Moroni commented further on Ether’s teachings about faith, hope, and charity. “Faith is things which are hoped for and not seen.” We may not see God and his heavenly hand moving in the events of mortality, but we nevertheless trust that he is there, and we have confidence that he is guiding our lives. Just because we cannot see him with our physical eyes does not mean he is not alive and involved. We know our mortal vision is extremely limited; there is a wide spectrum of waves and rays all around us that our eyes, incredible instruments as they are, do not see. In spiritual matters we see not with our eyes but with our spirits. Our spirit, enhanced and quickened or accelerated by the Spirit of God, can see and understand far beyond any mortal capacity. Read carefully and learn in the following verses how the “eyes of understanding” or “spiritual eyes” are opened and greater things can be seen: Doctrine and Covenants 76:12, 19, 116–118, and 138:11.
There is a spiritual realm, attempting to understand the things of God, where our “seeing” comes not through the two little orbs in the top front of our heads but through the spirit within us. The Holy Ghost can show us—Spirit revealing to spirit—things that can be engraved into every fiber of our being, a spiritual witness that is far greater than the physical sight registered in a small portion of our cerebrum.
“By my Spirit will I enlighten them, and by my power will I make known unto them … those things which eye has not seen… .
“… For they are only to be seen and understood by the power of the Holy Spirit, which God bestows on those who love him, and purify themselves before him;
“To whom he grants this privilege of seeing and knowing for themselves” (D&C 76:10, 116–117).
Exercising our faith comes first; then comes the ability to see through the veil. In the world generally the saying is “seeing is believing,” but in spiritual matters the reverse is true—believing is seeing.
So, Moroni continued, don’t ever complain against God, or shake a fist at heaven, or argue against spiritual things just because the empirical method doesn’t work to prove them, “for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.” The testimony, the sure witness of the Spirit, comes only after we are tested, tried, and proved, not through the scientist’s empirical method but through the Father’s laboratory of testing called mortal probation. This life is a test. “They must needs be chastened and tried” (D&C 101:4). “My people,” says the Lord, “must be tried in all things” (D&C 136:31). “God hath said that He would have a tried people.”33 (See commentary at Alma 7:5.)
His greatest blessings, the ultimate privileges of being sealed up to eternal life and enjoying the Divine Presence, come to a man “when the Lord has thoroughly proved him, and finds that the man is determined to serve Him at all hazards.”34
“Faith Is Things Which Are Hoped for and Not Seen”
Moroni commented further on Ether’s teachings about faith, hope, and charity. “Faith is things which are hoped for and not seen.” We may not see God and his heavenly hand moving in the events of mortality, but we nevertheless trust that he is there, and we have confidence that he is guiding our lives. Just because we cannot see him with our physical eyes does not mean he is not alive and involved.
We know our mortal vision is extremely limited; there is a wide spectrum of waves and rays all around us that our eyes, incredible instruments as they are, do not see. In spiritual matters we see not with our eyes but with our spirits. Our spirit, enhanced and quickened or accelerated by the Spirit of God, can see and understand far beyond any mortal capacity. Read carefully and learn in the following verses how the “eyes of understanding” or “spiritual eyes” are opened and greater things can be seen: Doctrine and Covenants 76:12, 19, 116–118, and 138:11.
There is a spiritual realm, attempting to understand the things of God, where our “seeing” comes not through the two little orbs in the top front of our heads but through the spirit within us. The Holy Ghost can show us—Spirit revealing to spirit—things that can be engraved into every fiber of our being, a spiritual witness that is far greater than the physical sight registered in a small portion of our cerebrum.
“By my Spirit will I enlighten them, and by my power will I make known unto them . . . those things which eye has not seen. . . .
“. . . For they are only to be seen and understood by the power of the Holy Spirit, which God bestows on those who love him, and purify themselves before him;
“To whom he grants this privilege of seeing and knowing for themselves” (D&C 76:10, 116–117).
Exercising our faith comes first; then comes the ability to see through the veil. In the world generally the saying is “seeing is believing,” but in spiritual matters the reverse is true—believing is seeing.
So, Moroni continued, don’t ever complain against God, or shake a fist at heaven, or argue against spiritual things just because the empirical method doesn’t work to prove them, “for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.” The testimony, the sure witness of the Spirit, comes only after we are tested, tried, and proved, not through the scientist’s empirical method but through the Father’s laboratory of testing called mortal probation. This life is a test. “They must needs be chastened and tried” (D&C 101:4). “My people,” says the Lord, “must be tried in all things” (D&C 136:31). “God hath said that He would have a tried people.”(See commentary at Alma 7:5.)
His greatest blessings, the ultimate privileges of being sealed up to eternal life and enjoying the Divine Presence, come to a man “when the Lord has thoroughly proved him, and finds that the man is determined to serve Him at all hazards.”