General Conference Odyssey: Sunday morning session, October 5, 1986
The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
Gordon B. Hinckley, First Counselor in the First Presidency
When President Hinckley spoke at the start of the Sunday morning session of the October 1986 conference, he mentioned receiving a bit of literature from one of the Church’s enemies, misrepresenting some basic Latter-day Saint beliefs-as such literature does. So here he reiterated the core doctrines expressed in the first Article of Faith.
While some consider it heretical to claim that God looks like a human, President Hinckley said, “Does it demean God, as some would have us believe, that man was created in His express image? Rather, it should stir within the heart of every man and woman a greater appreciation for himself or herself as a son or daughter of God.”
To the idea that God is a spirit, President Hinckley responded with the same idea he once expressed to a heckler he encountered when he was a young missionary:
“Each of us is a dual being of spiritual entity and physical entity. All know of the reality of death when the body dies, and each of us also knows that the spirit lives on as an individual entity and that at some time, under the divine plan made possible by the sacrifice of the Son of God, there will be a reunion of spirit and body. Jesus’ declaration that God is a spirit no more denies that he has a body than does the statement that I am a spirit while also having a body.”
And as we understand more about the true nature of God, we come to better realize how much he loves us and how approachable he is.
“Miracle of miracles and wonder of wonders, they are interested in us, and we are the substance of their great concern. They are available to each of us. We approach the Father through the Son. He is our intercessor at the throne of God. How marvelous it is that we may so speak to the Father in the name of the Son.”
“God Will Yet Reveal”
Neal A. Maxwell, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
The way we can know anything about God is through revelation, so Elder Maxwell’s talk picked up nicely where President Hinckley left off. It was also a good follow-up to the talk he gave in the previous conference. Here, we are warned that when people don’t learn eternal truths through revelation, they may fail to accept them when they encounter them, or forget things they had once learned and accepted.
“If people are without the truths of God’s plan of salvation for very long, some may not even ‘believe [these truths] when they are taught’ (Mosiah 1:5). An untaught ‘rising generation’ comes not to ‘believe ... concerning the resurrection,... neither ... the coming of Christ’ (Mosiah 26:1-3). Belief in Deity and in the resurrection are usually the first to go.”
We can use logic and reason to approach some doctrines and accept them, but such methods of inquiry are not enough. We can observe how contradictory religions can be, using the same source materials and the same methods of inquiry, to see how effective that approach is. “God’s plan, however, is not something to be deduced by logic alone, nor is human experience deep enough or long enough to inform us adequately. It requires revelation from God.”
As we learn God’s plan of redemption, we not only learn more about him, but also ourselves. In one of his inspired one-liners, Elder Maxwell said, “There can be no true felicity without true identity.”
And through learning more of God’s character and his plan, the ideal result is that we then change to become more like him.
“God’s ultimate power is safe, precisely because He possesses ultimate love, justice, mercy, and knowledge. We cannot share in His power without sharing in His attributes.
“But, we may say, do we not have His spiritual genes? Yes, but we do not have His gentleness.
“Yet we are of His spiritual lineage! Yes, but we do not have His capacity to love.
“Surely, we belong to Him! Of course, but we cannot reenter His house until our behavior would let us feel at home.”
Pulling in the Gospel Net
Joseph B. Wirthlin, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
In Elder Wirthlin’s first talk as a member of the Twelve, he spoke a bit about the Saints he observed while presiding over the Europe area in his previous assignment. This included visiting west Africa, which was part of the area at the time, and seeing the Freiberg Temple completed in East Germany, following President Monson’s dedication of that land for receiving the gospel some years before. At the end of his testimony, he stated,
“The gospel of Jesus Christ is more enduring than fame, more precious than riches, more to be desired than happiness. Understanding and living the gospel leads to the possession of a Christlike character. The aim of each of us is to live a great and exemplary life. A noble character is needed especially in this age when evil is rampant.”
The Joy of Honest Labor
L. Tom Perry, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
Elder Perry’s talk was about parents teaching children the importance of work.
“Teaching children the joy of honest labor is one of the greatest of all gifts you can bestow upon them. I am convinced that one of the reasons for the breakup of so many couples today is the failure of parents to teach and train sons in their responsibility to provide and care for their families and to enjoy the challenge this responsibility brings. Many of us also have fallen short in instilling within our daughters the desire of bringing beauty and order into their homes through homemaking.”
Couples breaking up at the time would be from the baby boomer generation, the children of those involved in World War II. It brings to mind a criticism I heard of that generation from Dennis Prager, that while the World War II generation has been labeled the “greatest generation,” they’re the ones that produced the baby boomer generation, along with all their flaws and shortcomings.
But it further makes me wonder how well the parents of the baby boomers did in teaching their children how to make a home, and what fruits might be yielded from a study of Elder Perry’s hypothesis.
Also, if his statement about daughters “bringing beauty and order into their homes through homemaking” offends feminist sensibilities as they translate those words into “cooking and cleaning,” I would suggest taking a broader view, where anything a woman does to bring beauty and order to a home would count as homemaking, not just her physical labors.
Then there was this quote from Brigham Young:
“Pick up everything....
“Never consider that you have bread enough around you to suffer your children to waste a crust or a crumb of it.... Remember it, do not waste anything, but take care of everything.
“If you wish to get rich, save what you get. A fool can earn money; but it takes a wise man to save and dispose of it to his own advantage”
Incidentally, this was part of the priesthood manual from the teachings of Brigham Young that was being studied during my mission, and I had a companion who tended to make more food than he needed for breakfast. But that changed after we read the above statement about waste. Then, when he was about to discard his remaining food, a stern look from me would have him finishing his food and murmuring about Brigham Young.
Then as I look at the accommodations our home has, where there are more children than bedrooms, I take reassurance from Elder Perry stating, “As I remember events in my life, I do not believe there was any degree of difference in the happiness that I enjoyed when my two brothers and I shared a single bedroom than when we had a home large enough that each of us enjoyed a bedroom.”
Finally, the character we get from working matters more than the work itself. “Work is something more than the final end result. It is a discipline. We must learn to do, and do well, before we can expect to receive tangible rewards for our labors.”
Your Patriarchal Blessing: A Liahona of Light
Thomas S. Monson, Second Counselor in the First Presidency
Patriarchal blessings aren’t mentioned frequently in conference, but President Monson did so in this session, stating,
“A patriarchal blessing is a revelation to the recipient, even a white line down the middle of the road, to protect, inspire, and motivate activity and righteousness. A patriarchal blessing literally contains chapters from your book of eternal possibilities. I say eternal, for just as life is eternal, so is a patriarchal blessing. What may not come to fulfillment in this life may occur in the next. We do not govern God’s timetable.”
I was impressed by the stories he told. First, he had an assignment to visit a stake in Logan, Utah, to call a new patriarch. As he considered the men in that stake, he wrote down the name of one of the men on a slip of paper and put it in his scriptures. Shortly afterward, he learned that an ordained patriarch had recently moved in, so no new patriarch was called.
Nine years later, he was assigned to the same stake for the same purpose. He had some new scriptures by then, but before making the trip decided to take an older set. As he began to review the men in the stake again, he discovered the slip of paper with the name he had written earlier, and asked the stake president if that man was still in the stake. He was, and received the calling that President Monson had been inspired to give him nine years previously.
The other story was about Percy K. Fetzer, a patriarch who had been sent to Poland to bless the Saints there who had no stake and no patriarch of their own. Upon returning from Poland, he came to President Monson, very distraught. While giving blessings to a certain family, he had told them of temple blessings and other opportunities that were impossible for a family living behind the Iron Curtain, but said the Lord wouldn’t let him hold those blessings back.
President Monson assured him that the blessings came from the Lord, not him, and to have faith in their fulfillment. Not long afterward, Poland and West Germany reached an agreement, allowing people of German heritage to move to the west. This included the family in question. President Monson got to ordain the father a bishop after they settled in Dortmund, and the family was then sealed in the Swiss Temple. By then, Brother Fetzer was serving as the president of that temple.
Other blogs:
To Keep Up With Our Prophet by Jan Tolman
More than Human Experience by Marylin Nielson
Gordon B. Hinckley, First Counselor in the First Presidency
When President Hinckley spoke at the start of the Sunday morning session of the October 1986 conference, he mentioned receiving a bit of literature from one of the Church’s enemies, misrepresenting some basic Latter-day Saint beliefs-as such literature does. So here he reiterated the core doctrines expressed in the first Article of Faith.
While some consider it heretical to claim that God looks like a human, President Hinckley said, “Does it demean God, as some would have us believe, that man was created in His express image? Rather, it should stir within the heart of every man and woman a greater appreciation for himself or herself as a son or daughter of God.”
To the idea that God is a spirit, President Hinckley responded with the same idea he once expressed to a heckler he encountered when he was a young missionary:
“Each of us is a dual being of spiritual entity and physical entity. All know of the reality of death when the body dies, and each of us also knows that the spirit lives on as an individual entity and that at some time, under the divine plan made possible by the sacrifice of the Son of God, there will be a reunion of spirit and body. Jesus’ declaration that God is a spirit no more denies that he has a body than does the statement that I am a spirit while also having a body.”
And as we understand more about the true nature of God, we come to better realize how much he loves us and how approachable he is.
“Miracle of miracles and wonder of wonders, they are interested in us, and we are the substance of their great concern. They are available to each of us. We approach the Father through the Son. He is our intercessor at the throne of God. How marvelous it is that we may so speak to the Father in the name of the Son.”
“God Will Yet Reveal”
Neal A. Maxwell, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
The way we can know anything about God is through revelation, so Elder Maxwell’s talk picked up nicely where President Hinckley left off. It was also a good follow-up to the talk he gave in the previous conference. Here, we are warned that when people don’t learn eternal truths through revelation, they may fail to accept them when they encounter them, or forget things they had once learned and accepted.
“If people are without the truths of God’s plan of salvation for very long, some may not even ‘believe [these truths] when they are taught’ (Mosiah 1:5). An untaught ‘rising generation’ comes not to ‘believe ... concerning the resurrection,... neither ... the coming of Christ’ (Mosiah 26:1-3). Belief in Deity and in the resurrection are usually the first to go.”
We can use logic and reason to approach some doctrines and accept them, but such methods of inquiry are not enough. We can observe how contradictory religions can be, using the same source materials and the same methods of inquiry, to see how effective that approach is. “God’s plan, however, is not something to be deduced by logic alone, nor is human experience deep enough or long enough to inform us adequately. It requires revelation from God.”
As we learn God’s plan of redemption, we not only learn more about him, but also ourselves. In one of his inspired one-liners, Elder Maxwell said, “There can be no true felicity without true identity.”
And through learning more of God’s character and his plan, the ideal result is that we then change to become more like him.
“God’s ultimate power is safe, precisely because He possesses ultimate love, justice, mercy, and knowledge. We cannot share in His power without sharing in His attributes.
“But, we may say, do we not have His spiritual genes? Yes, but we do not have His gentleness.
“Yet we are of His spiritual lineage! Yes, but we do not have His capacity to love.
“Surely, we belong to Him! Of course, but we cannot reenter His house until our behavior would let us feel at home.”
Pulling in the Gospel Net
Joseph B. Wirthlin, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
In Elder Wirthlin’s first talk as a member of the Twelve, he spoke a bit about the Saints he observed while presiding over the Europe area in his previous assignment. This included visiting west Africa, which was part of the area at the time, and seeing the Freiberg Temple completed in East Germany, following President Monson’s dedication of that land for receiving the gospel some years before. At the end of his testimony, he stated,
“The gospel of Jesus Christ is more enduring than fame, more precious than riches, more to be desired than happiness. Understanding and living the gospel leads to the possession of a Christlike character. The aim of each of us is to live a great and exemplary life. A noble character is needed especially in this age when evil is rampant.”
The Joy of Honest Labor
L. Tom Perry, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
Elder Perry’s talk was about parents teaching children the importance of work.
“Teaching children the joy of honest labor is one of the greatest of all gifts you can bestow upon them. I am convinced that one of the reasons for the breakup of so many couples today is the failure of parents to teach and train sons in their responsibility to provide and care for their families and to enjoy the challenge this responsibility brings. Many of us also have fallen short in instilling within our daughters the desire of bringing beauty and order into their homes through homemaking.”
Couples breaking up at the time would be from the baby boomer generation, the children of those involved in World War II. It brings to mind a criticism I heard of that generation from Dennis Prager, that while the World War II generation has been labeled the “greatest generation,” they’re the ones that produced the baby boomer generation, along with all their flaws and shortcomings.
But it further makes me wonder how well the parents of the baby boomers did in teaching their children how to make a home, and what fruits might be yielded from a study of Elder Perry’s hypothesis.
Also, if his statement about daughters “bringing beauty and order into their homes through homemaking” offends feminist sensibilities as they translate those words into “cooking and cleaning,” I would suggest taking a broader view, where anything a woman does to bring beauty and order to a home would count as homemaking, not just her physical labors.
Then there was this quote from Brigham Young:
“Pick up everything....
“Never consider that you have bread enough around you to suffer your children to waste a crust or a crumb of it.... Remember it, do not waste anything, but take care of everything.
“If you wish to get rich, save what you get. A fool can earn money; but it takes a wise man to save and dispose of it to his own advantage”
Incidentally, this was part of the priesthood manual from the teachings of Brigham Young that was being studied during my mission, and I had a companion who tended to make more food than he needed for breakfast. But that changed after we read the above statement about waste. Then, when he was about to discard his remaining food, a stern look from me would have him finishing his food and murmuring about Brigham Young.
Then as I look at the accommodations our home has, where there are more children than bedrooms, I take reassurance from Elder Perry stating, “As I remember events in my life, I do not believe there was any degree of difference in the happiness that I enjoyed when my two brothers and I shared a single bedroom than when we had a home large enough that each of us enjoyed a bedroom.”
Finally, the character we get from working matters more than the work itself. “Work is something more than the final end result. It is a discipline. We must learn to do, and do well, before we can expect to receive tangible rewards for our labors.”
Your Patriarchal Blessing: A Liahona of Light
Thomas S. Monson, Second Counselor in the First Presidency
Patriarchal blessings aren’t mentioned frequently in conference, but President Monson did so in this session, stating,
“A patriarchal blessing is a revelation to the recipient, even a white line down the middle of the road, to protect, inspire, and motivate activity and righteousness. A patriarchal blessing literally contains chapters from your book of eternal possibilities. I say eternal, for just as life is eternal, so is a patriarchal blessing. What may not come to fulfillment in this life may occur in the next. We do not govern God’s timetable.”
I was impressed by the stories he told. First, he had an assignment to visit a stake in Logan, Utah, to call a new patriarch. As he considered the men in that stake, he wrote down the name of one of the men on a slip of paper and put it in his scriptures. Shortly afterward, he learned that an ordained patriarch had recently moved in, so no new patriarch was called.
Nine years later, he was assigned to the same stake for the same purpose. He had some new scriptures by then, but before making the trip decided to take an older set. As he began to review the men in the stake again, he discovered the slip of paper with the name he had written earlier, and asked the stake president if that man was still in the stake. He was, and received the calling that President Monson had been inspired to give him nine years previously.
The other story was about Percy K. Fetzer, a patriarch who had been sent to Poland to bless the Saints there who had no stake and no patriarch of their own. Upon returning from Poland, he came to President Monson, very distraught. While giving blessings to a certain family, he had told them of temple blessings and other opportunities that were impossible for a family living behind the Iron Curtain, but said the Lord wouldn’t let him hold those blessings back.
President Monson assured him that the blessings came from the Lord, not him, and to have faith in their fulfillment. Not long afterward, Poland and West Germany reached an agreement, allowing people of German heritage to move to the west. This included the family in question. President Monson got to ordain the father a bishop after they settled in Dortmund, and the family was then sealed in the Swiss Temple. By then, Brother Fetzer was serving as the president of that temple.
Other blogs:
To Keep Up With Our Prophet by Jan Tolman
More than Human Experience by Marylin Nielson