…Opposition In All Things
www.kevinhinckley.com
Gila Academy vs University
of Arizona (1912.)
It is a great occasion. Many people came
tonight who have never been before. Some
of the townspeople say basketball is a girl’s
game but they came in large numbers
tonight.
Our court is not quite regulation. We are used to it, our opponents not.
I have special luck with my shots tonight and the ball goes through the hoop
again and again and the game ends with our High School team the victors
against the college team.
I am the smallest one and the youngest on the team. I have piled up the most
points through the efforts of the whole team protecting me and feeding the
ball to me.
I am on the shoulders of the big fellows of the Academy. They are parading me
around the hall to my consternation and embarrassment.
I like basketball. I would rather play this game than eat.
Spencer Kimball, 1912
Biography, p. 65
The importance of words
Elder Cecil Samuelson once attended a fireside meeting
with Elder Maxwell in Seoul, Korea. Neal was
speaking "a hundred miles an hour, as he always
does." A young interpreter was trying very hard to
keep up. Neal told a funny story that required several
sentences. The translator paused, said about a half
dozen words, and the audience roared with laughter.
When Elder Samuelson afterward asked the interpreter
how he'd handled that, he replied, "I was so far
behind and so tired I just said, 'Brothers and sisters,
Elder Maxwell just said something very funny.
Please laugh.'"
Lehi’s choice of words to
Laman and Lemuel
O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea,
even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by
which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the
children of men, that they are carried away captive down to
Question:
the eternal gulf of misery and woe.
How would you describe this “sleep of hell?”
arise from the dust, my sons, and be men, and be determined in
one mind and in one heart, united in all things, that ye may
not come down into captivity;
Awake, my sons; put on the armor of righteousness. Shake off the
chains with which ye are bound,
and come forth out of obscurity,
and arise from the dust.
President Kimball
"[There] are Church members who are steeped in
lethargy. They neither drink nor commit the sexual
sins. They do not gamble nor rob nor kill. They are
good citizens and splendid neighbors, but spiritually
speaking they seem to be in a long, deep sleep.
They are doing nothing seriously wrong except in their
failures to do the right things... To such people as
this, the words of Lehi might well apply…
(Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, p149)
Can we being sleeping and not know it?
Lehi continues…
And now, Jacob, I speak unto you: Thou art my
first-born in the days of my tribulation in the
wilderness. And behold, in thy childhood thou
hast suffered afflictions and much sorrow,
because of the rudeness of thy brethren.
Nevertheless, Jacob, my first-born in the
wilderness, thou knowest the greatness of
God; and he shall consecrate thine afflictions
for thy gain.
Elder Maxwell
We can, if we are obedient,
be gentled by afflictions;
Might we
we canchoose
be tamed by afflictions;
to cope with:
we can be softened by afflictions;
we can be consoled in the midst of afflictions;
Through
we can be humbled by them.
Afflictions
Spiritual
Wherefore, Ye Must Press Forward, 57
Sleep?
Brother Spencer Condie
Father Lehi explained in great detail how this testing is to occur and why it is
that Heavenly Father created a plan through which our moral agency, the
freedom to choose, can be maximized.
Lehi taught his son Jacob: "For it must needs be, that there is an opposition
in all things".
He did not forewarn his young son that there might
be opposition, or that there could be opposition, or
even that there would be opposition. Lehi clearly
taught that, in keeping with the very purpose of the
plan, there must be opposition. He explained further
that this opposition was in all things.
Opposition is an inherent, indispensable ingredient
in all things. He continued his explanation by
teaching that if this were not so, "righteousness
could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness,
neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad.
Wherefore, all things must be a compound in one.“
In Perfect Balance, 1
Leo Tolstoy
In 1900, Thomas J. Yates, a Mormon student attending Cornell University in
Ithaca, New York, had an interesting conversation with the cofounder of that
institution, Andrew Dixon White. Dr. White had served as U.S. foreign
minister in Russia several years earlier and told Brother Yates of a visit he
had had with the famous Count Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy, as you know, is
considered by many to be the greatest Russian philosopher, social critic, and
novelist of all time. …
According to Brother Yates' recollection of what Dr. White told him
concerning the exchange with Tolstoy, the great Russian scholar asked Dr.
White to tell him about the American religion. Puzzled, Dr. White explained
that we don't have an American religion, "that each person is free to belong to the particular church in which
he is interested." Tolstoy is reported to have shown a little impatience in replying:
"I know all of this. . . . But the Church to which I refer originated in America, and is commonly known as the
Mormon Church. What can you tell me of the teachings of the Mormons?"
"Well," said Dr. White, "I know very little concerning them. They have an unsavory reputation, they practice
polygamy, and are very superstitious."
Then Count Leo Tolstoi . . . rebuked the ambassador. "Dr. White, I am greatly surprised and disappointed that a
man of your great learning and position should be so ignorant on this important subject. . . . If the people
follow the teachings of this Church, nothing can stop their progress--it will be limitless. There have been
great movements started in the past but they have died or been modified before they reached maturity."
"If Mormonism is able to endure, unmodified, until it reaches the third and fourth generation, it is destined to
become the greatest power the world has ever known."
[Thomas J. Yates, "Count Tolstoi and the 'American Religion,''' Improvement Era, February 1939, p. 94]
Sister Vilate C. Raile, speaking of
our pioneer ancestors
They cut desire into short
lengths
And fed it to the hungry fires of tribulation.
Long after when the fires had died,
Molten gold gleamed in the ashes.
They gathered it in bruised palms
And handed it to their children
And their children's children forever.
Quoted in Lawrence Flake’s BYU Address, July 1995