“Let Us Rise Up and Build” – Scriptures and Quotes

Lesson 47: “Let Us Rise Up and Build” – Scriptures and Quotes

Reading 1 – Esther 3:2-5

Reading 2 – Elder Neal A. Maxwell has said: Premortality is not a relaxing doctrine. For each of us, there are choices to be made, incessant and difficult chores to be done, ironies and adversities to be experienced, time to be well spent, talents and gifts to be well employed. Just because we were chosen “there and then,” surely does not mean we can be indifferent “here and now.” Whether foreordination for men, or foredesignation for women, those called and prepared must also prove “chosen, and faithful.” (See Rev. 17:14; D&C 121:34-36). In fact, adequacy in the first estate may merely have ensured a stern, second estate with more duties and no immunities! Additional tutoring and suffering appears to be the pattern for the Lord’s most apt pupils. (See Mosiah 3:19; 1 Pet. 4:19). Our existence, therefore, is a continuum matched by God’s stretching curriculum (“Premortality, a Glorious Reality,” Ensign, Nov. 1985, 16).

Esther 4:16

Reading 3: Esther 7:3-6

Reading 4 – President George Albert Smith wrote: When Cyrus was about fifty years of age, after subduing many peoples and small nations, he appeared with his army before Babylon, the then greatest of all cities, with its impregnable walls, 91 meters high, and its mighty gates of iron and brass. Instead of attacking the walls he diverted the Euphrates River that flowed through the city and used the channel under the walls by which to enter Babylon. (George Albert Smith, "Origin of Man and Prophecy Fulfilled", Liahona, Jan. 1980, 39)

Reading 5 – Isaiah 44:28, 45:1-5

Ezra 1:1-3

Reading 6: Ezra 4:1-2

Ezra 4:3

Reading 7 - Ezra 4:4-5

Reading 8 - Brother Andrew Skinner has written: "The phrase used in Ezra 4:4, which says the Samaritans 'weakened the hands' of Judah, reflects a Hebrew idiom which means to cause someone to lose heart and become discouraged. . . . . Thus, in their spiritually and emotionally weak state, the Jews, having little resolve, allowed harassment from the Samaritans to hinder their work on the new temple for several years." (Studies In Scripture, 4:342-343)

Brigham Young said “We never begin to build a temple without the bells of hell beginning to ring” (JD vol. 8, 355, 356).
Reading 9 – Ezra 5:1-2

Haggai 1:3-8

Nehemiah 2:17-18

Nehemiah 6:3

Reading 10 – Nehemiah 8:2-3

Nehemiah 8:6,9

Nehemiah 10:29