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by Dennis B. Horne
At the
luncheon, held in President Lee’s honor, President Eyring recorded that
“President Lee began to speak. . . . He spoke with power, emotion, and
informality that I cannot recreate on this page. He spoke of his own calling,
saying, ‘If you think Satan doesn’t try to tempt the prophet, you’re wrong. I’m
his prime target on earth.’”[1]
This event foreshadowed the spiritual intensity of the coming devotional, held
immediately afterward.
Later that
evening President Eyring recorded a few memories of what President Lee said
during his address, wherein the Prophet of God spoke as the
Prophet of God. He remembered President Lee prophesying that the United States
of America would never fall, and also that he recognized that there was an
unusually strong feeling of the Spirit present during his remarks.
Although
President Eyring did not note the fact in his journal, President Lee took
occasion in this devotional address to speak of the power of the Holy Spirit
that can be present in “translation” in the Restored Church of Jesus Christ. He
discussed this miracle in some detail, in regards to both of his recent general
conference talks and to translation of the Book of Mormon (and by association,
the Book of Abraham). President Lee’s statements leave no room for equivocation
or doubt.
There is no
printed version of President Lee’s address available, so the below constitutes
a partial transcript; or, one can simply listen
to the audio version, with comment about Book of Mormon translation starting
at about 44:40. President Lee said:
Let me tell you something in a way of a testimony now.
We've wondered how the prophet Joseph Smith was able to translate. Here he was
an unschooled boy, and to translate from unknown hieroglyphics or an unknown
language into English, language. Scientists scoff at it—how ridiculous can you
be to claim such a thing? But we had something happen at the last conference
that I want to tell you about to indicate something. That will give you a key
to how the Lord can open the mind of a man and give him spiritual understanding
beyond what his natural self could. We had eleven translators or interpreters
that were down in the basement of the tabernacle, translating in eleven
different languages. One of these brethren was translating for the Swedish
brethren. And here, for most of the talks they had the script so that they
could study it. And they would as the speakers spoke in English, they would
repeat it for the benefit of those that were listening. But when this man who
was translating from Swedish, from my English into his Swedish, at the
priesthood meeting where he had no script. I was talking from an extemporaneous
standpoint in my closing address. He said something happened, and I want you to
hear, he said:
The whole conference was a spiritual experience, but at the
general priesthood meeting, I had an experience which I've never had before. I
knew that there were some Swedish brethren attending the conference who had
never been here before and perhaps would never come again. Therefore, I had a
great desire that they receive everything that the prophet had to deliver. Not
having a script, I commended myself into the hands of the Lord. And as you
began to speak, I was startled by the fact that I knew one or two words and
even three ahead of the time before you would say them. At first I was so
startled that I did not dare to pronounce them as they were given. Usually, I
closed my eyes and listen, and then interpret as I heard the speakers
delivered. But this time I was prompted to look at your face on the television
screen.
In this very unusual situation, I looked at you and began to
translate the words as they came. But to my amazement, I did not receive just
the words in my mind, but with my inner eyes, I saw them emanating from the
vicinity of the temple of your head and coming toward me. I did not see them
actually as written on something. And yet I saw them and how they were spelled
and experienced the power of the spirit as I received them. One of the things
that made it even more dramatic was that when a complex sentence was about to
be delivered, I received more words so that I could reconstruct the grammar
into good Swedish and delivered it at the very moment you pronounced the words.
Never have I experienced a great force with which the interpreted message was
flowing as I did at that time. The same experience happened during your closing
remarks on Sunday afternoon, except that I did not see the words coming to me.
I have talked with the Swedish members in attendance, who have
expressed an awesome amazement of what they experienced. They said they heard
the interpretation and understood the interpreted message was delivered at the
same moment as you delivered the words in English, but the interpretation was
all that they heard. That the message came directly from you to them, they have
all expressed that their attendance at the conference was a fantastic
experience, never to be forgotten.
Latter-day Saints don't you think for a moment that the
Lord doesn't have means of communicating with us and sending us messages that
are beyond our understanding, even to translate an unknown language into our
understandable language. He did it with the prophet Joseph. He did it with King
Mosiah. He's done it with others. He'll do it today as we have need. I have no
doubt.
These descriptions of translation by the power of God
give us further insight into how God can operate with His servants; His
instruments. Whatever God could do with a general conference translator, he can
do more with His prophets, seers, and revelators like Brother Joseph and King
Mosiah. We need not concern ourselves with the various man-made theories that
float around. As President
Gordon B. Hinckley put it, “I am happy that my
faith has not been shaken by the writings of critics who never seem to
recognize that knowledge of things divine comes by the power of the Spirit and
not of the wisdom of men.”
President Lee then went on to speak of revelation for
himself and for the Church, also bearing witness and testimony of the powerful
Spirit then present during the devotional, and sharing what “an unseen speaker”
said to a man about to apostatize:
My whole soul pleads that I may so live that if the Lord
has any communication that He would wish me to receive for my beloved people
[the Church], that I could be a pure vessel through which that message could
come. I don’t ask for anything; I don’t want anything more than the Lord is
willing to send. I trust that I may live worthily so that I won’t be a lame
vessel. Or a broken reed that the Lord can’t use at the times when He wants to
communicate with His people.
I know that this is the Church and Kingdom of God, you
Latter-day Saints. I know it with every fiber of my being. I have been
polished, yes, . . . I thank the Lord and I understand more of what the apostle
Paul meant when he said of the Master, “Though he were a son, yet learned he
obedience by the things which he suffered. And thus being made perfect he
became the author of salvation for all who would believe on him” (see Hebrews
5:8-9). Whatever may be necessary, that I might be more refined; to purge out
all that may be in me or that I have done that didn’t please the Lord. I would
hope that I would stand ready to receive; to please God that I wouldn’t fail or
flinch in a time of trial or testing.
I bear witness that these things are true. You hold fast
to the iron rod, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ and the power of
salvation. “Stick with the old ship,” as a father who was just about to
apostatize was told by an unseen speaker. Stick with the old ship, it will see
you safely through. You may think it is out of date. It is out of date,
thank goodness, as compared with some of these modernistic things of
permissiveness. But before you depart from those plain simple doctrines of the
gospel of Jesus Christ, you had better make sure that you know the direction
you are going, and listen to those who preside in authority over you. So I bear
you that witness and leave you my testimony.
There is a wonderful Spirit here today. There is
something unusual about this [Spirit] today. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it
is one of those occasions when we could feel and hear and see remarkable things
happen. You brought with you a tremendous spirit and I can feel it.[2]
President
Lee closed his address with a prayer for those in attendance. It was a
spiritual feast that they would not soon forget, President Eyring among them. Along
these lines, we might benefit from another experience shared by President
Eyring, this time as a young boy attending a District Conference.
He wrote:
“But then I remember hearing something—a man's voice from the pulpit. I turned around
and looked. I still remember that the speaker was at a rostrum set on wooden
risers. There was a tall window behind him. He was the priesthood visitor. I
don't know who he was, but he was tall and bald, and he seemed very old to me.
He must have been talking about the Savior or the Prophet Joseph, or both,
because that was all I remember hearing much about in those days. But as he
spoke, I knew that what he said came from God and that it was true, and it
burned in my heart. That was before scholars told me how hard it was to know. I
just knew with certainty—I knew it was true.”[3]
[1]
Devotional given 26 October 1973; as quoted and with background info in Robert I. Eaton and Henry J. Eyring, I Will Lead You Along: The Life of Henry B.
Eyring (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2013), 257 (256-58).
[2]
President Harold B. Lee untitled Rick’s College Devotional Address; Excerpts
transcribed from the second half; 26 October 1973; no official printed version
available.
https://byui-media.ldscdn.org/byui_ft/devo_audio/1973_10_26_ADV_LeeH.mp3;
accessed 3/2022.
[3]
Eaton and Eyring, I Will Lead You Along: The Life of Henry B. Eyring, 35;
also quoted in Henry B. Eyring, To Draw Closer to God: A Collection of
Discourses (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1997), 5.
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