first moments in the Garden of Gethsemane to that moment when Jesus died on the Cross great spiritual and material processes and changes were underway which went unnoticed by the outer, carnal eye. The Universe was being changed so that it would never be the same again. Not one single particle of matter would be unaffected by it. The history of Creation was turning on one hinge, Jesus Christ. By His own power He turned the Universe around. And the greatest irony of it all was that noone on earth saw it!

Now if, while you were asleep, God were to descend to the earth and totally remold the landscape, change the colour of the sky, the constituency of water, the properties of air so that everything sounded different, the appearance of creatures so that they look like something out of a science fiction movie, and even our own appearance so that we looked quite different, would we notice the changes the next morning? If I walked through the door looking like E.T. and sounding like a parrot, you'd notice alright. Imagine the people on earth waking up the next morning to find absolutely everything changed. Try to picture the reaction they would have -- imagine the confusion, the excitement, the exploration of the new properties of matter, trying to identify relatives and friends who looked completely different, and so on. Just try to picture it. The world would be in commotion. A whole new life would have begun.

Then go to Calvary and see the lonely and awful site of a disfigured man bleeding to death on a cross like thousands of other victims of Roman rule in Palestine. Apart from an earthquake at the very moment of his death, and the coming forth of some of the dead saints out of their graves and the excitement and wonder and discussion that that might provoke, after a day or so it would be forgotten. And it was, by most of the world. Then compare this with the imaginary situation I described to you of a whole world being changed in every aspect of its existence. In the latter noone would ever forget the changes because they were so visible.

O the irony of it! How blind men and women are! If they could only see with their spiritual eyes the effect of the work of the Cross on creation they would marvel and rejoice like no tinkering of the material world I described in my illustration could. Why do you think the angels in Heaven sang for joy?! Was it just a sudden outburst that died down minutes, hours, or days later? I tell you, in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that those angels are still singing for joy nearly two thousand years on, and they will be singing that song for ever! And when you, my brethren and sisters, get the vision, you will sing, and sing, and sing until you are hoarse in your voices! The world won't understand you and will probably think you are mad, but those who have been born again and have tasted of this heavenly vision will know. You mark my words, the day will come when your mouth will cascade praises for the Living God and His Christ when you see how everything has been transformed by that Man of Nazareth. The world doesn't see it, and most of Christendom hasn't begun to comprehend even the tiniest fraction, of this reality I am taking of, and neither have the Latter Day Saints, but the faithful shall.

I desire, with a great desiring, that you could comprehend what the creation was like before the death of Jesus, and what it became afterwards. Looking at the world you would think that nothing has happened at all. But then you should know from the lessons of life how the inner world is often veiled from the outer. I can go up to a man in the street and look at him and think that everything is well with him and the world. But were I to take a look inside him I might either find ecstatic joy or the most unspeakable misery and pain imagimable. The inner is veiled from the outer and we are all masters at this art of concealment, for whatever reasons. Part of this work of Restoration into which we have been called is to bring the Spirit of Elijah to work in the lives of men and women so that inner agonies can be healed, through the grace of Jesus, and inner joys shared for the upliftment of all.

Jesus did away with the outer. He brought the rituals and ordinances of the Mosaic Law to an end, leaving only a few skeleton ordinances for us in the post-resurrection period to enable us to find His grace and so allow Him to take control of our lives. If you believe in the Cross -- and you should, because it is the centre of our faith and hope -- then you will also believe that the dispensation of grace has superceded the dispensation of works, or outer ordinances. In Mosaic Israel they were essential, for they were the only way keeping the human soul from sinking in the ocean of sin that had been filling up since the Fall of Adam. They had rituals, festivals, ordinances, codes of behaviour, and so on, that followed after a lunar calendar. They had numerous baptisms, circumcisionm, new moon celebrations, feast days and other liturgical practices, to point them to He who was to come and free them from sin. The law made them self-conscious; and being self-conscious they were able to repent. If you are not self- conscious, how can you repent?

Now believe this, and do not be deceived in any way, nor listen to others who would tell you otherwise, for it is written: When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all our sins, having cancelled the written code (Law of Moses), with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; He took it away, nailing it to the Cross. And having made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the Cross. Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ (Col.2:13-17, NIV).

If you need rituals, or ceremonies, or temple ordinances to save you, you have missed the point entirely. Salvation is not predicated upon works but upon faith; for whosoever has faith in Jesus Christ will receive His grace, and from that grace will flow good works, whether for the blessing of the world or for the upbuilding of the Kingdom. And from that grace comes salvation. So why do we honour the Sabbath and subscribe to ordinances like baptism, the laying on of hands, temple worship, and so on? Because as the Lord said, in this case addressing the Sabbath question: No man or woman possesseth the Sabbath Spirit always and for this cause have I given you an ordinance, even the Sabbath Day of Rest, that ye might begin outwardly and turn your rest inwards (NC&C 102:33ff).

The death of Jesus on the Cross of Calvary, which we honour and commemorate today, marked an end to not only the old Mosaic system of worship but the practices of the Patriarchs before, such as animal sacrifice and circumcision. The Cross did not only cancell, or fulfill, the Mosaic Law, but all that preceeded it also.

Jesus has done everything that needs to be done as far as the salvation and exaltation of man is concerned. There is nothing that we can do ourselves unless, as the scriptures would seem to suggest, we are willing to spend several million years atoning for our own sins, suffering what Jesus suffered throughout what will seem like an eternity (D&C 19:17/18:2).

Today we remember the work of death on the Cross. Please remember your baptism today, of the time you were immersed under water in similitude of the grave. Paul says: If we have been united with (Jesus) in his death, we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin -- because anyone who has died has been freed from sin (Romans 6:5-7, NIV).

Have you died to sin? Have you united yourself to the death of Christ on the Cross? If you haven't, you've missed the whole point! You've missed the mark and the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ! When you were baptised, you symbolically enacted your intention to put to death all that was of your natural selves. Paul says: Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming (Col.3:3-6).

I want you to understand what the God of Heaven went through for us so that we are under no illusions as to what the Cross means. The Lord said: I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent; but if they will not repent, they must suffer even as I; which suffering caused Myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit (D&C 19:16-18/18:2)

Brethren and sisters, you must put to death all that is ungodly and spiritually destructive in you. I'm not calling you to give up one sin, or two, but all. I am calling you, in the name of Jesus. to nail your whole carnal nature to the Cross by surrendering to Christ totally, as you would yield up your life. You can't be reborn in Him and taste the sweet and, O, so wonderful joys of heaven until you do so. The is not a Gospel of sprinkling -- of turning away from a few sins -- but a Gospel of immersion, or a turning away from all sins. And I'm not calling you to mutilate yourselves or make yourselves unhappy -- quite the opposite -- I'm inviting you to surrender -- to lay all your weapons of opposition and rebellion down, and yield yourselves as a sweet sacrifice to Jesus in your hearts, as He did when He yielded Himself in death to His Father, and our Father. True surrendering brings a sweet peace and joy.

One of the most beautiful and important revelations this Church has received, in my opinion, came in this very house in which we are worshipping, last February. It says:

Verily, verily, thus saith the Lord unto those who have forsaken the Cross for the sake of vain babblings and idle imaginations on account of the false doctrines of men, both wise and foolish: cease your empty movements and your philosophising, for they are as wind. The heart of man is desperately wicked and vain, and his mind as a sewer; he seeketh after his own and clutcheth at the wind. He esteemeth the Cross as foolishness because he is dying, knowing not the power of God unto redemption. He seeth the form but not the substance; and unto him hath the Cross become a stumbling block, for he understandeth not the ways of Heaven and preferreth the sweetness of the words of the philosophers. But I say unto the saints of the New Covenant: preach the foolishness of the Cross, for this shall save souls. Seek not to convert the sons and daughters of men to doctrine, but bring them to the Cross. This is the whole work of the preacher, for out of the Cross floweth glad tidings and the hope of the Firstborn. O My beloved ones, I yearn to feed you with wholesome meat, and to fill your cups to overflowing, but ye persist in contending over tenets; and all that is praiseworthy becometh lost in a strife of words. Cease to trouble yourselves over those things which ye cannot understand in your unsanctified state, but rather come to the Cross, for this is the beginning and end of My work. And the Cross is the Atonement of Christ which bringeth to pass the immortality and eternal life of man, both now and in the eternities. For ye must begin to receive the spirit of the resurrection even now, which is the omega of grace that floweth freely from the throne of God. Allign yourselves to this work and ye shall stay near, and receive of Me always. Amen (NC&C 100).