Conference, Ensigns, and Prophets

An Ensign to the Nations - April 2011 Conference

What better way to start off a blog about General Conference addresses than with Elder Holland's address on General Conference?  Watch it if you have time - I'll see you in about 18 minutes.

Elder Holland sure knows how to get your attention, doesn't he?  His addresses are always gripping to me.  Whether he's thanking saints for their faithfulness, warning us about the dangers of pornography, giving us insight into the atoning sacrifice of Christ or expounding his testimony of the Book of Mormon, I'm riveted every time.  (Perhaps I should have started a blog just to dissect Elder Holland's discourses!  Don't worry - I'll get to every one of these eventually.)  Elder Holland has a unique intensity and ability to shape phrases, coupled with an urgency and testimony that leave me hanging on every word.   So let's talk about some of those words!

"It is not happenstance that one English publication of our general conference messages is in a magazine simply titled the Ensign."

So what is an "Ensign?"  It is a flag or standard, an emblem of a particular "thing".  While they have symbolic meaning today, flags have historically meant even more, particularly in the setting of a battle.  In battle, a flag would help one tell friends from enemies.  It would help you locate the leader, often giving you a source from when to receive orders.  Bearing the flag (from when the rank Ensign originates) was an important duty.  If your flag fell, it sent a signal to friend and foe alike that your army had fallen.  The word "Standard" is equally intriguing.  While the original meaning seems to come from flags used in battle, it has come to also mean "rule, principal or means of judgment".

So these words given during conference are meant to be a rallying point, a means of directing the ever-continuing battle against evil, a basis for comparison and correction.  And they are meant not only for those inside the church, but for "the nations".  They are meant to be held up, to be displayed, to be absolute. 

"We testify to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people that God not only lives but also that He speaks, that for our time and in our day the counsel you have heard is, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, “the will of the Lord, … the word of the Lord, … the voice of the Lord, and the power of God unto salvation.”

What more important set of messages could there be?  These messages are truly for the entire world.

So what kind of messages do they give us?  What would you expect from the mouthpiece of God?  I would expect no more or less than what he has given in the past: equal measures of comfort and hope, and direction and chastisement.

"I guess President Harold B. Lee put it best years ago when he said that the gospel is “to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the [comfortable].”"

I love this concept.  Years ago, Brother Goaslind gave a talk about Spiritual Mountaintops.  Even as a youth, this talk moved me with it's imagery of our eternal progression as a long climb up a mountain.  But he warned us about reaching comfortable plateaus, particularly as a group. "...Many of us have attained a level of obedience in which we consistently keep the letter of the law; we commit no grievous sins. As we look about us, we see that we do no worse than the next family, and we feel satisfied, comfortable. We are compatible with others on our plateau partway up the mountain."

This is where "afflicting the comfortable" comes in to me.  Every time I listen to conference, my comfortable patterns become apparent to me.  I have motivation to climb higher.  And as an assurance of the blessing I will receive if I do, Brother Goaslind said that "we have every confidence that earth and hell will not overtake you, but it will require that you move from your current plateaus and climb to higher ground."

Elder Holland points out that Christ himself ran the gamut from comfort to extreme challenge in His Sermon on the Mount.  "What was gentle in the lowlands of initial loyalty becomes deeply strenuous and very demanding at the summit of true discipleship."

And then comes one of the most striking points in my view:

"Clearly anyone who thinks Jesus taught no-fault theology did not read the fine print in the contract! No, in matters of discipleship the Church is not a fast-food outlet; we can’t always have it “our way.” Some day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ and that salvation can only come His way."

This is how Prophets teach: with great power and authority (Reminds me of Elder Bednar's Priesthood address in April 2012...but we'll get to that another week).  Elder Holland doesn't posit how Christ might have taught or what he may have meant; he lays down for us the gospel truth.  And brother, it feels good!

When I left the sheltered confines of the Salt Lake Valley to serve my mission in France, I was surprised by how often I would encounter this "religion à la carte", where people would pick and choose which parts of a religion to support.  This simply does not work.  As Joseph Smith put it in his lectures on faith, "a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation."  I ask you how a religion can require the sacrifice of all things if its adherents are free to remove at will the direction given them?  It would be like hiring a personal trainer to help you get full-body fitness, but ignoring him every time he told you to work out your legs.

"Perhaps you already know (but if you don’t you should) that with rare exception, no man or woman who speaks here is assigned a topic."

No, I didn't know that, at least, not for a long time.  In fact, I had wondered and supposed a great many things about how Conference was coordinated.  This was a very interesting revelation to me.  (For the record, I still wonder about their timelines for submitting drafts for translation, when they know where in conference they'll be speaking, etc.  But that's not really important.)

"If we teach by the Spirit and you listen by the Spirit, some one of us will touch on your circumstance, sending a personal prophetic epistle just to you."

I love having that spelled out.  The key, after all, is the Spirit.  And who's to say the same principle doesn't apply to our other church meetings?  "Consider the response of President Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) when someone once asked him, 'What do you do if you find yourself caught in a boring sacrament meeting?' President Kimball thought a moment, then replied, 'I don’t know; I’ve never been in one.'" (Merrill, 2007)

 It's all about our attitude and our preparation - we get out what we put in.  And the Spirit amplifies this effort as we "put in" in love and service to others.

And in the end, this is the note I want to end this discussion on and begin the rest of this blog: you will get out of the words of these Prophets and Apostles what you put into them.