Description

Upon This Rock

In our deluged information age; what will you learn today, tomorrow, this next week? By this story, I hope to convey what knowledge is more important to you to know than anything else on this out-of-kilter planet. 

Jesus came into the coasts of Caeserea Phillippi to pray. Along the way, He asked His disciples. “Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?”

The disciples responded with what the rumors were. “Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.”

“But whom say ye that I am,” he asked?

In one way or another, that question will be put to all of us and our entire eternity rests on how we answer it. Will we speak of what we may have read or heard on social media, or even in the scriptures, or will we speak the conviction of Peter.

“Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God!”

This knowledge Peter knew, independent of every other man or means. It was personal revelation that Jesus is the Messiah, given of the Holy Ghost. A precious gift. 

“Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven.”

Jesus wouldn’t have asked if He didn’t know the answer that would come, and when it came, Jesus drew significant attention to that answer. He said,

“And I say also unto thee That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church; and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.”

A moment before He called him Simon, now He calls him Peter “which is by interpretation a seer or stone.” And declares that He will build His Church on the bedrock foundation of revelation—and not just any revelation—the revelation that Peter had had, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of Almighty God, and our Savior and Redeemer. When we know that by the fire of the Holy Ghost, hell cannot claim us. It can hurt us, wound us, but it cannot overcome us. 

Jesus is the bedrock of salvation and exaltation and Peter was the man of Rock for his time—the Savior’s Prophet Seer, and Revelator and who would with the Keys of the Kingdom and the help of his brethren bring all men to know what he knew. Today, the man of rock for our time is Russell M. Nelson. His mission is exactly the same. 

Of all things in this world to know—know who Jesus is for yourself. 

Sources:

Matthew 16:13-20