Brethren we have had great messages tonight. I hope the vast audience will have been aroused to the realization that the enemies to truth are just as active today as they have been since Christ was tempted, and before when two powers stood before the Creator and each presented his plan.

I hope there will be just as much realization that the responsibility to teach the truth rests upon the Priesthood of the Church as it ever has done.

This evening, just before coming to this meeting, I read a line from the Chief Apostle two thousand years ago. He addressed the elders of the Church and said, "I am also an elder and a witness of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. Feed the flock of God. Be examples to the flock. Be sober, vigilant, because your adversary, the Devil, as a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour, whom resist, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world"  1 Pet. 5:1-9 Be examples to the flock.

Now, a testimony. The older I grow the more grateful I am for my parents, for how they lived the gospel in that old country home. Father used to preach it, even to visitors who stayed at the house—and that was a stopping place for them—both father and mother lived the gospel.

I have realized throughout this conference, as perhaps never before, that my testimony of the reality of the existence of God dates back to that home when I was a child, and it was through their teachings and their examples that I received then the knowledge of the reality of the spiritual world; and I testify that it is a reality.

It is just as easy for me to accept as a divine truth the fact that Christ preached to the spirits in prison while his body lay in the tomb  1 Pet. 3:18-19 as it is for me to look into your faces tonight. His body was silent. His spirit was in the spiritual realm with his father. It is true.

And it is just as easy for me to realize that one may so live that he may receive impressions and direct messages through the Holy Ghost. The veil is thin between those who hold the Priesthood and those on the other side of the veil. That testimony began, I repeat, in the home in my youth because of the example of a father who honored the Priesthood—and his wife, who sustained him and lived it in the home.

I do not know that Peter had that in mind particularly when he mentioned being an example to the flock  1 Pet. 5:3 but I know that such a home is a part of that flock. The influence you spread in your home will go throughout the town, will go throughout the county, the wards, and the stakes. The most precious thing in the world is a testimony of the truth. Truth never grows old, and the truth is that God is the source of your Priesthood and mine. The truth is that he lives; that Jesus Christ, the Great High Priest, stands at the Head of the Church and that every man who holds the Priesthood, if he lives properly, soberly, industriously, humbly and prayerfully, is entitled to the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit. I know that is true.

God help us to defend the truth—better than that, to live it. Exemplify it in our homes. What we owe to our parents we cannot express. Are you going to have that same influence on your children, parents—fathers and mothers? God give you power so to have that they may be true to the last, to death if necessary, to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ that magnifies God, our Father, who looks as our leader and Saviour, and Redeemer of the World, to his Beloved son, Jesus Christ; that they appeared to the Prophet Joseph and revealed themselves in this Dispensation; that his work is established, nevermore to be thrown down or given to another people  Dan. 2:44

Satan is still determined to have his way, and his emissaries have power given them today as they have not had throughout the centuries. Be prepared to meet conditions that may be severe—ideological conditions that seem reasonable—but depend upon that spirit within. You are entitled to interpret the whisperings of the Holy Spirit. They are real. God is guiding this Church. Be true to it, loyal to it. Be true to your families, loyal to them. Protect your children. Guide them, not arbitrarily, but through the kind example of a father, a loving mother, and so contribute to the strength of the Church by exercising your Priesthood in your home and in your lives, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.