Paraphrasing Brigham Young, Elder Joe J. Christensen of the Presidency of the Seventy told an audience at Utah State University, "I . . . feel like shouting hallelujah all the time when I think that I ever had the privilege of knowing even a portion of the powerful ideas revealed through Joseph Smith the Prophet."

Elder Christensen delivered the 61st annual Joseph Smith Memorial Lecture Jan. 22 in the USU Fine Arts Auditorium.To illustrate the power of the eternal truths Joseph Smith taught, Elder Christensen recounted an experience he had teaching a young woman in an LDS doctrine and philosophy course during the summer session at the institute of religion adjacent to the University of Utah. The woman seemed bright and eager to learn, but stopped attending three weeks before the session ended.

That September, she came to see him. She told him she had been dating a returned missionary, but they had stopped seeing each other. She became immersed in her own church but could not forget the LDS religion. She added, "In spite of all my efforts, the ideas would not let me go."

She enrolled in a Book of Mormon course, met with the missionaries and joined the Church.

"The powerful ideas of the gospel stretch our minds and spirits, and after knowing and believing some of them, we are never the same," Elder Christensen commented, adding that those ideas came through the Prophet Joseph Smith and the Restoration of the Church.

He quoted Count Leo Tolstoy, the Russian statesman, author and philosopher, as saying of the Church that Joseph Smith restored: "If the people follow the teachings of this Church, nothing can stop their progress - it will be limitless. . . . If Mormonism is able to endure, unmodified until it reaches the third and fourth generations, it is destined to become the greatest power the world has ever known."

Elder Christensen remarked, "The powerful ideas taught by the Prophet satisfy the most inquiring mind." He cited a study by the Princeton Religion Research Center showing that among Americans generally, those with a more formal education are not as active in their churches as those with less education. By contrast, college-educated Latter-day Saints tend to be more active than those with only a high school education, he said, citing a 1981 survey by the Church of 7,000 LDS adults in the United States and Canada.

"Among university-age students and members of

the ChurchT, activity levels and affirmative identity are growing," he said. "They are even higher today than they were in the 1960s. I am convinced that one powerful reason is found in the truths that have been restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith."

He told of speaking to a university class in the Southwest on the Church during a Religion in Life Conference. After the class, the professor approached him and asked him if he believed the statement, "As man is God once was, and as God is man may become."

"I had purposely not used that statement during my remarks to the class because I felt that I could raise more dust with that one than I would be able to settle in one class period," he recalled. "After circumlocuting around and around the question, I finally said, `Yes, we believe that.' "

He said the man mumbled through the words again and then enthusiastically exclaimed, "That is the greatest idea I have ever heard!"

"He was elated," Elder Christensen commented. "He made his living teaching ideas, and the greatest idea he had ever heard came through the Prophet Joseph Smith."

He contrasted LDS doctrine with widely held Christian belief "that God is the only eternal and, consequently, everything that exists was created ex nihilo or out of nothing."

"Thanks to the Prophet Joseph Smith, we don't have to blame God for all that exists because there are other eternals, including the elements, polar forces, priesthood and truth," he said. "Because of the eternals of our own intelligence and agency, we as human beings must take responsibility for much of the evil that exists in the world."