No member of the Church must ever forget the terrible price paid by the Redeemer who gave His life that all men might live, said President Gordon B. Hinckley at the April 1995 general conference.

President Hinckley spoke of the price paid by the Savior: the agony of Gethsemane, the bitter mockery of His trial, the vicious crown of thorns tearing at His flesh, the blood cry of the mob before Pilate, the lonely burden of His heavy walk along the way to Calvary, the terrifying pain as great nails pierced His hands and feet, the fevered torture of His body as He hung that tragic day, the Son of God crying out, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34.)"This was the cross, the instrument of His torture, the terrible device designed to destroy the Man of Peace, the evil recompense for His miraculous work of healing the sick, of causing the blind to see, of raising the dead. This was the cross on which He hung and died on Golgotha's lonely summit," President Hinckley said.

"We cannot forget that. We must never forget it, for here our Savior, our Redeemer, the Son of God, gave Himself a vicarious sacrifice for each of us. But the gloom of that dark evening before the Jewish Sabbath, when His lifeless body was taken down and hurriedly laid in a borrowed tomb, drained away the hope of even His most ardent and knowing disciples. They were bereft, not understanding what He had told them earlier. Dead was the Messiah in whom they believed. Gone was their Master in whom they had placed all of their longing, their faith, their hope. He who had spoken of everlasting life, He who had raised Lazarus from the grave, now had died as surely as all men before Him had died. Now had come the end to His sorrowful, brief life. That life had been as Isaiah had long before foretold: He was `despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. . . . He was wounded for our transgression, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him.' (Isa. 53:3) Now He was gone. . . ."

Then dawned the first day of the week, and with it the greatest miracle in human history, His resurrection from the dead.

"On Calvary He was the dying Jesus. From the tomb he emerged the living Christ," President Hinckley said. "The cross had been the bitter fruit of Judas' betrayal, the summary of Peter's denial. The empty tomb now became the testimony of His divinity, the assurance of eternal life, the answer to Job's unanswered question: `If a man die, shall he live again?' " (Job 14:14.)