My brothers and sisters: This is an humbling experience. I pray the Lord will bless me while I stand before you, and I ask that you be good enough to add your prayers to mine that I may say something that will be useful, upbuilding, and encouraging to all of us.

I am partly in the unfortunate situation that Brother Romney found himself yesterday. Others that have spoken have gone over my ground. However, I am not like him, I have not a good talk in my coat pocket. Brother Lee and Brother Romney went over much of the ground some of which I shall try to cover this morning. I have made my peace with them.

So far as we know, humankind have been afflicted with great crises since the grand council in heaven. We are in the midst of a great crisis now, and curiously, the crisis which we now face has in it and is a part of it, the great elemental principle that was in the first crisis that occurred in the council in heaven—the free agency of man.

I should like to personalize that council a little more than I have usually thought. Two great rival personages were in that conference, one standing with the Father. As the chronology is given in the book, it appears that, first they found space in which to build an earth; then they provided that this earth should be built; that the spirits should come here to prove themselves whether they would obey the commandments of the Lord, and they were told of the rewards that would come to them if they did, and the punishments if they did not.

Then the question arose with the Father, "Whom shall I send?" The plan called for redemption. One stood forth and said, "I will redeem all mankind. Not one soul will be lost. I will surely do it. So send me"  Abr. 3:24-28 That plan, when analyzed, involved, as the Lord has told us time and again, the destruction of our free agency. Just how we were to be redeemed under the plan and yet destroy our free agency we are not told. The proposer of that plan said to our heavenly Father, "Give me thine honor" (see  Moses 4:1-2  Abr. 3:27 And our heavenly Father has told us that that meant that he should surrender to the proposer, his power, and he, the Father, become more or less a nonentity, I suppose.

Then the other Personage said, "Send me, and the honor will be thine." The heavenly Father chose the latter, the Only Begotten, who was to be sent to this earth.

Now this first personage, Satan—I can understand that his proposal was based upon the proposition that since the Father was the Father of all his children and loved them, nothing could be more satisfactory to the Father than the promise to redeem them all. It was a subtle approach, and, of course, God saw it. Satan was "cast down"  Rev. 12:9-10 and with him went one-third of the hosts of heaven  Rev. 12:4 He declared by his rebellion  Moses 4:3 eternal enmity toward the plan that was adopted, and from that time until now, constantly sought to build the empire, the kingdom for which he planned, by leading us astray. He has never relented for a moment. Having our agency, he was to lead us to do evil.

He first struck at Adam and Eve in the garden and secured from them disobedience. There is much in the scripture that indicates that mere obedience, per se, irrespective of what the obedience involved, is a great virtue in itself. Obedience in spiritual matters requires that on occasion it shall be blind obedience because the Lord cannot explain to us all the things that he asks us to do. We could not understand.

You know, Satan won with Eve, but Eve, when she understood, gave a great hymn of praise that she had fallen because now they would have seed, and could not have had seed had the fall not taken place  Moses 5:11

Adam and Eve were thrust out of the garden of Eden; they became mortal, subject to temporal death, but the Lord then said, and did as he said, that he would give to Adam the gospel plan by which the spirits that were to come here could live and gain the reward which he had promised. That gospel plan he gave, and when he gave it, he said it would never be taken away until the end of the world  Moses 5:59 It is my faith that the gospel plan has always been here, that his priesthood has always been the earth, and that it will continue be so until the end comes. (While through the apostasy since the time of Christ, the priesthood was lost to the people generally and to the Christian churches, yet there have always been on the earth from the beginning, servants of the Lord who have the priesthood. See: as to the descent of the priesthood down through Moses  D&C 84:6-17,25-26 as to Moses, Elias, Elijah  D&C 110:11-15 as to the Apostle John  John 21:22-23 and as to the Three Nephites  3 Ne. 28:1-10 See Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Smith, pp. 180-181.)

When Adam began to rear a family, Satan struck again. This time he divided the family  Moses 5:13 Part of them became worldly and wicked, and that wickedness increased. Part of them were righteous. Brother Lee, yesterday traced down the dispensations. There is no need of my retracing their course. These dispensations were, each of them, a crisis. The dispensation in which Enoch lived afforded Enoch a chance to demonstrate that he could do what no other leader of a dispensation has ever done—prepare a people to be taken into the presence of our heavenly Father. That was the greatest achievement of any leader of any dispensation.

Before the Meridian of Time and the birth of the Messiah, mankind looked forward thereto. Before that, all of the rituals pertaining to the gospel looked to the Messiah, to his birth, as Brother Romney told us. Since that time, we honor him, and our ritual, the sacrament, relates back to that time. We make covenants when we partake of the sacrament. But also, and ever since that time, we have been told that there would be a Dispensation of the Fulness of Times. And as Brother Lee pointed out, we now are in that dispensation, we are in the dispensation which is to prepare for the Second Coming, toward which all true Christians look.

The particular thing that I wish to say today is this: Being in that last dispensation, representing our heavenly Father therein, we have great responsibilities. If the world is to be prepared for the Second Coming, we must do it. No one else has the knowledge. No one else has the authority. The responsibility is ours. The last dispensation has welded together all of the doctrines and principles of the gospel that were advanced in former dispensations. We have the priesthood bestowed by heavenly hands. We have the restoration of the keys, conferred in the Kirtland Temple when Moses and Elias and Elijah came. We have all of the authority, all of the principles that are necessary for the great work of preparation; and ours, I repeat, is the sole responsibility to go forward and see that our mission is carried out.

We must live righteously. We must keep the commandments of the Lord. We must do his work. He has told us what we are to do, and if we are to gain the salvation which we hope and expect to gain and meet our responsibilities, we must obey what he has told us to do.

My brothers and sisters, if we think of this carefully, I am sure we cannot approach our work in the Church with lightmindedness. I am sure we shall have to be a prayerful people. I am sure we shall have to live in accordance with the commandments which he has given. I am sure we must use our utmost endeavors to build up the kingdom of God here on earth.

I hope, my brothers and sisters, that we shall not be remiss in anything that pertains to ourselves or to our activities in the Church.

I add again my testimony, which I have borne time and again, that God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, that he came to earth, lived, moved among men, carried on his mission, that in due time and in accordance with the plan, he was crucified, and lay in the tomb, and rose on the third morning. I testify that Joseph was the Prophet through whom the Lord re-established his Church here on earth, so ushering in this last Dispensation of the Fulness of Times, for the carrying forward of which and the perfecting of which we are responsible, that the priesthood came, that the gospel was fully restored.

I testify that those who followed the Prophet succeeded to his powers, to his rights and prerogatives and that has come down through to our present President, President David Oman McKay. I testify that if we will follow the advice and the counsel of those who are placed over us, we shall carry forward the work which we are obliged to do—I say obliged, because we are.

May the Lord bless each and every one of us and help us to do our part, I humbly pray, in the name of Jesus. Amen.