Line upon Line

When President Russell M. Nelson died just a few days before, we knew we were in for a rare General Conference, and it was. Seamlessly, gracefully, the Church rolls on in power even when its beloved prophet has passed. The minute the prophet dies, the First Presidency is dissolved, and the Church is under the direction of the Quorum of the Twelve, with its senior apostle, President Dallin H. Oaks, leading and the Spirit of the Lord directing.

The keys and authority are intact.

Arguing, infighting, and jockeying for power is completely foreign in leadership change for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. President Nelson had already made assignments and given instruction for this conference, and his imprint was still upon it. Yet, it is the profound immersion of the Spirit that will continue to guide.

What a time this has been. Elder Quentin L. Cook began his talk by quoting the famous Charles Dickens quote, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” The lethal attack on the Grand Blanc ward in Michigan reminds us quite personally of the unrest, division, and hatred that too often marks our civil dialogue, and we are still weeping for the dead, the wounded, and the traumatized of our fellow Latter-day Saints and all who are terrorized in news that has become all too frequent.

Yet, it is also the best of times. Elder Cook told us just how manifestly the Lord is hastening his work. “In the last 36 months nearly 900,000 converts have joined the Church. These converts constitute approximately 5% of the total church membership…These 900,000 converts in the last 36 months exceed the total membership of the Church at its 110th anniversary in 1940, which was just over 860,000 members.”

Elder Gerrit W. Gong reported that “Every Sabbath, members and friends from 195 birth countries and territories gather in 31,916 Church congregations. We speak 125 languages.”

Seeing the Invitation

This General Conference seemed particularly designed to hasten the work within and throughout the heart and soul of each listener. It was full of invitations to be more and to see more, to come closer to a Lord who was relentlessly pursuing you and offering you your only chance for complete peace. It is as if we could hear the Lord speaking to us, saying, “I am able to make you holy.”

Here are just a few of the invitations:

An Invitation to Fresh Starts

Elder Patrick Kearon said, “Everything He said and did provided a new beginning for each of those He healed, blessed, taught, and relieved of sin. He didn’t withdraw from them, and He certainly won’t withdraw from you. Imagine in this moment, hearing any of these life-giving words from Him:

“’Son, thy sins be forgiven thee’.

“’Damsel, I say unto thee, arise’

“’Be thou clean’.

“’Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more’.

“’Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace’.

“The Savior’s words to these individuals were brief, but with them He painted vast new horizons of forgiveness, healing, restoration, peace, and eternal life. And the glorious news is, He offers the same new beginning to you and to me. All of us can have a new beginning through and because of Jesus Christ. Even you. New beginnings are at the heart of the Father’s plan for His children. This is the church of new beginnings! This is the church of fresh starts!”

An Invitation to be Unafraid of Being Proved

Elder Eyring was struggling as he studied physics and mathematics in college, so much so that learning it seemed beyond him. He said, “I felt weak. As I prayed, I felt the quiet assurance of the Lord. I felt Him say to my mind, “I am proving you, but I am also with you.”

He went on to explain what it meant to be proved. “To prove something is not simply to test it. It is to increase its strength. To prove a piece of steel is to place it under strain. Heat, weight, and pressure are added until its true nature is enhanced and revealed. The steel is not weakened by the proving. In fact, it becomes something that can be trusted, something strong enough to bear greater burdens.

“The Lord proves us in much the same way to strengthen us. That proving does not come in moments of ease or comfort. It comes in moments when we feel stretched beyond what we thought we could bear.”

He continued, I bear witness that these moments are not evidence that the Lord has abandoned you. Rather, they are evidence that He loves you enough to refine and strengthen you. He is making you strong enough to carry the weight of eternal life. If we remain faithful in our service, the Lord will refine us. He will strengthen us. And one day, we will look back and see that those very trials were evidence of His love. We will see that He was shaping us to be able to stand with Him in glory. “

An Invitation to Take Charge of Your Testimony

When Elder Kevin G. Brown was baptized, his friends belittled his choice to become a member and asked him, “Why are you wasting your life away?” But he had attained a witness.

He said, “Jamaica is to me like Palmyra was to Joseph Smith. It is my Sacred Grove. I do not know the exact spot where Joseph knelt to pray in the Sacred Grove, but I know exactly where I was when my Sacred Grove became reality. It happened at Four Grove Road, Mandeville, Jamaica, in my bathroom, at 6 a.m. on a Wednesday- three years after my baptism. This sacred experience happened because two weeks earlier, an inspired sister missionary had invited me to read the Book of Mormon. That experience changed me.”

He said, Brothers and sisters, a testimony is not given for temporary use. This gift from our loving Heavenly Father is meant to be eternal because the giver is eternal. A testimony should not have an expiration date. It should not weaken or diminish because something in my life has changed or something in the world has changed. It should get stronger because, like the servant in the parable of the talents, my personal testimony is a gift to be multiplied—not buried.”

“I plead with you to take charge of your testimony. Work for it. Own it. Care for it. Nurture it so that it will grow. Feed it truth.” To me, the words take charge, work, care, own, nurture, and feed sound like an agent given stewardship for something precious and important.

Elder Brown continued, “I invite you to think about your path to a sure witness of Jesus Christ and His gospel. Take charge of your testimony, use your agency wisely, and acknowledge the giver and all His glorious attributes. I bear witness that the power is within you. No one can choose for you. No one can take this gift away. You can choose to believe.

“I promise that as you do this, your testimony will be a ‘well of living water springing up unto everlasting life.’ It will be an anchor and a motivator and it will sustain you through difficult times. It will enable you to develop spiritual gifts. It will help you in your personal ministry and service. It will be a weapon against Satan and your adversaries. Your testimony will be a joy as you see it replicated in your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren and in those you love and serve. It will be powerful when you share it and use it to testify. If you know, you know. I know that I know. We need more sure witnesses of Jesus Christ and His gospel. Get there! Seek it! It is urgent! This is the final dispensation—the dispensation of the fullness of times.

He continued, “Brothers and sisters, a testimony of Jesus Christ was never meant to be a temporary gift. Nothing about it is temporary. Not the giver, not the gift itself, not the deliverer of the gift, not who the gift is about.”

An Invitation to Discipline

Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf found himself in a flight simulator at Lufthansa, the company where he was once chief pilot. He wondered if his old skills had become rusty with disuse. Then he taught:

“You might spend years acquiring a skill or developing a talent. You might work so hard that it becomes second nature to you. But if you think that means you can stop practicing and studying, you’ll gradually lose the knowledge and abilities you once acquired at great cost.

“This applies to skills like learning a language, playing a musical instrument, and flying an airliner. It also applies to becoming a disciple of Christ.

“Simply put, discipleship takes self-discipline. It is not a casual endeavor, and it doesn’t happen by accident. Faith in Jesus Christ is a gift, but receiving it is a conscious choice that requires a commitment of all our “might, mind, and strength.” It is a practice of every day. Every hour. It takes constant learning and determined commitment. Our faith, our loyalty to the Savior, becomes stronger as it is tested against the opposition we face here in mortality.

“It is because we keep nourishing it, we keep actively applying it, and we never give up.

“On the other hand, if we fail to use faith and its convincing power, we become less sure of things we once held sacred—less confident of things we once knew were true. Temptations that would never have enticed us begin to look less appalling and more appealing. The fire of yesterday’s testimony can warm us for only so long. It needs constant nourishment to keep burning brightly.”

An Invitation to Look to the Lord in Times of Trouble

Elder D. Todd Christofferson reminded us of the horrible bus accident in Lesotho in June that killed 6 young women, 2 of their leaders, and the branch president and his wife.  Others were deeply injured, some with severe burns.

Elder Christofferson said, “There seems to be no end to the different sources people look to for meaning, happiness, and help. Most are “looking beyond the mark.” But we need not be “children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine [or fashion]”

“In looking to God, we can find peace in difficulty, and our faith can continue to grow even in times of doubt and spiritual challenge. We can receive strength in the face of opposition and isolation. We can reconcile the ideal with present reality.

“There truly is no other way than what God Himself has ordained, ‘Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.’ Looking to God means that He is not just one of our priorities; it means rather that He is our one highest priority.

I call to mind again that awful crash in Lesotho last June. From her hospital bed, one of the Young Women leaders who survived, who did not believe in God before joining the Church, said that her purpose is now to discover why her life was spared. “Constantly serving God is how I will come to an answer, if I come to an answer,” she stated. “I used to think that I loved God, but now I really, really, really, really love Him. Now He is the number one priority in my life.”

An Invitation to be Peacemakers

Elder Gary E. Stevenson continued the call given to us by President Russell M. Nelson.

“Peacemakers Needed.  Disagree without being disagreeable.  Replace contention and pride with forgiveness and love. Build bridges of cooperation and understanding, not walls of prejudice or segregation. And the same promise: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.’

“The hearts of today’s rising generation are filled with a testimony of Jesus Christ and a hope for the future. Yet they too ask, ‘Can I truly become a peacemaker when the world is in commotion, my heart is filled with fear, and peace seems so far away?’

“The resounding response is once again yes! We embrace the words of the Savior: ‘Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you…Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.’ Peacemaking still begins in the most basic place—in our hearts. Then in homes and families. As we practice there, peacemaking will spread into our neighborhoods and communities.

An Invitation to Study the Book of Mormon

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland reminded us that one of Jesus’ miracles was healing a blind man by first requesting him to put a mixture of mud and spit on his eyes. He observed:

A “truth that is evident here are the instruments the Creator of Heaven and Earth used to provide this miracle: spit and a handful of dirt! These very unlikely ingredients declare that God can bless us by whatever method He chooses. Like Naaman resisting the River Jordan or the children of Israel refusing to look at the serpent on the staff, how easy it is for us to dismiss the source of our redemption because the instruments pointing to it seem embarrassingly plain.

But we remember from the Book of Mormon that some things are both plain—and precious—and that prior to Jesus’s birth it would be prophesied that “he [would have] no form nor comeliness; and when we [should] see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.” How often God has sent His majestic message through a newly called and very anxious Relief Society president, or an unlearned boy on a New York farm, or a baby lying in a manger. So what if the answers to our prayers come in plain or convoluted ways? Are we willing to persevere in trying to live Christ’s gospel no matter how much spit and clay it takes? It may not always be clear to us what is being done or why, and, from time to time, we will all feel a little like the senior sister who said, “Lord, how about a blessing that isn’t in disguise?”

My first sight-giving, life-giving encounter with real evidence of truth did not come with anointing clay or the Pool of Siloam. No, the instrument of truth that brought my healing from the Lord came as pages in a book, yes, the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ! The claims about this book have been attacked and dismissed by some unbelievers, the anger often matching the vitriol of those who told the healed man he could not possibly have experienced what he knew he had experienced.

It has been hurled at me that the means by which this book came to be were impractical, unbelievable, embarrassing, even unholy. That is harsh language from one who presumes to know the means by which the book came to be, inasmuch as the only description given about those means is that it was translated “by the gift and power of . . . God.”

In any case, the impact in my life of the Book of Mormon is no less miraculous than was the application of spit and dirt placed on the blind man’s eyes. It has been, for me, a rod of safety for my soul, a transcendent and penetrating light of revelation, an illumination on the path when mists of darkness come as surely they have and as surely they will.

An Invitation to Stand by and Live the Proclamation on the Family

The concluding speaker of this conference was President Dallin H. Oaks, acting in his role as President of the Quorum of the Twelve. He spoke with a great deal of tenderness on The Family: A Proclamation to the World, becoming personal and vulnerable when he spoke of losing his Dad.

“I will never forget the promise of my maternal grandfather, when we children were living on his farm near Payson, Utah. He gave me the tragic news that my father had died in faraway Denver, Colorado. I ran into the bedroom and knelt beside the bed, crying my heart out. Grandpa followed me and went to his knees beside me and said, ‘I will be your father.’

Elder Oaks stands with Elder Nelson, who said of the Proclamation, that it is “pivotal to God’s plan . . . . In fact, a purpose of the plan is to exalt the family.”

President Oaks reminds us of all the ways that we are a family-centered church: “We can truly say that the gospel plan was first taught to us in the council of an eternal family, it is implemented through our mortal families, and its intended destiny is to exalt the children of God in eternal families.

“Despite that doctrinal context, there is opposition. In the United States, we are suffering from a deterioration in marriage and childbearing. For nearly a hundred years, the proportion of households headed by married couples has declined, and so has the birthrate. The marriages and birthrates of our Church members are much more positive, but they have also declined significantly. It is vital that Latter-day Saints do not lose their understanding of the purpose of marriage and the value of children. That is the future for which we strive.”

He reminded us. “The national declines in marriage and childbearing are understandable for historic reasons, but Latter-day Saint values and practices should improve—not follow—those trends.”

President Oaks reminded us, “The family circle is the ideal place to demonstrate and learn eternal values such as the importance of marriage and children, the purpose of life, and the true source of joy. It is also the best place to learn other essential lessons of life, such as kindness, forgiveness, self-control, and the value of education and honest work.”