What Influenced You Most as You Figured Out How to be a Parent?

I had to smile quietly to myself when I saw this question from Shauna this morning. I’m old enough now to wonder if I really EVER have figured out how to be a parent (he said with a broad grin). But, nevertheless, I will attempt an answer only because there are now so many up and coming parents among us.

As I reflect upon my life, I am consistently being reminded of past memories. My future is much shorter than my lengthy history. I think it is safe to conclude the single greatest influence in my life has been my lifelong love affair with the scriptures, beginning with the Book of Mormon. When I told Dianne that I had offered a pdf copy of my compilation of all the ZION scriptures to Woodland Ward members as I taught recently in Sunday School, she smiled and observed, “Yeah, Dad, you were obsessed.” Yes, guilty as charged, Dianne.

She no doubt recalled all the late nights I spent at my desk pounding it out on the manual typewriter long before the Internet had been invented. And here I sit at my desk this morning, still pounding it out on my very intelligent and advanced computer keyboard. It was laborious back in the day, no doubt about it, but I had found a topic that propelled me through all the standard works and into the Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. The scriptures became familiar to me, as revelation upon revelation poured out to me merely as a reward for making the attempt to learn. The prophets who wrote them came to life before me night after night.

I went page by page with a marker circling every reference I found. It was tedious and painstaking, but when I found the word ZION, I put it in context in my written compilation including surrounding verses, and kept going until I felt I had found each reference. The last time I touched it was 2002, when I printed the final copy. I found only a few takers in my latest invitation, but years ago I opened it up to the whole world in The Goates Notes, my blog page, and never looked back. An online search will quickly yield the results.

What did THAT have to do with parenting, you may ask? The quest for eternal life in my mind correlates directly with the establishment of Zion in these last days. Yes, there is a very broad and expansive definition at the global scale, but perhaps more meaningful is that individually we are the composite collective of ZION as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We trace our priesthood lineage back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Through them we have the potential to become like them, and by extension like our Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ.

That reality has been my steadfast and lifelong quest as I have “figured out” parenting. I reviewed again the story of the willingness of Abraham to offer his only son Isaac on the altar of sacrifice, and his hand was only stopped by the intervention of an angel when his faithfulness had been tested to the utmost. In the case of the Father, I reflected just last week, there was no stopping the crucifixion of His Son on the cross outside Jerusalem so the full effect of the Atonement could be realized for all His children who had ever lived on Earth. Imagine what THAT self-restraint not to intervene must have looked like!

As parents, we do all we can do to teach our children the correct principles of the gospel. Often, it may feel like we’re going down a long, long checklist of commandments and requirements, but reduced to its essence we find a much simpler compilation I am reminded of each time I attend an endowment session in the the temple.

“We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.”

Faith is hope for things that we cannot see but are true. We believe that Jesus Christ is our Savior, and we trust Him to help and guide us.

Repentance is when we change our hearts to be more like Heavenly Father. When we do something wrong, we feel sorry and promise ourselves and Heavenly Father that we will not do that wrong thing again. When we repent, we can be forgiven because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

Baptism is the first step in becoming a member of Jesus Christ’s Church. We can be baptized when we are eight years old. At age eight, we are old enough to know the difference between right and wrong.

The gift of the Holy Ghost is given to us by a priesthood holder after we are baptized. The Holy Ghost prompts us to choose the right, comforts us, and helps us understand eternal truths. The Holy Ghost is like a still, small voice that we feel in our minds and hearts.

It was standardized by the Prophet Joseph Smith, as with all the other Articles of Faith, so he could merely point to them as references for the repetitive questions he was constantly asked.

As I grew older and more children came into our home, my approach to embracing the scriptures as my guide to parenting became pivotal and defining in helping me to become a father. I reasoned that my Father in Heaven would have to become my role model. I know I must have failed many times in achieving that ideal, but I kept persisting, and still do, despite my weakness. I believe Patsy and I first found each other in the pre-existence. We chose each other there and then. When we came to Earth, we found each other here and now. The direct correlation is that then each of our children also appeared here on Earth in our family circle because we were all promised to each other in our pre-mortal existence too.

I often reflected on Grandfather Harold B. Lee’s obvious emotional reaction as he pronounced those precious sealing words upon us at the altar on the morning of December 19, 1969, in the Salt Lake Temple. I was his first grandson for whom he performed that ordinance, though he had performed it before for hundreds of others who had asked him to. It is my belief he may have had a glimpse into eternal realms beyond our physical sight as he perceived that magnificent posterity that would one day come to mortality through our loins, as their parents. I believe you might have surrounded that altar as our spirit children, waiting patiently to join us. The spirit whispers it is true as I write this morning.

So, what has influenced me as I have sought to be a parent? I hope I may have answered this question to your satisfaction. My counsel to all of you as you undertake and continue your parenting is this: Take the scriptures as your infallible guide first and foremost. I predict you will make mistakes as you raise your children, most assuredly, if my life is any indication. However, anchoring yourselves in the gospel of Jesus Christ, particularly with the promise found in D&C 58:42-43, is the assurance you seek:

Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more.

By this ye may know if a man repenteth of his sins — behold, he will confess them and forsake them.

In your attempts at raising a righteous posterity, remember what I have come to call “Divine Amnesia.” It is the part and parcel of the mercy of our Father in Heaven. It is His eternal promise to all who invite those spirits to join you here, with whom you have made eternal covenants even before this world was created. You are never alone as parents in this mortal life.

He and His Son are at your elbow in ALL the days of your lives. Of that, I bear my humble and solemn witness.

What is Something Prophets Have Shared That Brought You Closer to the Savior?

Amelia, a granddaughter, asked this question the other day as I was headed out to the Orem Temple for an endowment session. I was officiating for a great uncle four times removed who was born in 1704 in Lincolnshire, England. It was yet another glorious, full session.

As I was leaving I held the entrance door open for a man dressed in his whites. He was seated in his automated wheelchair, his temple clothes in a suitcase on his lap, and then I noticed he had no feet. There was no one assisting him, but I was immediately humbled by just the sight of him coming to the temple, independent and faithful.

President Harold B. Lee

To answer Milsie’s question as I pondered it, I decided to isolate my response to the teachings of my Prophet Grandfather, Harold B. Lee. He was the 11th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he had a singular imprint on my soul. I longed to be as knowledgeable in the scriptures as he was. He anchored his soul in the scriptures all his life, as noted below. It was through him that I gleaned the desire to become as he was, and I slowly came to know that it required consistent and systematic effort over the course of a lifetime to become as he was. I feel his eyes upon me even after all these years, and I pray I may continue to endure in faith in my Lord Jesus Christ to the end.

His grave marker in the Salt Lake City Cemetery

Of course, there are many, many prophets to whom I could turn for the answers, but I want to capture the essence of this preeminent progenitor, for all of us this morning so you may become more familiar with who he was and what he taught.

“I once had a visit from a young Catholic priest who came with a stake missionary from Colorado. I asked him why he had come, and he replied, ‘I came to see you.’

“‘Why?’ I asked.

“‘Well,’ he said, ‘I have been searching for certain concepts that I have not been able to find. But I think I am finding them now in the Mormon community.’

“That led to a half-hour conversation. I told him, ‘Father, when your heart begins to tell you things that your mind does not know, then you are getting the Spirit of the Lord.’

“He smiled and said, ‘I think that’s happening to me already.’

“‘Then don’t wait too long,’ I said to him.

“A few weeks later I received a telephone call from him. He said, ‘Next Saturday I am going to be baptized a member of the Church, because my heart has told me things my mind did not know.’

“He was converted. He saw what he should have seen. He heard what he should have heard. He understood what he should have understood, and he was doing something about it. He had a testimony.” (Stand Ye in Holy Places [1974], 92–93, emphasis added.)

“I bear you my testimony that I know the Savior lives, that the most powerful witness you can have that He lives comes when the power of the Holy Spirit bears witness to your soul that He does live. More powerful than sight, more powerful than walking and talking with Him, is that witness of the Spirit by which you shall be judged if you were to turn against Him. But it is the responsibility of all of you, as well as my responsibility, to get that testimony established. We are constantly asked, just how does one receive revelation? The Lord said in a revelation to the early leaders, ‘I will tell you in your mind and in your heart by the Holy Ghost. It shall dwell within you. This is the revelation by which Moses led the children of Israel to the Red Sea and on across it.’ (See D&C 8:2–3.) When that Spirit has witnessed to our spirit, that’s a revelation from Almighty God.” (Address given at Lausanne, Switzerland conference, 26 Sept. 1972, Historical Department Archives, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 8.)

“Not many have seen the Savior face to face here in mortality, but there is no one of us who has been blessed to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost after baptism but that may have a perfect assurance of His existence as though we had seen. Indeed, if we have faith in the reality of His existence even though we have not seen, as the Master implied in His statement to Thomas, even greater is the blessing to those who ‘have not seen, and yet have believed’ (John 20:29), for ‘we walk by faith, not by sight’ (2 Corinthians 5:7). Although not seeing, yet believing, we rejoice with joy unspeakable in receiving the end of our faith, even the salvation of our souls (see 1 Peter 1:8–9).” (The Teachings of Harold B. Lee, 93.)

“Can we sum it up and say then, that any person who has received a true testimony has received a revelation from the living God, or else he would not have the testimony? Anyone who has a testimony, then, has enjoyed the gift of prophecy, he’s had the spirit of revelation. He has had the gift by which the prophets have been able to speak things pertaining to their responsibilities…

“The Lord help us all to strive to gain that testimony most vital in our preparation to know. When finally we get that one divine thought that Joseph Smith was and is a prophet and that the gospel is true, all the other seeming difficulties melt away like heavy frost before the coming of the rising sun.” (“Church and Divine Revelation,” 1954, Historical Department Archives, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 17, 23, emphasis added.)

“Now when our missionaries go out, we say to those among whom they labor, ‘We are not asking you to join the Church just to put your name on the records. That is not our concern. We come to you offering you the greatest gift the world can give, the gift of the kingdom of God. This is here for you if you will only accept and believe.’ Now that is our challenge to the world. ‘We can teach you the doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ and bear testimony of the divinity of the work, but the witness of the truth of what we teach has to come from your own searching.’

“We say to our people whom we teach, ‘Now, you ask the Lord. Study, work, and pray.’ This is the process by which people are brought into the Church, and it is the same way that from the beginning the honest in heart everywhere have been brought into the Church.” (The Teachings of Harold B. Lee, 135–36.)

“As Jesus lifted up his eyes in prayer as ‘his hour was come,’ (see John 17:1) he gave expression to a profound truth that should be full of meaning to every soul: ‘And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.’ (John 17:3.) While this expression has deeper significance than I shall discuss here, I should like to take one thought from it. How can you know the Father and the Son? … We begin to acquire that knowledge by study. The Savior counseled us to ‘Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.’ (John 5:39, see also Moses 6:63 and 2 Nephi 11:24.) Therein will be found a history of God’s dealings with mankind in every dispensation and the works and words of the prophets and those of the Savior himself as given ‘by inspiration of God,’ as the Apostle Paul said, ‘and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.’ (2 Timothy 3:16–17.) Youth should let no day pass without reading from these sacred books.

“But it is not enough merely to learn of his life and works by study. It was the Master who replied in answer to the question as to how one might know of him and his doctrine: ‘If any man will do his will, he shall know.’ (John 7:17.) Would you think an authority on science to be one who had never experimented in a laboratory? Would you give much heed to the comments of a music critic who did not know music or an art critic who didn’t paint? Just so, one like yourself who would ‘know God’ must be one who does his will and keeps his commandments and practices the virtues Jesus lived.” (Decisions for Successful Living [1973], 39–40; paragraphing added, emphasis added.)

“The acquiring of knowledge by faith is no easy road to learning. It demands strenuous effort and a continual striving by faith…

“In short, learning by faith is no task for a lazy man. Someone has said, in effect, that such a process requires the bending of the whole soul, the calling up from the depths of the human mind and linking it with God — the right connection must be formed. Then only comes ‘knowledge by faith.’” (The Teachings of Harold B. Lee, 331.)

Here’s one of my favorites that hangs in a frame on my office wall as a reminder of the precious fruit that is a testimony:

“Testimony is as elusive as a moonbeam; it’s as fragile as an orchid; you have to recapture it every morning of your life. You have to hold on by study, and by faith, and by prayer. If you allow yourself to be angry, if you allow yourself to get into the wrong kind of company, you listen to the wrong kind of stories, you are studying the wrong kind of subjects, you are engaging in sinful practices, there is nothing that will be more deadening as to take away the Spirit of the Lord from you until it will be as though you had walked from a lighted room when you go out of this building, as though you had gone out into a darkness.” (The Teachings of Harold B. Lee, 331.)

“That which you possess today in testimony will not be yours tomorrow unless you do something about it. Your testimony is either going to increase or it is going to diminish, depending on you. Will you remember your responsibility, then? The Lord said, ‘If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself’” (John 7:17). (The Teachings of Harold B. Lee, 331, emphasis added.)

“The Master was saying, and I am saying to you today, that the rains of disaster, the rains of difficulty, the floods and winds of severe trials are going to beat upon the house of every one of you. There will be temptation to sin, you will have hardship, you will have difficulty to face in your life. The only ones that will not fall when those tests come will be those who have their houses founded upon the rock of testimony. You will know no matter what comes; you will not be able to stand on borrowed light. You can only stand on the light that you have by the witness of the Spirit that all of you have the right to receive.” (The Teachings of Harold B. Lee, 140.)

As a newly called Apostle in April, 1941, he once described his testimony this way many years later looking back:

“I come to you today as a special witness charged with, above all else, the responsibility of bearing that witness. There have been intimate circumstances when I have known with a surety. When I was searching for the Spirit to deliver a talk on the Easter theme [in 1941], the resurrection of the Lord, I closeted myself, read the four gospels, particularly down to the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and I had something happen to me. As I read, it was as though I was reliving, almost, the very incident, not just a story. And then I delivered my message and bore testimony that now, as one of the least of my brethren, I, too, had a personal witness of the death and the resurrection of our Lord and Master. Why? Because I had had something burned into my soul that I could speak with a certainty that is beside all doubt. So can you. And the most satisfying thing in all the world, the greatest anchor to your soul, in time of trouble, in time of temptation, in times of sickness, in times of indecision, in times of your struggles and work, [is that] you can know with a certainty that defies all doubt that God lives.” (Education for Eternity, “The Last Message” lecture given at the Salt Lake Institute of Religion, 15 Jan. 1971, 11, emphasis added.)

“You, too, can know that your Redeemer lives, as did Job in the midst of his temptation to ‘curse God, and die,’ (see Job 2:9; 19:25) and know also that you, too, can open the door and invite Him in ‘to sup with you.’ (See Revelation 3:20.) See also yourselves one day as resurrected beings claiming kinship to Him who gave His life that the rewards to mortal men for earthly struggle and experience will be the fruits of eternal life even though as measured by human standards one’s life’s labors seemed to have been defeated.” (In Conference Report, April 1958, 136.)

This next teaching reverberates within me too. There is a fellowship in suffering that only those who have experienced it acutely can know fully. He knew because of the suffering he experienced in the decade of the 60s with the deaths of his beloved companion Fern, and his daughter Maurine, just how painful death of a loved one could be. And now, so do I. I have also buried my wife and a daughter.

“I know … what it means to have the shattering devastation of loneliness with the snatching away of a loved one. Over my years, I have been called and tried to comfort those who mourn, but until I had to repeat those very things to myself that I have been saying to others, then only did I come to sense something that was far beyond words, that had to reach down to the touchstone of the soul before one can give real comfort. You have to see part of you buried in the grave. You have to see the loved one die and then you have to ask yourself — Do you believe what you have been teaching others? Are you sure and certain that God lives? Do you believe in the Atonement of the Lord and Master — that He opened the doors to the resurrection in the more glorious life? Sometimes when we stand in the stark nakedness all alone, it’s then that our testimony has to grow deep if we are not going to be shattered and fall by the wayside.

“As the wife … of Job said, ‘Why don’t you curse God and die.’ (See Job 2:9.) But in the majesty of Job’s suffering, he gave expression to something that I think no funeral service is quite complete without repeating. He said, ‘I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, … and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.’ (Job 19:25–27.) You folks today, if you know that you have anchored your souls in that divine testimony that He lives and that at the latter day He will stand upon this earth and you will meet Him face to face — if you know that, no matter what the risks and the responsibilities and the tragedies may be — if you build your house upon the rock, you won’t falter. Yes, you’ll go through the terrifying experience of sorrow over a lost loved one, but you won’t falter; eventually you’ll come through with even greater faith than you ever had before.” (Address given at the funeral of David H. Cannon, 29 Jan. 1968, Historical Department Archives, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 5–6, emphasis added.)

“The path to [exaltation] is rugged and steep. Many stumble and fall, and through discouragement never pick themselves up to start again. The forces of evil cloud the path with many foggy deterrents, often trying to detour us in misleading trails. But through all this journey,” assured President Lee, “there is the calming assurance that if we choose the right, success will be ours, and the achievement of it will have molded and formed and created us into the kind of person qualified to be accepted into the presence of God. What greater success could there be than to have all that God has?” (The Teachings of Harold B. Lee, 69–70.)

“Isaiah said: ‘But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.’ (Isaiah 64:8.)

“I’ve read that verse many times but had not received the full significance until I was down in Mexico a few years ago at Tlalcapaca, where the people mold clay into various kinds of pottery. There I saw them take clay that had been mixed by crude, primitive methods, the molder wading in the mud to mix it properly. Then it was put upon a potter’s wheel and the potter began to fashion the intricate bits of pottery, which he was to place on the market. And as we watched, we saw occasionally, because of some defect in the mixing, the necessity for pulling the whole lump of clay apart and throwing it back in to be mixed over again, and sometimes the process had to be repeated several times before the mud was properly mixed.

“With that in mind, I began to see the meaning of this scripture: Yes, we too have to be tried and tested by poverty, by sickness, by the death of loved ones, by temptation, sometimes by the betrayal of supposed friends, by affluence and riches, by ease and luxury, by false educational ideas, and by the flattery of the world. A father, explaining this matter to his son, said,

“‘And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man, after he had created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter.’ (2 Nephi 2:15.)

“It was the Prophet Joseph Smith who said, speaking of this refining process, that he was like a huge, rough stone rolling down the mountainside, and the only polishing he got was when some rough corner came in contact with something else, knocking off a corner here and a corner there. But, he said, ‘Thus I will become a… polished shaft in the quiver of the Almighty.’ [History of the Church, 5:401.]

“So, we must be refined; we must be tested in order to prove the strength and power that are in us.” (Stand Ye in Holy Places [1974], 114–15.)

This was his message in his inaugural press conference after he had been set apart and ordained as the new President of the Church in 1972:

“‘Keep the commandments of God,’ for therein is the one course that brings that inward peace of which the Master spoke when He bade farewell to His disciples: ‘These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.’ (John 16:33) So may each of you, in the midst of the turmoil all about you, find that heavenly assurance from the Master who loves us all, which puts to flight all fears when, like the Master, you also have overcome the things of the world.” (“A Message to Members in the Service,” Church News, 2 Dec. 1972, 3.)

When Harold B. Lee was President of the Church, he and his wife were visiting missionaries across the country.

Harold: How are you doing, elders?

Elders: Wonderful. Thank you for visiting us.

Harold: It’s my pleasure. You’re doing great work out here.

Before their trip was finished, President Lee felt impressed to return home.

Harold: I’m not feeling very well. I think we should go home as quickly as possible.

Joan: I think so, too. We’ll just have to miss the rest of our appointments.

President Lee and his wife were soon on an airplane headed for Utah. During the flight, he thought he felt someone touch him.

Harold: Did someone just touch my head?

Joan: I didn’t touch you.

President Lee looked up, but no one was there. Later, President Lee felt hands on his head again. He knew that he was being blessed by angels, but he didn’t know why.

When they arrived home, President Lee was feeling worse.

Joan: I’ll call the doctor.

President Lee went to the hospital. Doctors found that an ulcer inside his body was bleeding badly. If he had started bleeding on the airplane, he could have died.

During General Conference, President Lee told the members about his experience.

Harold: I know that there are divine powers that reach out when all other help is not available. Yes, I know that there are such powers. (See Ensign, July 1973, page 123, emphasis added.)

* * *

I will conclude this entry by stating to Amelia and to all my posterity that I do know I have grown closer to my Savior Jesus Christ by studying ALL the sermons of President Harold B. Lee throughout my life. I have given you only a small sample here. He has inspired me, continually and eternally, because of my relationship to him as his eldest grandson. He called me “Skipper,” which was his nickname suggesting I needed to set the example for my younger siblings and cousins (there were 10 of us). He explained I was to be the one who would “set the sail” for our mortal journey together. I was initially intimidated about that role, trust me, but I learned to grow into it because he had designated it for me.

I have outlived him in the number of years we were in mortality, and now I often reflect about what seemed his premature death when he was taken home on December 26, 1973, the day after Christmas. Maybe it’s only because I am a slow learner - certainly slower than he! Whatever the case, I inexorably draw closer to the day when I will depart this earthly existence.

Before that day occurs, I want to enjoy my remaining days sharing with each of you in this format. It has been a labor of love to assure you how much YOU are loved. If it is determined to be only a fraction of how much Harold B. Lee loved me, then I will be content.

Harold B. Lee and his "Skipper"

What Is The Relationship Between Faith and Science?

Ben, thank you for this probing question. It has usually been asked in the spirit of pitting truth against science. Which one is more accurate, or to which one should we give preference?

President Boyd K. Packer

I have always valued the sagacious wisdom of President Boyd K. Packer, who noted:

“The Spirit of Christ can enlighten the inventor, the scientist, the painter, the sculptor, the composer, the performer, the architect, the author to produce great, even inspired things for the blessing and good of all mankind.

“This Spirit can prompt the farmer in his field and the fisherman on his boat. It can inspire the teacher in the classroom, the missionary in presenting his discussion. It can inspire the student who listens. And of enormous importance, it can inspire husband and wife, and father and mother.” (Boyd K. Packer, “The Light of Christ,”Ensign, April 2005, 10, emphasis mine).

The Lord declares, “All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.” (D&C 93:30, emphasis mine).

President Boyd K. Packer, in the article I quoted earlier, taught:

“Every man, woman, and child of every nation, creed, or color — everyone, no matter where they live or what they believe or what they do — has within them the imperishable Light of Christ. In this respect, all men are created equally. The Light of Christ in everyone is a testimony that God is no respecter of persons (see D&C 1:35). He treats everyone equally in that endowment with the Light of Christ.” (Boyd K. Packer, ibid).

The Light of Christ, which every mortal on earth possesses, is what Lehi had in mind when he declared, “And men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil. … And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves.” (2 Nephi 2:5, 26).

Mormon urged: “Search diligently in the light of Christ that ye may know good from evil; and if ye will lay hold upon every good thing, and condemn it not, ye certainly will be a child of Christ.” (Moroni 7:19).

The scriptures are simply the most accurate guide we may apply to Ben’s question, as well as every other question we might suggest. It’s where my mind always takes me first, in addition to the living oracles who lead and preside among us in these last days.

President Harold B. Lee

I went WAY BACK in my memory this morning to a talk none of you would have heard of because it was delivered near the end of his mortal life in 1973, by my Grandfather, President Harold B. Lee. He titled it simply “Closing Remarks.”

“And so, in the closing moments of this conference, I have been moved as I think I have never been moved before in all my life. If it were not for the assurance that I have that the Lord is near to us, guiding, directing, the burden would be almost beyond my strength, but because I know that he is there, and that he can be appealed to, and if we have ears to hear attuned to him, we will never be left alone.

“I am grateful for strong men like President Tanner and President Romney and the Twelve and all the General Authorities, who are united more so than I have ever experienced before during my lifetime. The General Authorities are united and working together and are speaking with one voice to the world.

“Follow the Brethren, listen to the Brethren. I bear you my witness as one whom the Lord has brought to this place, as Brother Gordon Hinckley has said. I thank the Lord that I may have passed some of the tests, but maybe there will have to be more before I shall have been polished to do all that the Lord would have me do.

“Sometimes when the veil has been very thin, I have thought that if the struggle had been still greater that maybe then there would have been no veil. I stand by, not asking for anything more than the Lord wants to give me, but I know that he is up there and he is guiding and directing.

“I extend my blessings to you wonderful Saints. Go back to your homes now. Take the love of the General Authorities to your people. We extend to those who are not members of the Church the hand of fellowship. May we reach out to those who have lost their sense of direction and, before it is too late, try to win them back into the fold; because they are all God’s children, and he wants us to save all of them.

“Peace be with you, not the peace that comes from the legislation in the halls of congress, but the peace that comes in the way that the Master said, by overcoming all the things of the world. That God may help us so to understand and may you know that I know with a certainty that defies all doubt that this is his work, that he is guiding us and directing us today, as he has done in every dispensation of the gospel, and I say that with all the humility of my soul, in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.” (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1973/10/closing-remarks?lang=eng).
That concluding address to the Saints in October General Conference would be his final one. He would be gone by December 26, 1973, after a shockingly short administration everyone had expected would be much longer because of his 20-year age differential with President Joseph Fielding Smith. When his surprising death came, we all looked back and realized he had been saying his benediction at the end of General Conference.

Now, please don’t misunderstand. I have intentionally avoided in my answer anything that might resemble giving any credence to the notion that somehow faith and science are mutually exclusive. They are NOT!! Our enemies are fond of pitting us against each other with similarly posited “controversies.” There is eternal harmony in TRUTH, whether it comes from science or religion. We are taught in sacred precincts, “All truth may be circumscribed into one great whole.” We carry the symbol of that eternal truth in the sacred temple garments each of us wears every day.

President Russell M. Nelson

Now to put a fine point on this question, Ben, I turn to perhaps our most recent and most famous scientist/Apostle, even President Russell M. Nelson, who was a world-renowned heart surgeon. He brilliantly reconciles below what might only appear to be two competing worlds in his life:

“After graduating from medical school, I pursued advanced education in surgery. At that time there was no such thing as heart surgery. Then I teamed up with other researchers in the daunting task of making an artificial heart and lung machine. We knew that such an apparatus could possibly maintain the body’s circulation while repairs might be made on the heart. But during that early era, there was much we did not know.

“Then one day, two truths articulated in the Doctrine and Covenants spoke to my inquiring mind. These truths were, first, that all blessings are predicated upon obedience to law [see Doctrine and Covenants 130:21] and, second, that to every kingdom there is a law given [see Doctrine and Covenants 88:38].

“Well, I reasoned that if every kingdom had a law, there must be laws that govern the beating heart. I was determined to discover those laws and obey them. By doing so, blessings would come and lives could be saved.

“In medical school I had been taught that if one touched the beating heart, it would stop beating. However, one of the first laws we discovered in the lab was that we could touch the heart of an animal without losing its heartbeat. This finding opened the door later to uncovering another law that made more complex open-heart operations possible.

“We learned that if we added potassium chloride to blood flowing into the coronary arteries, thereby altering the normal sodium/potassium ratio, the heart would stop beating instantly. Then, when we nourished the heart with blood that had a normal sodium/potassium ratio, the heart would spring back to its normal beating pattern. Literally we could turn the heart off long enough to repair it and then turn it back on again.

“Decades later, when I explained this to a group of medical students, one prominent professor asked, ‘But what if it doesn’t work?’ My answer? It always works, because it is based on divine law.” (“The Love and Laws of God,” Brigham Young University devotional, Sept. 17, 2019, 2–3, speeches.byu.edu, emphasis mine).

Now, to all of you, my beloved posterity reading these poor words of mine, compiled with generous quotes from prophets, ancient and modern, I conclude with my witness. I know by the revelations to my heart and soul that ALL truth, whether it originates in the halls of scientific academia or the sacred precincts of temples now dotting the globe, that I have the witness of the Holy Ghost who speaks to me here and now as I write that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true.

When I think of the careful tutoring and mentoring received by the boy prophet Joseph Smith in the years between 1820 and 1830, including the publication of the Book of Mormon, that ALL I know compiled over my 78 years, has been revealed to me by my Heavenly Father and my Savior Jesus Christ through the ministrations of the Holy Ghost. It is consistent, comprehensive, and exhaustive in its volume which I will never have in its fulness until I move ahead into the spirit world someday.

In the meantime, I am content to bear this sure witness.

Comment:

Hey Grandpa! This is Ben, thanks for your answer to my question!
It’s a topic that’s come up a few times at BYU in my classes and I wanted to hear your perspective. Very enlightening!

Moses 7 and the Establishment of Zion

This week our study in the Old Testament in Come, Follow Me points us to Moses 7 in the Pearl of Great Price. There is not another topic that fires one's imagination more than the establishment of the ideals represented in the revelations of God to His prophets, particularly as it relates to Enoch's society and the establishment of the ancient city of Zion that was translated. Even the chapter heading is a fabulous summary for all who desire further light and knowledge:

Enoch teaches, leads the people, and moves mountains—The city of Zion is established—Enoch foresees the coming of the Son of Man, His atoning sacrifice, and the resurrection of the Saints—He foresees the Restoration, the Gathering, the Second Coming, and the return of Zion.

In 1982, I concluded my research in the scriptures by producing a pdf manuscript consisting of every reference to the word "Zion" in all four standard works and the Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. It was a personal quest born out of my inexhaustible curiosity over what the future of the Church might hold for all the faithful saints of the latter-days.

My conclusions all those years ago will follow in this post. My daughter Emily asked me this morning if I had ever gone back to make revisions to the original manuscript, and my answer was, "No." It goes without saying as I now share this link with everyone "out there" that my foresight in 1982, could not possibly have predicted that I would live long enough to see the proliferation of temples worldwide we are witnessing in 2026. That is only one example, but I am certain there are others. 

With that said, please enjoy your study of Enoch's society in Moses 7, and my blessings as you delve deeper into the topic of Zion. Truly, it is the study of a lifetime that will bless you and your families.

* * *

CONCLUSIONS:

There is an inherent weakness in this compilation that might be as obvious to the reader who has waded through the material, as it is to the author. The weakness I speak of is the learning curve. Not only have I learned as I have written, but my awareness of all that I do not know about Zion has increased exponentially. Further, prophetic events in the world seem to fill the headlines each day at an accelerated pace. That which I wrote a year ago is not as complete as it would be if I were writing today, nor is it as comprehensive as it may someday be. Further, as these rapidly unfolding events in the world occur each day, the shrouded prophetic picture of Zion seems to materialize more clearly. Predictions made in yesteryear are more accurate as events shape and focus our future destiny. We are all learning day by day, and I suppose for this reason the wisest authors reserve publishing their views until late in life when they are full of wisdom and knowledge. I do grow older – in that sense I qualify – but make no claim to either wisdom or knowledge. In my ignorance I would nevertheless make the attempt to state my conclusions if for no other reason than to brush a little dust and grime off the portrait of our destiny.

People

Zion is a covenant people, set apart, consecrated, and sanctified from the rest of the world. They are different, they are peculiar and they are pure. They have come out of the world, entered in at the gate of baptism, are born of the Spirit and have taken hold of the iron rod. They reject the clarion voices from amid the mists of darkness, and ignore the taunts and jeers of those in the spacious building of sin. God has purged his people in all the other dispensations of which we have record, and the purification has come as a result of extreme adversity and affliction. Gold is never refined in an air-conditioned chamber. If the covenant people cannot sacrifice and consecrate their lives to God, it has forever been the case that the rest of the world was willing to cast them out, throw them into the lions' den, or stoke up the fiery furnace. Let us never be deluded into thinking we will inherit Zion in any other way, nor be worthy of the company of earlier martyrs at that future wedding feast unless we consecrate.

Place

Zion is two world centers of righteousness and judgment that are ultimately joined together physically. One is Independence, Missouri, the "centerstake," from which “the law” will emanate, the other is Jerusalem, from which “the word” will go forth. Those who love and cherish the Constitution of the United States, it would seem, will rally to Zion and her stakes upon the American Continent. Christ will come to the Earth and sit in his temples in Jerusalem and in Jackson County, from which will go forth his word. They will combine eventually in the Lord's timetable with the heavenly Zion when the earth enters the terrestrial phase of its existence, thus returning to the status it once enjoyed referred to in the 10th Article of Faith as "paradisiacal glory."

This telestial world in which we now live will give way to a terrestrial world that will stand for one thousand years, a period of time referred to as "The Millennium." This is the place at the end of the path in Lehi's vision where the tree of life grows.

Condition

Zion will stand apart from all worldly influences. Men and women of honesty and truth will seek the peace Zion affords, trust their temporal and spiritual welfare to each other, or sink lower and lower with the rest of the world who will be at war. There will be no middle ground -- either total acceptance of God's salvation, or Lucifer's damnable embrace of death and destruction. Zion will be the light on the hill, and so formidable will be her strength and beauty because of God's overshadowing presence that her enemies will shrink at the sight of her. The society will be characterized by people of one heart, one mind, and one objective -- spreading the truth of God's salvation over the face of the earth as with a flood.

Time

Zion will come to pass in the due season of the Lord, and that season is upon us even now. We live at the end of the sixth seal of John's Revelation, meaning the end of the sixth thousand-year period since the Fall. It is called "today" in the scriptures, and it is a day of sacrifice. It is not a day in which to trust in the arm of flesh, seeking security in the carnal pleasures of today's society. Zion's time is not fully ripe until the Bridegroom comes to accept the Bride, as John foresaw. The paradox of Zion's timetable is that she will be nurtured as it were in the bull rushes like Moses, in the midst of unparalleled wickedness and abominations among men. The wheat and tares continue growing together, and the tares keep looking more and more like the weeds they are. And we also see the fig tree putting forth its leaves every day.

The Spirit whispers the truth that Zion will indeed have to be led out of bondage as the children of Israel were led out under Moses. While we are in the midst of spiritual bondage right now, the scriptures are replete with types and shadows of a physical bondage yet to come that will precede the day when all things are fulfilled.

We will not see the establishment of the headquarters of Zion until the temporary landlords who now occupy the sacred sites of the habitations of the New and the Old Jerusalem are swept off. The reclamation of those lands will come in the wake of destruction as foretold by all the prophets who witnessed the promised day, and that time is not far distant. Without an understanding of the impending destruction as the lynch pin to prophecy, the promises of the Lord to Israel that she will ultimately redeem the promised lands of her inheritance seem incomprehensible. One need not read far into The Book of Mormon to discover that this land is not promised to the Gentiles who now occupy it. Rather, it will be given to the scattered remnants of the House of Israel now being gathered, and to those relatively few Gentiles who repent, embrace the gospel and by adoption become Israel. To think otherwise would be to deny the very faith that gave the prophets their utterance. And this despite the obvious evidence that the Gentiles who occupy this Promised Land today have material wealth and military might beyond even the wildest imaginations of the prophets who foresaw their destruction.

Ephraim's descendants will figure prominently in the leadership of the House of Israel in the development of Zion, but it would be a gross error to assume that Zion is the private domain of Ephraim. The scriptures speak plainly of ALL the tribes coming to their inheritances in their various lands. We are witnessing the emergence of all these long-lost cousins in Israel in our day, as adversity, lawlessness, and political upheavals continue to drive them to our borders of freedom.

They come because of wars, famines, diseases, natural disasters, and the love of freedom, but whatever the reasons, they are coming to claim their promised blessings at the hands of Ephraim. Let us never be so surfeited by the things of this world that we cannot embrace them, when they come with little more than the clothes on their backs.

There is not a clear road map to Zion, a "checklist" if you will, that will land us unerringly at the gates of the Holy City. To come to Zion requires clean hands, a pure heart, and pure faith. To be a consecrated saint is to hearken to the voice of the Lord by the power of the Holy Ghost, to receive revelation upon revelation, and to possess a submissive heart that endures all that the Lord sees fit to inflict upon us. All the inhabitants of Zion are as little children, full of faith, and eager to do the will of the Father in all things.

We are not worthy of Zion's society in our present state. The institution of the Church that has served us so well to this point in the dispensation will be of little worth in the wilderness that still must be traversed by Zion's caravan. Programs, like scaffolding, must be dismantled, institutional thinking, like jetsam, must be thrown overboard as the caravan rolls onward. Those who cling steadfastly to their institutional faith, never risking the failure of individual responsibility for their decisions will sink in the depths of forgotten dust with the discarded baggage. We cannot endure the journey to Zion on borrowed light, nor will we find the oil of the Spirit to buy at midnight.

We must beware of repeating the patterns of old. The institution of the Church today can easily be discerned of bearing all the earmarks of the institution of the Jews in Christ's day. Despite the law of Moses designed by the Lord himself to prepare them for his kingdom, they tripped on form, on organizational neatness and perfection, on vain practices, and on outward works of professed righteousness for all men to see. In reality they were nothing but whited sepulchers having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. There is a tendency among us toward this same condition today. The liability of institutions is they tend to produce the undesirable qualities of self-righteousness and they miss the mark. Satan loves a parade, but Zion is a caravan of strangers and foreigners seeking a city built without hands. It is to be expected that the "corporate" Church would have difficulty implementing the celestial principles upon which Zion will be built. That reality does not make the Church's doctrines any less true.

This is an important point that cannot be glossed over. The Church’s compromise with Babylon in 2002 is nearly complete. In a forthcoming day there will be an entire separation of the righteous from the wicked. Babylon is slated for destruction. That fact is a well-documented scriptural reality, and so is the establishment of Zion. We are in the world as never before in our history, and we are more of the world too. We have a long and well-established history in the twentieth century of trying to have it both ways. We had to give away our “weird” history to convince the world we are no longer “weird.” 

President Gordon B. Hinckley has made the point well in his unprecedented outreach to the mass media on the world’s stage. In order to fulfill our mandate to take the gospel, even the least part of the gospel – that salvation is in Christ – to the world we had to make peace with our past. From the days of Brigham Young whose mission was to separate the saints from the world by leading them to these remote valleys of the Mountain West, to the administration of Gordon B. Hinckley who has welcomed the world with the red carpet, we have come full circle. Living prophets lead the way.

But the caravan is on course, never fear, though there will always be those among us who cling to the past fiercely, as though we are going to return somehow to the purity and simplicity of an earlier time. These somehow wish they could live in the days before the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands and started rolling downhill. We are picking up speed as the little stone rolls forward. But let us not be smug. We are no better than our earlier counterparts in Israel who sinned against the covenant. 

President Ezra Taft Benson made a convincing case that the Church was still under condemnation for treating lightly The Book of Mormon. God will cut short the work in this last dispensation of the fulness of times. The Bride may have grown weary while waiting and defiled herself with the world, but this time there will be a wedding with the Bridegroom and the Church will become the Bride of Christ. The best course we can take is individual repentance and to let the rest of the Church and the world who fail to repent go their merry way to destruction.

As midnight draws nigh there will be fewer opportunities to obtain oil to light our little lamps of faith. Unconsecrated material possessions in that hour will be a poor store of value, ancient prophets used the word “slippery.” (Helaman 13:31).

Now I offer this final observation. Patience with the unfolding timetable of the Lord is indispensable to the true disciple. Many, knowing what the scriptures reveal concerning conditions in a Zion society, and observing these circumstances do not now exist in the Church, and thinking they have somehow been "called" to lead the way, have made unwise and premature decisions to move out in front of the caravan. Like the ancient Rechabites of Jeremiah’s day they prefer the separatist life to the heat of the day in the kingdom with all its paradoxes, contradictions and ironies. They are never wise stewards, and seem to lack the faith they proclaim. The keys of the priesthood reside with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and those keys and this kingdom will never again be taken from the earth. The path to Zion is first discovered deep within the hearts of men and women, and they gravitate to others who have made a similar discovery, all of whom are subject to the Lord's mouthpiece. That man, the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, like Moses who stood at the head of another caravan, will lead Israel out of whatever form of bondage awaits us.

Until that promised day comes, it is enough to hear the Lord whisper again, "Be still, and know that I am God." His promises will never fail, and the gates of the Heavenly City await us.

* * *

Jesus Christ will come again in the last days.

Enoch’s vision, especially what’s recorded in Moses 7:59–67, is one of history’s first prophecies of the Savior’s Second Coming. What impresses you about the way these verses describe the last days? For example, consider how you feel the prophecies from verse 62 are being fulfilled. What do these phrases teach you about God’s work in the latter days?

Enoch was a true prophet whose entire city of the faithful saints was translated:

And Enoch and all his people walked with God, and he dwelt in the midst of Zion; and it came to pass that Zion was not, for God received it up into his own bosom; and from thence went forth the saying, Zion is Fled.