Brigham Young

The gospel is of a character that a man may be benefitted by it if he will, but it has no help for the man who fails to take advantage of that which it offers. It is a perfect system of self-development. A man can rise to the most exalted heights, if he will; or he may loiter by the way, waste the day-light until he is overtaken in his darkness and thence must grope his way, because he failed to take advantage of the light.

Today is our day, brethren and sisters. We cannot hope, when the night comes, when the grave has demanded its own, for the development and progress that is available to us today. These bodies of ours God has given us for development. We are separated from them when we go into the grave. We are not ourselves, we are only partial when the body and the spirit are separated. Why will we loiter, instead of developing that which is perfect, the human soul. Separated, it is a divided thing; together, it may rise to the most exalted height. We preach to the world faith. Have we faith? We preach to the world repentance. Do we repent? Do we place our feet each day upon the mistakes of yesterday, using them as stepping stones to a higher life, to the new birth symbolized by the baptism of water? Have we taken to ourselves every day the new birth of the Spirit? Have we risen to more exalted heights? Are we in closer communion with God than we were yesterday? If not, we have failed to take advantage of opportunity offered in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Elder Brigham S. Young, Conference Report, April 1927, Afternoon Meeting 59

Rulon S. Wells

The Lord inspired the fathers of our country, our Revolutionary fathers, with this same spirit of human liberty, this right of free agency. This great struggle for liberty did not begin on this earth; it began before the foundations of it were laid. The Lord devised the plan whereby we might be liberated and made free and independent. The Lord designs that we shall be so. There was war in heaven before the foundations of this earth were laid. And what was that great conflict over? It was a struggle for the liberties of the children of God.

Elder Rulon S. Wells, Conference Report, April 1930, Second Day—Morning Meeting 70

Neal A. Maxwell

Petitioning in prayer has taught me that the vault of heaven, with all its blessings, is to be opened only by a combination lock: one tumbler falls when there is faith, a second when there is personal righteousness, and the third and final tumbler falls only when what is sought is (in God's judgment, not ours) "right" for us.  Sometimes we pound on the vault door for something we want very much, in faith, in reasonable righteousness, and wonder why the door does not open.  We would  be very spoiled children if that vault door opened any more easily than it does now.  I can tell, looking back, that God truly loves me by the petitions that, in his perfect wisdom and love, he has refused to grant me.  Our rejected petitions tell us not only much about ourselves, but also much about our flawless Father.

Neal A. Maxwell, "Insights From My Life," p. 200

Jeffrey R. Holland

To hear someone so remarkable say something so tremendously bold, so overwhelming in its implications, that everything in the Church - everything - rises or falls on the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and, by implication the Prophet Joseph Smith's account of how it came forth, can be a little breathtaking.  It sounds like a "sudden death" proposition to me.  Either the Book of Mormon is what the Prophet Joseph Smith said it is or this Church and its founder are false, fraudulent, a deception from the first instance onward.

Not everything in life is so black and white, but it seems the authenticity of the Book of Mormon and its keystone role in our belief is exactly that.  Either Joseph Smith was the prophet he said he was, who, after seeing the Father and the Son, later beheld the angel Moroni, repeatedly heard counsel from his lips, eventually receiving at his hands a set of ancient gold plates which he then translated according to the gift and power of God - or else he did not.  And if he did not, in the spirit of President Benson's comment, he is not entitled to retain even the reputation of New England folk hero or well-meaning young man or writer of remarkable fiction.  No, and he is not entitled to be considered a great teacher or a quintessential American prophet or the creator of great wisdom literature.  If he lied about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, he is certainly none of those.

I feel about this as C.S. Lewis once said about the divinity of Christ... I am suggesting that we make exactly that same kind of do-or-die, bold assertion about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the divine origins of the Book of Mormon.  We have to. Reason and rightness require it.  Accept Joseph Smith as a prophet and the book as the miraculously revealed and revered word of the Lord it is or else consign both man and book to Hades for the devastating deception of it all, but let's not have any bizarre middle ground about the wonderful contours of a young boy's imagination or his remarkable facility for turning a literary phrase. That is an unacceptable position to take - morally, literally, historically, or theologically.

Jeffrey R. Holland, "True or False," New Era, June 1995, 6

C.S. Lewis

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say.  A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the son of God: or else a madman or something worse.  You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.  But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher.  He did not leave that open to us.  He did not intend to.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1952, pp. 40-41

W. Ian Thomas

There are few things quite so boring as being religious, but there is nothing quite so exciting as being a Christian!  Most folks have never discovered the difference between the one and the other, so that there are those who sincerely try to live a life they do not have, substituting religion for God, Christianity for Christ, and their own noble endeavors for the energy, joy, and power of the Holy Spirit.  In the absence of reality, they can only grasp at ritual, stubbornly defending the latter in the absence of the former, lest they be found with neither!  They are lamps without oil, cars without gas, pens without ink, baffled at their own impotence in the absence of all that alone can make man functional; for man was so engineered by God that the presence of the Creator within the creature is indispensable to His humanity.  Christ gave himself for us to give Himself to us!  His presence puts God back into the man! He came that we might have life - God's life!  There are those who have a life they never live.  They have come to Christ and thanked Him only for what He did, but do not live in the power of who He is.  Between the Jesus who 'was' and the Jesus who 'will be' they live in a spiritual vacuum, trying with no little zeal to live for Christ a life that only He can live in and through them, perpetually begging for what in Him they already have!

W. Ian Thomas, in Bob George Classic Christianity [Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House Publishers, 1989], foreward

Solomon Bennett Freehof

as quoted by W. Eugene Hansen:

Years ago I preferred clever people.  There was a joy in beholding ... a mind ... bearing thoughts quickly translated into words, or ideas expressed in a new way.  I find now my taste has changed.  Verbal fireworks often bore me.  They seem motivated  by self-assertion and self-display.  I now prefer another type of person; one who is considerate, understanding of others, careful not to break down another person's self-respect. ... My preferred person today is one who is always aware of the needs of others, or their pain and [their] fear and [their] unhappiness, and their search for self-respect. ... I once liked clever people.  Now I like good people."


W. Eugene Hansen, "Love," Ensign, Nov 1989, 24