21. All Things Bear Record

A bishopric message written on Monday and Tuesday, July 27–28, 1998, and published in the August 1998 issue of the Bountiful Twentieth Ward Newsette.

Summer is passing quickly—a little too quickly for those who enjoy the longer days and warmer temperatures. And yet the passing of the seasons, as the earth makes its annual orbit about the sun, reminds us that “all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator” (Alma 30:44).

The Savior, in His premortal role as the Lord Jehovah, declared that “all things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal, and things which are spiritual; things which are in the heavens above, and things which are on the earth, and things which are in the earth, and things which are under the earth, both above and beneath: all things bear record of me” (Moses 6:63). That doesn’t leave much out.

“Behold, my soul delighteth in proving unto my people the truth of the coming of Christ,” wrote the prophet Nephi, “and all things which have been given of God from the beginning of the world, unto man, are the typifying of him” (2 Nephi 11:4).

A later Nephi testified concurrently, “Ye have received all things, both things in heaven, and all things which are in the earth, as a witness that they are true” (Helaman 8:24).

Recently we celebrated Pioneer Day. Those of us who have traveled to other parts of this great country or even to distant parts of the earth know that there is much of beauty and goodness and opportunity across the face of the earth. Yet, we are privileged to live in a peaceful, blessed area that was preserved by the hand of God for His peculiar purposes.

This desert area, in fulfillment of ancient prophecy, has blossomed as a rose. Among other things, that should remind us ever and always that we are the Lord’s covenant people, the sheep of His pasture. It should remind us that the Lord God Almighty has set His hand again to gather scattered Israel and bring them home. It should remind us that He keeps His promises, all of them, and that nothing will ever fail of all His goodness toward us if we keep the covenants we have made with Him.

May we “with thanksgiving, with cheerful hearts and countenances” (D&C 59:15), always be found among “those who confess . . . his hand in all things, and obey . . . his commandments” (D&C 59:21).

20. Springtime

A bishopric message written on Monday, April 27, 1998, and published in the May 1998 issue of the Bountiful Twentieth Ward Newsette.

Springtime. What a glorious time of year. A time of rebirth and renewal. A time of hope and promise. A time when the very earth bears record of Him who made it (see Moses 6:63; 2 Nephi 11:4 Alma 30:44; and Helaman 8:24).

Although in concert with the rest of the Christian world we celebrate the birth of the Lord Jesus at Christmas time, we believe from latter-day revelation that it really happened in the spring of the year, during that season when shepherds would be “abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8).

It was also in the spring of the year, at the season of Passover, when the Lamb of God worked out what Elder Neal A. Maxwell has called “the awful arithmetic of the atonement,” causing the Savior “to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit” (D&C 19:18) that He might take upon Him the pains and the sicknesses and the infirmities and the sins of His people (see Alma 7:11–13).

It was also on an early spring morning, the first day of the week, when faithful women arrived at an empty tomb to become the first witnesses of His glorious resurrection.

And it was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of 1820 that the boy Joseph walked into a grove of trees near his New York farmhouse and, in answer to his humble prayer, saw the Father and the Son in that glorious vision that opened the dispensation of the fulness of times.

These and a score of other springtime events associated with the gospel of Jesus Christ—such as the restoration of the priesthood in May 1829 and the organization of the Church in April 1830—all remind us of “the great and wonderful love made manifest by the Father and the Son in the coming of the Redeemer into the world; that through his atonement, and by obedience to the principles of the gospel, [we] might be saved” (D&C 138:3–4).

May God bless us, as we enjoy this season called spring, to remember always these evidences of His love.