Welcome to this year's Easter celebration! There is so much content out there that goes well with Easter that I have really enjoyed partaking of all of it! I hope to be able to offer you some of the best of what I saw, read, and learned this week even if I can't cover all of it!
A really great beginning would be to go back and ready Elder Stevenson's talk The Greatest Easter Story Never Told. I loved this talk when he gave it, and with our study of the Book of Mormon this year, it goes perfectly. I am not going to include quotes from that talk because the entire thing is worth reading.
Before I add any other content, I wanted to drop this video here. It can be difficult to find fun family activities for Easter that don't involve bunnies and eggs, and while those things are definitely fun, being able to bring more of Christ into Easter is also important. I don't have kids at home (or grandkids) so these ideas didn't pertain to me nearly as much, but if you do, I loved some of what they shared.
I kind of stumbled on this talk by John M. Madsen and loved the messages from past prophets including Gordon B, Hinckley, and I loved this quote:
This is Easter morning. This is the Lord’s day, when we celebrate the greatest victory of all time, the victory over death. Those who hated Jesus thought they had put an end to Him forever when the cruel spikes pierced His quivering flesh and the cross was raised on Calvary. But this was the Son of God, with whose power they did not reckon. Through His death came the Resurrection and the assurance of eternal life.
With sorrow unspeakable those who loved Him placed His wounded, lifeless body in the new tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Gone was the hope from the lives of His Apostles, whom He had loved and taught. He to whom they had looked as Lord and Master had been crucified and His body laid in a sealed tomb. He had taught them of His eventual death and Resurrection, but they had not understood. Now they were forlorn and dejected. . . .
The Jewish Sabbath passed. Then came a new day, a day that ever after was to be the Lord’s day.
He quotes from President Hinckley a lot, and then sums up what he teaches in this way:
- Easter is the Lord’s day and “ever after was to be the Lord’s day.”
- Easter is the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which “was the great crowning event of His life and mission. It was the capstone of the Atonement.”
- “Through His death came the Resurrection and the assurance of eternal life.”
- “The sacrifice of His life for all mankind was not complete without His coming forth from the grave, with the certainty of the Resurrection for all who have walked the earth.”
- “Of all the victories in the chronicles of humanity, none is so great, none so universal in its effects, none so everlasting in its consequences as the victory of the crucified Lord, who came forth from the tomb that first Easter morning.”
And then one final quote from President Hinckley:
No event of history has been more certainly confirmed. There is the testimony of all who saw and felt and spoke with the risen Lord. He appeared on two continents in two hemispheres and taught the people. . . . Two sacred volumes, two testaments speak of this most glorious of all events in all of human history. . . .
And then comes the ringing testimony of the Prophet of this dispensation that in a wondrous theophany he saw and was spoken to by the Almighty Father and the Risen Son. . . .
There is nothing more universal than death, and nothing brighter with hope and faith than the assurance of immortality. The abject sorrow that comes with death, the bereavement that follows the passing of a loved one are mitigated only by the certainty of the Resurrection of the Son of God that first Easter morning.”
You can read the full article here: Easter--The Lord's Day by John M. Madsen
Another great article I found is this one by Gary Coleman. I loved how he broke down the things we learn about the Savior's resurrection in all the different books of scripture, and I was especially paying attention to the Book of Mormon:
The prophet Lehi says, “Redemption cometh in and through the Holy Messiah” (2 Nephi 2:6). This scripture introduces a new word to the text of the Book of Mormon: redemption. Afterward, Lehi says, “How great the importance to make these things known unto the inhabitants of the earth . . . that there is no flesh that can dwell in the presence of God, save it be through the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah, who layeth down his life according to the flesh, and taketh it again by the power of the Spirit, that he may bring to pass the resurrection of the dead, being the first that should rise” (v. 8). We must now ask ourselves, how are these truths made known? The answer is that we can know them through latter-day revelation and scripture.
In 2 Nephi 9, Jacob writes of the great power of the Resurrection through the Redeemer. And yet in the same chapter we hear of the plan of the evil one because throughout our mortal time there is always going to be an effort that will be opposed to this work and this knowledge. To fulfill the merciful plan of the Great Creator, there needs to be a power of the Resurrection that will restore the bodies and spirits of men one to another.
The prophets Adam, Abinadi, Aaron, Samuel, and Moroni and the resurrected Lord Himself all speak of multiple facets of the Resurrection. Alma, like Paul, speaks of the different states of the soul between death and resurrection. Moroni, the concluding writer of the Book of Mormon, quotes the words of his father: “Ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him” (Moroni 7:41). This seems to be a summary of the plan of salvation.
You can read this entire article here: Resurrection: “A Matter of Surpassing Wonder” by Gary J. Coleman
There are a TON of great Easter videos put out by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and I love each and every one of them. A lot of them are very short, so it's easy to go through them all. I am going to add the ones that I really loved below, but be sure to check The Church's website for more if you need to.
Elder Quentin L. Cook wrote:
“Among the first principles lost in the Apostasy was an understanding of God the Father. It is not surprising, then, that among the first principles revealed in the Restoration was an understanding of God the Father. . . . Eternal life is to know the Father and His holy Son, Jesus Christ. Family relationships . . . extend beyond the grave. We can return to the presence of God, eternally united with our families.”
In the talk I listed above by Gary J. Coleman, he talks about his conversion to the Church and the differences he learned and how he learned them. It was very interesting and informative. We truly do need to understand the nature of God the Father and His Great Plan of Happiness in order to truly understand the importance of Christ's resurrection. My biggest takeaway this week is how lucky I am to have the restored gospel and the testimony of Christ that I find in the Book of Mormon so that I can have the complete truth. I hope you enjoy this week's lesson!