(by Dennis B. Horne)
Elder McConkie, “The
Doctrine of the Priesthood”:
Priesthood
is power like none other on earth or in heaven. It is the very power of God
himself, the power by which the worlds were made, the power by which all things
are regulated, upheld, and preserved.
It is the
power of faith, the faith by which the Father creates and governs. God is God
because he is the embodiment of all faith and all power and all priesthood. The
life he lives is named eternal life. . . .
Faith and
priesthood go hand in hand. Faith is power and power is priesthood. After we
gain faith, we receive the priesthood. Then, through the priesthood, we grow in
faith until, having all power, we become like our Lord. . . .
We received the priesthood first in the premortal existence and then again as mortals. Adam held the keys and used the priesthood when he participated in the creation of the earth. After his baptism he received the priesthood again, and he now stands as the presiding High Priest over all the earth. . . .
Truly,
there is power in the priesthood—power to do all things!
If the
world itself was created by the power of the priesthood, surely that same power
can move mountains and control the elements.
President Marion G. Romney, “Priesthood”:
We can,
however, understand that priesthood is power—the power of God. By means of the
priesthood he exercises, God the Father brings into existence and governs all
of his creations. President Brigham Young said that “the Priesthood of the Son
of God … is the law by which the worlds are, were, and will continue for ever
and ever. It is that system which brings worlds into existence and peoples
them, gives them their revolutions—their days, weeks, months, years, their
seasons and times and by which they are rolled up as a scroll, as it were, and
go into a higher state of existence.” (Discourses of Brigham Young, sel. John
A. Widtsoe, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1941, p. 130.). . .
the
priesthood, as I have come to understand it through studying, is power. It’s
the power that God used in the Creation. It is the power that he used to feed
the people in the days of Moses. It is a power which we can exercise by means
of our priesthood if we have the faith and learn to follow the inspiration of
heaven. (Brother McConkie gave a fine discourse on this subject earlier
tonight, as you remember.)
General
Conference, April 1976:
The truth I
desire to emphasize today is that we mortals are in very deed the literal
offspring of God. If men understood, believed, and accepted this truth and
lived by it, our sick and dying society would be reformed and redeemed, and men
would have peace here and now and eternal joy in the hereafter.
Members of
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints accept this concept as a basic
doctrine of their theology. The lives of those who have given it thought enough
to realize its implications are controlled by it; it gives meaning and
direction to all their thoughts and deeds. This is so because they know that it
is the universal law of nature in the plant, animal, and human worlds for
reproducing offspring to reach in final maturity the likeness of their parents.
They reason
that the same law is in force with respect to the offspring of God. Their
objective is, therefore, to someday be like their heavenly parents.
They not
only so reason; they know they may so become because God has revealed the fact
that it is his work and glory to bring to pass their eternal life (Moses 1:39),
which is the life God lives.
Adam, the
first man, knew that he was a son of God. He walked and talked with him in the
Garden of Eden before the fall. After the fall, “Adam and Eve, his wife, called
upon the name of the Lord, and they heard the voice of the Lord from the way
toward the Garden of Eden, speaking unto them. …” (Moses 5:4–5.)
Later, the
Lord sent an angel who taught them the gospel plan, whereupon, “Adam and Eve
blessed the name of God, and they made all things known unto their sons and
their daughters.” Then “Satan came among them, saying: … Believe it not; and
they believed it not, and they loved Satan more than God. And men began from
that time forth to be carnal, sensual, and devilish.” (Moses 5:12–13.)
From then
until now, most men, like the first generation of Adam’s posterity, have
“believed it not,” although God has repeatedly revealed it to all the prophets
from Adam to Noah. He likewise revealed it to Abraham and thereafter to Moses
“at a time when Moses was caught up into an exceedingly high mountain, . . .
I add my
personal testimony that I know that I am a son of God, and that you, my beloved
listeners, are individually a son or a daughter of God.
Therefore,
what do we really mean when we sing or say, “I am a child of God”? To answer
this question, we must first understand that the Lord revealed to the Prophet
Joseph Smith that we human beings are souls; that is, we are dual beings, and
dual means two. A dual object means an object made up of two parts. A human
soul, each of us, is composed of two parts, or two bodies—a spirit body and a
physical body. It is the Lord himself who said that “the spirit and the body
are the soul of man.” (D&C 88:15.) Thus, it is our spirits, not our
physical bodies, that were “begotten” of God. . . .
One of the
great truths of this account is the clear understanding we receive about who we
were as pre-mortal spirit children of God. We were individual, separate
persons, with agency, being, and names prior to our entry on earth.
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