Conference questions and answers

I came to conference with questions this time around. There were three specific ones that I had in my head and in my heart. I had not written them down, but I knew what they were.

Similar answers came to each question, but not in the same talks.

It has caused me to reflect on how my process of receiving answers to prayers works. Doctrine & Covenants gives us some clues to general processes in the Lord’s instructions to Oliver Cowdrey in sections 6, 8 and 9. You know them: ponder, pray, think about your own solutions and your own process, feel peace in heart and mind, feel a burning in the bosom, and remember what you’ve learned.

Joseph Smith taught this about divine instruction:

When you feel pure intelligence flowing into you, it may give you sudden strokes of ideas, so that by noticing it, you may find it fulfilled the same day or soon; (i.e.) those things that were presented unto your minds by the Spirit of God, will come to pass; and thus by learning the Spirit of God and understanding it, you may grow into the principle of revelation, until you become perfect in Christ Jesus.”
(Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. Joseph Fielding Smith [1976], 151.)

I’ve written before that my answers to prayer rarely come during the prayer, almost never during the first prayer.

As I prepared for this particular conference, I had three broad questions in my mind. One concerned one of my children, one concerned my job, and one concerned a health concern of mine. These are not questions specific to conference, since these three items have been occupying my prayers off and on for months. But I looked at conference as one opportunity among many to receive guidance.

What I found is that guidance came. Some of it came in overarching themes, and some in specific quotations. A particular sentence in a particular talk struck me in a particular way. A story related by a speaker related to one of my issues. Recurring and connecting themes from several talks united to offer instruction and comfort.

In the end, most of my answers were comforting answers rather than go-and-do answers this time. That’s not always so. But this time I was counseled to be patient and to trust that the Lord can do His work. He has a way to accomplish what He needs to accomplish. That message is reassuring to me.

As I reflected on the Lord’s instructions through the prophet Joseph, it occurred to me that the Lord did whisper peace to my heart and mind. The Lord did cause my bosom to burn as I pondered ideas I had about my questions. And I felt what I assume is the pure intelligence, the sudden strokes of ideas that Joseph described. Not everything happened at once. And I am not sure I recognized each of those events as they happened, some only were clearer after the fact. But I do know that answers came.

These particular questions are still too tender for me to discuss in great detail, which makes this essay less readable; for that I’m sorry. But hopefully my writing will encourage you to think about how conference spoke to you – or that is, how the Lord spoke to you through conference.

Teaching the Restoration

I went out with the missionaries in my ward last week, and we taught a discussion on the restoration.

I love teaching that particular lesson. I always have. To me there is great power in the testimony of Joseph Smith regarding his experience in the grove and the restoration of the gospel.

I confess that my earliest testimony of the church was not focused on the restoration. It was focused (perhaps as it should be!) on the Savior as He is revealed in the Book of Mormon. And yes, I heard all those quips about how if you accept the Book of Mormon you must accept Joseph Smith as a prophet. Except that I didn't. Not because I actively did not believe his story. It just wasn't relevant to me (or at least as relevant as my Book of Mormon experience).

I joined the church with my family at nearly age 9. A year later we were in the Salt Lake Temple being sealed. Those two ordinance experiences were huge for me. I felt something when I was baptized, and I really felt something in the sealing room of the temple. I knew in my heart, with no intellectual understanding, that I was in a place that was good.

I was a pretty normal apathetic teen early on. I was not particularly rebellious and had pretty good friends, so I didn't get into trouble. And I went to church and was comfortable talking with adults, so I got along very well there. But my first brush with my own testimony, I think, besides those deep feelings in the baptismal font and the temple, came when my sister, who had just come home from being in the Hill Cumorah pageant, shared some thoughts about the Book of Mormon with me, and particularly her feelings about the Savior's visit to the Nephites.

The baptismal font/temple feeling came back as she spoke to me. And I began to notice it more in certain church meetings and when I read the Book of Mormon myself. Just before my senior year, I attended a youth conference (one of those I went to because my mom asked me to, not because I wanted to go) where I was particularly touched by a guest speaker in a priesthood meeting, and it was impossible for me to describe to anyone else at the time why it was so important to me (and when I tried, it seemed to cheapen the experience).

So I had this growing testimony of the Book of Mormon and of the Savior and of the church, but I was still nowhere as far as Joseph was concerned. Again, it's not that I did not believe he was a prophet. But having that testimony that he was just didn't seem that important to me at the time.

As a freshman at BYU I grew in my gospel maturity as I began to study more on my own, particularly with a friend whose dad had challenged the church for years. In the process of researching questions for myself, I came to a clear testimony of the prophet Joseph Smith, too. And so by the time I went on my mission the next year, I could with confidence testify about the events of the restoration. It would be years before I felt fully firm in my testimony as I continued to have some unanswered questions, but I grew to love the simple restoration story we taught as missionaries.

And I still enjoy it. And as I listened to one of the elders recite Joseph's words in our discussion last night, I felt that baptismal font / temple feeling again – that confirming witness of the restoration.

Joseph Smith

One cannot separate the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from it's founder, Joseph Smith. And I cannot begin to discuss him comprehensively here. There are many great histories of him. I'd recommend Richard Bushman's Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling.

Joseph Smith tells his early story in one of the sections of The Pearl of Great Price. It is one of several different accounts of his early experiences. He tells that as a young man he lived in New York State, where there was "excitement" about religion, and how even his own family was divided about what church to attend. On a clear spring day in 1820, he, recalling the verse from James 1:5, retires to a grove of trees to "seek wisdom" directly from God. His intent was not to found a church, but simply to inquire which of the churches of his time he should join.

In the grove, he attempts to pray aloud, encounters the oppressive influence of a "power" of "darkness", and is, after struggling and fearing for his life, freed from the dark power and sees a pillar of light directly over his head. In the light are two personages. One calls him by name, points to the other and says, "This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!"

He is then instructed to join none of the churches, but to wait for further instructions. Those do not come for three more years, when Joseph receives a visit from another heavenly messenger, Moroni. Moroni was the last prophet of the Book of Mormon and appears to Joseph three times during the night and once more in the morning, telling him of an ancient record buried in a nearby hill. Over the course of the next four years, Joseph is taught and prepared by this messenger in annual visits to the hill before he receives the record and finally translates it by the power of God.

It is not until 10 years after Joseph's first vision the grove that the church is officially organized, after the initial printing of the Book of Mormon, and after considerable persecution for Joseph and his followers.

Over the next 14 years, the church Joseph founded in a farmhouse in New York state grows to populate the city of Nauvoo, Illinois – the the largest city in the state. The band of followers has traveled to Kirtland, Ohio, various cities in Missouri, and finally to Nauvoo, driven each time by angry mobs who found reasons to oppose the growing band of saints.

In June of 1844, Joseph and his brother Hyrum were martyred while held in jail in Carthage, Illinois.

During his life, Joseph received revelations on doctrinal issues as diverse as the nature of God, the organization of the priesthood, the establishment of ordinances, the building of temples, a health code for Latter-day Saints, as well as personal instruction for many members. He translated the Book of Mormon and recorded his revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants. He was a civic and military leader as well as a religious one.

He was the first prophet of our dispensation. Through him the Lord restored His church, His priesthood authority, and the ordinances with which we can prepare ourselves to return to His presence. Mormons do not worship Joseph Smith, but they do honor him. My own experience is that as I have learned of Joseph and the fruits of his ministry, I have come to recognize him as the prophet that he was.

Paul