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Emeritus General Authorities are something of a forgotten lot, and I have wondered how many other names must have been considered before landing on mine. Perhaps it is because my sister filled this slot last year. In 2011, just after I was named an emeritus General Authority, one of my grandchildren said, “Grampy, what does emeritus mean?” I told him it was the Latin word for dinosaur, which seemed to satisfy him. I am not suggesting that was an inspired definition, but that is my story and I’m sticking with it!

My message is simple and straightforward: it is to help us identify a few of the witnesses of the Restoration and the Resurrection and to add my own witness to them. I have chosen to take a few examples of universal witnesses—witnesses to the entire world—and intersperse them with a few personal experiences that have increased my faith.

My paternal grandfather, Bryant S. Hinckley, graduated from this institution in the days when it was known as the Brigham Young Academy. While here, he studied under Karl G. Maeser and was named the commencement speaker when his class graduated. Years later, in April of 1916, he gave a brief address in general conference. We have a transcript of that talk. He was serving as stake president at the time, and it is difficult to tell from his remarks whether they were prepared in advance or were impromptu, which would not have been unusual in that day.

I quote the first two sentences of that talk as a foundation for the message I have prepared: “My brothers and sisters, I am admonished that no poor word of mine will encourage you in the work of the Lord, but I am sustained with the thought that no word, be it ever so humble, spoken under the impress and power of the Spirit of God, is forgotten or falls fruitless to the earth. In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints there is no place for pride or vanity.”[1] It is in the spirit of that admonition that I approach this invitation. I will speak to several witnesses; it is by no means an exhaustive list, to be sure.

Testimonies of Our Families

First, we have the faith and testimonies of our own families, including our forebears. Each of us is, to a very large extent, the product of our own experiences and of our own upbringing. I was blessed beyond anything I deserved in that regard. I made earlier reference to my paternal grandfather. I spent many hours with him as a boy, sitting on his lap or at his side on a swing on his porch while he told me stories of his boyhood on the frontier. He was well spoken, well educated, and well informed. He seemed larger than life to me, and he always greeted me with the tousle of my hair, a smile, and a deep chuckle. His home was just a ten-minute walk from my own, and I visited him often.

In that same conference address to which I referred earlier, he said, “I would like to make my own home a center of faith. I should like to engender in the hearts of my own children a love and reverence, not only for the principles of the gospel, but for those who have been instrumental in their establishment in this great day.”[2] He did indeed make his own home a center of faith, and he did in very deed engender in the hearts of his children and his grandchildren a love for the gospel.

I am most certainly, at least in part, a product of his faith. One small example: I will play for you a short audio clip he made in 1956 at the age of eighty-nine. On that occasion, he gathered his daughters together and, at their urging, reminisced about the prophets he had personally known, beginning with Brigham Young and ending with David O. McKay. These reminiscences, recorded in his own wonderfully familiar voice, built faith in my heart as few other things have. I have listened to them scores of times over the years. For me, they are a treasure. Listen to his voice as he remembers Joseph F. Smith, the sixth President of the Church.

President Joseph F. Smith. Courtesy of Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

Let’s see, who is the next—Joseph F. Smith. Oh yes, I knew him. I’d like to talk about him. I think in all my acquaintances with men Joseph F. Smith was the greatest man I ever knew—anywhere. Anywhere. It was marvelous. He had a something that no mortal man I ever knew had. He could just make the earth tremble. No man that I ever heard could bear testimony like he could. . . . It was marvelous.

The Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association of which he was the superintendent used to meet in his office, and when they were through with the business, they would ask him to talk to them, and he would do it. It is the greatest education, the greatest school I ever did attend, to hear this man talk.[3]

That voice, the intonation, and those words still have a profound impact on me sixty-seven years after they were recorded. Of course, my own parents were tremendously influential in my gaining a testimony. Ours was a home of much work, but also of fun and laughter. It was also a home of example—more so than of words. The reverence with which the Savior was mentioned in our home is something that will remain with me always. Our family prayers were times of reflection, giving thanks, and feeling of the deep and reverent conviction of our parents. Our home evenings were lively and fun, but we also felt of our parents’ faith as we discussed gospel topics. I have listened to countless testimonies borne publicly by my parents, but I believe more impactful to me were their testimonies, quiet and sure, borne in our home, mostly without words.

Testimonies of Church Leaders

Second, we have the testimonies of Church leaders, past and present. We have just witnessed another conference weekend during which we heard the personal witnesses of prophets, seers, and revelators, as well as others of the General Authorities and General Officers of the Church. These each bore witness of the life, the teachings, the ministry, the death, and the Resurrection of the Savior as well as the Restoration of the Church.

President David O. McKay. Courtesy of Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

David O. McKay became President in 1951 and died in 1970. I was nine years old when he became President and twenty-eight years old when he died, so I have many wonderful memories of him. I remember him vividly at the dedication of the Los Angeles California Temple in March of 1956, which my siblings and I attended with our parents. We were seated early before President McKay entered the room. He entered from the rear and walked up the aisle passing close to where I sat. I remember the feeling I had as I looked up at him, with his erect stature, his beautiful white hair, and his kindly brown eyes. There came into my fourteen-year-old heart a powerful feeling, a witness, that this was a man of God, and that feeling never left me.

I wish I had time to give an anecdote or experience with each of the other Presidents of the Church which have strengthened me, but time does not permit. Cumulatively, however, they have had a great and wonderful impact on my own faith and testimony.

I will mention just a word about our current prophet, President Russell M. Nelson. I enjoyed a close association with him during my last few years as a full-time General Authority. Then-Elder Nelson was chair of the Missionary Executive Council, of which I was a member. In that capacity, I met with him twice weekly, once one-on-one, and once with the three or four other members of that council. I came to know his style, his faith, his love of the Savior, and of his absolute devotion to the work.

President Russell M. Nelson. Courtesy of Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

Everything he has done, every talk he has given, and every policy he has implemented or modified has had laser focus on the Savior, whether it is to stay on the covenant path, seek and follow personal revelation, attend the temple more regularly, minister instead of “checking a box,” or take charge of our own testimonies. In the early months of his presidency, before COVID-19 broke upon the world, he implemented the home-centered Church initiative: “It is time for a home-centered Church, supported by what takes place inside our branch, ward, and stake buildings.”[4] All the Church’s “teaching, programs, and activities . . . are home centered and Church supported.”[5]

Think of that massive shift in emphasis in light of these verses from 3 Nephi: “I perceive that ye are weak,” the Savior told the Nephites, “that ye cannot understand all my words which I am commanded of the Father to speak unto you at this time. Therefore, go ye unto your homes, and ponder upon the things which I have said, and ask of the Father, in my name, that ye may understand, and prepare your minds for the morrow, and I come unto you again” (3 Nephi 17:2–3).

Testimonies Found in Scripture

Third, we have testimonies and witnesses found in the scriptures. The sheer number of scriptural references to the Savior, His teachings, the Atonement and Resurrection, and the Restoration is vast.

The standard works are simply brimming with these witnesses. They jump from every page. I will mention but a very few. The entire book of Isaiah is replete with the witness of the promised Messiah. In fact, the entire Hebrew Bible witnesses of His coming in very specific ways. “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

Jesus commanded His disciples to "love one another." Courtesy of Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

And John’s record of the Last Supper is one of the most beautiful and touching accounts of the Savior’s ministry in all of scripture. The Savior and His disciples met together to celebrate the Feast of the Passover. While there, in the quiet intimacy of that upper room, He spoke out of the depths of his heart to those He loved. He testified of Himself. He testified of His Father, and of His commission from the Father to condescend to come to earth and to die for all humankind. He washed their feet, He broke bread and blessed it, likening it to His body, and He poured wine and blessed it, likening it to His blood. He told His disciples that he must leave them and that they would no longer see and be with Him but promised them that He would prepare a place for them. “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2).

Surely, He was feeling the terrible anguish, the oppression of that which was about to happen; it must have been overwhelming, it must have been crushing, and yet He spoke out of the love in His great heart of His mission, of His Father and of His love for those who followed Him. There He gave them a new commandment, which was in stark contrast to all of their experience and training: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:34–35).

These teachings became clear to the disciples only in retrospect; at the time, they were baffled. John recorded, “We cannot tell what he saith” (John 16:18). Of course, there was the Samaritan woman at the well, to whom He bore witness that He was the Messiah. There was Peter’s great declaration, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). There are scores of other scriptures which bear testimony of Him and of His Father—far too many to mention.

Testimonies Found in Outside Sources

Fourth, we have testimony found in other, outside sources, both written and oral, scholarly and secular, even in the works of poets. Those of you who belong to this faculty are deeply immersed in historical and scholarly works testifying of the Resurrection, which are both interesting and plentiful.

N. T. Wright is one of the most persuasive of the non-Latter-day Saint scholars on the subject. Through careful analysis of ancient scripture, which led him to a profoundly different interpretation, at least for a Protestant, of the fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, as well as his study of the early church fathers, he argues persuasively for the physical Resurrection not just of the Savior but of all mankind. His scholarship is more than pure scholarship; it is infused with the sense of a man who truly believes.

Some of you here likely knew Stephen Webb, the Catholic scholar and writer who came to view our Church and its teachings with great respect. He collaborated with some of the faculty here on books and other projects. My wife and I spent a day with him and his family and came to admire and respect him and thereafter exchanged occasional emails. When the open house for the Indianapolis Indiana Temple was held, we arranged a VIP tour for him and his family. Elder Kent F. Richards, then the executive director the Temple Department, was kind enough to lead that tour. A few days later, I received an email from Stephen. He did not ask me to hold it in confidence, and so I will share just a few lines:

Dear Richard,

It was such a blessing to be at the temple last Wednesday. I never dreamed I would see the inside of one, and it met my every expectation. The combination of understated beauty and dignified elegance made for a holy atmosphere, and the focus on Christ was overwhelming. . . .

The highlight was sitting with my wife in the sealing room, on the very spot where couples sit to be sealed.

He continues:

The sublimity of the LDS view of heaven and how important it is and how it shows most other churches, well, all other churches, actually, to have very trivial and mild and lackluster views of heaven [was evident]. We’ve lost heaven, I’m afraid, its reality, its presence, but Mormons haven’t. You will have to carry on so much of the faith for the rest of us, until we can catch up to you. . . . So much of Western Christianity is all about obtaining a vision of God in the end, becoming one with God, which erases our individuality and threatens to collapse any real diversity into an eternal monism. But Mormon eschatology preserves real plurality.

He concludes:

Really, I could go on, Richard! I am more convinced than ever that the Saints have truly provided an extensive list of corrections, or restorations, to the church, where we have lost our way, and I hope to be counted a fellow traveler, someone following the Saints at a distance perhaps, but only because that permits me to draw attention to the path the Saints have laid out for the restoration of a fully and truly robust faith in Jesus Christ.

Steve

Pretty powerful stuff, I would say—an outsider’s witness to the Restoration!

Even nature provides a type that testifies of the Resurrection. A few days ago, I awoke early, far too early to get out of bed and start the day—a common occurrence with people my age. As I lay there thinking of this talk, the lines of a poem came into my mind—a poem I first read sixty years ago. It is a wonderful metaphor for mortality, death, and the Resurrection. Listen to these lines, excerpted from that poem:

O wild West Wind, . . . O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill . . .
With living hues and odours plain and hill.[6]

How like the seeds of those flowers are we, who in the winter of our lives die and our mortal remains lie “cold and low” within the grave until, in the metaphor of that poem, the warm breeze of the Resurrection shall blow her clarion o’er the dreaming earth and bring us resurrected, physical life again. The poem ends with this hopeful line: “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

And one more example of a remarkable poem by the English poet Francis Thompson, titled “The Hound of Heaven.” Some scholars, whose business it is to judge such things, consider this to be the finest ode in the English language.

It is likely autobiographical, depicting the poet’s reluctance to submit to the Savior’s will. The Savior is depicted as the great Hound of Heaven, which in metaphor depicts someone whose pursuit is patient and relentless. These few lines will give you perhaps a glimpse into this rhythmic, unhurried, persistent pursuit. I quote:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him.[7]

And thus, the pursuit begins and then continues for 182 lines, the poet fleeing and the magnificent Hound of Heaven, the Savior, in steady, calm, loving, persistent, and patient pursuit. In the end the poet capitulates, falls exhausted to the ground, and submits his will. Listen to these marvelous closing lines, with the Savior speaking:

‘Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?’
. . .
‘Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!

Thou dravest love from Thee, who dravest Me.’[8]

Testimony of the Holy Ghost

Fifth and finally, and certainly the most important, is the testimony of the Holy Ghost when it speaks to our own spirit.

I think it is human nature to seek our witnesses from other sources first, and from the Spirit secondarily, but that will avail us little. “For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:11). Or consider this: “Wherefore I give you to understand, . . . no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost” (1 Corinthians 12:3).

Some “seven weeks plus one day”—fifty days after the Feast of the Passover—the Jews celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. It was at this feast that the assembled group received that great outpouring of the Spirit that the Savior had promised. His disciples were emboldened as never before. “And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting” (Acts 2:2).

Peter, being filled with the Spirit, stood and testified in ways so direct and bold that he must have surprised even himself. This man Peter, who just a few weeks earlier had three times denied even knowing Christ, now bore powerful testimony of Him as the Savior of the world, quoting Old Testament passages that pointed to the Savior, and inviting those present to repent and be baptized. The Spirit was so strong, and Peter’s witness so powerful, that the scriptures record that “the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:41; emphasis in original).

And so it is, and so it must be with you and with me. We may not speak in tongues, as did those on that Day of Pentecost.[9] We may not see angels or heavenly manifestations, but each one of us knows what the Spirit feels like. Every member of the Church has received the gift of the Holy Ghost, and while generally we don’t talk of sacred experiences in public, we have had them. I have had them, and many of you, if not most of you, have had them too.

And so, brothers and sisters, these are just a few of the things that witness to me of the reality of the Restoration of the gospel and the Resurrection of the Lord. There are many others, including sacred music. Many witnesses not mentioned will have application to your own lives and in your own circumstances. You will know what they are.

It’s a rough world out there. Never in my lifetime have threats to spirituality and to faith been more numerous, more subtle, or more devastatingly destructive. None of us is exempt. Every mother, father, daughter, and son will feel the buffetings to a greater or lesser degree. We need faith—faith in the Restoration and in our current prophet, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and in His teachings and in His atoning sacrifice. And we need Him. Oh, how we need Him.

As Sister Chieko-Okazaki said so beautifully, “He’s not waiting for us to be perfect. Perfect people don't need a Savior. He came to save his people in their imperfections. He is the Lord of the living, and the living make mistakes. He’s not embarrassed by us, angry at us, or shocked. He wants us in our brokenness, in our unhappiness, in our guilt and our grief.”[10]

Sister Chieko N. Okazaki, Courtesy of Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

May each one of us make our home a center of faith. May we appreciate in a deeper and more personal way the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and the promise that each of us will be resurrected with a perfect physical body as we move along the path of eternal life.

May we appreciate more fully the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and of His Church through the Prophet Joseph Smith, who was an eyewitness to the majesty of the Father and the Son (see Doctrine and Covenants 76:22–23).

May we appreciate this marvelous era of temple building, greater and at a more accelerated pace than ever before in the history of the world, and the sacred covenants we make, which bind us to the Father and the Son, and embody the Resurrection and which reflect the Restoration as nothing else quite does.

I add my testimony of Jesus Christ to the others mentioned. I bear my witness of His life, His ministry, His atoning sacrifice, of His Resurrection, and of the plan of salvation which embodies His teachings. I am all in.

Let us not seek the living among the dead. He is not here but is risen. That is my prayer and my witness. May we turn not just our hearts but our lives to him this Easter season. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Notes

[1] Bryant S. Hinckley, general conference, April 1916, copy in author’s possession.

[2] Hinckley, general conference, April 1916.

[3] Bryant S. Hinckley, audiotaped remarks, 1956, copy in author’s possession.

[4] Russell M. Nelson, “Opening Remarks,” Ensign or Liahona, November 2018, 7; emphasis in original.

[5] Handbook 2: Administering the Church (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2010), 4.

[6] Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind,” in Prometheus Unbound, A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts, With Other Poems, lines 1, 5–10, 12.

[7] Francis Thompson, “The Hound of Heaven,” Merry England, July 1890, 163, lines 1–5.

[8] Thompson, “Hound of Heaven,” lines 169–70, 180–82.

[9] See Acts 2.

[10] Chieko N. Okazaki, Lighten Up! Finding Real Joy in Life (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1993), 174.