Sunday morning session: A beautiful light
E-mail story
It's easy. Send a link to the story you were just reading to a friend. Just fill out the form on this page and we'll send it along.
Your name and e-mail address are transmitted to the recipient. Otherwise, it is considered private information; see Privacy policy.
These are perilous times — yet the human race has lived in peril from the time before the earth was created, said President Gordon B. Hinckley.
"Somehow, through all of the darkness, there has been a faint but beautiful light," President Hinckley said Sunday morning. "And now with added luster it shines upon the world. It carries with it God's plan of happiness for His children. It carries with it the great and unfathomable wonders of the atonement of the Redeemer."
President Hinckley said he sometimes wonders why there is so much trouble and suffering almost everywhere in the world. Indeed, Church members live in times "fraught with peril." But such peril is not a new condition for the human family.
The Church leader cited Revelation's description of the war in heaven, in which Satan and his angels were cast out into the earth (Revelation 12: 7-9). "What a perilous time that must have been. The Almighty Himself was pitted against the son of the morning. We were there while that was going on. That must have been a desperately difficult struggle, with a grand triumphal victory."
That pivotal victory brought about happiness because good had triumphed over evil and the whole human family was on the Lord's side, President Hinckley said.
"We turned our backs on the adversary and aligned ourselves with the forces of God, and those forces were victorious. But having made that decision, why should we have to make it again and again after our birth into mortality? I cannot understand why so many have betrayed in life the decision they once made when the great war occurred in heaven."
The contest between good and evil continues, he said.
"I think our Father must weep because so many of His children through the ages have exercised the agency He gave them and have chosen to walk the road of evil rather than good," President Hinckley said.
Old Testament and Book of Mormon prophets also knew of perilous times and denounced evil. During His mortal ministry, Christ denounced the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees, and lashed out at the money changers in the temple. "This, too, was a time of great peril. Palestine was part of the Roman Empire, which, in its governance, was ironfisted, oppressive and clouded over with evil. Paul's letters cried out for strength among the followers of Christ, lest they fall into the ways of the wicked one. But a spirit of apostasy ultimately prevailed," President Hinckley said.
Ignorance and evil enveloped the world, resulting in the dark ages, President Hinckley said. It was a time of terrible peril. But somehow a candle was lit amidst the season of darkness. The age of Renaissance brought about a flowering of learning, art and science. Courageous men and women looked heavenward, acknowledged God and His Son and brought about the Reformation.
"And then, after many generations had walked the earth — so many of them in conflict, hatred, darkness and evil — there arrived the great new day of the Restoration," President Hinckley said. "This glorious gospel was ushered in with the appearance of the Father and the Son to the boy Joseph. The dawn of the dispensation of the fullness of times rose upon the world. All of the good, the beautiful, the divine of all previous dispensations was restored in this most remarkable season."
Still, evil lingered — manifested by persecution and hatred of the Lord's people.
"Notwithstanding the great evil of these times, what a glorious season it has been and now is," President Hinckley said. "A new day has come in the work of the Almighty. That work has grown and strengthened and moved across the earth. It has now touched for good the lives of millions, and this is only the beginning."
Such a dawning has also resulted in remarkable developments of secular knowledge, he added. There is increased longevity of life and advancements in medicine, education, travel and communication. "Man's ingenuity knows no end when the God of heaven inspires and pours out light and knowledge."
Even so, there remains much conflict in the world.
"There is still terrible poverty, disease and hatred," President Hinckley said. "Man is still brutal in his inhumanity to man. Yet there is this glorious dawn. The 'Sun of righteousness' has come 'with healing in His wings' (Malachi 4:2). God and His Beloved Son have revealed themselves. We know Them. We worship Them 'in spirit and in truth' (John 4:24). We love Them. We honor Them and seek to do Their will."
Church members, he added, can be grateful to God "for His beneficent care of His children in providing for them, through all the perils of eternity, the opportunity of salvation and the blessings of exaltation in His kingdom, if only they will live in righteousness."
With this opportunity comes a grand and consuming responsibility to do the work of the Lord and obey His commandments, President Hinckley said.
"This is our great and demanding challenge, my brothers and sisters. This is the choice we must constantly make, just as generations before us have had to choose. We must ask ourselves:
Who's on the Lord's side? Who?
Now is the time to show.
We ask it fearlessly:
Who's on the Lord's side? Who? (Hymns, No. 260.)
President Hinckley asked if Church members truly understand "the tremendous significance of that which we have."
"This is the summation of the generations of man, the concluding chapter in the entire panorama of the human experience," he said.
It is a humbling blessing, President Hinckley said. "It places upon us an unforgiving responsibility to reach out with concern for all others in the Spirit of the Master who taught, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself' (Matthew 19:19). We must cast out self-righteousness and rise above petty self-interest."
Members must do all that is required to move forward the Lord's work.
"We can never compromise the doctrine which has come through revelation, but we can live and work with others, respecting their beliefs and admiring their virtues, joining hands in opposition to the sophistries, the quarrels, the hatred, those perils which have been with man from the beginning," President Hinckley said.
This generation is the endharvest of all that has gone before, he declared.
"It is not enough to simply be known as a member of this Church," President Hinckley said. "A solemn obligation rests upon us. Let us face it and work at it.
"We must live as true followers of the Christ, with charity toward all, returning good for evil, teaching by example the ways of the Lord, and accomplishing the vast service He has outlined for us."
