Divine Revelation

[Connie]

(I found this among my hubby's old mission things and really liked it. Hope you do too. It's from a speech by Harold B. Lee. Not sure what scriptures he is referring to in the beginning.)

As I thought of those scriptures, I remembered a little incident or a little illustration that Brother Widtsoe related in a general conference. He said, “When God speaks, some of us fail to so live that we understand the message that comes from eternity.” I know some people who will say, “Well, how can I conduct my life so as to be responsive to the message that comes from an unseen world?” There is an old illustration that bears on this subject: We may take a rod of soft iron and place it with some filings without apparently causing any change – the rod is not magnetic. But if we wrap that rod with a wire carrying an electric current, it becomes a magnet. Though the rod has not changed in shape and width and length, it has undergone a deep change, it has become changed so that it attracts iron filings or whatever else is subject to magnetic action. Just so, if we – men and women – could wrap ourselves in obedience to God's love, and live as we should, a wonderful change is effected in us, and we too can then hear the messages from the unseen world.

I had that illustrated some years ago when I served as a stake president. We had a very grievous case that had to come before the high council and the stake presidency, which resulted in the excommunication of a man of a family who had harmed a lovely young girl. After nearly an all-night session which resulted in that action, I went to my office rather weary the next morning, to be confronted by a brother of this man whom we had had on trial the night before. This man said, “I want to tell you that my brother wasn't guilty of that thing which you charged him with.”

“How do you know he wasn't guilty?” I asked.

“Because I prayed, and the Lord told me he was innocent,” the man answered.

I asked him to come into the office and we sat down, and I asked, “Would you mind if I asked you a few personal questions?”

He said, “Certainly not.”

“How old are you?”

“Forty-seven.”

“What priesthood do you hold?” He said he thought he was a teacher. “Do you keep the Word of Wisdom?” He said, “Well, no.” He used tobacco, which was obvious.

“Do you pay your tithing?”

He said, “No” – and he didn't intend to as long as the blankety-blank-blank man was the bishop of the ward.

I said, “Do you attend your priesthood meetings?”

He replied, “No, sir!” and he didn't intend to as long as that man was bishop.

“You don't attend your sacrament meetings either?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you have your family prayers?” and he said no.

“Do you study the scriptures?” He said, well, his eyes were bad and he couldn't read very much.

I then said to him: “In my home I have a beautiful instrument called a radio. When everything is in good working order we can dial it to a certain station and pick up a speaker or the voice of a singer all the way across the continent or sometimes on the other side of the world, bringing them into the front room as though they were almost speaking there. But, after we have used it for a long time, there are some little delicate instruments or electrical devices on the inside called radio tubes that begin to wear out. When one of them wears out, we get a kind of a static – it isn't so clear. Another wears out, and if we don't give it attention, it fades in and out just when we are about to make the winning football touchdown. If we don't give that attention, and another one wear out – well, the radio sits there looking quite like it did before, but something has happened on the inside. We can't get any singer. We can't get any speaker.”

“Now,” I said, “you and I have within our souls something like what might be said to be a counter-part of those radio tubes. We might have what we call a 'Go-to-Sacrament-Meeting' tube, 'Keep-the-Word-of-Wisdom' tube, 'Pay-Your-Tithing' tube, 'Have-Your-Family-Prayers' tube, 'Read-the-Scriptures' tube, and, as one of the most important, that might be said to be the master tube of our whole soul, we might call the 'Keep-Yourselves-Morally-Clean' tube. If one of these becomes worn out by disuse or is not active – we fail to keep the commandments of God – it has the same effect upon our spiritual selves that that same worn out instrument in the radio in my home has upon the reception that we otherwise could receive from a distance.

“Now, then,” I said, “fifteen of the best living men in this stake prayed last night. They heard the evidence, and every man was united in saying that your brother was guilty. Now, you, who do none of these things, you say you prayed, and you got an opposite answer. How would you explain that?”

Then this man gave an answer that I think was a classic. He said, “Well, President Lee, I think I must have gotten my answer from the wrong source.” And you know that is just as great a truth as we can have. We get our answer from the source of the power we list to obey. If we are keeping the commandments of the Devil, we will get the answer from the Devil. If we are keeping the commandments of God, we will get the commandments from our Heavenly Father for our direction and for our guidance.

(“Divine Revelation” BYU Speeches of the Year, Oct. 15, 1952, pp. 4-6.)