My Brothers And Sisters, And Friends: I Am...

My brothers and sisters, and friends: ¶

I am grateful to our heavenly Father that he has permitted us to meet again together, and specifically that I am privileged to be with you. ¶

I sincerely invoke the strength of your faith and your prayers that what I may say may be helpful to you and to me, help to give us strength and courage and determination to carry on the work of the Lord. ¶

Years ago, I heard of a statement from a non-member banker of the city which has always impressed me. He is reported to have said, and of course this in jest, that Mormons have six senses: the five that ordinary mortals have and a sixth that enables him to believe Mormonism. ¶

I am more grateful than I can express for that sixth sense. All down through the ages there have been great bodies of humanity who could not believe the gospel. Adam, his own family, was invaded. His son offered improper sacrifice and then committed murder. From him was taken away the right to perform sacrifice. He was shut out; he lost his priesthood, which has never been restored to his descendants. But that offshoot so begun grew and prospered in the land, and from that time on down, the pagan world has been a great part of humankind. The gospel we know was preached from the beginning, but men would not hearken to it. The Flood came and destroyed the inhabitants except a few, and after the Flood again unrighteousness came among men, and again a great part of them, the greater part of them, refused to follow the Lord. ¶

This gospel of the Christ is the true way of salvation and exaltation in the kingdom of God. It has been the same gospel from the beginning, not always understood, not always preached, but it has been the plan of life, salvation, and exaltation from the time it was taught to Adam. ¶

Paul said: "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." (Gal. 1:8.) Well, there are, now, wolves in the sheepfold disguised as sheep. Against them and against their teachings we must all be fighting affirmatively for the truths of the gospel. ¶

The Savior said that in the last days there would be those who would come and say, "Lo, here is Christ, or there. . . . ¶

"Behold, he is in the desert; ... he is in the secret chambers; believe it not." ¶

(Matt. 24:23, 26.) You know, I feel that we must not pare that down to mere place. That man and that woman that teach false doctrine as the doctrine of Christ are crying, "Lo, here is Christ," in the sense in which that great statement of the Savior is to be understood. ¶

So I am happy that we Latter-day Saints have a blessing and a heritage that teaches us the truths of this everlasting gospel, which has been with the world from the beginning. We are marvelously blessed and a blessing always carries with it a responsibility. ¶

Having that blessing, the responsibility is ours to live in accordance with the truths which we have. We are blessed that we know that life is purposeful. ¶

We are blessed that we know that before we came we had an existence. We are blessed to know that we came to this earth which was created for the purpose of giving us the experiences of mortality. ¶

We are blessed that we know that if we observe and keep the commandments of the Lord that our salvation and exaltation is assured. That is part of the sixth sense which we have. ¶

We are blessed that we can accept the scriptures and do accept them as the word of God and as a history of his dealings with his people, specifically, the Bible. And we are not prepared, although we believe the Bible only so far as it is translated correctly, we are not prepared to accept these modern translations, which go largely to destroy the Christ and his sacrifice, his resurrection. ¶

We are blessed in that we believe in God, a Personage who has manifested himself in our day, in the great vision of all time, concerning which these children sang so beautifully at the opening of this meeting. We are blessed with that testimony, that the Son was in the image of the Father, and that we also are created in his image. That is part of our blessing. ¶

We are blessed that God not only spoke in ancient times, but that he also speaks today and has spoken, speaks with all of the definiteness and the specifications that he spoke to Israel at Mount Sinai. He does not speak alone in parables as he taught some of the multitudes, you will remember, in Palestine, stating that he taught them thus lest they should understand and believe and he would have to bless them. He speaks definitely, I repeat, that all can understand. ¶

Revelation, continuous revelation, comes from our heavenly Father, and for the Church it comes and comes alone to the President of the Church. ¶

Each individual living properly may have that inspiration coming from him, and if you do not have it, amend your ways, and you will get it. Revelation is not intuition, as some would suggest. ¶

We are blessed in the faith that we have, the living, active faith which not alone inspires us to live as we should, but which gives us power and strength. ¶

Our people have defined faith as the moving cause of all action. Faith is not trust, faith is a living, and I think an intelligent, force, through which God himself performs his great work. ¶

We are blessed that, along with that faith, we have the priesthood, the Holy Priesthood of God; the authority of that priesthood is the authority to act in the name of our heavenly Father and exercise his power to the extent which that authority has bestowed upon us. We are blessed as thousands know, that that priesthood, with the faith exercised through it, heals our sick, gives us peace, gives us comfort, gives us consolation, helps us in our daily work, day by day. We are blessed in that more than I can express, and I think there are few here today who have not seen a manifestation of the exercise of faith through the administrations of the priesthood. ¶

We are blessed, I was going to say, beyond all, in our knowledge, our testimony, our witness that Jesus is the Christ. And what a responsibility that knowledge brings to us, that he came to earth a sacrifice to answer for the Fall of Adam. How that was brought about, the Lord has not revealed. I am not sure that if he revealed it we finite minds could understand it. A part of the trouble of the world today is that men are declining to believe things they cannot understand. Out of the great myriads of things that pertain to existence and to the universe, how few there are that men can understand and yet, why should we deny the universe and its wonders because finite man cannot comprehend. ¶

Jesus, the Savior of the world, born of woman, divine, lived his life through, became a sacrifice, went into the tomb, arose the morning of the third day, a resurrected Being and thereafter moved among his fellow men, select groups, almost as when he was a mortal, ate with them, talked with them, taught them. We are the beneficiaries of that sacrifice, for by his resurrection he brought resurrection to all of us; every man and woman born in mortality on the earth is the beneficiary of that great sacrifice. I repeat, that testimony and that witness brings to each and every of us a great responsibility. You cannot be an honest professor of Christianity if you do not believe and live as Christ marked out. ¶

We are blessed with a knowledge that just as all down through history men and women have gone astray, so we know that the Church set up by the Christ and by the Apostles who followed him, was not long upon the earth. A few centuries and it had become corrupt. It became an apostate church. This is our witness; this is our testimony. That blessing is one of the blessings that goes with our belief in Mormonism. ¶

Since the true Church had disappeared, bringing down in its ruins the priesthood of the Church, it was necessary that there should be a restoration, and in due course of time that restoration came. You know, it has always been a difficult thing for me, wholly ignoring my beliefs and testimonies and witness in the gospel, how men could say that for the first centuries, millenniums, the Lord taught and spoke with his children, guided them and directed them, told them what to do in their times of distress, and then to say that at the end of the Christian era revelation ceased. ¶

Surely, mankind never was in a more distressed and uncertain condition than today, the day in which we live. Shall we say that God has stopped his voice, has closed his ears to our prayers, that he no longer cares for or loves us? ¶

Rationally, the conclusion to that question that he has, would be absurd. So in this day of ours, a little over a hundred years ago, God came, he and his Son, Jesus Christ, and opened up through the Prophet Joseph Smith, this last Dispensation of the Fulness of Times. We Mormons are blessed with a testimony and a witness of that. ¶

We are also blessed with a testimony and witness that not only did the powers and the authority come to Joseph but that he passed them on down, and that today, President McKay, as prophet, seer, and revelator, stands for the Church as the mouthpiece of God, and when he speaks through the inspiration of the Lord, as he will when he speaks to the Church, he proclaims what the Lord would have us know today. ¶

My brothers and sisters, for all of these blessings, I am grateful. I am glad that I have that sixth sense which enables me not only merely to believe, but to have a spiritual knowledge that all that I have said today is true, with countless other principles which there is not time to mention. ¶

I bear you my witness that God lives, that he still speaks, not in vague, mystic terms, but directly. I bear you my witness that Jesus is the Only Begotten of the Father, that he came to the earth, put on mortality and answered the demands of justice by fulfilling his mission, by his giving of his life in the necessary sacrifice to bring us free from the Fall. I bear you my testimony that he is the Son of God, the atoning sacrifice, the first fruits of the resurrection, that we all shall be resurrected, even as was he, and come forth, even as he came forth, in the image in which we live. ¶

I bear you my testimony again that the authority conferred upon Joseph still is in the Church and that the President of the Church, our great leader, President David O. McKay, is the repository at this moment of all the power and authority that was conferred upon Joseph at the beginning of the dispensation, through the ministrations of angels and of the Savior himself. ¶

May God increase this testimony to me, and to you, and having the testimony, will he give us the power and the strength to live in accordance with the principles of the gospel, I humbly pray, in the name of Jesus. Amen. ¶