Elder L. Whitney Clayton: 'The Time Shall Come'
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"Our most important message, which we are both divinely commissioned and commanded to take everywhere in the world, is that there is Savior," said Elder L. Whitney Clayton of the Presidency of the Seventy during the Saturday morning session of conference. "He lived in the meridian of time. He atoned for our sins, was crucified and was resurrected. That matchless message, which we proclaim with authority from God, is the real reason this Church grows as it does."
Elder Clayton said there are nearly 3,000 stakes and 29,000 wards and branches worldwide. The remarkable growth of the Church is a fulfillment of three prophecies, including Daniel's interpretation of King Nebuchadnezzar's dream that the kingdom of God like a stone cut out of a mountain would fill the earth (see Daniel 2:1-45).
The Angel Moroni appeared to 17-year-old Joseph Smith in 1823 and told him "that God had a work for [him] to do; and that [his] name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds, and tongues" (Joseph Smith-History 1:33. (In fulfillment of that prophecy, Elder Clayton said, "The Kingdom of God is filling the continent and the name of Joseph Smith is being published both by us and by his detractors in countries he may never even have heard of during his lifetime."
In 1831 the Lord told the Prophet Joseph that the keys of the kingdom of God had again been "committed unto man on the earth" and the "the gospel [would] roll forth unto the ends of the earth, as the stone which is cut out of the mountain without hands ... until it has filled the whole earth (Doctrine and Covenants 65:2)."
In 1898 President Wilford Woodruff related an experience in which the Prophet Joseph told a handful of Priesthood holders that "this Church will fill North and South America — it will fill the world" (Conference Report, 1898, 58).
"These prophecies about filling the world and being known world over; preposterous? Perhaps. Unlikely? Undoubtedly. Impossible? Emphatically no. It is happening before our eyes."
He recalled the words of President Gordon B. Hinckley who said, "… the sun never sets on the work of the Lord as it is touching the lives of people across the earth."
"The work of the Lord is indeed great and marvelous, but it moves forward essentially unnoticed by many of mankind's political, cultural, and academic leaders," Elder Clayton noted. "It progresses one heart and one family at a time, silently and unobtrusively, its sacred message blessing people everywhere."
