Truth tastes good
This is good doctrine. It tastes good. I can taste the principles of eternal life, and so can you. They are given to me by the revelations of Jesus Christ; and I know that when I tell you these words of eternal life as they are given to me, you taste them, and I know that you believe them. You say honey is sweet, and so do I. I can also taste the spirit of eternal life. I know it is good; and when I tell you of these things which are given me by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, you are bound to receive them as sweet, and rejoice more and more. (Joseph Smith, King Follett Sermon, April 7, 1844; Teaching of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 354)
You never know until it is a matter of life and death
“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it? (C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, p. 22)
I had been warned–I had warned myself–not to reckon on worldly happiness. We were even promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accepted it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for. Of course, it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination.
Yes, but should it, for a sane man, make quite such a difference as this? No. And it wouldn’t for a man whose faith had been real faith and whose concern for other people’s sorrow had been real concern. The case is too plain. If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. The faith that ‘took these things into account’ was not faith but imagination….I thought I trusted the rope until it mattered to me whether it would bear me. Now it matters, and I find it didn’t.”
Bridge-players tell me that there must be some money on the game ‘or else people won’t take it seriously. ‘ Apparently it’s like that. Your bid – for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity – will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high, until you find that you are playing not for counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world. Nothing less will shake a man – or at any rate a man like me – out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself. (C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, p. 36-38)
Feed the hungry
The afternoon meeting will be omitted, for I wish the sisters to go home and prepare to give those who have just arrived [in the Martin handcart company] a mouthful of something to eat, and to wash them and nurse them up. You know that I would give more for a dish of pudding and milk, or a baked potato and salt, were I in the situation of those persons who have just come in, than I would for all your prayers, though you were to stay here all the afternoon and pray. Prayer is good, but when baked potatoes and pudding and milk are needed, prayer will not supply their place on this occasion; give every duty its proper time and place. (Brigham Young, November 30, 1856, The Complete Discourses of Brigham Young 2:1197).
Sin can become a habit
Sin is intensely habit-forming and sometimes moves men to the tragic point of no return. Without repentance there can be no forgiveness, and without forgiveness all the blessings of eternity hang in jeopardy. As the transgressor moves deeper and deeper in his sin, and the error is entrenched more deeply and the will to change is weakened, it becomes increasingly nearer hopeless and he skids down and down until either he does not want to climb back up or he has lost the power to do so. (Spencer W. Kimball, Miracle of Forgiveness, p. 117)
Safely dead
Elder George Q. Cannon stated:
Satan is bound as soon as the faithful spirit leaves this tabernacle of clay and goes to the other side of the veil. That spirit is emancipated from the power and thraldom and attacks of Satan. Satan can only afflict such in this life. He can only afflict those in that life which is to come who have listened to his persuasions, who have listed to obey him. These are the only ones over whom he has power after this life.” (George Q. Cannon, Sept. 1, 1885, JI 20:264 see also Gospel Truth: Discourses and Writings of President George Q. Cannon, selected, arranged, and edited by Jerreld L. Newquist [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1987], 61.)
Elder F. Burton Howard of the Seventy told of a funeral he once attended where Elder M. Russell Ballard spoke. Elder Howard remembered:
“He said, `Life isn’t over for a Latter-day Saint until he or she is safely dead, with their testimony still burning brightly.’ `Safely dead’ – what a challenging concept. Brothers and sisters, we will not be safe until we have given our hearts to the Lord, until we have learned to do what we have promised to do.” (Elder F. Burton Howard, Commitment, General Conference Address, April 1996.)
Elder Bruce R. McConkie stated:
“We don’t need to get a complex or get a feeling that you have to be perfect to be saved. You don’t. There’s only been one perfect person, and that’s the Lord Jesus, but in order to be saved in the Kingdom of God and in order to pass the test of mortality, what you have to do is get on the straight and narrow path—thus charting a course leading to eternal life—and then, being on that path, pass out of this life in full fellowship. I’m not saying that you don’t have to keep the commandments. I’m saying you don’t have to be perfect to be saved. If you did, no one would be saved. The way it operates is this: you get on the path that’s named the “straight and narrow.” The straight and narrow path leads a very great distance, to a reward that’s called eternal life. If you’re on that path and pressing forward, and you die, you’ll never get off the path. There is no such thing as falling off the straight and narrow path in the life to come. If you’re working zealously in this life—though you haven’t fully overcome the world and you haven’t done all you hoped you might do—you’re still going to be saved. You don’t have to have an excessive zeal that becomes fanatical and becomes unbalancing. What you have to do is stay in the mainstream of the Church and live as upright and decent people live in the Church—keeping the commandments, paying your tithing, serving in the organizations of the Church, loving the Lord, staying on the straight and narrow path. If you’re on that path when death comes you’ll never fall off from it, and, for all practical purposes, your calling and election is made sure.” (Bruce R. McConkie, “The Probationary Test of Mortality,” Jan 10, 1982, at the SL Institute).