The Love of God, Elder D. Todd Christofferson
God loves us.
"His is a Father’s pure love—universal to all yet personal to each.”
“Our Heavenly Father loves us profoundly and perfectly. In His love, He created a plan, a plan of redemption and happiness to open to us all the opportunities and joys we are willing to receive, up to and including all that He has and is. To achieve this, He was even willing to offer His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, as our Redeemer. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” His is a Father’s pure love—universal to all yet personal to each.”
Elder Holland - “But the first great truth of all eternity is that God loves us with all of His heart, might, mind and strength. That love is the foundation stone of eternity and it should be the foundation stone of our daily life. Indeed, it is only with that reassurance burning in our soul that we can have the confidence to keep trying to improve, to keep seeking forgiveness for our sins and to keep extending that grace to our neighbor.”
O, Love effulgent, love divine.
What debt of gratitude is mine?
That is His offering I have part
And hold a place within His heart.
~God Loved Us, So He Sent His Son
16 And he said unto me: Knowest thou the acondescension of God?
17 And I said unto him: I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things.
The love of God- the tree from Lehi’s dream represented the love of God. The fruit from the tree was desirable to make one happy. And most joyous to the soul. Most desirable above all things.
Question- How have you felt the love of God in your life?
God loves us with all of His heart, might, mind, and strength.
Tender mercies, answering prayers, feeling His help when we go through something hard,gratitude, service
If you want to feel more of God’s love, do more of that.
God loves you; Do you love Him?
By repenting, we can feel His love even more profoundly.
“This divine love should give us abundant comfort and confidence as we pray to the Father in the name of Christ. Not one of us is a stranger to Them. We need not hesitate to call upon God, even when we feel unworthy. We can rely on the mercy and merits of Jesus Christ to be heard.”
“Because God’s love is all-embracing, some speak of it as “unconditional,” and in their minds they may project that thought to mean that God’s blessings are “unconditional” and that salvation is “unconditional.” They are not. Some are wont to say, “The Savior loves me just as I am,” and that is certainly true. But He cannot take any of us into His kingdom just as we are, “for no unclean thing can dwell there, or dwell in his presence.” Our sins must first be resolved.”
After making it clear that He cannot excuse or wink at sin, the Lord assures us:
“Nevertheless, he that repents and does the commandments of the Lord shall be forgiven.”
Ours is not a religion of rationalization nor a religion of perfectionism but a religion of redemption—redemption through Jesus Christ. If we are among the penitent, with His Atonement our sins are nailed to His cross, and “with his stripes we are healed.”
When we repent and serve Him, we show our love for him.
Because They love you, They do not want to leave you “just as you are.” Because They love you, They want you to have joy and success. Because They love you, They want you to repent because that is the path to happiness. But it is your choice—They honor your agency. You must choose to love Them, to serve Them, to keep Their commandments. Then They can more abundantly bless you as well as love you.
Doctrine and Covenants 59:5
5 Wherefore, I give unto them a commandment, saying thus: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy might, mind, and strength; and in the name of Jesus Christ thou shalt serve him.
In acknowledging that God loves us perfectly, we each might ask, “How well do I love God? Can He rely on my love as I rely on His?”
Conclusion:
Here is the solution for our incessantly quarrelsome times—the love of God. In the golden age of Book of Mormon history following the Savior’s ministry, it is reported that “there was no contention in the land, because of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the people.”
1. When President Nelson was younger, general conference was this long.(What is three-four days?)
2.Elder Holland counseled us to take this up.(What is the cross of Christ?)
3.In an analogy to becoming distracted, this is what Sister Bonnie H. Cordon’s son got tangled in.(What is a soccer net?)
4.Elder Soares counseled us to do this instead of spending so much time and energy fixating on the perceived imperfections of others.
(What is sit at Jesus’s feet and plead for mercy for our own imperfections?)
5. Elder Christofferson says that blessings and salvation are conditional but this is not.(What is God’s love for us?)
6. Elder Clark G. Gilbert talked about the parable of this.(What is the slope?)
7.This person introduced Elder Patricio M. Giuffra to the Gospel.(Who is his neighbor, Leonor Lopez?)
8.President Dallin H. Oaks spoke about the need for this.(What is church or going to church?)
Saturday afternoon
1.Elder Bednar said that Moroni’s teachings in September of 1823 about the Book of Mormon and the mission of Elijah established the doctrinal foundation for the work of salvation and exaltation on both sides of this.(What is the veil?)
2.Elder Schmeil said that President Nelson told him Elder Schmeil was called for this.(What is what he could become?)
3.Sister Susan W. Porter said that God’s love is not found in the circumstances of our lives but in this.(What is God’s presence in our lives?)
4.This is the topic that Elder Erich W. Kopischke spoke on.(What is mental health?)
5.Elder Rasband said that this word isused in the scriptures 2,354 times.(What is “things”?)
6.Elder Christoffel Golden spoke about this.(What is preparing for the second coming of Christ?)
7.In the past year, 3 members of Elder Moisés Villanueva’s family died of this.(What is Covid?)
8.Elder Gary R. Stevenson said these are our divinely appointed responsibilities. (What are Living the gospel of Jesus Christ, Caring for those in need, Inviting all to receive the gospel, and Uniting families for eternity?)
Saturday evening session
1.President M. Russell Ballard asked us what we could do in our own lives to show this.(What is how much we love God?)
2.Sharon Eubank brought a cookie that was made by this family from Damascus, Syria.(Who is the Kadado family?)
3.Elder Brent H. Nielson’s father died of this.(What is pancreatic cancer?)
4.Elder Arnulfo Valenzuela said that these are 2 gifts from God that we sometimes take for granted.(What are the scriptures and our knowledge of God?)
5.Bradley R. Wilcox said that worthiness is not this.(What is flawlessness?)
6.Elder Alfred Kyungu said that he had been inspired by studying about this New Testament prophet.(Who is Saul or Paul?)
7.Elder Marcus B. Nash spoke on this subject.(What is missionary work or sharing the Gospel?)
8.Elder Henry B. Eyring said that this is the key to receiving revelation.(What is faith in Jesus Christ?)
Sunday Morning
1.Elder Uchtdorf said we should have this daily.(What is restoration?)
2.Sister Camille N. Johnson counseled us to let Christ do this.(What is write our story?)
3.Elder Dale G. Renlund related a story of how his father and other Finnish Saints overcame their animosity for this people.(Who are Russians?)
4.Elder Sikahema talked about doing things this way.(What is in sequential order?)
5.According to Elder Quentin L. Cook, it has never been more important to seek this.(What is personal peace?)
6.President Russell M. Nelson used this to encourage us to strengthen our personal spiritual foundations.(What is the Salt Lake temple foundation?)
Sunday afternoon
1.Elder Gerrit W. Gong spoke on this important topic.(What is trust?)
2. This is how Bishop L. Todd Budge responded when his wife asked him what the presiding bishopric does.(What is I don’t know?)
3.Elder Anthony D. Perkins spoke about his 5 year struggle with this.(What is cancer?)
4.Elder Michael A. Dunn said that even this amount of improvement can bring great results in our lives.(What is 1%?)
5.Elder Sean Douglas related hurricanes to this in our lives.(What are challenges or adversity?)
6.This is the greeting Elder Carlos G. Revillo Jr.used to begin his message.(What is Mabuhay?)
7.Alvin F. Meredith III spoke about this experience in the apostle Peter’s life.(What is walking on water?)
8.Elder Neil L. Andersen spoke about the importance of using this.(What is the full name of the church?)
9.This is the number of temples President Nelson announced during this conference.(What are 13?)
When Kevin was given his new "high profile" calling last week, my first comment was, "But we are just regular people!" Elder Mehr quoted me when he spoke and there have been many comments made about it.
It has caused me to think about this. Kevin and I, and our family, are far from being the best and most righteous people in the stake. We really are just regular people.
It has brought to mind two talks about this sort of thing and I wanted to have somewhere to put them so I can find them again.
The first is: A Tribute to the Rank and File of the Church by Elder Boyd K. Packer
The second is: To Them of the Last Wagon by President J. Reuben Clark
President Wilford Woodruff in his old age spoke to the young men of the Church and said: “I desire to impress upon you the fact that it does not make any difference whether a man is a Priest or an Apostle, if he magnifies his calling. A Priest holds the keys of the ministering of angels. Never in my life, as an Apostle, as a Seventy, or as an Elder, have I ever had more of the protection of the Lord than while holding the office of a Priest” (in Millennial Star, Oct. 5, 1891, 629).
Those who met in that humble farmhouse to organize The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were not—indeed they were not—the prominent men of their day.
Only a few, and they of most humble prospect, were party to it. It was as Paul had told the Corinthians:
“Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:
“But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty” (1 Cor. 1:26–27).
This sacred event, witnessed by those few, had been preceded by marvelous spiritual manifestations.
In preparation for it the Father and the Son had appeared to one of them. He had been called as the prophet.
Angelic messengers had instructed them.
The principle of revelation, thought by most to have concluded in centuries past, was demonstrated to be ongoing.
The Book of Mormon had been published, and its pages carried a testimony of the prophet Moroni that angels have not “ceased to appear unto the children of men.” Nor will they, “so long as time shall last, or the earth shall stand, or there shall be one man upon the face thereof to be saved” (Moro. 7:36).
These humble men from among the common folks of that day were to become Apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ, as surely as Peter, the fisherman, and the other common men had been made Apostles in ancient times.
And so the angels came, a continuation of them, to teach these men, to confer the priesthood upon them, to deliver keys of authority to them; for these were things that men could not assume, nor take to themselves.
Above all, the Lord Himself appeared and reappeared, “That the fulness of my gospel might be proclaimed by the weak and the simple unto the ends of the world” (D&C 1:23).
Those days of beginning were not so far away as we sometimes think. There sits behind me on the stand Elder LeGrand Richards of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
He remembers personally some of those who helped to open this work.
He attended the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple and remembers President Wilford Woodruff very clearly. He heard him speak on several occasions.
Yesterday Elder Faust mentioned the incident where Wilford Woodruff, leading a group of immigrants, was inspired not to take an ill-fated boat. Brother Richards heard Brother Woodruff give that sermon, name a number in the audience, and say to them, “If I had not followed that prompting, you would not be here today.”
President Woodruff was only two years younger than the Prophet Joseph Smith, and he had been an Apostle for five years when the Prophet was martyred.
Hands we have touched have touched the hands that shaped the beginnings of this dispensation.
Some things have not changed very much over the years. Some things have not changed at all. This work has been brought through 150 years by ordinary men and women and children across the world.
The rank and file of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, present and past, who now number in the millions, have each carried their part.
Lives are shaped through the influence of obscure, faithful members who carry the spirit of the gospel.
When once I tried to thank a great teacher and patriarch, William E. Berrett, he quickly passed the credit back to one who had taught him. An old convert from Norway was called to teach a group of mischievous Aaronic Priesthood boys. They were greatly amused by his broken English, but somehow the Spirit polished his words and soon the boys responded.
I have heard Brother Berrett testify on more than one occasion, “We could warm our hands by the fire of his faith.”
President Heber J. Grant once heard Bishop Millen Atwood preach a sermon in the Thirteenth Ward, “I was studying grammar at the time,” he said, “and he made some grammatical errors in his talk.
“I wrote down his first sentence, smiled to myself, and said: ‘I am going to get … enough material to last me for the entire winter in my night school grammar class.’ We had to take … four sentences a week, that were not grammatically correct, together with our corrections.
“… But I did not write anything more after that first sentence—not a word; and when Millen Atwood stopped preaching, tears were rolling down my cheeks, tears of gratitude and thanksgiving that welled up into my eyes because of the marvelous testimony which that man bore of the divine mission of Joseph Smith, the Prophet of God. …”
He continued: “Although it is now more than sixty-five years since I listened to that sermon, it is just as vivid today, and the sensations and feelings that I had are just as fixed with me, as they were the day I heard it. …
“… the one thing above all others that has impressed me has been the spirit, the inspiration of the living God that an individual had, when proclaiming the Gospel, and not the language. … I have endeavored, from that day to this … to judge men and women by the spirit they have; for I have learned absolutely, that it is the spirit that giveth life and understanding, and not the letter—the letter killeth” (Improvement Era, Apr. 1939, p. 201).
Whenever we seek for true testimony we come, finally, to ordinary men and women and children.
Let me quote from the diary of Joseph Millett, a little-known missionary of an earlier time. Called on a mission to Canada, he went alone and on foot. In Canada, during the wintertime, he said:
“I felt my weakness. A poor, ill-clothed, ignorant boy in my teens, thousands of miles from home among strangers.
“The promise in my blessing and the encouraging words of President Young to me, with the faith I had in the gospel, kept me up.
“Many times I would turn into the woods … in some desolate place with a heart full, wet eyes, to call on my master for strength or aid.
“I believed the Gospel of Christ. I had never preached it. I knew not where to find it in the scriptures.”
That didn’t matter so much, for, “I had to give my Bible to the boatman at Digby for passage across the sound.”
Years later, Joseph Millett, with his large family, was suffering through very, very difficult times. He wrote in his journal:
“One of my children came in and said that Brother Newton Hall’s folks was out of bread, had none that day.
“I divided our flour in a sack to send up to Brother Hall. Just then Brother Hall came.
“Says I, ‘Brother Hall, are you out of flour?’
“‘Brother Millett, we have none.’
“‘Well, Brother Hall, there is some in that sack. I have divided and was going to send it to you. Your children told mine that you was out.’
“Brother Hall began to cry. He said he had tried others, but could not get any. He went to the cedars and prayed to the Lord, and the Lord told him to go to Joseph Millett.
“‘Well Brother Hall, you needn’t bring this back. If the Lord sent you for it you don’t owe me for it.’”
That night Joseph Millett recorded a remarkable sentence in his journal:
“You can’t tell me how good it made me feel to know that the Lord knew there was such a person as Joseph Millett” (Diary of Joseph Millett, holograph, Archives of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City).
The Lord knew Joseph Millett. And He knows all those men and women like him, and they are many. Theirs are the lives that are most worth recording.
This rank and file of the Church—150 years of them—have brought the truth to this generation. It is planted where it is most likely to bear an abundant harvest—in the hearts of the ordinary people.
When President Kimball first came here as a member of the Twelve, he was asked to sit for a portrait. (Those of us who know him well know how those hours of sitting still must have bothered him.) To keep him from daydreaming, the painter one day asked an abrupt question:
“Brother Kimball, have you ever been to heaven?”
His answer seemed to be a shock, as he said without hesitation, “Why, yes … certainly. I had a glimpse of heaven just before coming to your studio.”
He then told of an experience in the temple where he had performed a marriage:
“As the subdued congratulations were extended, a happy father … offered his hand and said, ‘Brother Kimball, my wife and I are common people and have never been successful, but we are immensely proud of our family. … This is the last of our eight children to come into this holy house for temple marriage. They, with their companions, are here to participate in the marriage of this, the youngest.’ …
“I looked at his calloused hands, his rough exterior, and thought to myself, ‘Here is a real son of God fulfilling his destiny’” (Ensign, Dec. 1971, p. 36; also in Conference Report, Oct. 1971, pp. 152–53).
President J. Reuben Clark told of pioneer members of the Church in these words:
“Day after day, they of the last wagon pressed forward, worn and tired, footsore, sometimes almost disheartened, borne up by their faith that God loved them, that the restored gospel was true, and that the Lord led and directed the Brethren out in front.
He then told of the morning:
“… when from out that last wagon floated the [cry] of the newborn babe, and mother love made a shrine, and Father bowed in reverence before it. But the train must move on. So out into the dust and dirt the last wagon moved again. …
“Who will dare to say that angels did not cluster round and guard her and ease her rude bed, for she had given another choice spirit its mortal body” (Improvement Era, Nov. 1947, p. 705).
Who would dare to say that angels do not now attend the rank and file of the Church who—
answer the calls to the mission fields,
teach the classes,
pay their tithes and offerings,
seek for the records of their forebears,
work in the temples,
raise their children in faith,
and have brought this work through 150 years?
There comes a witness, also, from some who have stumbled and fallen but have struggled back and have found the sweet, forgiving, cleansing influence of repentance. They now stand approved of the Lord, clean before Him; His Spirit has returned to them and they are guided by it. Without reviewing the hard lessons of the past they guide others to that Spirit.
Who would dare to say that the day of miracles has ceased? Those things have not changed in 150 years, not changed at all.
For the power and inspiration of the Almighty rests upon this people today as surely as it did in those days of beginning:
“It is by faith that miracles are wrought; and it is by faith that angels appear and minister unto men; wherefore, if these things have ceased wo be unto the children of men, for it is because of unbelief” (Moro. 7:37).
The prophet Moroni taught that angelic messengers would accomplish their work “by declaring the word of Christ unto the chosen vessels of the Lord, that they may bear testimony of him.
“And by so doing, the Lord God prepareth the way that the residue of men may have faith in Christ, that the Holy Ghost may have place in their hearts” (Moro. 7:31–32).
There has come, these last several years, a succession of announcements that show our day to be a day of intense revelation, equaled, perhaps, only in those days of beginning, 150 years ago.
But then, as now, the world did not believe. They say that ordinary men are not inspired; that there are no prophets, no apostles; that angels do not minister unto men—not to ordinary men.
That doubt and disbelief have not changed. But now, as then, their disbelief cannot change the truth.
We lay no claim to being Apostles of the world—but of the Lord Jesus Christ. The test is not whether men will believe, but whether the Lord has called us—and of that there is no doubt!
We do not talk of those sacred interviews that qualify the servants of the Lord to bear a special witness of Him, for we have been commanded not to do so.
But we are free, indeed, we are obliged, to bear that special witness.
But that witness, the testimony of this work, is not reserved to those few of us who lead the Church. In proper order that witness comes to men and women and children all over the world.
Across the world the ordinary members, who might be described as obscure, bear witness that they were guided to this Church by revelation and that they are guided in their service in it.
Revelation that belongs to the prophet and president of the Church, to speak on matters for the entire Church, rests as well upon all who hold office, each within the limits of his calling.
It rests upon parents who preside over families, and if we will live for it, it will rest upon each of us.
Like all of my Brethren, I too come from among the ordinary people of the Church. I am the seventy-eighth man to be accepted by ordination into the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in this dispensation.
Compared to the others who have been called, I am nowhere near their equal, save it be, perhaps, in the certainty of the witness we share.
I feel compelled, on this 150th anniversary of the Church, to certify to you that I know that the day of miracles has not ceased.
I know that angels minister unto men.
I am a witness to the truth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the Only Begotten of the Father; that He has a body of flesh and bone; that He knows those who are His servants here and that He is known of them.
I know that He directs this Church now, as He established it then, through a prophet of God. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
In 1947, the centennial of the arrival of Latter-day Saint pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley, many tributes were paid to those who set their faces toward Zion and wore out their lives in pursuit of that spiritual homeland. One of the most poignant of those tributes was voiced by President J. Reuben Clark Jr., First Counselor in the First Presidency, in a general conference address Sunday, 5 October 1947. That address is now reprinted in tribute to those early pioneer Saints as well as to the millions of Saints today who trek across plains of personal trial and deserts of worldly perils toward their spiritual homeland.
My brethren and sisters, I should like in the beginning to add my testimony to the many that we have heard during this conference—my testimony that God lives; that Jesus is the Christ, the Redeemer of the World, the First Fruits of the Resurrection; that Joseph Smith was a prophet; that through him the gospel was restored and likewise the priesthood, the authority delegated to man on earth to represent Deity here among us; and that the Prophet has been followed down to and including our present president, George Albert Smith, by men who possessed the keys of the last dispensation as conferred upon Joseph Smith.
The matter that I shall give you today is very dear to my soul. Since I should like to say what I have to say in the best way I can say it, I have written it down and shall read it. I hope that what I shall say will be in harmony with the spirit of this great conference—I think the greatest I have attended in its high spiritual tone.
At the near close of this one hundredth year of the entering into these valleys of your fathers and your mothers, some of yours and mine, I wish to speak a few further words of humble tribute and thanksgiving to them, and especially to the meekest and lowliest of them, those great souls, majestic in the simplicity of their faith and in their living testimony of the truth of the restored gospel, to those souls in name unknown, unremembered, unhonored in the pages of history, but lovingly revered round the hearthstones of their children and their children’s children who pass down from generation to generation the story of their faith and their mighty works, and the righteousness of their lives and living, those souls who worked and worked, and prayed and followed, and wrought so gloriously.
I would not take away one word of praise or gratitude, honor or reverence from the great men who led these humble ones of ours. They were mighty men in brain and brawn, in courage and valor, in honesty and in love of truth, living near the Lord—Brothers Brigham and Heber and Wilford and Willard and Charles, the two Orsons and Parley and John and George and Erastus and Lorenzo and Daniel and Joseph and Jedediah, and a host of other giants, each and all richly blessed with the Lord’s divine love and with that gift of the Holy Ghost that made them leaders truly like unto Moses of old. I yield, we yield, to no one in our gratitude for them and for their work of directing the conquest of the wilderness and of saving men’s souls. Their names shine lustrously on those pages of history which record only the doings of the makers of epochs—those choice spirits, chosen before the foundation of the world, to be the leaders and builders of dispensations of God’s dealings with men; and these leaders of ours to be the builders of that dispensation which of old was named the “dispensation of the fulness of time[s]” [Eph. 1:10; D&C 112:30]. Unnumbered eternities will remember and honor them.
But I should like now and here to say a few words about those who trod after where those giants led, some in the same companies that the Brethren piloted, some in later companies following that year and the years after, some in the fateful handcarts, with their unexcelled devotion, heroism, and faith, all trickling forward in a never-failing, tiny stream, till they filled the valley they entered and then flowed out at the sides and ends, peopling this whole wilderness-waste which they fructified, making it to fulfill the ancient prophecy that the desert should blossom as the rose.
I would like to say something about the last wagon in each of the long wagon trains that toiled slowly over the plains, up mountain defiles, down steep, narrow canyons, and out into the valley floor that was to be home—this last wagon: last, because the ox team that pulled it was the smallest and leanest and weakest, and had the tenderest feet of any in the train; it was slow starting, and slow moving; last, because, worn and creaking, it took more time to fix and to grease, for young Jimmy generally had trouble in getting the wagon jack under the “ex” [the point where a shaft called the “reach” crosses the axle]; last, because its wind-rent cover was old and patched and took hours to mend and tie up to keep out the storm; last, because the wife, heavy with child, must rest till the very moment of starting; last, because sickly little Bill, the last born, poorly nourished, must be washed and coaxed to eat the rough food, all they had; last, because with all his tasks—helping little Bill, cooking and cleaning up the breakfast (Mother was not able to help much)—Father took a little longer to yoke his cattle and to gird himself for the day’s labor; last, because his morning prayers took a few more minutes than the others spent—he had so many blessings to thank the Lord for and some special blessings to ask the Lord to grant, blessings of health and strength, especially for his wife, and for little Bill, and for the rest, and then the blessings for himself that his own courage would not fail, but most of all for the blessing of faith, faith in God and in the Brethren who sometimes seemed so far away. For they were out in front where the air was clear and clean and where they had unbroken vision of the blue vault of heaven. The Brethren had really visioned the glory of the Lord, who walked near them, put his thoughts into their minds; his Spirit guided and directed them, petitioned thereto by the thousands of Saints who were back in Winter Quarters, back in Iowa, back in the States, and beyond, even across the waters, for the faithful poured out their souls in fervent prayer to Almighty God that the Brethren should be inspired. The Saints buoyed up the Brethren out in front with encouragement, with praise, and sometimes even with adulation. Knowing the Brethren were prophets of God, the Saints gave them full confidence, daily, almost hourly, expressed. The Brethren lived in a world of commendation from friends and the tried and true Saints. Rarely was their word or their act questioned by the faithful Saints. This was as it should be and had to be to carry out the Lord’s purposes.
But back in the last wagon, not always could they see the Brethren way out in front, and the blue heaven was often shut out from their sight by heavy, dense clouds of the dust of the earth. Yet day after day, they of the last wagon pressed forward, worn and tired, footsore, sometimes almost disheartened, borne up by their faith that God loved them, that the restored gospel was true, and that the Lord led and directed the Brethren out in front. Sometimes, they in the last wagon glimpsed, for an instant, when faith surged strongest, the glories of a celestial world, but it seemed so far away and the vision so quickly vanished because want and weariness and heartache and sometimes discouragement were always pressing so near.
When the vision faded, their hearts sank. But they prayed again and pushed on, with little praise, with not too much encouragement, and never with adulation. For there was nearly always something wrong with the last wagon or with its team—the off ox was a little lame in the right front shoulder; the hub of the left front wheel was often hot; the tire of the hind wheel on the same side was loose. So corrective counsel, sometimes strong reproof, was the rule, because the wagon must not delay the whole train. But yet in that last wagon there was devotion and loyalty and integrity, and above and beyond everything else, faith in the Brethren and in God’s power and goodness. For had not the Lord said that not even a sparrow fall[s] unnoticed by the Father [see Matt. 10:29], and were they not of more value than sparrows? And then they had their testimony, burning always like an eternal fire on a holy altar, that the restored gospel was true, that Joseph was a prophet of God, and that Brigham was Joseph’s chosen successor.
When the train moved forward in the early morning sun and the oxen with a swinging pull that almost broke the tongue got the last wagon on the move, the dust in the still morning air hung heavy over the road. Each wagon from the first stirred up its own cloud, till when the last wagon swung into line, the dust was dense and suffocating. It covered that last wagon and all that was in it; it clung to clothes; it blackened faces; it filled eyes already sore, and ears. The wife, soon to be a mother, could hardly catch her breath in the heavy, choking dust, for even in the pure air she breathed hard from her burden. Each jolt of the wagon, for those ahead had made wagon ruts almost “ex” deep, wrung from her clenched lips a half-groan she did her best to keep from the ears of the anxious, solicitous husband plodding slowly along, guiding and goading the poor, dumb cattle, themselves weary from the long trek. So through the long day of jolting and discomfort and sometimes pain, and sometimes panting for breath, the mother, anxious only that the unborn babe should not be injured, rode, for she could not walk; and the children walked, for the load was too heavy and big for them to ride; and the father walked sturdily alongside and prayed.
When in the evening the last wagon creaked slowly into its place in the circle corral and the Brethren came to inquire how the day had gone with the mother, then joy leaped in their hearts, for had not the Brethren remembered them? New hope was born, weariness fled, fresh will to do was enkindled; gratitude to God was poured out for their knowledge of the truth, for their testimony that God lived, that Jesus was the Christ, that Joseph was a prophet, that Brigham was his ordained successor, and that for the righteous a crown of glory awaited that should be theirs during the eternities of the life to come. Then they would join in the songs and dancing in the camp, making the camp’s gaiety their own—as much as Mother’s condition would permit.
Then the morning came when from out that last wagon floated the la-la of the newborn babe, and Mother love made a shrine and Father bowed in reverence before it. But the train must move on. So out into the dust and dirt the last wagon moved again, swaying and jolting, while Mother eased as best she could each pain-giving jolt so no harm might be done her, that she might be strong to feed the little one, bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh. Who will dare to say that angels did not cluster round and guard her and ease her rude bed, for she had given another choice spirit its mortal body that it might work out its God-given destiny?
My mother was one of those babes so born in 1848, ninety-nine years ago.
Another morning came, when courageous little Bill, who, with a hero’s heart, had trudged through long days of hot sun and through miles of soggy mud in the rain, his little body drenched, little Bill, weak and wan, must be crowded in to ride with Mother, for he was sick from a heavy cold. Months before, on that cold winter’s night when they fled Nauvoo for their lives to escape the fiendish wrath of a wild mob, Bill became dangerously ill with pneumonia, which left him with weak lungs. This old illness now returned. He grew worse and worse. The elders came and prayed he might get well. But the Lord wanted little Bill with Him. So a few mornings later a weeping mother and a grief-stricken father and that last wagon swung into place in the line, leaving beside the road, under some scrub brush, a little mound, unmarked save for heaped up rocks to keep out the wolves, a mound that covered another martyr to the cause of truth.
So through dust and dirt, dirt and dust, during the long hours, the longer days—that grew into weeks and then into months, they crept along till, passing down through its portals, the valley welcomed them to rest and home. The cattle dropped to their sides, wearied almost to death; nor moved they without goading, for they too sensed they had come to the journey’s end.
That evening was the last of the great trek, the mightiest trek that history records since Israel’s flight from Egypt, and as the sun sank below the mountain peaks of the west and the eastern crags were bathed in an amethyst glow that was a living light, while the western mountainsides were clothed in shadows of the rich blue of the deep sea, they of the last wagon, and of the wagon before them, and of the one before that, and so to the very front wagon of the train, these all sank to their knees in the joy of their souls, thanking God that at last they were in Zion—“Zion, Zion, lovely Zion; Beautiful Zion; Zion, city of our God!” [Hymns, no. 44]. They knew there was a God, for only he could have brought them, triumphant, militant, through all the scorn, the ridicule, the slander, the tarrings and featherings, the whippings, the burnings, the plunderings, the murderings, the ravishings of wives and daughters, that had been their lot, the lot of their people since Joseph visioned the Father and the Son.
But hundreds of these stalwart souls of undoubting faith and great prowess were not yet at their journey’s end.
Brother Brigham again called them to the colors of the kingdom of God, and sent them to settle the valleys, near and remote, in these vast mountains of refuge. So again they yoked their oxen and hitched up their teams, and putting their all in the covered wagon, this time willingly, unwhipped by the threat of mob cruelty and outrage, they wended their slow way to new valleys again trusting with implicit faith in the wisdom and divine guidance of their Moses. The very elements obeyed their faith, faith close kin to that which made the world.
These tens of thousands who so moved and so built were the warp and the woof of Brother Brigham’s great commonwealth. Without them Brother Brigham had failed his mission. These were the instruments—the shovelers, the plowers, the sowers and reapers, the machinists, the architects, the masons, the woodworkers, the organ builders, the artisans, the mathematicians, the men of letters, all gathered from the four corners of the earth, furnished by the Lord to Brother Brigham and the prophet leaders who came after, that he and they might direct the working out of His purposes. These wrought as God inspired Brother Brigham and the other prophets to plan, all to the glory of God and the upbuilding of His kingdom.
Upright men they were, and fearless, unmindful of what men thought or said of them, if they were in their line of duty. Calumny, slander, derision, scorn left them unmoved, if they were treading the straight and narrow way. Uncaring they were of men’s blame and censure, if the Lord approved them. Unswayed they were by the praise of men, to wander from the path of truth. Endowed by the spirit of discernment, they knew when kind words were mere courtesy, and when they betokened honest interest. They moved neither to the right nor to the left from the path of truth to court the good favor of men.
So for a full hundred years, urged by the spirit of gathering and led by a burning testimony of the truth of the restored gospel, thousands upon tens of thousands of these humble souls, one from a city, two from a family, have bade farewell to friends and homes and loved ones, and with sundered heart strings, companioned with privation and with sacrifice even to life itself, these multitudes have made their way to Zion, to join those who were privileged to come earlier, that all might build up the kingdom of God on earth—all welded together by common hardship and suffering, never-ending work and deep privation, tragic woes and heart-eating griefs, abiding faith and exalting joy, firm testimony and living spiritual knowledge—a mighty people, missioned with the salvation not only of the living but of the dead also, saviors, not worshippers of their ancestors, their hearts aglow with the divine fire of the spirit of Elijah, who turns the hearts of the fathers to the children and of the children to the fathers.
And thousands upon thousands of these tens of thousands, from the first till now, all the elect of God, measured to their humble calling and to their destiny as fully as Brother Brigham and the others measured to theirs, and God will so reward them. They were pioneers in word and thought and act and faith, even as were they of more exalted station. The building of this intermountain empire was not done in a corner by a select few but by this vast multitude flowing in from many nations, who came and labored and wrought, faithfully following their divinely called leaders.
In living our lives let us never forget that the deeds of our fathers and mothers are theirs, not ours; that their works cannot be counted to our glory; that we can claim no excellence and no place because of what they did, that we must rise by our own labor, and that labor failing, we shall fall. We may claim no honor, no reward, no respect, nor special position or recognition, no credit because of what our fathers were or what they wrought. We stand upon our own feet in our own shoes. There is no aristocracy of birth in this Church; it belongs equally to the highest and the lowliest; for as Peter said to Cornelius, the Roman centurion, seeking him: “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:
“But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him” (Acts 10:34–35).
So to these humble but great souls, our fathers and mothers, the tools of the Lord, who have, for this great people, hewed the stones and laid the foundations of God’s kingdom, solid as the granite mountains from which they carved the rocks for their temple, to these humble souls, great in faith, great in work, great in righteous living, great in fashioning our priceless heritage, I humbly render my love, my respect, my reverent homage. God keep their memories ever fresh among us, their children, to help us meet our duties even as they met theirs, that God’s work may grow and prosper till the restored gospel of Jesus Christ rules all nations and all peoples, till peace, Christ’s peace, shall fill the whole earth, till righteousness shall cover the earth even as the waters cover the mighty deep [see Moses 7:62]. Let us here and now dedicate all that we have and all that we are to this divine work. May God help us so to do.
Because of your Faith by Elder Jeffery R. Holland:
And to the near-perfect elderly sister who almost apologetically whispered recently, “I have never been a leader of anything in the Church. I guess I’ve only been a helper,” I say, “Dear sister, God bless you and all the ‘helpers’ in the kingdom.” Some of us who are leaders hope someday to have the standing before God that you have already attained.
When we hear stories of God’s mighty servants who came before us—like Moses, Mary, Moroni, Alma, Esther, Joseph, and many others—they seem bigger than life. But they were not that different from us. They were regular people who faced challenges. They trusted the Lord. They made the right choices at pivotal moments. And, with faith in Jesus Christ, they performed the works required in their time.
This is a facebook post from Pres. M. Russell Ballard from Sun. Sept. 26, 2021:
I am just overwhelmed with the Lord’s goodness and His trust that He has in you and me. We are all ordinary members of the Church. None of us are superstars. We are just God’s children trying to do the right thing for the right reason. We are trying to raise our families the right way so they will love the Lord and want to strive to keep His commandments. In the process, we have some wonderful, choice privileges and opportunities.
When our final judgment comes, it won’t be the number of meetings we attend, the number of meetings we conducted, or all the visits we made. Instead, the Lord will be deeply appreciative of those seeking and helping others along the covenant path.
Jesus Christ is our brother and our best friend. He loves us and has shown us the way. The things you and I need to find happiness are contained in striving to keep His commandments and striving to be like Him as much as we can. Each day is an opportunity to touch a life, to reach out to someone who needs you and offer a word of encouragement.
