My brothers and sisters, in your presence this morning I would like to express my gratitude to my Heavenly Father for my membership in his Church, and for what it means to me and my family, and for the pattern of life that it gives us to live by, and for the thousands of faithful Latter-day Saints who are such wonderful friends everywhere I go in the Church. This is the greatest brotherhood in all the world.

Many of you know that I have spent many years in missionary service, and I thank the Lord for this great arm of his Church. As we heard here today in the statistics that were given, there are over 16,000 at the present time engaged in this missionary work, one of the most unselfish contributions for the blessing of humanity that this world has ever known. And as we labor among the people and see what the gospel does for them, that is when we really realize what a marvelous thing this work is.

A Man Anew

I would like to make reference today to a few of my experiences. When I was president of a mission, a brother was on his way home from doing his branch teaching, and he saw my light burning, and he belled on, and said, "President Richards, I was just wondering, as I was going home, when I saw your light, if you would be interested in knowing what I was thinking." And I told him I certainly would. So he came in. He said, "I was thinking of who I was, and what I was when the Mormon elders came to my home, and who I am today and what I am, and I just can't believe that I am the same man." He said, "I have changed so much. I don't think the same thoughts. I don't have the same habits. I don't have the same ideals to live by. I have completely changed." Isn't that what the Apostle Paul meant when he said that we are buried with Christ in baptism and that as he arose to the glory of his Father that we should come forth and walk in a newness of life, knowing this first, that our old man of sin is buried with him (see  Rom. 6:4

You can go all over this Church and apply that to all who have come in faith and have entered into the waters of baptism and have taken upon them the name of Christ our Lord. According to the statistics here today we had nearly 100,000 converts during the last year, people who have left the teachings of their youth and joined this Church because they found something in it that they did not already possess in their own churches.

What Will Unite Christendom?

During the year we converted a very prominent minister who has held religious revivals all over the United States and has known many, many ministers. I visited with him, and this is what convinced him: He realized how this world was divided upon spiritual matters. If you just stop to think for a moment of all the hundreds of so-called Christian churches in the world, they have all come into existence because they couldn't agree in their interpretation of the Bible. If we had all the Bibles in the world, that wouldn't unite Christianity. It comes back to what was mentioned here a few moments ago by Brother Franklin D. Richards, that one of the fundamentals of this Church is modern revelation, and that is what convinced this minister that I have been talking about.

He has now been going around renewing friendships with many of the ministers he has known and making appointments for one of our brethren to meet with them and talk with them, and they are beginning to recognize that the great loss in this Christian world today is the lack of modern revelation—lack of something authoritative that we can turn to that tells us what is right and what is wrong. How could we hope with some hundreds of these different churches that they can ever get together and reconcile their differences, and even if they did that, where would they get their authority to bind the heavens to which reference has been made here today?

Modern Revelation

And so we come back to the story that has been told us during this conference of a search for truth on the part of the Prophet Joseph Smith and its importance in our lives.

Speaking of this fundamental requirement, all of the mistakes in doctrine could have been avoided if the Lord had just had living prophets for the world, and that is what has brought us to what we are today. If all of the Bibles in this world had been destroyed, we would still be preaching what we are preaching. We didn't get our Church by a study of the Bible; we got it through the revelations of God the Eternal Father and the sending to this earth of heavenly messengers that have brought back the power to officiate in the name of the Lord and have given us a clear, comprehensive understanding of the truths of the gospel.

When I was in Holland on a mission, I was invited at one time to talk to a group of businessmen—a Bible class. We met in the home of a prominent furniture dealer. They gave me an hour and a half and a subject to discuss. At the close of the hour and a half I don't think there had been one question asked. I laid my Bible on the table and folded my arms and waited for a comment. The first comment came from a daughter of the man of the house. She was the only woman in the room at that time with about twenty businessmen, each with his Bible. She said, "Father, I just can't understand it. I have never attended one of these Bible classes in my life that you haven't had the last word to say on everything, and tonight you haven't said a word."

He shook his head and said, "There isn't anything to say. This man has been teaching us things we have never heard of, and he has been teaching them to us out of our own Bibles." Now, that's why we have to have modern revelation. No one but God the Eternal Father could give us the truth.

Joseph of Egypt Told of the Modern Prophet

You will remember the promise we read in the Book of Mormon how the Lord promised Joseph, who was sold into Egypt, that he would raise up a prophet from his loins in the latter days by the name of Joseph, whose father's name would be Joseph. He would bring forth his word. He not only would bring forth his word, but would also bring men to conviction of his word that had already gone forth among them (see  2 Ne. 3:7-15 And that is what our message is as missionaries to the world: it is to teach them the truths that have been revealed through the restoration of the gospel, through the promised prophet.

I would like to refer to another experience I had a few years ago. Two of the large churches of the western part of the United States were holding a convention here in Salt Lake City. The leader wrote a letter to President McKay and asked if he would send one of the General Authorities to attend that convention and to talk for two hours in the morning session and tell them the story of Mormonism and to remain as their guest for lunch and then to remain for an hour and a half in the afternoon and let them ask questions.

President McKay gave me the assignment, and of course I was happy because I have always told the missionaries that you never need to worry about arguing as long as you learn how to tell our story and you keep the lead, for you are telling people things they have never heard of. They pushed their luncheon back a half an hour and gave me two hours and a half. I said, "Do you want it just the way we believe it, how we got this Church and what we believe?" And the leader said, "That's what we want." Of course, there isn't time to tell you very much about that, but I talked for two hours and a half to them, and when I went to leave, the man in charge said, "Mr. Richards, this has been one of the most interesting experiences of my entire life."

All those leaders, ministers, church executives of these western states only asked me one question, and I think you might be interested in what that question was. The leader said, "Now, Mr. Richards, you have told us that you believe that God is a personal God." I said, "That's right, that's the very foundation of our religion: whom we worship."

Now, brothers and sisters, we have nothing to fear; we have everything to give. The heavens have been opened, and the Lord has revealed his truth.

By the way, this minister I just told you about that believes in modern revelation has another minister ready for baptism who gives a radio address every day in one of our largest cities, and the only thing that is holding him back is that he doesn't know what he is going to do for a living when he joins the Church. But he has already confessed that he believes that Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God.

A Minister with the Aaronic Priesthood

Sometime back, we converted a minister who had been a minister for thirty years. I heard a letter read that he wrote in which he said he had always believed that he had as much authority as any man to administer the ordinances of the gospel until he met the Mormon missionaries. "Now," he said, "I have come to believe that I must accept baptism at their hands," and after he was baptized, he told me this himself as he sat in my office. He said, "I accepted Joseph Smith as a Prophet of God. I didn't feel that I could say I knew he was a Prophet, but I believed he was a Prophet. But," he said, "when the elders of Israel laid their hands upon my head and conferred upon me the Aaronic Priesthood, I felt a thrill go through my being from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet such as I had never felt in my life, and I knew that no man could do that for me, that such feelings had to come from the Lord."

When he sat in my office, he said this, "Brother Richards, when I think of how little I had to offer my people as a minister of the gospel compared to what I now have in the fulness of the gospel as it has been restored, I want to go back and tell all my friends what I have found. Now they won't listen to me. I am an apostate from their church." But his conversion was so genuine that he gave up his ministry and took a menial job in order that he might become a member of the Church of Jesus Christ and worship God the Eternal Father according to the new conversion and conviction that the Lord had planted in his heart.

He pointed to this temple here on this temple block and said, "I can't wait to get in there with my wife." That was one of the principles that appealed to him. How could any true Christian who lives the principles of righteousness and treats his wife and his children as he should—how could he ever look forward to an eternity without the companionship of his wife and his children? And yet because of lack of divine inspiration and modern revelation, the scriptures have been so misunderstood that there isn't another one of the reputable churches of this world, according to my investigation, that believes that the marriage covenant and the family unit will project itself beyond the grave.

Building for a Thousand Years

We have had some wonderful talks on this subject in this conference. President Joseph Fielding Smith gave us a wonderful doctrinal talk in the first meeting on this subject. But people have been misled, and what is there now to induce them to live the kind of lives they ought to live. We have to have a foundation upon which to build. I like the story they tell about when they built this great temple here on this temple block, and they tell us that the footings are sixteen feet wide, and at one time President Brigham Young came along and saw them throwing in some chipped granite. He made them take it out and put in these great granite blocks with this explanation: "We are building this temple to stand through the millennium."

Is there any man in Israel or any man who truly loves his family who doesn't want to build his home to stand through the millennium? Can you imagine living forever and forever without the companionship of your wife and your children? I would just as soon believe that death is a complete annihilation of both body and spirit as to think that the ties that are so sacred here could not be projected into the eternal world.

And that is what the Lord has promised us through modern revelation. We don't have to depend upon man's interpretation of the Bible. We have the word of the Lord himself to his Prophet of this dispensation, telling us what we must do to have our wives and our children throughout the countless ages of eternity. No wonder the Christian world, who know nothing about the three degrees of glory that President Brown spoke about, don't know how to plan. There never was a time that the Lord gave this revelation as completely, as far as we know, until that revelation was given to the Prophet Joseph Smith.

Paul was caught up into the third heaven and the paradise of God, and he saw things he was not permitted to write (see  2 Cor. 12:2-4 He must have seen something pretty wonderful by the time he had passed the first and the second heaven and the paradise of God into the third heaven, but he did say, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him"  1 Cor. 2:9

I thank the Lord that we have the truth. I like the statement made by Anderson M. Baten to his wife Beulah, in which he said:

"I wed thee forever, not for now,
Not for the sham of earth's brief years.
I wed thee for the life beyond the tears,
Beyond the heartache and clouded brow.
Love knows no grave, and it shall guide us, dear,
When life's spent candles flutter, and burn low."

World Knowledge of Eternal Marriage and Family

One other thought along that line. I preached a sermon on this subject in the mission field, and I quoted from all the major churches from their official statements to the effect that not one of them believed in the eternal duration of the marriage covenant and the family unit. At the close of the meeting I stood at the door to greet the people, and a man came up and introduced himself as a Baptist minister, and I said, "Did I misquote you?"

"No," he said, "Mr. Richards, but it's just as you say, we don't believe all the things our churches teach."

I said, "You don't believe them either. Why don't you go back and teach your people the truth. They will take it from you, and they are not ready to take it from the Mormon elders yet."

He said, "I'll see you again." That is all I could get out of him that day.

The next time I went there, my coming was announced because I was the mission president. As I walked up to that little church, there stood that minister. As we shook hands, I said, "I would certainly be interested to know what you thought of my last sermon."

He said, "Mr. Richards, I have been thinking about it ever since, and I believe every word you said, but I would have liked to hear the rest of it."

Brothers and sisters, I thank God that we have the voice of living prophets to show us the way and that we don't have to depend on the written word only. Wasn't that what Jesus meant when he stood overlooking Jerusalem and said, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

"Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.

"For I say unto you, ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord"  Matt. 23:37-39

So we invite all men everywhere to be willing to listen to the living prophets that God has raised up in this dispensation so that they can be taught correct principles and not be tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine, as we read in the scriptures (see  Eph. 4:14 and may God help us as a people so to live that we may be worthy of the blessings he has in store for us and be a light unto the world, I pray and ask God to bless you all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.