The Week of Atoning Sacrfice: "For This Purpose Came I Into the World"

Randal S. Chase

Apr 2014 · Plain & Precious Publishing

About this ebook

The Week of Atoning Sacrifice: "For This Purpose Came I Into the World" is a stirring summary of the most important week in the history of our Father?s universe. This is the week when Jesus Christ performed His act of mercy and grace that allows all of us to overcome all things and return to our Heavenly Father. The story is told in a chronological narrative that adds context and meaning to the individual events of that final week. Jesus enters Jerusalem triumphant, with crowds shouting ?Hosanna!? But one week later, those same crowds demanded that the Romans "Crucify Him!" The intervening events show how Jesus ministered to the people, healing and forgiving and teaching. He cleansed the temple, condemned the hypocrisy of Jerusalem's religious leaders, and prophesied the destruction of the city and temple. On the night before His crucifixion, Jesus met with his disciples, taught them, and instituted the ordinance of the sacrament. Then He retreated to the Garden of Gethsemane, where by some process that is beyond our comprehension, He suffered for the sins, sorrows, disappointments, disabilities, pains, and unjust circumstances of every living child of God in every part of our vast universe in every dispensation of time. Jesus is then betrayed, arrested, and illegally tried. He declares himself to the Son of God, endures hateful and humiliating insults, and is condemned to death. He suffers unspeakable torture, concluding with His being nailed to a cross. He died, ministered to the spirits in the Spirit World, then rose from the dead. He taught His disciples for 40 days, then ascended into heaven with a promise that one day He would return in great power. It was, without doubt, the most consequential week of human history. Dr. Randal S. Chase, a veteran CES and Institute instructor, provides insights into these in a relaxed and understandable style. Readers will find themselves gaining insights and understanding about the week of atoning sacrifice that may have eluded them before. The cover features the stunning image of the crosses on Golgatha, by Carl Bloch.

About the author

Randal S. Chase spent his childhood years in Nephi, Utah, where his father was a dry land wheat farmer and a businessman. In 1959 their family moved to Salt Lake City and settled in the Holladay area. He served a full-time mission in the Central British (England Central) Mission from 1968 to 1970. He returned home and married Deborah Johnsen in 1971. They are the parents of six children?two daughters and four sons?and an ever-expanding number of grandchildren.

He was called to serve as a bishop at the age of 27 in the Sandy Crescent South Stake area of the Salt Lake Valley. He served six years in that capacity, and has since served as a high councilor, a stake executive secretary and clerk, and in many other stake and ward callings. Regardless of whatever other callings he has received over the years, one was nearly constant: He has taught Gospel Doctrine classes in every ward he has ever lived in as an adult?a total of 35 years.

Dr. Chase was a well-known media personality on Salt Lake City radio stations in the 1970s. He left on-air broadcasting in 1978 to develop and market a computer-based management, sales, and music programming system to radio and television stations in the United States, Canada, South America, and Australia. After the business was sold in 1984, he supported his family as a media and business consultant in the Salt Lake City area.

Having a great desire to teach young people of college age, he determined in the late 1980s to pursue his doctorate, and received his Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Utah in 1997.ÿ He has taught communication courses at that institution as well as at Salt Lake Community College and Dixie State University for 21 years. He served as Communication Department chair and is currently a full-time professor at Dixie State University in St. George, Utah.

Concurrently with his academic career, Brother Chase has served as a volunteer LDS Institute and Adult Education instructor in the CES system since 1994, both in Salt Lake City and St. George, where he currently teaches a weekly Adult Education class for three stakes in the Washington area. He has also conducted multiple Church History tours and seminars. During these years of gospel teaching, he has developed an extensive library of lesson plans and handouts which are the predecessors to these study guides.

Dr. Chase previously published a thirteen-volume series of study guides on the Book of Mormon, Church History, the Old Testament, and the New Testament. The series, titled Making Precious Things Plain, along with four smaller study guides on Isaiah, Jeremiah, the story of the Nativity, and the final week of our Lord?s atoning sacrifice, are designed to assist teachers and students of the gospel, as well as those who simply want to study on their own. Several of these books are also available in the Spanish language.