PROVO, Utah -- All people are captives who may be delivered from their bonds by Jesus Christ, Elder Bruce D. Porter of the Quorum of Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Tuesday during a Brigham Young University devotional.

Elder Porter illustrated his Christmas message with the story of a European convert to the church who sobbed with surprise and relief when missionaries taught him about the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

"Are you trying to say that Christ would forgive me of my sins?" the man asked the missionaries. "I have lived a terrible life. I am haunted by the memory of my sins. I would do anything to be freed of the guilt I feel."



"All of his pride," Elder Porter said, "had only been a facade that hid a soul captive to sin and guilt."

All people, he added, are captives of mortal bodies and sin, and to some degree bad habits, indulgences and addictions, mistakes, worldly distractions and pride.

"The Lord Jesus Christ, the great Immanuel, has come to set us free," Elder Porter said, adding, "He ... was born to be the friend of the lowly and the hope of the meek."

The LDS belief that Christ was born not on Dec. 25 but on April 6, places his birth in the midst of that year's Passover, the celebration of the salvation brought to the firstborn of Israelite families that sacrificed a lamb and smeared its blood on the wooden doorposts of their dwellings.

"Thirty-three years after his Passover birth," Elder Porter said, "Christ's blood would be smeared on the wooden posts of a cross to save his people from the destroying angels of death and sin."

Elder Porter suggested to the BYU students, faculty and staff in the Marriott Center that the Christmas season would be a good time to pray for Christ "to be with us in our daily walk and to free us from our own bondages, our own personal forms of captivity, be they great or small."

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