THE
TEAM
and
MOTIVATIONAL
/ INSPIRATIONAL | - TEAM: (T)ogether, (E)veryone (A)chieves (M)ore
- A Power Decision: A decision which will set a course of action from which you do not allow yourself to retreat under any circumstances whatsoever.
- Dreams are not practical, they are inspirational!
- The non-dreamer lives a life that is just a series of sequences of events, but the dreamer lives a life that is filled with stories of dreams dreamed, and fulfilled!
-- Curtis Ledbetter - God honors faith and commitment -- no act of faith will go unblessed!
-- Jeff Harris - Listen... I know it isn't easy, Rodney. But a dream that you don't fight for can haunt you for the rest of your life. ... It's up to you.
-- Herb Copperbottom, Robots - Steadiness and toil will serve you better than brilliance.
- Jimmy: QUITTING; you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Baseball's what gets inside you; it's what lights you up -- you can't deny that!
Dottie: It just got too hard!
Jimmy: It supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great!
-- From A League of Their Own - You don't have to be sick in order to get better.
- To build your business, you are either plugged-in or plugged-up!
- Schedule your priorities, don't prioritize your schedule.
- Procrastination is the assassination of motivation!
- When it gets ot the point that this business feels like work, you've lost sight of your"why."
- First we make our habits; then our habits make us.
- You can make excuses or you can make money in this business, but you can't do both.
- You can chase a dream -or- you can chase a paycheck -- your choice.
- ANything worthwhile is hard to get!
- Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anone can start from now and make a brand new end.
- If the 20th century taught us anything, it is to be caution about the word impossible!
-- Charles Platt - Be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them.
-- W. Clement Stone - Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetula serenity.
-- Joseph Addison - An optimist is the human personification of spring.
-- Susan J. Bissonette - Life is 10-percent what you make it and 90-percent how you take it.
-- Irving Berlin - Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which one has overcome while trying to succeed.
-- Booker T. Washington - We live in a world of connect-the-dots; it is up to us to draw the lines.
- People don't follow you for what you have done, they follow you for what you are doing.
-- Dave Hampton - Leadership is character in motion.
- You make decisions based on emotion...
and justify them using logic. - I succeeded because:
I listened to the ones who told me I could.
I listened to the ones who believed in me!
-- Ronald Reagan - Excuse me????
When a person, be they close relative, friend, acquaintance, or what-have-you, tried to steal your dream, why do we excuse them by saying things like "they mean well"? No matter how they act, they do not mean well! These people are sealing the most valuable asset you own: your dreams and your self-esteem. There is no excuse for this.
Do not let these people, not matter who they are or how they act, seal this most precious possession of yours! - So you have the enthusiasm for the challenge? Notice I didn't ask you: Do you have the enthusiasm to celebrate victory? We all have the enthusiasm to celebrate our victory. Enthusiasm, not for the victory, but for the challenge that we have to face when things go wrong, and they sometimes will, when challenges happen, when things just don't go perfectly -- do you have the enthusiasm for the challenge? You must have enthusiasm for the celebration of the challenges that you must face on a day-to-day basis; it will not matter what happens.
-- Jody Victor - May the challenges that come you way not be your tombstone, but stepping stones.
-- Jody Victor
| RELIGIOUS
These are mostly from LDS authors. |
|---|
Quotes by the Prophet Joseph Smith- Again it may be asked, how it was that [the false christian churches] could speak in tongues if they were of the devil. We would answer that they could be made to speak in another tongue, as well as their own, as they were under the control of that spirit, and the devil can tempt the Hottentot, the Turk, the Jew, or any other nation; and if these men were under the influence of his spirit, they of course could speak Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Italian, Dutch, or any other language that the devil knew.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - All Spirit Is Matter:
There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes. We cannot see it, but when our bodies are purified, we shall see that it is all matter.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - And I continued and said, no man is capable of judging a matter, in council, unless his own heart is pure; and that we frequently are so filled with prejudice, or have a beam in our own eye, that we are not capable of passing right decisions.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Apostates Persecutions:
From apostates the faithful have received the severest persecutions. Judas was rebuked and immediately betrayed his Lord into the hands of His enemies, because Satan entered into him. There is a superior intelligence bestowed upon such as obey the Gospel with full purpose of heart, which, if sinned against, the apostate is left naked and destitute of the Spirit of God, and he is, in truth, nigh unto cursing, and his end is to be burned. When once that light which was in them is taken from them, they become as much darkened as they were previously enlightened, and then, no marvel, if all their power should be enlisted against the truth, and they, Judas like, seek the destruction of those who were their greatest benefactors. What nearer friend on earth, or in heaven, had Judas than the Savior? And his first object was to destroy Him. Who, among all the Saints in these last days can consider himself as good as our Lord? Who is as perfect? Who is as pure? Who is as holy as He was? Are they to be found? He never transgressed or broke a commandment or law of heaven -- no deceit was in His mouth, neither was guile found in His heart. And yet one that ate with Him who had often drunk of the same cup, was the first to lift up his heel against Him. Where is one like Christ? He cannot be found on earth. Then why should His followers complain, if from those whom they once called brethren, and considered as standing in the nearest relation in the everlasting covenant they should receive persecution? From what source emanated the principle which has ever been manifest by apostates from the true Church to persecute with double diligence, and seek with double perseverance, to destroy those whom they once professed to love, with whom they once communed, and with whom they once covenanted to strive with every power in righteousness to obtain the rest of God? Perhaps our brethren will say the same that caused Satan to seek to overthrow the kingdom of God, because he himself was evil, and God's kingdom is holy.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - As Man Approaches God He Is Enlightened:
We consider that God has created man with a mind capable of instruction, and a faculty which may be enlarged in proportion to the heed and diligence given to the light communicated from heaven to the intellect; and that the nearer man approaches perfection, the clearer are his views, and the greater his enjoyments, till he has overcome the evils of his life and lost every desire for sin; and like the ancients, arrives at that point of faith where he is wrapped in the power and glory of his Maker and is caught up to dwell with Him. But we consider that this is a station to which no man ever arrived in a moment: he must have been instructed in the government and laws of that kingdom by proper degrees, until his mind is capable in some measure of comprehending the propriety, justice, equality, and consistency of the same.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Avoiding Disputes:
Let the Elders be exceedingly careful about unnecessarily disturbing and harrowing up the feelings of the people. Remember that your business is to preach the Gospel in all humility and meekness, and warn sinners to repent and come to Christ.
Avoid contentions and vain disputes with men of corrupt minds, who do not desire to know the truth. Remember that "it is a day of warning, and not a day of many words." If they receive not your testimony in one place, flee to another, remembering to cast no reflections, nor throw out any bitter sayings. If you do your duty, it will be just as well with you, as though all men embraced the Gospel.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Do not contend with outers on account of their faith, or systems of religion, but pursue a steady course. This I delivered by way of commandment; and all who observe it not, will pull down persecution upon their heads, while those who do, shall always be filled with the Holy Ghost; this I pronounced as a prophecy, and sealed with hosanna and amen. (HC 2:431)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - How to Escape Judgments:
And now what remains to be done, under circumstances like these? I will proceed to tell you what the Lord requires of all people, high and low, rich and poor, male and female, ministers and people, professors of religion and non-professors, in order that they may enjoy the Holy Spirit of God to a fullness, and escape the judgments of God, which are almost ready to burst upon the nations of the earth. Repent of all your sins, and be baptized in water for the remission of them, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and receive the ordinance of the laying on of the hands of him who is ordained and sealed unto this power, that ye may receive the Holy Spirit of God; and this is according to the Holy Scriptures, and the Book of Mormon; and the only way that man can enter into the celestial kingdom. These are the requirements of the new covenant, or first principles of the Gospel of Christ: then "Add to your faith, virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, temperance; and to temperance, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity [or love]; for if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful, in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - I have met hundreds of men who have said: 'If it were not for Joseph Smith I could accept your religion.' Any man who does not believe in Joseph Smith as a prophet of the true and the living God has no right to be in this Church. That revelation to Joseph Smith is the foundation stone. If Joseph Smith did not have that interview with God and Jesus Christ, the whole Mormon fabric is a failure and a fraud. It is not worth anything on earth. But God did come, God did introduce His Son; God did inspire that man to organize the Church of Jesus Christ, and all the opposition of the world is not able to withstand the truth. It is flourishing; it is growing, and it will grow more.
-- Heber J. Grant - I see no faults in the church. Let me be resurrected with the saints, whether to heaven or hell or any other good place -- good society. What do we care, if the society is good? I don't care what a character is if he is my friend -- a friend and a true friend. And I will be a friend to him. Friendship is the grand fundamental principle of Mormonism, to civilize the world -- pour forth love. ... I do not swell upon your faults, you shall not upon mine. ... Get all the good in the world, come out a pure Mormon.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - If I were to voice what is in my heart it would seem egotistical to some, but I say to all men everywhere, examine the teachings of the gospel of our Lord as revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith, search them prayerfully, and you shall find the panacea for the ills of this world, and it will be discovered in no other way.
-- George Albert Smith, Conference Reports, October 1931, p. 121 - In Bonds for the Testimony of Jesus:
Know assuredly, dear brethren, that it is for the testimony of Jesus that we are in bonds and in prison. But we say unto you, that we consider that our condition is better (notwithstanding our sufferings) than that of those who have persecuted us, and smitten us, and borne false witness against us; and we most assuredly believe that those who do bear false witness against us, do seem to have a great triumph over us for the present. But we want you to remember Haman and Mordecai: you know that Haman could not be satisfied so long as he saw Mordecai at the king's gate, and he sought the life of Mordecai and the destruction of the people of the Jews. But the Lord so ordered it, that Haman was hanged upon his own gallows.
So shall it come to pass with poor Haman in the last days, and those who have sought by unbelief and wickedness and by the principle of mobocracy to destroy us and the people of God, by killing and scattering them abroad, and willfully and maliciously delivering us into the hands of murderers, desiring us to be put to death, thereby having us dragged about in chains and cast into prison. And for what cause? It is because we were honest men, and were determined to defend the lives of the Saints at the expense of our own. I say unto you, that those who have thus vilely treated us, like Haman, shall be hanged upon their own gallows; or, in other words, shall fall into their own gin, and snare, and ditch and trap, which they have prepared for us, and shall go backwards and stumble and fall, and their name shall be blotted out, and God shall reward them according to all their abominations.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Man Is His Own Tormentor and Condemner:
A man is his own tormentor and his own condemner. Hence the saying, They shall go into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. The torment of disappointment in the mind of man is as exquisite as a lake burning with fire and brimstone. I say, so is the torment of man.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Many Called But Few Chosen:
Behold, there are many called, but few are chosen. And why are they not chosen? Because their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world, and aspire to the honors of men, that they do not learn this one lesson--that the rights of the Priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness. That they may be conferred upon us, it is true; but when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control, or dominion, or compulsion, upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the Priesthood, or the authority of that man. Behold! ere he is aware, he is left unto himself, to kick against the pricks; to persecute the Saints, and to fight against God.
We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. Hence many are called, but few are chosen.
No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the Priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness, and meekness, and by love unfeigned; by kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile, reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost, and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy; that he may know that thy faithfulness is stronger than the cords of death; let thy bowels also be full of charity towards all men, and to the household of faith, and let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly, then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God, and the doctrine of the Priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews from heaven. The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth, and thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Nothing is so much calculated to lead people to forsake sin as to take them by the hand, and watch over them with tenderness. When persons manifest the least kindness and love to me, O what power it has over my mind, while the opposite course has a tendency to harrow up all the harsh feelings and depress the human mind.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Our Acts Are Recorded:
Our acts are recorded, and at a future day they will be laid before us, and if we should fail to judge right and injure our fellow-beings, they may there, perhaps, condemn us; there they are of great consequence, and to me the consequence appears to be of force, beyond anything which I am able to express. Ask yourselves, brethren, how much you have exercised yourselves in prayer since you heard of this council; and if you are now prepared to sit in council upon the soul of your brother.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Questions Answered:
- Do you believe the Bible?
If we do, we are the only people under heaven that does, for there are none of the religious sects of the day that do. - Wherein do you differ from other sects?
In that we believe the Bible, and all other sects profess to believe their interpretations of the Bible, and their creeds.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Renegade "Mormon" dissenters are running through the world and spreading various foul and libelous reports against us, thinking thereby to gain the friendship of the world, because they know that we are not of the world, and that the world hates us; therefore they [the world] make a tool of these fellows [the dissenters]; and by them try to do all the injury they can, and after that they hate them worse than they do us, because they find them to be base traitors and sycophants.
Such characters God hates; we cannot love them. The world hates them, and we sometimes think that the devil ought to be ashamed of them.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Salvation Comes Through Knowledge:
A man is saved no faster than he gets knowledge, for if he does not get knowledge, he will be brought into captivity by some evil power in the other world, as evil spirits will have more knowledge, and consequently more power than many men who are on the earth. Hence it needs revelation to assist us and give us knowledge of the things of God.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has also had its false spirits; and as it is made up of all those different sects professing every variety of opinion, and having been under the influence of so many kinds of spirits, it is not to be wondered at if there should be found among us false spirits.
Soon after the Gospel was established in Kirtland, and during the absence of the authorities of the Church, many false spirits were introduced, many strange visions were seen, and wild, enthusiastic notions were entertained; men ran out of doors under the influence of this spirit, and some of them got upon the stumps of trees and shouted, and all kinds of extravagances were entered into by them; one man pursued a ball that he said he saw flying in the air, until he came to a precipice, when he jumped into the top of a tree, which saved his life; and many ridiculous things were entered into, calculated to bring disgrace upon the Church of God, to cause the Spirit of God to be withdrawn, and to uproot and destroy those glorious principles which had been developed for the salvation of the human family. But when the authorities returned, the spirit was made manifest, those members that were exercised with it were tried for their fellowship, and those that would not repent and forsake it were cut off.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The Lord raised up Joseph Smith specially to do the work that he performed. He was ordained and appointed before he was born to come upon the stage of action in this age of God's mercy to man, through the loins of ancient Joseph, who was a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to lay the foundation of this great and glorious dispensation-a dispensation that will be marked and distinguished in the annals of human history for its grand and mighty, and also its serious and awful events.
-- Wilford Woodruff, Journal of Discourses, 24:51, January 27, 1883 - The Meaning of Salvation:
Salvation means a man's being placed beyond the power of all his enemies.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The nearer we get to our Heavenly Father, the more we are disposed to look with compassion on perishing souls; we feel that we want to take them upon our shoulders, and cast their sins behind our backs. If you would have God have mercy on your, have mercy on one another.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The Prophet's Calling:
You don't know me; you never knew my heart. No man knows my history. I cannot tell it: I shall never undertake it. I don't blame any one for not believing my history. If I had not experienced what I have, I would not have believed it myself. I never did harm any man since I was born in the world. My voice is always for peace. I cannot lie down until all my work is finished. I never think any evil, nor do anything to the harm of my fellow-man. When I am called by the trump of the archangel and weighed in the balance, you will all know me then.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - God, man, and angels will not condemn those that resist everything that is evil, and devils cannot; as well might the devil seek to dethrone Jehovah, as overthrow an innocent soul that resists everything which is evil. . .
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The devil has great power to deceive; he will so transform things as to make one gape at those who are doing the will of God.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The contention in heaven was -- Jesus said there would be certain souls that would not be saved; and the devil said he would save them all, and laid his plans before the grand council, who gave their vote in favor of Jesus Christ. So the devil rose up in rebellion against God, and was cast down, with all who put up their heads for him.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - When a man begins to be an enemy to this work, he hunts me, he seeks to kill me, and never ceases to thirst for my blood. He gets the spirit of the devil -- the same spirit that they had who crucified the Lord of Life -- the same spirit that sins against the Holy Ghost. You cannot save such persons; you cannot bring them to repentance; they make open war, like the devil, and awful is the consequence.
I advise all of you to be careful what you do, or you may by-and-by find out that you have been deceived. Stay yourselves; do not give way; don't make any hasty moves, you may be saved. If a spirit of bitterness is in you, don't be in haste. You may say, that man is a sinner. Well, if he repents, he shall be forgiven. Be cautions: await. When you find a spirit that wants bloodshed, -- murder, the same is not of God, but is of the devil.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - In conclusion we would say, brethren and sisters, be faithful, be diligent, contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the Saints; let every man, woman and child realize the importance of the work, and act as if success depended on his individual exertion alone; let all feel an interest in it.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The disappointment of hopes and expectations at the resurrection would be indescribably dreadful [for those who have ignored or rejected revealed truths].
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - It is in vain to try to hide a bad spirit from the eyes of them who are spiritual, for it will show itself in speaking and in writing, as well as in all our other conduct. It is also needless to make great pretensions when the heart is not right; the Lord will expose it to the view of His faithful Saints.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - It is evident from the Apostles' writings, that many false spirits existed in their day, and had "gone forth into the world," and that it needed intelligence which God alone could impart to detect false spirits, and to prove what spirits were of God. The world in general have been grossly ignorant in regard to this one thing, and why should they be otherwise -- "for no man knows the things of God, but by the Spirit of God."
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - I did not like the old man (Elder Pelatia Brown) being called up for erring in doctrine. It looks to much like [the protestants], and not like the Latter-day Saints. [Protestants] have creeds which a man must believe or be asked out of their church. I want the liberty of thinking and believing as I please. It feels good not to be trammeled. It does not prove that a man is not a good man because he errs in doctrine.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - We believe that we have a right to revelations, visions, and dreams from God, our heavenly Father; and light and intelligence, through the gift of the Holy Ghost, in the name of Jesus Christ, on all subjects pertaining to our spiritual welfare; if it so be that we keep his commandments, so as to render ourselves worthy of his sight.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Highest Order of Priesthood Revealed:
In this council was instituted the ancient order of things for the first time in these last days. And the communications I made to this council were of things spiritual, and to be received only by the spiritual minded: and there was nothing made known to these men but what will be made known to all the Saints of the last days, so soon as they are prepared to receive, and a proper place is prepared to communicate them, even to the weakest of the Saints; therefore let the Saints be diligent in building the Temple, and all houses which they have been, or shall hereafter be, commanded of God to build; and wait their time with patience in all meekness, faith, perseverance unto the end, knowing assuredly that all these things referred to in this council are always governed by the principle of revelation. (May 4, 1842.) DHC 5:1-2.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Elijah had to flee his country, for they [his country and kindred] sought his life, -- and he was fed by ravens. ... Did these afflictions come upon these prophets of the Lord on account of transgression? No! It was the iron hand of persecution -- like the chains of Missouri! And mark -- when these old prophets suffered, the vengeance of God, in due time, followed and left the wicked opposers of the Lord's anointed like Sodom and Gomorrah; like the Egyptians; like Jezebel, who was eaten by dogs; and like all Israel, which were led away captive, till the Lord had spent his fury upon them -- even to this day.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Salvation is nothing more or less than to triumph over all our enemies.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - If we would secure and cultivate the love of others, we must love others, even our enemies as well as friends.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The Lord once told me that what I asked for I should have. I have been afraid to ask God to kill my enemies, lest some of them should, peradventure, repent.
I asked a short time since for the Lord to deliver me out of the hands of the Governor of Missouri, and if it needs must be to accomplish it, to take him away; and the next news that came pouring down from there was, that Governor Reynolds had shot himself. And I would now say, Beware, O earth, how you fight against the Saints of God and shed innocent blood; for in the day so Elijah, his enemies came upon him, and fire was called down from heaven and destroyed them.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Eternal life is to know the only true God and his Son Jesus, without which there is no salvation.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - It is one thing to see the kingdom of God, and another thing to enter into it. We must have a change of heart to see the kingdom of God, and subscribe the articles of adoption to enter therein.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - If you wish to go where God is, you must be like God, or possess the principles which God possesses, for if we are not drawing towards God in principle, we are going from Him and drawing towards the devil.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Truth and error, good and evil cannot be reconciled.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Reading the experiences of others, or the revelation given to them, can never give us a comprehensive view of our condition and true relation to God. Knowledge of these things can only be obtained by experience through ordinances of God set forth for that purpose.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - God brings low before He exalts.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - God will gather out His Saints from the Gentiles, and then comes desolation and destruction, and none can escape except the pure in heart who are gathered.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - God exalts the humble, and debases the haughty.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Therefore let you heart be comforted; live in strict obedience to the commandments of God, and walk humbly before Him, and He will exalt thee in His own due time.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Time and experience will teach us more and more how easily falsehood gains credence with mankind in general, rather than the truth.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - "Try the spirits," but what by? Are we to try them by the creeds of men? What preposterous folly -- what sheer ignorance -- what madness! Try the motions and actions of an eternal being (for I contend that all spirits are such) by a thing that was conceived in ignorance, and brought forth in folly -- a cobweb of yesterday! Angels would hide their faces, and devils would be ashamed and insulted, and would say, "Paul we know, and Jesus we know, but who are ye?" Let each man of society make a creed and try evil spirits by it, and the devil would shake his sides; it is all that he would ask -- all that he would desire. Yet many of them do this, and hence "many spirits are abroad in the world."
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Joseph then related some of his own experience, in many contests he had had with the evil one, and said: "The nearer a person approaches the Lord, a greater power will be manifested by the adversary to prevent the accomplishment of His purposes.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - It is the duty of all men to protect their lives and the lives of the household, whenever necessity requires.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - When you go home, never give a cross or unkind word to your husbands, but let kindness, charity and love crown your works henceforward.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - If the Saints are sick, or have sickness in their families, and the elders so not prevail, every family should get power by fasting and prayer and anointing with oil, and continue so to do. Their sick shall be healed. This also is the voice of the Spirit.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The man who willeth to do well, we should extol his virtues, and speak not of his faults behind his back.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - We have nothing to fear if we are faithful.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - We are full of selfishness; the devil flatters us that we are very righteous, when we are feeding on the faults of others.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - I do not dwell upon your faults, and you shall not upon mine. Charity, which is love, covereth a multitude of sins, and I have often covered up all the faults among you; but the prettiest thing is to have no faults at all. We should cultivate a meek, quiet, and peaceable spirit.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - I have sometimes spoken too harshly from the impulse of the moment, and inasmuch as I have wounded your feelings, brethren, I ask your forgiveness, for I love you and will hold you up with all my heart in all righteousness, before the Lord, and before all men. ... I will now covenant with you before God, that I will not listen to or credit any derogatory report against any of you, nor condemn you upon any testimony beneath the heavens, short of that testimony which is infallible, until I can see you face to face, and know of a surety; and I do place unremitted confidence in your word, for I believe you to be men of truth. And I ask the same of you, when I tell you anything, that you place equal confidence in my word, for I will not tell you I know anything that I do not know.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He dies, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it. But in connection with these, we believe in the gift of the Holy Ghost, the power of faith, the enjoyment of the spiritual gifts according to the will of God, the restoration of the house of Israel, and the final triumph of truth.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Flattery also is a deadly poison.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - None but fools will trifle with the souls of men.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Thus you see, my dear brother, the willingness of our Heavenly Father to forgive sins, and restore to favor all those who are willing to humble themselves before Him, and confess their sins, and forsake them, and return to Him with full purpose of heart, acting no hypocrisy, to serve Him to the end.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Ever keep in exercise the principle of mercy, and be ready to forgive our brother on the first intimations of repentance, and asking forgiveness; and should we even forgive our brother, or even our enemy, before he repent or ask forgiveness, our Heavenly Father would be equally as merciful unto us.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - One of the most pleasing scenes that can occur on earth, when a sin is committed by one person against another, is, to forgive that sin; and then according to the sublime and perfect pattern of the Savior, pray to our Father in Heaven to forgive him also.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - It is one of the first principles of my life, and one that I have cultivated from my childhood, having been taught it by my father, to allow every one the liberty of conscience.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The names of the faithful are what I wish to record in this place. These I have met in prosperity, and they were my friends; and I now meet them in adversity, and they are still my warmer friends. These love the God that I serve; they love the truths that I promulgate; they love those virtuous, and those holy doctrines that I cherish in my bosom with the warmest feelings of my heart, and with that zeal which cannot be denied. I love friendship and truth; I love virtue and law.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - When you support my friends, you support me.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - If my life is of no value to my friends it is of none to myself.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - I don't care what a man's character is; if he's my friend -- a true friend, I will be a friend to him. ... Friendship is one of the grand fundamental principles of "Mormonism"; {it is designed] to revolutionize and civilize the world, and cause wars and contentions to cease and men to become friends and brothers. ... It is a time-honored adage that love begets love. ... Friendship is like [a blacksmith] welding iron to iron; it unites the human family with its happy influence.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - God hath said that He would have a tried people, that He would purge them as gold. (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976], 135.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Yet many of the righteous shall fall a prey to disease to pestilence and by reason of the weakness of the flesh and yet be saved in the Kingdom of God so that it is an unhallowed principle to say that such and such have transgressed because they have been preyed upon by disease or death for all flesh is subject to death and the Savior has said—"Judge not lest ye be judged." (The Words of Joseph Smith, comp. Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook [Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1980], 15.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - By every possible means [satan] seeks to darken the minds of men and then offers them falsehood and deception in the guise of truth. Satan is a skillful imitator, and as genuine gospel truth is given the world in ever-increasing abundance, so he spreads the counterfeit coin of false doctrine. Beware of his spurious currency, it will purchase for you nothing but disappointment, misery and spiritual death. The "Father of Lies" he has been called, and such an adept has he become through the ages of practice in his nefarious work, that were it possible he would deceive the very elect. (Juvenile Instructor, Sept. 1902, 562.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - He [Joseph Smith] then observed that Satan was generally blamed for the evils which we did, but if he was the cause of all our wickedness, men could not be condemned. The devil could not compel mankind to do evil; all was voluntary. Those who resisted the Spirit of God, would be liable to be led into temptation, and then the association of heaven would be withdrawn from those who refused to be made partakers of such great glory. God would not exert any compulsory means, and the devil could not; and such ideas as were entertained [on these subjects] by many were absurd. (Discourses of the Prophet Joseph Smith, comp. Alma P. Burton [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1977], 131.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - All are within the reach of pardoning mercy, who have not committed the unpardonable sin, which hath no forgiveness. (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976], 191.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The baptism of water, without the baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost attending it, is of no use; they are necessarily and inseparably connected. An individual must be born of water and the Spirit in order to get into the kingdom of God. (History of the Church, 7 vols., 2d ed. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1967], 6:316.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - You might as well baptize a bag of sand as a man, if not done in view of the remission of sins and getting of the Holy Ghost. Baptism by water is but half a baptism, and is good for nothing without the other half-that is, the baptism of the Holy Ghost. (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976], 314.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The time [will] come when none but the women of the Latter-day Saints [will] be willing to bear children. (In Young Woman's Journal, Nov. 1890, 81.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - If a spirit of bitterness is in you, don't be in haste.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - As God governed Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as families, and the children of Israel as a nation; so we, as a Church, must be under His guidance if we are prospered, preserved and sustained. Our only confidence can be in God; our only wisdom obtained from Him; and He alone must be our protector and safeguard, spiritually and temporally, or we fall. (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976], 253.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - If you would have God have mercy on you, have mercy on one another.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - We cannot keep all the commandments without first knowing them, and we cannot expect to know all, or more than we now know unless we comply with or keep those we have already received. (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976], 256.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Shall I, who have heard the voice of God, and communed with angels, and spake as moved by the Holy Ghost for the renewal of the everlasting covenant, and for the gathering of Israel in the last days,—shall I worm myself into a political hypocrite? Shall I, who hold the keys of the last kingdom, in which is the dispensation of the fullness of all things spoken by the mouths of all the holy Prophets since the world began, under the sealing power of the Melchizedek Priesthood,—shall I stoop from the sublime authority of Almighty God, to be handled as a monkey's cat's-paw, and pettify myself into a clown to act the farce of political demagoguery? (History of the Church, 7 vols., 2d ed. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1967], 6:78.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The greatest responsibility in this world that God has laid upon us is to seek after our dead. Those Saints who neglect it . . . do it at the peril of their own salvation. (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976], 193.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - This doctrine presents in a clear light the wisdom and mercy of God in preparing an ordinance for the salvation of the dead, being baptized by proxy, their names recorded in heaven and they judged according to the deeds done in the body. . . . Those saints who neglect it in behalf of their deceased relatives, do it at the peril of their own salvation. (Discourses of the Prophet Joseph Smith, comp. Alma P. Burton [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1977], 144.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - In the days of Noah, God destroyed the world by a flood, and He has promised to destroy it by fire in the last days: but before it should take place, Elijah should first come and turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, &c.
Now comes the point. What is this office and work of Elijah? It is one of the greatest and most important subjects that God has revealed. He should send Elijah to seal the children to the fathers, and the fathers to the children.
Now was this merely confined to the living, to settle difficulties with families on earth? By no means. It was a far greater work. Elijah what would you do if you were here? Would you confine your work to the living alone? No; I would refer you to the Scriptures, where the subject is manifest: that is, without us, they could not be made perfect, nor we without them; the fathers without the children, nor the children without the fathers.
I wish you to understand this subject, for it is important; and if you will receive it, this is the spirit of Elijah, that we redeem our dead, and connect ourselves with our fathers which are in heaven, and seal up our dead to come forth in the first resurrection; and here we want the power of Elijah to seal those who dwell on earth to those who dwell in heaven. This is the power of Elijah and the keys of the kingdom of Jehovah. (History of the Church, 7 vols., 2d ed. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1967], 6:251-52.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - I have a declaration to make as to the provisions which God hath made to suit the conditions of man—made for before the foundation of the world. What has Jesus said? All sin, and all blasphemies, and every transgression, except one, that man can be guilty of, may be forgiven; and there is a salvation for all men, either in this world or the world to come, who have not committed the unpardonable sin, there being a provision either in this world or the world of spirits. Hence God hath made a provision that every spirit in the eternal world can be ferreted out and saved unless he has committed that unpardonable sin which cannot be remitted to him either in this world or the world of spirits. God has wrought out a salvation for all men, unless they have committed a certain sin; and every man who has a friend in the eternal world can save him, unless he has committed the unpardonable sin. And so you can see how far you can be a savior. (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976], 356-57.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - If others' blessings are not your blessings, others' curses are not your curses. (History of the Church, 7 vols., 2d ed. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1967], 1:283.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Blessings offered, but rejected, are no longer blessings. (History of the Church, 7 vols., 2d ed. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1967], 5:135.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Search the scriptures-search the revelations which we publish, and ask your Heavenly Father, in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, to manifest the truth unto you, and if you do it with an eye single to His glory nothing doubting, He will answer you by the power of His Holy Spirit. You will then know for yourselves and not for another. You will not then be dependent on man for the knowledge of God; nor will there be any room for speculation. (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976], 11-12.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Every man who has a calling to minister to the inhabitants of the world was ordained to that very purpose in the Grand Council of heaven before this world was. (History of the Church, 7 vols., 2d ed. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1967], 6:364.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Supposing that Jesus Christ and angels should object to us on frivolous things, what would become of us? We must be merciful and overlook small things. . . . If you would have God have mercy on you, have mercy on one another. . . . There should be no license for sin, but mercy should go hand in hand with reproof. (The Words of Joseph Smith, comp. Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980], 123-24.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The doctrine of baptism for the dead is clearly shown in the New Testament; and if the doctrine is not good, then throw the New Testament away; but if it is the word of God, then let the doctrine be acknowledged; and it was the reason why Jesus said unto the Jews, "How oft would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!"—that they might attend to the ordinances of baptism for the dead as well as other ordinances of the priesthood, and receive revelations from heaven, and be perfected in the things of the kingdom of God—but they would not. (History of the Church, 7 vols., 2d ed. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1967], 5:425.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Every man that has been baptized and belongs to the kingdom has a right to be baptized for those who have gone before; and as soon as the law of the gospel is obeyed here by their friends who act as proxy for them, the Lord has administrators there to set them free. (History of the Church, 7 vols., 2d ed. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1967], 6:365.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The Lord takes many away, even in infancy, that they may escape the envy of man, and the sorrows and evils of this present world; they were too pure, too lovely, to live on earth. (History of the Church, 7 vols., 2d ed. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1967], 4:553.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The only difference between the old and young dying is, one lives longer in heaven and eternal light and glory than the other, and is freed a little sooner from this miserable wicked world. (History of the Church, 7 vols., 2d ed. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1967], 4:554.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - A man is his own tormentor and his own condemner. Hence the saying, They shall go into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. The torment of disappointment in the mind of man is as exquisite as a lake burning with fire and brimstone. I say, so is the torment of man. (History of the Church, 7 vols., 2d ed. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1967], 6:314.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - St. Paul informs us of three glories and three heavens. He knew a man that was caught up to the third heavens. Now, if the doctrine of the sectarian world, that there is but one heaven, is true, Paul, what do you tell that lie for, and say there are three? Jesus said unto His disciples, "In my Father's house are many mansions, if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you, and I will come and receive you to myself, that where I am ye may be also." (History of the Church, 7 vols., 2d ed. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1967], 5:426.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - It is a day of warning and not of many words. (History of the Church, 7 vols., 2d ed. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1967], 3:384.)
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The Standard of Truth
The Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions my rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accom0plished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - There can be no genuine happiness separate and apart from the home, and every effort made to sanctify and preserve its influence is uplifting to those who toil and sacrifice for its establishment.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - I never heard of a man being damned for believing too much.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The Lord once told me that what I asked for I should have. I have been afraid to ask God to kill my enemies, lest some of them should, peradventure, repent.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - It is our duty to concentrate all our influence to make popular that which is sound and good, and unpopular that which is unsound.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Blessings offered, but rejected, are no longer blessings.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - We should gather all the good and true principles in the world and treasure them up, or we shall not come out true Mormons.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Could you gaze into heaven five minutes, you would know more than you would by reading all that ever was written on the subject.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - All beings who have bodies have power over those who have not.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - he kindness of a man should never be forgotten.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - It is our duty to concentrate all our influence to make popular that which is sound and good, and unpopular that which is unsound.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Every man that has been baptized and belongs to the kingdom has a right to be baptized for those who have gone before; and as soon as the law of the Gospel is obeyed here by their friends who act as proxy for them, the Lord has administrators there to set them free. A man may act as proxy for his own relatives; the ordinances of the Gospel which were laid out before the foundations of the world have thus been fulfilled by them, and we may be baptized for those whom we have much friendship for; but it must first be revealed to the man of God, lest we should run too far. 'As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive' (1 Cor. 15:22); all shall be raised from the dead. The Lamb of God hath brought to pass the resurrection, so that all shall rise from the dead.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - All I can offer the world is a good heart and a good hand.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Search the scriptures, search the prophets, and learn what portion of them belongs to you.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - It will not be by sword or gun that this kingdom [of God] will roll on.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The doctrine of baptism for the dead is clearly shown in the New Testament; and if the doctrine is not good, then throw the New Testament away; but if it is the word of God, then let the doctrine be acknowledged; and it was the reason why Jesus said unto the Jews, 'How oft would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!' (See Matt. 23:37.) -- That they might attend to the ordinances of baptism for the dead as well as other ordinances of the priesthood, and receive revelations from heaven, and be perfected in the things of the kingdom of God -- but they would not. This was the case on the day of Pentecost those blessings were poured out on the disciples on that occasion. God ordained that he would save the dead and would do it by gathering his people together.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - I could go back and trace every object of interest concerning the relationship of man to God, if I had time. I can enter into the mysteries; I can enter largely into the eternal worlds; for Jesus said, 'In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.' (John 14:2.) Paul says, 'There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead.' (1 Cor. 15:41.) What have we to console us in relation to the dead? We have reason to have the greatest hope and consolation for our dead of any people on the earth; for we have seen them walk worthily in our midst, and seen them sink asleep in the arms of Jesus; and those who have died in the faith are now in the celestial kingdom of God. And hence is the glory of the sun.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Order by Which Revelation Comes:
I will inform you that it is contrary to the economy of God for any member of the Church, or any one, to receive instruction for those in authority, higher than themselves; therefore you will see the impropriety of giving heed to them; but if any person have a vision or a visitation from a heavenly messenger, it must be for his own benefit and instruction; for the fundamental principles, government, and doctrine of the Church are vested in the keys of the kingdom. Respecting an apostate, or one who has been cut off from the Church, and who wishes to come in again, the law of our Church expressly says that such shall repent, and be baptized, and be admitted as at the first.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Take away the Book of Mormon and the revelations, and were is our religion? We have none.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Baptism:
"Do the Mormons baptize in the name of 'Joe' Smith?" No, but if they did, it would be as valid as the baptism administered by the sectarian priests.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Baptism is a holy ordinance preparatory to the reception of the Holy Ghost; it is the channel and key by which the Holy Ghost will be administered.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - I will give you one of the Keys of the mysteries of the Kingdom. It is an eternal principle, that has existed with God from all eternity: That man who rises up to condemn others, finding fault with the Church, saying that they are out of the way, while he himself is righteous, then know assuredly, that that man is in the high road to apostasy; and if he dies not repent, will apostatize, as God lives. The principle is as correct as the one Jesus put forth in saying that he who seeketh a sign is an adulterous person; and that principle is eternal, undeviating, and firm as the pillars of heaven; for whenever you see a man seeking after a sign, you may set it down that he is an adulterous man.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Love is one of the chief characteristics of Deity, and ought to be manifested by those who aspire to be the sons of God. A man filled with the love of God, is not content with blessing his family alone, but ranges through the whole world, anxious to bless the whole human race.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Let us realize that we are not to live to ourselves, but to God; by so doing the greatest blessings will rest upon us both in time and in eternity.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The Spirits of Men Are Eternal:
I would just remark, that the spirits of men are eternal, that they are governed by the same priesthood that Abraham, Melchizedek, and the Apostles were: that they are organized according to that priesthood which is everlasting, "without beginning of days or end of years" that they all move in their respective spheres, and are governed by the law of God; that when they appear upon the earth they are in a probationary state, and are preparing, if righteous, for a future and greater glory; that the spirits of good men cannot interfere with the wicked beyond their prescribed bounds, for "Michael, the Archangel, dared not bring a railing accusation against the devil, but said, 'The Lord rebuke thee, Satan.' "
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - He that will war the true Christian warfare against the corruptions of these last days will have wicked men and angels of devils, and all the infernal powers of darkness continually arrayed against him. When wicked and corrupt men oppose, it is a criterion to judge if a man is warring the Christian warfare. When all men speak evil of you falsely, blessed are ye. Shall a man be considered bad, when men speak evil of him? No. If a man stands and opposes the world of sin, he may expect to have all wicked and corrupt spirits arrayed against him. But it will be but a little season, and all these afflictions will be turned away from us, inasmuch as we are faithful, and are not overcome by these evils. By seeing the blessings of the endowment rolling on, and the kingdom increasing and spreading from sea to sea, we shall rejoice that we were not overcome by these foolish things.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - When I was preaching in Philadelphia, a Quaker called out for a sign. I told him to be still. After the sermon, he again asked for a sign. I told the congregation the man was an adulterer; that a wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and that the Lord had said to me in a revelation, that any man who wanted a sign was an adulterous person. "It is true," cried one, "for I caught him in the very act," which the man afterwards confessed, when he was baptized.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - God judges men according to the use they make of the light which He gives them.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - When God offers a blessing or knowledge to a man, and he refuses to receive it, he will be damned.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - There are so many fools in the world for the devil to operate upon, it gives him the advantage oftentimes.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - False prophets always arise to oppose the true prophets and they will prophesy so very near the truth that they will deceive almost the very chosen ones. ... In relation to the kingdom of God, the devil always sets up his kingdom at the very same time in opposition to God.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - I believe all that God ever revealed, and I never hear of a man being damned for believing too much; but they are damned for unbelief.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - The name Mormon, and Mormonism, was given to us by our enemies, but Latter Day Saints was the real name by which the Church was organized.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - We believe that no man can administer salvation through the Gospel, to the souls of men, in the name of Jesus Christ, except he is authorized from God, by revelation, or by being ordained by some one whom God hath sent by revelation, as it is written by Paul, Romans 10:14, "and how shall they believe in him, of who, they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach, except they be sent?" and I will ask, how can they be sent without a revelation, or some other viable display of the manifestations of God. And again, Hebrews 5:4, "And no man taketh this honor unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron." -- And I would ask, how was Aaron called, but by revelation.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - Adam was a large broad shouldered man, and Eve, as a woman, was large in proportion.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - There is no salvation between the two lids of the Bible without a legal administrator.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith - A man who will whip is wife is a coward.
-- The Prophet Joseph Smith
Pres Ezra Taft Benson quotes- A great challenge and day of preparation is at hand for missionaries to meet and teach with the Book of Mormon. We need missionaries to match our message.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - Character is the one thing we make in this world and take with us into the next.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - No one can cuddle a cherished newborn baby... without deepening reverence for life and our creator.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - The Book of Mormon brings men to Christ through two basic means. First, it tells in a plain manner of Christ and His gospel. It testifies of His divinity and of the necessity for a Redeemer. ... Second, the Book of Mormon exposes the enemies of Christ. It confounds false doctrines and lays down contention. ... It fortifies the humble followers of Christ against the evil designs, strategies, and doctrines of the devil in our day.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - The Book of Mormon is not on trial--the people of the world, including the members of the Church, are on trial as to what they will do with this second witness of Christ.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - The secret of a happy marriage is to serve God and each other.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - The two groups who have the greatest difficulty in following the prophet are the proud who are learned and the proud who are rich. The learned may feel the prophet is only inspired when he agrees with them; otherwise, the prophet is just giving his opinion-speaking as a man. The rich may feel they have no need to take counsel of a lowly prophet.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - His gospel is the perfect prescription for all human problems and social ills. But His gospel is effective only as it is applied in our lives. Therefore, we must 'feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the words of Christ will tell [us] all things what [we] should do.' (2 Nephi 32:3.) Unless we do His teachings, we do not demonstrate faith in Him.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - One of the most important things you can do as priesthood leaders is to immerse yourselves in the scriptures. Search them diligently (see D&C 1:37; 3 Nephi 23:1). Feast upon the words of Christ (see 2 Nephi 31:20; 32:3). Learn the doctrine. Master the principles that are found therein. There are few other efforts that will bring greater dividends to your calling. There are few ways to gain greater inspiration as you serve.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - Thoughts lead to acts, acts lead to habits, habits lead to character-and our character will determine our eternal destiny.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - In the Book of Mormon we read that 'despair cometh because of iniquity.' (Moroni 10:22.) 'When I do good I feel good,' said Abraham Lincoln, 'and when I do bad I feel bad.' Sin pulls a man down into despondency and despair. While a man may take some temporary pleasure in sin, the end result is unhappiness. 'Wickedness never was happiness.' (Alma 41:10.) Sin creates disharmony with God and is depressing to the spirit. Therefore, a man would do well to examine himself to see that he is in harmony with all of God's laws. Every law kept brings a particular blessing. Every law broken brings a particular blight. Those who are heavy laden with despair should come unto the Lord, for his yoke is easy and his burden is light. (See Matt. 11:28-30.)"
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - If thoughts make us what we are and we are to be like Christ, then we must think Christlike thoughts.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - I bear testimony that Joseph Smith was a prophet of the living God, one of the greatest prophets that has ever lived on the earth. He was the instrument in God's hand in ushering in the present gospel dispensation, the greatest of all, and the last of all in preparation for the second coming of the Master.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - Studying and searching the scriptures is not a burden laid upon Saints by the Lord, but a marvelous blessing and opportunity. Note what the Lord Himself has said about the benefits of studying His word. To the great prophet-leader Joshua, He said: 'This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein; for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success' (Joshua 1:8). The Lord was not promising Joshua material wealth and fame, but that his life would prosper in righteousness and that he would have success in that which matters most in life, namely the quest to find true joy (see 2 Nephi 2:25).
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - Some people intend to make a decision and then never get around to it. They intend to paint the barn, to fix the fence, to haul away that old machinery or remove that old shed, but the time of decision just never arrives. Some of us face a similar situation in our personal lives. We intend to pay a full tithing, to begin keeping the Word of Wisdom, to make our initial home teaching visits early in the month. However, without actual decision followed by implementation, the weeks and months go by and nothing is accomplished. We could drift into eternity on these kinds of good intentions. Thus lack of decision becomes our decision not to do those good things for which we had the best of intentions. The Lord apparently sensed this weakness in his children, for he said: 'Wherefore, if ye believe me, ye will labor while it is called today.' (D&C 64:25) Get the facts—then decide promptly. As an excuse for postponing decisions, do not rely on the old clichés some people use, such as 'I want to sleep on it.' We don't make decisions in our sleep. However, don't jump to conclusions or make snap judgments. Get the facts, be sure of the basic principles, and weigh the consequences. Then decide!
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - I have noted within the Church the difference in discernment, in insight, conviction, and spirit between those who know and love the Book of Mormon and those who do not. That book is a great sifter.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - Now God expects us to use the Book of Mormon in several ways. We are to read it ourselves-carefully, prayerfully, and ponder as we read, as to whether this book is the work of God or of an unlearned youth. And then when we are finished reading the things in the book, Moroni exhorts us to put them to the test, in these words: 'And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, He will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.' (Moro. 10:4.) I have done as Moroni exhorts, and I can testify to you that this book is from God and so is verily true.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - It is the pure love of Christ, called charity, that the Book of Mormon testifies is the greatest of all-that never faileth, that endureth forever, that all men should have, and that without which they are nothing (see Moroni 7:44-47; 2 Nephi 26:30).
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - The great test of life is obedience to God. The great task of life is to learn the will of the Lord and then do it. The great commandment of life is to love the Lord.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - It is better to prepare and prevent than to repair and repent!
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - At present, the Book of Mormon is studied in our Sunday School and seminary classes every fourth year. This four-year pattern, however, must not be followed by Church members in their personal and family study. We need to read daily from the pages of the book that will get a man 'nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.' (History of the Church, 4:461.) And when we are called upon to study or teach other scriptures, we need to strengthen that undertaking by frequent reference to the additional insights which the Book of Mormon may provide on the subject (see 1 Nephi 13:40, 2 Nephi 3:12).
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - The prophet Lehi also saw our day in his great visionary dream of the tree of life. He saw that many people would wander blindly in the mists of darkness, which symbolized the temptations of the devil. (See 1 Nephi 12:17.) He saw some fall away 'in forbidden paths,' others drown in rivers of filthiness, and still others wander in 'strange roads.' (1 Nephi 8:28, 32.) When we read of the spreading curse of drugs, or read of the pernicious flood of pornography and immorality, do any of us doubt that these are the forbidden paths and rivers of filthiness Lehi described?
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - The great test of life is obedience to God. The great task of life is to learn the will of the Lord and then do it. The great commandment of life is to love the Lord.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - In the Lord's due time His Spirit 'wrought upon' Columbus, the pilgrims, the Puritans, and others to come to America. They testified of God's intervention in their behalf (see 1 Nephi 13:12-13). The Book of Mormon records that they humbled 'themselves before the Lord; and the power of the Lord was with them' (1 Nephi 13:16). Our Father in Heaven planned the coming forth of the Founding Fathers and their form of government as the necessary great prologue leading to the restoration of the gospel. Recall what our Savior Jesus Christ said nearly two thousand years ago when He visited this promised land: 'For it is wisdom in the Father that they should be established in this land, and be set up as a free people by the power of the Father, that these things might come forth' (3 Nephi 21:4). America, the land of liberty, was to be the Lord's latter-day base of operations for His restored church.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - "The Book of Mormon exposes the enemies of Christ. It confounds false doctrines and lays down contention. (See 2 Nephi 3:12.) It fortifies the humble followers of Christ against the evil designs, strategies, and doctrines of the devil in our day. The type of apostates in the Book of Mormon are similar to the type we have today. God, with his infinite foreknowledge, so molded the Book of Mormon that we might see the error and know how to combat false educational, political, religious, and philosophical concepts of our time.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - We are commanded to 'feast upon the words of Christ' and not just nibble (2 Nephi 32:3). Remember President Spencer W. Kimball's statement: 'I find that when I get casual in my relationships with divinity and when it seems that no divine ear is listening and no divine voice is speaking, that I am far, far away. If I immerse myself in the scriptures the distance narrows and the spirituality returns' (Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball [1982], p. 135). How many times did President Ezra Taft Benson urge us to read from the Book of Mormon daily? There is no other book that provides us with so much opportunity to 'feast on the words of Christ.' It really is another testament of Jesus Christ. Within its pages are 3,925 references to the Savior. On average, every 1.7 verses make reference to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is referred to by 101 different titles: Lord, Savior, Redeemer, the Only Begotten Son, the Good Shepherd, and so on. If you were to start on January 1st reading just two pages a day, by the time you came to September 22nd, you would have read the entire book. Are you reading from the scriptures every day? If not, now, this very day, is a good time to repent.
-- Joe J. Christensen - Becoming Christlike is a lifetime pursuit and very often involves growth and change that is slow, almost imperceptible. The scriptures record remarkable accounts of men whose lives changed dramatically, in an instant, as it were: Alma the Younger, Paul on the road to Damascus, Enos praying far into the night, King Lamoni. Such astonishing examples of the power to change even those steeped in sin give confidence that the Atonement can reach even those deepest in despair.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - Just as a man does not really desire food until he is hungry, so he does not desire the salvation of Christ until he knows why he needs Christ. No one adequately and properly knows why he needs Christ until he understands and accepts the doctrine of the Fall and its effect upon all mankind. And no other book in the world explains this vital doctrine nearly as well as the Book of Mormon.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - There can be no genuine happiness separate and apart from the home.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - Eternal life, the greatest gift that God can give and the life for which we all should be striving, comes from knowing our Father in heaven and His Son, Jesus Christ. As the Savior said: 'This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.' (John 17:3.) We cannot know God and Jesus without studying about them and then doing their will. This course leads to additional revealed knowledge that, if obeyed, will eventually lead us to further truths. When we follow this pattern, we will receive further light and joy, eventually leading into God's presence where we, with Him, will have a fullness.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - God can reveal to us our talents and our strengths so that we will know what we can build upon. Be assured that in all our righteous endeavors, we can say, as did Paul: 'I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.' (Philip. 4:13.) Also be assured, as Paul said further, that there will be no temptation befall us but what is common to man: but God will, with each temptation, provide a way to escape. (See 1 Cor. 10:13.)"
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - The greatest events of history are those that affect the greatest number for the longest periods. By this standard, no event could be more important to individuals or nations than the resurrection of the Master. The eventual resurrection of every soul who has lived and died on earth is a scriptural certainty, and surely there is no event for which one should make more careful preparation. A glorious resurrection should be the goal of every man and woman, for it is a reality. Nothing is more absolutely universal than the resurrection. Every living being will be resurrected. 'As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.' (1 Cor. 15:22.)
-- President Ezra Taft Benson - Man is at his best when complemented by a good woman's natural influence.
-- President Ezra Taft Benson
President Gordon B. Hinckley quotes- All of us have to deal with death at one time or another, but to have in one's heart a solid conviction concerning the reality of eternal life is to bring a sense of peace in an hour of tragedy that can come from no other source under the heavens.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - Brethren, we can do better!
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong (Ecclesiastes 9:11). Life's winners are generally those who endure to the end.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - There is nothing in this world so satisfying as a task well done.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - We cannot begin to measure or calculate the influence of women who, in their own ways, build stable home life and nurture for everlasting good the generations of the future.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - That knowledge comes from the word of scripture, and that testimony comes by the power of the Holy Ghost. It is a gift, sacred and wonderful, borne by revelation from the third member of the Godhead. I believe in the Holy Ghost as a personage of spirit who occupies a place with the Father and the Son, these three constituting the divine Godhead.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - It is in this spirit that I add my own witness. Our Eternal Father lives. He stands as the great God of the universe, ruling in majesty and power. And yet He is my Father, to whom I may go in prayer with the assurance that He will hear, listen, and answer. Jesus is the Christ, His immortal Son, who under His Father's direction was the Creator of the earth. He was the great Jehovah of the Old Testament, who condescended to come into the world as the Messiah, who gave His life on Calvary's cross in His wondrous Atonement because He loved us. The work in which we are engaged is their work, and we are their servants, who are answerable to them.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - Pay your tithes that you may be worthy of the Lord's blessings. I will not promise that you will become wealthy. But I bear testimony that the Lord does reward generously in one way or another those who keep His commandments. And I assure you that no investment counselor to whom you may go can promise you as the Lord has promised: 'I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.' (D&C 82:10.) The Lord honors His covenants.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - I believe without equivocation or reservation in God, the Eternal Father. He is my Father, the Father of my spirit, and the Father of the spirits of all men. He is the great Creator, the Ruler of the universe. He directed the creation of this earth on which we live. In his image man was created. He is personal. He is real. He is individual. He has 'a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's.'
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - No nation can rise above the strength of its homes or the virtue of its people.
-- Gordon B. Hinckley - I don't hesitate to say if every family in the world practiced [family home evening], you'd see a very great difference in the solidarity of the families of the world.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - No nation can rise above the strength of its homes or the virtue of its people.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - If we are to build that Zion of which the prophets have spoken and of which the Lord has given mighty promise, we must set aside our consuming selfishness. We must rise above our love for comfort and ease, and in the very process of effort and struggle, even in our extremity, we shall become better acquainted with our God.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - Could any language be more explicit? Does it demean God, as some would have us believe, that man was created in his express image? Rather, it should stir within the heart of every man and woman a greater appreciation for himself or herself as a son or daughter of God. Paul's words to the Corinthian Saints are as applicable to us today as they were to those to whom he wrote. Said he: 'Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.' (1 Corinthians 3:16-17)
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - This, my brethren and sisters, is our divine right-to choose. This is our divine obligation-to choose the right.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - This gospel is an intimate thing. It is not some distant concept. It is applicable in our lives. It can change our very natures.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - Our kindness may be the most persuasive argument for that which we believe.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - Let us turn from the negativism that so permeates our culture and look for the good. Let us speak of one another's virtues more than we speak of one another's faults.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - Here is the kernel of the whole matter. We need not worry about consensus, or reason, or opinion in matters of right and wrong. "The Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil." Most of us know better than we do. As we discipline ourselves in line with our knowledge, in line with the inner convictions of our hearts, rather than the inclination to follow the crowd, we grow.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - I believe in the triumph of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the triumph of the Church and kingdom of God on the earth. If ever your faith is inclined to weaken as you see the onward march of evil and oppression, read again the story of Daniel who, putting his trust in the 'God in heaven that revealeth secrets,' interpreted Nebuchadnezzar's dream. He said concerning our day that the God of heaven shall 'set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these [other] kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.' (Dan. 2:44.)
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - When all is said and done, when all of history is examined, when the deepest depths of the human mind have been explored, nothing is so wonderful, so majestic, so tremendous as this act of grace when the Son of the Almighty, the Prince of His Father's royal household, He who had once spoken as Jehovah, He who had condescended to come to earth as a babe born in Bethlehem, gave His life in ignominy and pain so that all of the sons and daughters of God of all generations of time, every one of whom must die, might walk again and live eternally. He did for us what none of us could do for ourselves.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - It is not God who has given us the spirit of fear; this comes from the adversary. So many of us are fearful of what our peers will say, that we will be looked upon with disdain and criticized if we stand for what is right. But I remind you that "wickedness never was happiness" (Alma 41:10). Evil never was happiness. Sin never was happiness. Happiness lies in the power and the love and the sweet simplicity of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - Let us be good citizens of the nations in which we live. Let us be good neighbors in our communities. Let us acknowledge the diversity of our society, recognizing the good in all people. We need not make any surrender of our theology. But we can set aside any element of suspicion, of provincialism, of parochialism.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - To every officer, to every teacher in this Church who acts in a priesthood office, there comes the sacred responsibility of magnifying that priesthood calling. Each of us is responsible for the welfare and the growth and development of others. We do not live only unto ourselves. If we are to magnify our callings, we cannot live only unto ourselves. As we serve with diligence, as we teach with faith and testimony, as we lift and strengthen and build convictions of righteousness in those whose lives we touch, we magnify our priesthood. To live only unto ourselves, on the other hand, to serve grudgingly, to give less than our best effort to our duty, diminishes our priesthood just as looking through the wrong lenses of binoculars reduces the image and makes more distant the object.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - The course of our lives is not determined by great awesome decisions. Our direction is set by the little day-to-day choices which chart the track on which we run.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - No system can long command the loyalties of man that does not expect of them certain measures of discipline, and particularly of self-discipline.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - Never assume that you can make it alone. You need the help of the Lord. Never hesitate to get on your knees in some private place and speak with Him. What a marvelous and wonderful thing is prayer. Think of it. We can actually speak with our Father in Heaven. He will hear and respond, but we need to listen to that response. Nothing is too serious and nothing too unimportant to share with Him. He has said, 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest' (Matthew 11:28). He continues, 'For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light' (v. 30).
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - In summary, try a little harder to measure up to the divine within each of you. As Alma said, 'Awake and arouse your faculties' (Alma 32:27).
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - We seldom get into trouble when we speak softly.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - '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.' (Matthew 16:13-18.) This rock of revelation is the source of knowledge concerning the things of God. It is the witness of the Holy Spirit that testifies of eternal truth, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against any man who seeks it, who accepts it, who cultivates it, and who lives by it.
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - He was buried in a borrowed tomb and on the third day rose from the grave. He came forth triumphant, in a victory over death, the firstfruits of all that slept. With his resurrection came the promise to all men that life is everlasting, that even as in Adam all die, in Christ all are made alive. (See 1 Cor. 15:20-22.) Nothing in all of human history equals the wonder, the splendor, the magnitude, or the fruits of the matchless life of the Son of God, who died for each of us. He is our Savior. He is our Redeemer. As Isaiah foretold, 'His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.' (Isa. 9:6.) "The Cornerstones of Our Faith"
-- President Gordon B. Hinckley - Gordon B. Hinckley, Prophet of the LDS Church, said this: "the stultifying effects of prison." The definition of the word stultify: to impair, invalidate, or make ineffective; to have a dulling or inhibiting effect on. This is the most sublime description of what I see happening to a majority of our long-term-incarcerated offenders.
-- Lee Crites
Elder Neal A. Maxwell quotes- The harrowing of the soul can be like the harrowing of the soil; To increase the yield, things are turned upside down.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - When times of adversity occur, we can either murmur, or ponder.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - You rock a sobbing child without wondering if today's world is passing you by, because you know you hold tomorrow tightly in your arms.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Concerning all of these challenges, a loving God said of us, as we stood on the edge of this mortal experience, 'We will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them.' (Abraham 3:25) Should this stern reminder not be adequate concerning how serious God is about schooling and stretching us, then let us ponder what the Savior said to the Prophet Joseph Smith, who was in the midst of being proved: 'All these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.' (D&C 122:7)
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Significantly, those who look forward to a next and better world are usually 'anxiously engaged' in improving this one, for they 'always abound in good works' (D&C 58:27; Alma 7:24).
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Seventy years ago, Lord Moulton coined a perceptive phrase, 'obedience to the unenforceable,' describing 'the obedience of a man to that which he cannot be forced to obey.' God's blessings, including those associated with consecration, come by unforced obedience to the laws upon which they are predicated (see D&C 130:20-21). Thus our deepest desires determine our degree of 'obedience to the unenforceable.' God seeks to have us become more consecrated, by giving everything. Then, when we come home to Him, He will generously give us 'all that [He] hath' (see D&C 84:38).
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - All of the godly attributes, to the degree developed through our 'diligence and obedience,' will actually rise with us in the resurrection, giving us 'so much the advantage in the world to come' (D&C 130:19). After we leave this life there will be no sudden setting apart that will, for instance, make us instantly perfect in the attribute of patience. Instead, we are to 'work out' this dimension of our exaltation now and subsequently. Hence it is best to aim for steady progression rather than to be intimidated and immobilized by the concept of being perfect or 'finished or completed.' We should display diligent discipleship but not expect it all to happen either at once or easily.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - We must be willing to let our gears of commitment be hammered and shaped so that they mesh with life's opportunities in ways that are crucial.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Hearing, really hearing, will bring obeying. Those who are thus submissive are not content to 'live by bread alone' but instead live 'by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord' (Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4).
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - It is accurate to say also that, when we are living well enough, the promptings of the Spirit will guide us in tactical matters (telling us all things we should do [see 2 Nephi 32:3]). Once we really know the 'what' and the 'why,' the 'how' will become clear.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Without our individual refining, therefore, life would become merely a pass-through, audited course--not a course for credit. Only in the latter arrangement can our experiences and our performances be sanctified for our own everlasting good (see 2 Nephi 32:9). Mortality therefore is not a convenient, suburban, drive-around beltway with a view. Instead it passes slowly through life's inner city. Daily it involves real perspiration, real perplexity, real choosing, real suffering--and real refining!
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Striving to incorporate these cardinal qualities makes us more saintly and helps us immeasurably to endure it well. Significantly, submissiveness, that reverent expression of enduring, is mentioned twice. Giving enduring extra emphasis is capped by directing that we 'submit to' and endure 'all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon [us], even as a child doth submit to his father' (Mosiah 3:19). Much of enduring well requires this reverent submissiveness. The living Church greatly facilitates living discipleship in which opportunities and reminders of the needed virtues are all about us.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Mostly, brothers and sisters, we become the victims of our own wrong desires. Moreover, we live in an age when many simply refuse to feel responsible for themselves. Thus, a crystal-clear understanding of the doctrines pertaining to desire is so vital because of the spreading effluent oozing out of so many unjustified excuses by so many. This is like a sludge which is sweeping society along toward 'the gulf of misery and endless wo.' (Hel. 5:12). Feeding the same flow is the selfish philosophy of 'no fault,' which is replacing the meek and apologetic 'my fault.' (Ensign, November 1996, p. 21)"
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Day in and day out the same Lord who parted the Red Sea so that Israel might escape Egypt provides ways for us to escape temptation (see 1 Corinthians 10:13). 'By very small means,' Alma told his son, 'the Lord... bringeth about the salvation of many souls' (Alma 37:7). Scale, therefore, is not the sole measure of spiritual significance; for 'out of small things proceedeth that which is great' (D&C 64:33).
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Sensual individuals crave and live by sensations. Disciples, instead, walk and 'overcome by faith' (D&C 76:53), accepting gratefully the evidence of things not seen which are true (see Heb. 11:1; Alma 32:21) and using quietly God's spiritual gifts.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Yes, you and I should count our blessings, but we should also make them count!
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - When one decides whether or not to deal with hard doctrines, the tendency is to put them off or to be put off by them. Not only are they in some respects puzzling, but they may even offend our mortal pride. Just as there are some good deeds we do gladly and quickly (while others are put off time and again), so it is with certain gospel truths: we accept some with joy and alacrity, but others we keep at arm's length. The hardness is usually not in their complexity, but in the deep demands these doctrines make of us. They are actually harder to accept than to understand, for there is a breathtaking simplicity about them.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Each temptation is real, but so is faith in one's identity. Each affliction is to some degree tormenting, but the plan of salvation reassures us about ourselves and outcomes. An irritation will be keenly felt, but it can be overcome by seeing the irritation for what it often is-including seeing it as an extrusion of yet untamed ego! With faith, as did Joseph anciently under serious temptation, one can self-interrogate: 'How... can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?' Joseph knew his own identity and the responsibility it carried. He went further, however, even reminding his temptress of her own identity and responsibility, noting that her husband 'hath [not] kept back anything from me but thee, because thou art his wife.' (See Genesis 39:7-20) The natural man, however, does not put such relevant questions to himself.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - The gross size of our talent inventories is less important than the net use of our talents.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Without balance and pace, therefore, our weaknesses become even more pronounced, causing some of us who would not chastise a neighbor for his frailties to have a field day with our own. Some of us stand before no more harsh a judge than ourselves, sometimes dealing more justly with others than with ourselves. (See Ether 10:11.) Pace is so essential to personal progress lest we magnify our weaknesses instead of our callings.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - In the economy of heaven, God does not send thunder if a still, small voice is enough, or a prophet if a priest can do the job.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Often our best effort is not fully effectual because of someone else's worst effort.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - We can honestly acknowledge, in those moments of wonderment about our mattering, that if we were to die today, we would be genuinely and deeply missed. Perhaps parliaments would not praise us, but no human circle is so small that it does not touch another circle and another and another.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - We [need to] make quiet but more honest inventories of our strengths. Most of us are dishonest bookkeepers and need confirming "outside auditors." He who in the first estate was thrust down delights in having us put ourselves down. Self-contempt is of Satan; there is none of it in heaven. We should, of course, learn from our mistakes, but without forever viewing the instant replays lest these become the game of life itself.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - We [need to] learn that at the center of our agency is our freedom to form a healthy attitude toward whatever circumstances we are placed in. Those, for instance, who stretch themselves in service, though laced with limiting diseases, are often the healthiest among us. The strong Spirit can drive weak flesh beyond where the body first agrees to go!
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Clearly, we are to help each other in the journey along the straight and narrow path. Even though such helping seems to drain us of energy and surely takes precious time, it will actually strengthen us. We will become more like Him whose followers we are.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - The prophet Nephi, who had progressed and advanced spiritually to a remarkable degree, still lamented about "sins which do so easily beset me." (2 Nephi 4:18.) Obviously, Nephi's sins were not major. But just as God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance (D&C 1:31), as we become more like Him, neither can we. The best people have a heightened awareness of what little of the worst is still in them! Indeed, the divine discontent, the justifiable spiritual restlessness that we feel, is a natural follow-on feeling in the disciple who has taken the Lord's counsel to "make you a new heart and a new spirit." (Ezekiel 18:31.) The "new" in us is bound to notice the "old" that remains.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Moreover, Latter-day Saints need to remember that we who live now are being called upon to work out our salvation in a special time of intense and immense challenges—the last portion of the dispensation of the fullness of times during which great tribulation and temptation will occur, the elect will almost be deceived, and unrighteous people will be living much as they were in the days of Noah. It will be a time of polarization, as the Twelve fore saw in their declaration of 1845. Hardness of heart in many will produce other manifestations of hardness and coarseness. Civility will be one casualty of these conditions, and a lowered capacity to achieve reconciliation, whether in a marriage or between interest groups, will be another.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Let us, therefore, notwithstanding our weaknesses, be reassured that the everyday keeping of the commandments and the doing of our duties is what it is all about. Customized and immediate reinforcement will come to us as we meet our challenges: "And secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he hath paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever; therefore, of what have ye to boast?" (Mosiah 2:24.)
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - If we are righteous and faithful, we will come to see, as did Joseph of Egypt, that character is often developed in the cauldron of trial, for the seeming tragedy of his youth contained within it opportunities (which did not fully appear for many years) to "save much people alive." (Genesis 50:20.) "Much" probably was millions who were fed by Joseph's national food storage plan. The evil intent of Joseph's brothers was folded into the plans of God, who knows the beginning from the end and all that is in between.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - It was Dostoevsky who warned (in a grim foreshadowing of the secular state) that "love toward men... without belief in God, very naturally leads to the greatest coercion over men and turns their lives completely into hell on earth." Those who rule and govern without any real allegiance to God may use the rhetoric of serving "the people," but they will end up doing wrong things for and to "the people." Whether because of ignorance or malice, such individuals will misread mankind's identity or purpose, and this misreading inevitably means misery. Furthermore, as Brigham Young observed, "Man's machinery makes things alike" (JD 9:370), while God gives to seemingly like individuals pleasing differences. Secularism is no friend of righteous individuality.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Each step toward singlemindedness in our worship of God squeezes out some of our selfishness, for so much of the overcoming of this world consists of overcoming selfishness.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - When we truly love God, we are released from the cruel constraints of our own egos. As our capacity to love increases, we go beyond the giving of time and talents and means—on to the full giving of self. Presently, so many of us send checks where we are not willing to go. So many of us give our time, but our hearts and minds are elsewhere.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - As we learn so to love, we will become more lovable, making much less taxing the task others have of loving us. Our neighbors will be better treated as we become better, for righteousness is more self-reinforcing than evil is.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - God is anxious to take us as far as we who are weak are willing to go in this journey toward perfection. It will not be He who disappoints. He knows our possibilities and will not settle for less, though, alas, we may. He knows what we need, while we merely know what we want.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - But keeping the first commandment [to love God with all our heart, might, mind, and strength] is an act of high trust; we turn ourselves over to our Father and finally give Him all that we have. Happily, He has said that, one day, we can enter His presence and receive all that He has. But we simply cannot contain all that He has to give until we are first emptied and then expanded. Until then, we are only part-time and seasonal workers in His vineyard.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Such love of the Lord requires that we become trustingly patient as experiences come to us that God deems are for our good. We must, on this side of the veil, wait out the inexplicable things, maintaining serenity as the storms beat upon us and as the winds of derision howl. We must be willing to submit ourselves "to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict" upon us. (Mosiah 3:19.) This is the unconditional submittal of the soul that lies at the very center of the first great commandment; there can be no holding back. Only as we thus come close to the living Lord can we honestly say, in the midst of the fiery trials of life, "Not as I will, but as thou wilt." (Matthew 26:39.)
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Just as the love of God for us is unconditional, one day ours for Him must be likewise. This is what the first commandment is all about. But even then, the adoration and awe we have developed for God will take humble notice of the eternal fact, stressed by John, that God loved us first. (See 1 John 4:19.) As we come closer to Him, we not only "stand all amazed" -- we even kneel all amazed!
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Those who disavow the existence of certain absolute truths must forever forgo disapproving of anything on moral grounds. They may try to evoke a social or political response by using the old words that went with the old values, but they will soon learn that words cannot, for long, be appropriated productively minus their moral content.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Efforts to move away from our traditional values, such as belief in God, produce terrible paradoxes. Decrease the belief in God, for instance, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God. Such societal supervisors deny the existence of divine standards but are very serious about imposing their own—or the lack of them.
It is no accident that the lessening, or loss, of belief in certain absolute truths, such as the existence of God and the reality of immortality, has occurred at the same time there has been a sharp gain in the size and power of governments.
Once we remove belief in God from the center of our lives, as the source of truth and as a determiner of justice, a tremendous vacuum is created into which selfishness surges, a condition that governments delight in managing.
Tens of thousands of regulations emerging from governments receive attention not given the Ten Commandments, perhaps because the Ten Commandments, which are so much a part of our Judeo-Christian heritage, are not flexible; they resist rationalization. Any amendments to the Ten Commandments could come only from the original Source. We cannot amend the seventh commandment to read, for instance, "Thou shalt not commit adultery except between consenting adults."
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Ambivalence is a hindrance, and indecision is a decision.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Human hyperbole is an unreliable source of perspective.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Moroni asked rhetorically, "What should we hope for?" and, responding, said: "Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise." (Moroni 7:41.)
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Thus gospel hope is a very focused and particularized hope that is based upon justified expectations. It is a virtue that is intertwined with faith and charity, which virtues are not to be understood either when they are torn apart from each other or apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, without whom they are all vague virtues. Doubt and despair go together, whereas faith and hope are constant companions. Those, for instance, who "hope" in vain for (and speak of) the day of world peace when men "shall beat their swords into plowshares" ignore the reality that the millennial dawn will be ushered in only by the second coming of Jesus Christ. Neither secular rhetoric nor secular assemblies will succeed in bringing lasting peace to this planet. Secularists, meanwhile, have ironically appropriated the Lord's language of hope while denying Him! It is He and His ways alone that can bring about such desirable conditions. There will be no millennium without the Master.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - The Spirit can teach us of 'things as they really are' - not just as they appear to be, according to conventional wisdom. Contrariwise, the flesh looks at the outward things, drawing its conclusions from surface appearances (1 Samuel 16:7). The opinions of the flesh, it turns out, are no more reliable than the arm of flesh! Faith, meanwhile, carries us forward even before the full flood of fact reaches and lifts us. Since meekness is not natural to the natural man, however, we must 'learn' some things over and over again - until we get it right! Faith and meekness make allowance for the role of such repeated experiences in Father's plan. Repetition is part of God's long-suffering in our behalf.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - If we have this kind of ultimate hope, there is no room for proximate despair. If the big things that really matter are finally going to work out in eternity, then the little things that go wrong mortally are not cause for desperation but perhaps only for a little frustration and irritation.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Thus it is that our faith and trust in our Heavenly Father, so far as this mortal experience is concerned, consists not simply of faith and gladness that He exists, but is also a faith and trust that, if we are humble, He will tutor us, aiding our acquisition of needed attributes and experiences while we are in mortality. We trust not only the Designer but also His design of life itself, including our portion thereof!
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Along with believing in the gospel, we need to believe in our own possibilities - not as to status, but as to power to do good. God could surprise - yes, even stun - each of us here today if we could manage such divine disclosures. Such must usually be kept from us (or can only be hinted at) for now. But specific and special opportunities are pending for every person here today, if we can trust God and do each day's duties and bear our present pain.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - The struggle is intense along the pathway to perfection, yet it is a trek necessitated by Jesus' having asked up to become 'even as I am' (3 Nephi 27:27). Through the Prophet Joseph Smith, either by translation or revelation, great insights came concerning this deepening of one's discipleship.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Given the choices made by some, we all end up with more protected pornography than protected children. Of course better self-restraint than censorship, but urging self-restraint on hedonists is like discouraging Dracula from hanging around the blood bank.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - An omnicompetent God leaves all mortals free to choose, but how grateful we should be that God chose long, long ago to rescue and to resurrect all His children through the Atonement of His Son. Nevertheless, some reject and many are indifferent to these and other divine beckonings, mostly because they are too caught up in the cares of the world. They are strangers to the Savior, who is far from the thoughts and intents of their hearts. (see Mosiah 5:13)
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Let us be articulate, for while our defense of the kingdom may not stir all hearers, the absence of thoughtful response may cause fledglings among the faithful to falter.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Ego trips are almost always made on someone else's expense account.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Because God wants us to come home after having become more like Him and His Son, part of this developmental process, of necessity, consists of showing unto us our weaknesses. Hence, if we have ultimate hope we will be submissive, because, with His help, those weaknesses can even become strengths (see Ether 12:27).
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - When we take Jesus' yoke upon us, this admits us eventually to what Paul called the "fellowship of [Christ's] sufferings" (Philip. 3:10). Whether illness or aloneness, injustice or rejection, etc., our comparatively small-scale sufferings, if we are meek, will sink into the very marrow of the soul. We then better appreciate not only Jesus' sufferings for us, but also His matchless character, moving us to greater adoration and even emulation.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - The gospel of Jesus Christ clearly says to us as far as the world of truth and fact is concerned, there's nothing out there to be afraid of. The Latter- day Saint leans into learning with a gusto, or should.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - The coming forth of the Book of Mormon is a marvelous episode not only in Church history but also in human history. You and I owe many people for their roles in bringing us the Book of Mormon, a book filled with plain and precious salvational truths which came forth by 'the gift and power of God' (Book of Mormon title page). Through the labors and sacrifices of many, the 'marvelous work and a wonder' foreseen by Isaiah (Isa. 29:14) restored vital truths which had been lost to mankind for centuries! We can best express our gratitude by reading and applying the teachings of the Book of Mormon.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Good homes are still the best source of good humans.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Even during these difficult times, members 'armed with righteousness' can do so many things. (1 Nephi 14:14.) We can have love at home, even though the love of many waxes cold in the world. (See Matt. 24:12.) We can have inner peace even though peace has been taken from the earth. (See D&C 1:35.)
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Along with all the foregoing reasons for our individual repentance, Church members have a special rendezvous to keep, brothers and sisters. Nephi saw it. One future day, he said, Jesus' covenant people, 'scattered upon all the face of the earth,' will be 'armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory.' (1 Nephi 14:14.) This will happen, but only after more members become more saintly and more consecrated in conduct.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - The Atonement is the chief expression of Christ's loving-kindness. He endured so many things. For instance, as prophesied, He was spat upon (see 1 Nephi. 19:9). As foretold, He was struck and scourged (see Mosiah 3:9). Likewise, He was offered vinegar and gall while aflame with thirst (see Ps. 69:21). Yet in His later description of His agonies, Jesus does not speak of those things. Instead, after the Atonement, there is no mention about His being spat upon, struck, or proffered vinegar and gall. Instead, Christ confides in us His chief anxiety, namely, that He 'would that [He] might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink' (D&C 19:18) -- especially desiring not to get partway through the Atonement and then pull back. Mercifully for all of us, He 'finished [His] preparations unto the children of men' (D&C 19:19). Jesus partook of history's bitterest cup without becoming bitter! Significantly, when He comes again in majesty and power, He will cite His aloneness, saying, 'I have trodden the wine-press alone' (D&C 133:50).
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Damage to ourselves is sufficient reason to resist murmuring, but another obvious danger is it is contagiousness. Even faithful father Lehi, for one brief moment, got caught up in the contagion of murmuring. (See 1 Nephi 16:20.) Similarly, when Moses lapsed, very briefly, it was under exasperating pressure from rebels. (See Num. 20:7-12.) No one knows how to work a crowd better than the adversary. Instead of murmuring, therefore, being of good cheer is what is needed, and being of good cheer is equally contagious. We have clear obligations to so strengthen each other by doing things 'with cheerful hearts and countenances.' (Doctrine and Covenants 59:15; see also Doctrine and Covenants 81:5.)"
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - When we rejoice in beautiful scenery, great art, and great music, it is but the flexing of instincts acquired in another place and another time.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - In the cumulative process of living, today's small inflection for good adds to what becomes tomorrow's mountain of character. A bad inflection in a defining moment, however, gouges a little more in what later becomes the eroded gully channeling us so swiftly into the 'gulf of misery' (2 Nephi 1:13). Life's experiences of boredom, exhilaration, deprivation, conflict, compromise, mistakes, successes, resentments, loving, excluding, belonging, repenting, and forgiving swirl about us constantly. How will immortal principles be applied by immortal individuals to these swirling situations?
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - At the center of the Father's plan is Jesus Christ, mankind's Redeemer. Yet, as foreseen, many judge Jesus 'to be a thing of naught' (1 Nephi 19:9), or 'consider him' merely 'a man.' (Mosiah 3:9.) Whether others deny or delimit Jesus, for us He is our Lord and Savior! Comparatively, brothers and sisters, it matters very little what people think of us, but it matters very much what we think of Him. It matters very little, too, who others say we are; what matters is who we say Jesus is. (See Matt. 16:13-17.)
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - As the Lord communicates with the meek and submissive, fewer decibels are required, and more nuances are received. Even the most meek, like Moses, learn overwhelming things they 'never had supposed.' (Moses 1:10.) But it is only the meek mind which can be so shown and so stretched -- not those, as Isaiah wrote, who 'are wise in their own eyes.' (Isaiah 5:21; see also 2 Nephi 9:29 and 2 Nephi 15:21.)
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Life's disappointments often represent the debris of our failed, proximate hopes. Instead, however, I speak of the crucial need for ultimate hope. Ultimate hope is a different matter. It is tied to Jesus and the blessings of the great Atonement, blessings resulting in the universal Resurrection and the precious opportunity provided thereby for us to practice emancipating repentance, making possible what the scriptures call 'a perfect brightness of hope' (2 Nephi 31:20).
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - In the last days, happily, the Church will grow extensively, with its membership being 'scattered upon all the face of the earth' (1 Nephi 14:14). Nevertheless, its dominions will still be comparatively 'small' because of 'wickedness,' which will close the ears of many to the gospel message (see 1 Nephi 14:12). There will also be 'a great division among the people' (2 Nephi 30:10; see also D&C 63:54). This stressful polarization will, ironically, help in the final shaking of that strange confederacy, the 'kingdom of the devil,' in order that the honest in heart, even therein, may receive the truth (2 Nephi 28:19).
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Real Christianity is contagious.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - In the anguishing process of repentance, we may sometimes feel God has deserted us. The reality is that our behavior has isolated us from Him. Thus, while we are turning away from evil but have not yet turned fully to God, we are especially vulnerable. Yet we must not give up, but, instead, reach out to God's awaiting arm of mercy, which is outstretched 'all the day long.' (Jacob 5:47; Jacob 6:4; 2 Nephi 28:32; Mormon 5:11.) Unlike us, God has no restrictive office hours.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Benjamin was not an 'I told you so' leader. He was genuinely concerned with whether or not his words had been received and applied. He also recognized the role of the family in teaching and implementing the commitments of discipleship. (See Mosiah 2:5-6; Mosiah 6:3.) He apparently did as the Savior did when He taught intensively and then directed His hearers to go and discuss with their families that which had been taught. (See 3 Nephi 17:3.)
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Listening is one of the forms of love.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - But this road of discipleship which we are considering here is not easy. It requires sturdy, all-weather souls who are constant in every season of life and who are not easily stalled or thrown off course. Likewise, even with this accurate view of the mortal experience we still need time and the wise use of our moral agency. We still need God's long-suffering to help us. We need all of these combined in order to gain experience in life. Amid this ongoing process, you and I can actually come to know for ourselves, like Alma of old, who 'fasted and prayed many days that I might know' that these immortal principles are true (Alma 5:46).
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Life in the Church soon teaches us that the Lord does not ask us about our ability, but only about our availability. And then, if we demonstrate our dependability, the Lord will increase our capability.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Brethren, as you submit your wills to God, you are giving Him the only thing you can actually give Him that is really yours to give. Don't wait too long to find the altar or to begin to place the gift of your wills upon it! No need to wait for a receipt; the Lord has His own special ways of acknowledging.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - It is up to us. Therein lies life's greatest and most persistent challenge. Thus when people are described as 'having lost their desire for sin,' it is they, and they only, who deliberately decided to lose those wrong desires by being willing to 'give away all [their] sins' in order to know God (Alma 22:18).
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Many in the world hold back from making the 'leap of faith' because they have already jumped to some other conclusions -- often the conclusions of Korihor, which are: God never was nor ever will be; there is not a redeeming Christ; man cannot know the future; man cannot know of that which he cannot see; whatsoever a man does is no crime; and death is the end. (See Alma 30:13-18.) The number of modern-day adherents to the Korihor conclusions will grow.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Church membership is not passive security but continuing opportunity.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - The winds of tribulation, which blow out some men's candles of commitment, only fan the fires of faith of [others].
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Joshua didn't say choose ye next year whom you will serve.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - There is an inseparable connection between the keeping of the commandments and the well-being of society.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Experience by experience, faith can yield to knowledge 'in that thing,' meaning the particularized verifications of gospel truths. (Alma 32:34.) It was so with the brother of Jared: 'He had faith no longer, for he knew.' (Ether 3:19.) Brigham Young assured that 'every principle God has revealed carries its own convictions of its truth to the human mind.' (In Journal of Discourses, 9:149.) Jesus clearly declared that 'if any man will do his will, he shall know.' (John 7:17.) However, Jesus described the steady process as being one of 'line upon line, precept upon precept.' (D&C 98:12.)
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - Our glimpse of Gethsemane should teach us that all prayers are petitions.
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - As we see ourselves, and others, passing through fiery trials, the wisdom of Peter, who had his own share of fiery trials, is very useful: 'Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you.' (1 Peter 4:12.) We do know, however, that God will not suffer us to be tempted above what we can bear. 'There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape.' (1 Corinthians 10:13.) God carefully scales 'all these things,' since we cannot bear all things now. He has told us: 'Behold, ye are little children and ye cannot bear all things now; ye must grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth.' (DNC 50:40.)
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - The dues of discipleship are high indeed, and how much we can take so often determines how much we can then give! I believe it was George MacDonald who observed that in the process of life, we are not always the already-tempered and helpful hammer which is shaping and pounding another. Sometimes we are merely the anvil. Thus, as already indicated, patience is a vital virtue in relation to our faith, our free agency, our attitude toward life, our humility, and our suffering. Moreover, patience will not be an obsolete attribute in the next world!
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - With the enemy combined, it is so vital to keep 'in the right way.' (Moroni 6:4.) Orthodoxy in thought and behavior brings safety and felicity as the storms come, including 'every wind of doctrine.' (See Eph. 4:14.) Happily, amid such winds the Holy Ghost not only helps us to recognize plain truth but also plain nonsense!
-- Elder Neal A. Maxwell - I've tried to emphasize repentance, one of the most vital and merciful doctrines of the kingdom. It is too little understood, too little applied by us all, as if it were merely a word on a bumper sticke
| |
