| 
178th
Annual General Conference
Priesthood Session
Give Heed unto the Prophets’
Words
Elder Quentin L. Cook
Of the Quorum of the Twelve
Elder Quentin L. Cook
We admire those who risk their lives
to rescue those in danger. When I visited Southern California during
the devastating Santa Ana Wind fires late last year, I came away
with two impressions. The first was how the Church members came
to the assistance of those in need. The second was how appreciative
they were to the firefighters …
From time to time, as individuals and
as a Church, we go through periods of crisis and danger. Some arise
quickly like a fire. Others are subtle and go almost undetected
before they are upon us. Some require heroic action but most are
less spectacular. The way we respond is crucial.
My purpose this evening is to reemphasize
to priesthood holders the importance of heeding the words of the
prophets. This is the one sure way to respond to physical and spiritual
dangers of all kinds …
Throughout history a loving Father in Heaven and His Son, Jesus
Christ, who is the Head of the Church, have blessed us with prophets
who counsel and warn about future dangers …
Prophets are inspired to provide us with prophetic priorities to
protect us from dangers. As an example, President Heber J. Grant,
the prophet from 1918 to 1945, was inspired to emphasize adherence
to the Word of Wisdom, the principle with a promise revealed by
the Lord to the Prophet Joseph Smith. He stressed the importance
of not smoking or drinking alcoholic beverages, and directed the
bishops to review these principles in temple recommend interviews.
At that time smoking was accepted by
society as an appropriate, even glamorous, behavior. The medical
profession accepted smoking with little concern because the scientific
studies linking cigarette smoking with several kinds of cancer were
far in the future. President Grant counseled with great vigor, and
we became known as a people who abstained from drinking and smoking
…
We want you young people to know that
President Thomas S. Monson has been prepared by the Lord from his
youth to be the prophet …
President Monson’s rescue efforts
… have been particularly exemplary. As a bishop he learned
to minister to the members of his ward … Despite a demanding
schedule, he was able to speak at the funerals of all 84 of the
widows who lived in his ward when he was bishop ... His personal
ministry has been Christ-like and has given comfort and peace to
countless numbers of people …
And Who Is My Neighbor?
Bishop H. David Burton
Presiding Bishop
Bishop H. David Burton
Tonight the scripture passages “as
ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have
done it unto me” and “remember in all things the poor
and the needy” take on special meaning as we review highlights
of humanitarian endeavors during the past year …
In 2007, Church humanitarian assistance
responded to major earthquakes in five countries, massive fires
in six countries, hunger and famine in 18 countries, and flooding
and severe storms in 34 countries. In total, the Church and its
members responded to 170 major events in 52 countries — nearly
one event every two days for the entire year. It was a busy year,
with many opportunities to serve.
In addition to responding to natural
disasters, thousands of public health initiatives were undertaken
during the year. Over 1 million people benefited from Church-sponsored
clean water projects in 25 countries. More than 60,500 people received
wheelchairs in 60 countries … In 11 countries, over 54,000
individuals now enjoy improved vision. Over 16,500 health-care professionals
were trained in infant neonatal resuscitation; they, in turn, will
train many others.
In a quest to eliminate measles, 2.8
million children and youth in 10 countries received immunizations.
The combined effects of these outreach endeavors directly touched
nearly four million people in 85 different countries …
The Church’s continuing four-year
effort to help those devastated by a tsunami in Indonesia and Southern
Asia continued. Funding was provided to help build 902 homes, three
community centers, 24 village water systems, 15 schools, and three
medical centers.
A community leader said: “Community
members feel happy and blessed to have the community center …
It is a place [where] we can pray … and teach the children…Thank
you to [the Church] for building this center for our people …
It will increase our economic and social well-being. We will pray
to God to give [the Church] blessings and success in the future.
Thank you.”…
Thank you for you compassion, goodness
and generosity. May we press forward to lighten the load of neighbors,
encourage and assist the downtrodden, open our purses to assist
the poor, and extend our helping hands …
Do You Know Who You Are?
President Dean R. Burgess
First Counselor of the Young Men General Presidency
President Dean R. Burgess
 One
Sunday, following one of those warm and long sacrament meetings,
the first counselor in our bishopric called me aside to talk to
me. This unscheduled priesthood interview became a blessing in my
life as I have pondered the question he asked during our brief but
significant visit.
Brother Bateman looked me in the eye
and asked, “Dean, do you know who you are?” There was
complete silence and then he gave me a quick and powerful reminder,
“You are the son of Reid Burgess.”
The meaning and significance of that
question has burned in my heart for a long time, and I often reflected
on it throughout my teenage years. This good brother’s question
— “Do you know who you are?” — has given
me inspired direction throughout my life and a commitment to bring
respect and honor to my family and to the priesthood …
Knowing who you are makes you spiritually
strong, sound, and steadfast in your priesthood duties. You become
confident with faith and determination to make right decisions.
You have courage to stand up for what you know is right. You realize
that it is a privilege to hold the priesthood of God and have the
authority to act in His name …
I ask you young men of the Aaronic
Priesthood, “How do you come to receive a knowledge and witness
of who you are?”
Please consider the following three
questions and related principles that are essential in understanding
your true identity.
First, do you know that you are a son
of God? ...
Second, do you know who you are in
God’s plan? ...
Third, do you know who you are as a
member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?
You have been baptized and have received
the Holy Ghost. You are a member of the restored Church of Jesus
Christ. It is His Church, and He has given us a prophet of God to
teach, lead, and guide us, and to direct His work here on earth.
I testify that President Thomas S. Monson is our prophet in these
“perilous times.” Listen to him. He and other modern-day
prophets will teach you who you are and how to become like the Savior.
A 12-YearOld Deacon
Elder John M. Madsen
Of the First Quorum of the Seventy
Elder John M. Madsen
Photo Courtesy of Elder Ron Vincent Asst. Zone Leader,
Worldwide Support, Family History Dept.
My beloved brethren of the priesthood,
as I begin, I would like to direct my remarks to each 12-year-old
deacon attending this general priesthood session! Wherever you are,
I want to acknowledge your presence, and to tell, or mind you, of
the experience that President Gordon B. Hinckley had when he was,
like you are, a 12-year-old deacon.
From his biography, we read:
Not long after he was ordained a
deacon, he attended his first stake priesthood meeting with his
father. He felt a little out of place as he found a seat on the
back row of the Tenth Ward chapel while … ([his father,]
who was serving in the stake presidency) took his place on the
stand. To pen the meeting, the three or four hundred men present
stood and sang William W. Phelp’s triumphant anthem …”Praise
to the man who communed with Jehovah!/ Jesus anointed that prophet
and seer./ Blessed to open the last dispensation,/kings shall
extol him and nations revere.
Reflecting back on that experience,
President Hinckley said:
Something happened within me as I
heard those men of faith sing. It touched my heart. It gave me
a feeling that was difficult to describe. I felt a great moving
power, both emotional and spiritual. I had never had it previously
in terms of any Church experience. There came into my heart a
conviction that the man of whom they sang was really a prophet
of God. I knew then, by the power of the Holy Ghost, that Joseph
Smith was indeed a prophet of God.
Even as that experience had by President
Hinckley, as a 12-year-old deacon, was “one he would remember
for the rest of his life,” I pray that the experience you
are having will be one you will remember for the rest of your lives!
… President Joseph Fielding Smith
declared, “Our young people … are the nobility of Heaven,
a choice and chosen generation who have a divine destiny. Their
spirits have been reserved to come forth in this day when the gospel
is on the earth, and when the Lord needs valiant servants to carry
on his great latter-day work …”
President Spencer W. Kimball declared,
“We are rearing a royal generation … who have special
things to do.”
A Matter of a Few Degrees
President Dieter F. Uchtdorf
Of the First Presidency
President Dieter F. Uchtdorf
In 1979, a large passenger jet with
257 people on board left New Zealand for a sightseeing flight to
Antarctica and back. Unknown to the pilots, however, someone had
modified the flight coordinates by a mere two degrees. This error
placed the aircraft 28 miles (45 km) to the east of where the pilots
assumed they were. As they approached Antarctica, the pilots descended
to a lower altitude to give the passengers a better look at the
landscape. Although both were experienced pilots, neither had made
this particular flight before, and they had no way of knowing that
the incorrect coordinates had placed them directly in the path of
Mount Erebus, an active volcano that rises from the frozen landscape
to a height of more than 12,000 feet.
As the pilots flew onward, the white
of the snow and ice covering the volcano blended with the white
of the clouds above, making it appear as though they were flying
over flat ground. By the time the instruments sounded the warning
that the ground was rising fast toward them, it was too late. The
airplane crashed into the side of the volcano, killing everyone
on board.
It was a terrible tragedy brought on
by a minor error — a matter of only a few degrees.
Through years of serving the Lord and
in countless interviews, I have learned that the difference between
happiness and misery in individuals, marriages, and families often
comes down to an error of only a few degrees …
The difference of a few degrees, as
with the Antarctica flight, or Saul’s failure to hold fast
to the counsel of the prophet just a little longer, may seem minor.
But even small errors, over time, can make a dramatic difference
in our lives.
Let me share with you how I taught
the same principle to young pilots.
Suppose you were to take off from an
airport at the equator, intending to circumnavigate the glove, but
that your course was off by just one degree. By the time you returned
to the same longitude, how far off course would you be? A few miles?
A hundred miles? The answer might surprise you. An error of only
one degree would put you almost 500 miles off course, or one hour
of flight for a jet …
Small errors and minor drifts away
from the doctrine of the gospel of Jesus Christ can bring sorrowful
consequences into our lives. It is therefore of critical importance
that we become disciplined enough to make early and decisive corrections
to get back on the right track and not wait or hope that errors
will somehow correct themselves.
The longer we delay corrective action,
the larger the needed changes become, and the longer it takes to
get back on the correct course — even to the point where a
disaster might be looming.
Faith and the Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood
President Henry B. Eyring
Of the First Presidency
President Henry B. Eyring
Let me describe some of the blessings
you will receive as you go forward in faith [keeping the oath and
covenant of the priesthood].
First, the very fact that you have
been offered the oath and covenant is evidence that God has chosen
you knowing your power and capacity. He has know you since you were
with Him in the Spirit World. With His foreknowledge of your strength
He has allowed you to find the true Church of Jesus Christ and to
be offered the priesthood. You can feel confidence because you have
evidence of His confidence in you.
Second, as you will try to keep your
covenants, the Savior has promised His personal Help. He has said
that as you forward in honoring the priesthood, “There I will
be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right
hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and
mine angels round about you, to bear you up.” (D&C 84:88)
You may at times need reassurance,
as I do, that you will have the strength to meet your obligations
in this sacred priesthood. The Lord foresaw your need for reassurance.
He said, “For whoso is faithful unto the obtaining these two
priesthoods of which I have spoken, and the magnifying their calling,
are sanctified by the Spirit unto the renewing of their bodies”
(D&C 84:33).
I have seen that promise fulfilled
in my own life and in the lives of others. A friend of mine served
as a mission president. He told me that at the end of every day
while he was serving he could barely make it upstairs to bed at
night, wondering if he would have the strength to face another day.
Then, in the morning, he would find his strength and his courage
restored. You have seen it in the lives of aged prophets who seemed
to be renewed each time they stood to testify of the Lord Jesus
Christ and the Restored Gospel. That is a promise for those who
go forward in faith in their priesthood service.
You are also promised that you will
be given the power to bear testimony and that in that process you
will be cleansed and made fit for the eternal life which you have
been promised.
“For I will forgive you of your
sins with this commandment — that you remain steadfast in
your minds in solemnity and the spirit of prayer, in bearing testimony
to all the world of those things which are communicated unto you.
“Therefore, go ye unto all the
world; and unto whatsoever place ye cannot go ye shall send, that
the testimony may go from you unto all the world unto every creature”
(D&C 84: 61-62).
President Thomas S. Monson
Of the First Presidency
President Thomas S. Monson
As bearers of the priesthood, we have
been placed on earth in troubled times. We live in a complex world
with currents of conflict everywhere to be found. Political machinations
ruin the stability of nations, despots grasp for power, and segments
of society seem forever downtrodden, deprived of opportunity and
left with a feeling of failure.
We who have been ordained to the priesthood
of God can make a difference. When we qualify for the help of the
Lord, we can build boys, we can mend men, we can accomplish miracles
in His holy service. Our opportunities are without limit.
Ours is the task to be fitting examples.
We are strengthened by the truth that the greatest force in this
world today is the power of God as it works through man. If we re
on the Lord’s errand, we are entitled to the Lord’s
help. That divine help, of course, is predicated upon our worthiness.
Each must ask: Are my hands clean? Is my heart pure? Am I a worthy
servant of the Lord?
We are surrounded by so much that is
designed to divert our attention from those things which are virtuous
and good and to tempt us with that which would cause us to be unworthy
to exercise the priesthood we bear. I speak not just to the young
men of the Aaronic Priesthood, but to those of all ages. Temptations
come in various forms throughout our lives.
Brethren, are we qualified at all times
to perform the sacred duties associated with the Priesthood we bear?
Young men — you who are priests — are you clean in body
and spirit as you sit at the sacrament table on Sunday and bless
the emblems of the sacrament? Young men who are teachers, are you
worthy to prepare the sacrament? Deacons, as you pass the sacrament
to the members of the Church, do you do so knowing that you are
spiritually qualified to do so? Does each of you fully understand
the importance of all the sacred duties you perform?
My young friends, be strong. Te philosophies
of men surround us. The face of sin today often wears the mask of
tolerance. Do not be deceived; behind that façade is heartache,
unhappiness and pain. You know what is right and what is wrong,
and no disguise, however appealing, can change that. The character
of transgression remains the same. If your so-called friends urge
you to do anything you know to be wrong — you be the one to
make a stand for right, even if you stand alone.
Have the moral courage to be a light
for others to follow. There is no friendship more valuable than
your own clear conscience, your own moral cleanliness — and
what a glorious feeling it is to know that you stand in your appointed
place clean and with the confidence that you are worthy to do so.
Brethren of the Melchizedek Priesthood,
do you strive diligently each day to live as you should? Are you
kind and loving to your wife and your children? Are you honest in
all your dealings with those around you — at all times and
in all circumstances?
If any of you has slipped along the
way, there are those who will help you to once again become clean
and worthy. Your bishop or branch president is anxious and willing
to help, and will, with understanding and compassion, do all within
his power to assist you in the repentance process, that you may
once again stand in righteousness before the Lord.
Return
to Top of Article
Click
here to sign up for Meridian's FREE email updates.
© 2008 Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
|
