The Atonement of Jesus Christ– Yeshua

Note:  Though I greatly love the Jewish people – my first people – I know with every cell of my body that Jesus is the Christ; that he is the only Begotten Son of Heavenly Father.  I love and serve them as diligently as I am able. Printing a message like this warms my heart and hopefully, yours, dear Reader. This excerpt from Br. Callister’s book is just a taste of its beauty and profundity. If you wish more, order the book!!
The Heart of the Gospel
The Atonement is not just a prime teaching of the Gospel; it is the heart of the Gospel. It infuses life into every doctrine, every principle, and every ordinance, transforming what might otherwise be a lofty but nonetheless lifeless ideal, to a vibrant spiritual truth. So essential is the Atonement to a purposeful life that on occasion it is referred to as “the gospel.” While expounding to the Nephites the Savior confirmed this: “This is the Gospel… that I came into the world to do the will of my Father…And my father sent me that I might be lifted up upon the cross” (3 Nephi 27:13-14). This same doctrine was audibly declared from the heavens to the Prophet Joseph: “This is the gospel, the glad tidings…that he came into the world, even Jesus, to be crucified for the world, and to bear the sins of the world” (D&C76:40-41). The LDS Bible Dictionary defines the gospel as “good news” and then adds, “The good news is that Jesus Christ has made a perfect atonement.”

In a more expansive sense, the gospel is referred to a all those principles and ordinances that comprise the plan of salvation (see D&C 39:6). Even when used in this latter sense, however, we must remember that those principles and ordinances have life and efficacy only because of the Savior’s atoning sacrifice. That is exactly what Enoch taught: “This is the plan of salvation unto all men, through the blood of mine Only Begotten” (Moses 6:62). The Atonement is the lifeblood that quickens every gospel precept. It is, as President Gordon B. Hinckley said, “the keystone in the arch of the great plan.” Without it all else collapses.

No doctrine supersedes or even approaches the Atonement in importance. It is the grandest miracle to have ever occurred. C.S. Lewis observed that if one takes away the miracles attributed to Buddhism, there would be “no loss” to religion. If all miracles were eliminated from Islam, he adds, “nothing essential would be altered.” Then this striking observation: “But you cannot possibly do that with Christianity, because the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion” that Christ came “into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing Nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left.”
From The Infinite Atonement, by Tad R. Callister, pg.8-9. Deseret Book 2000

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