With this wonderful theme for Education Week this year, “Strengthening Individuals and Families through Lifelong Learning,” I am so appreciative of the opportunity to prepare this talk. I’ve been so blessed as I’ve prepared for this hour with you! I hope and pray that in a small way, I can convey the excitement and appreciation I’m feeling for what I’ve learned.
I love learning, and my guess is that you feel the same. People who’d choose an event like this over other types of vacations are definitely special, special people in my book! I congratulate each of you for being here.
I like to think that eternity will be filled with moments like this. I think it will be filled with truth—brilliant truth, exciting truth—and I know that Christ will be the center of our joy and the fullest embodiment of all truth.
Now, to set the stage for what I’d like to share today, come with me to the very end of the book we call Joseph Smith—History. If you have your scriptures, come with me to the very end of Joseph Smith—History.
At the very end, you find a bit of a footnote (actually, a very long footnote!). Oliver Cowdery waxes effusive about his first experience with a heavenly being. The experience he’s attempting to describe is the visit of John the Baptist bringing the Aaronic Priesthood back to the earth. He calls them “days never to be forgotten.”[1]
Now, go with me to the last paragraph of this long footnote.
In this last paragraph, Oliver says that no one can begin to “clothe language in as interesting and sublime a manner” as John the Baptist’s voice to him and Joseph. He goes on and says, “Nor has this earth power to give the joy, to bestow the peace, or comprehend the wisdom which was contained in each sentence as they were delivered by the power of the Holy Spirit!”[2] He ends the sentence with an exclamation point.
Now, here’s the part I want to focus on. Skip to the middle of this final paragraph. Oliver says:
One touch with the finger of his love, yes, one ray of glory from the upper world, or one word from the mouth of the Savior, from the bosom of eternity, strikes [everything] into insignificance, and blots it forever from the mind.[3]
Brothers and sisters, that’s what I’ve felt as I’ve prepared my thoughts for this afternoon: everything is insignificant next to the greatness of God! Moments of discussing great truths that last are why we choose Education Week over other options. You’re going to learn a lot of practical things, but most important of all, you’re going to learn truth “unsullied”[4] (Oliver’s word) from the most important source of all truth: from the word of God, and from the inspiration of His Holy Spirit! You and I are going to capture it, prize it, treasure it! That’s why The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints supports with millions of dollars annually the running of BYU-Idaho: for moments just like these three days!
Now, I chose this picture of the Savior to represent what I want to share with you today for two reasons:
First, I find this a moving representation of the most powerful being to ever walk this planet: our Savior.
And second, it’s a representation of Him in a role that we need to always remember about Him: the Savior as Creator, the Savior as the pre-mortal Jehovah, and the Savior as the resurrected Redeemer of the world!
My purpose in the few minutes that we’ll share together is to show that the wonders of God are all around us and that their purpose is to teach us that “all things denote there is a God.”[5]
To set the stage for what I want to share, let’s talk about the wonders of God: who He is and what He’s created. To get a sense of that, let’s go to D&C 88.
Let’s begin in verse 41. Listen to these powerful phrases:
All things are before him . . . he is above all things, . . . in all things, . . . through all things, . . . round about all things; and all things are by him, and of him, even God, forever and ever. . . .
. . . He hath given a law unto all things, by which they move in their times and their seasons;
And their courses are fixed, even the courses of the heavens and the earth . . . and all the planets.
And they give light to each other in their times and in their seasons, in their minutes, in their hours, in their days, in their weeks, in their months, in their years—[and] all these are [but] one year with God . . . .
. . . [And] the earth rolls upon her wings, and the sun giveth his light by day, and the moon giveth her light by night, and the stars also give their light, as they roll upon their wings in their glory, in the midst of the power of God.[6]
And then finally, jump to verse 47:
All these are kingdoms, and any man who hath seen any or the least of these hath seen God moving in his majesty and power.[7]
Brothers and sisters, these are large, large thoughts! It’s easy to read across them as we study the scriptures, but oh, how powerful is our God! And He has invited us to know Him! “This is life eternal, that [you and I] might know . . . the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom [He] sent.”[8] This is the genius of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Its vastness is unbounded! This is just the beginning of “the fulness of the everlasting gospel,”[9] the greatest truths of all truths.
And blessed be God that He has not left us without witnesses, provisions, and a sure guide. In the words of Paul, God has given us a great “cloud of witnesses”[10] and again rings out Alma’s great words to Korihor: “All things denote there is a God.”[11]
Now I’m excited to share with you a few of our campus witnesses. The following are some profound ideas shared by a few of our exceptional BYU-Idaho faculty members. I asked a number of my friends and colleagues on the faculty this question:
When you think about your discipline, what is one thing about the natural world, human physiology, history, the visual world, etc., that has left you thinking, “That for me is powerful evidence that there is a God”?
Time will only allow me to share just a few examples of what I learned from my colleagues. I wish I could share more; each was powerful and represented a dozen diverse disciplines.
First, a colleague in the Department of Biology shared these amazing thoughts:
A single drop of blood, about the size of the head of a pin, contains between 4.5 to 5.5 million red blood cells.
Each of these red blood cells contains about 250 million molecules of hemoglobin.
Hemoglobin is the molecule that binds oxygen and carries it through the blood stream from the lungs to feed and supply our tissues. Each molecule can carry four oxygen atoms.
So, a single red blood cell carries approximately a billion oxygen atoms!
My friend continues:
The hemoglobin molecule itself is incredibly remarkable. It has the ability to change its shape depending on what kind of environment it is in. If it is in an oxygen-poor environment (like the tissues where oxygen is being consumed), its shape will change and it becomes less “sticky” to oxygen so the oxygen falls off the molecule. However, when it is in an oxygen-rich environment (like the lungs where oxygen is being breathed in), it changes shape and becomes very sticky to oxygen so that all four binding sites are filled with oxygen.
As you can imagine, the body needs to take in an enormous amount of oxygen continuously, considering the adult human body contains about 5 liters of blood. In healthy individuals, the blood at any given time is about 98% saturated with oxygen.
My colleague continues:
The miracle doesn’t stop there! Fortunately, our lungs are well designed to not only bring in a large volume of air but to also have an incredible amount of surface area [within the lungs] to conduct gas exchange. Each lung is constructed of microscopic pockets called alveoli. Air is brought into close contact with capillaries (in the alveoli) so oxygen can be picked up and carbon dioxide dropped off.
If you were to flatten each alveoli in the lungs and spread them out side by side, the surface area [of your lungs, one set of lungs] would be larger than two tennis courts!
What a miracle! There’re a lot of tennis courts represented here in this room!
Now, let’s jump scale a little. A colleague in the Department of Physics shared this:
“I see God’s great plan unfolding as we discover that exoplanets (planets around other stars) are actually a common phenomenon.
‘Worlds without number’ is literally unfolding in astronomy today. We find that there is on average at least one planet around every star—and,” he adds, “probably more.”
My colleague continues: “With at least 100 billion billion estimated stars (100,000,000,000,000,000,000).”
Note that the word “billion” isn’t on the slide twice by mistake. That, my friends, is a lot of planets!
“Even if only .000001% of those planets are habitable, that is still 100,000,000,000,000 (100 trillion) habitable planets for God’s children in our observable universe! (Not the whole universe, just the observable universe.)
No person could count all 100 trillion possibly habitable planets in a lifetime.”
Truly mind-boggling!
Now, let’s make one more stop, this time in my own discipline of the visual arts. Let’s see an example that’s part science and part art. This comes from a dear friend in the Department of Art:
The golden section, golden mean, golden ratio, or Fibonacci sequence, are names for a special mathematical sequence found in a host of patterns throughout nature.
This sequence sets up a set of ratios that in many contexts achieves a pleasing set of proportions.
In its most simple form, you can take any given dimension, divide it into a thousand equal units.
If you take a second dimension of 382 units, you achieve a pleasing rectangle. Now if you subtract 382 from 1000, you get 618 units.
At that point, you go north and you’ve got a perfect square. Now here’s where it gets interesting.
With each new subdivision, we can divide the newly created rectangle at the 382 division point and achieve a newer and smaller version of the whole.
With that proportion, you find the golden section in an infinite number of structures throughout the earth and the universe.
Here’s a screen shot of a search for the golden mean—things as diverse as seashells (like the chamber nautilus), sand dollars, starfish, horns of animals, the arrangement of pedals on flowers, the structure of leaves, pinecones, and even in the spacing of leaves and branch of a tree.
The golden section can be found in fish, and in animals of all kinds and varieties. It’s found in the placement of the features on our head and face, even in the structures of arms and hands. It’s found in the smallest viruses, and even in the double helix of a DNA chromosome. Likewise, the golden section is found in the spacing of the planets in our solar system and in the largest of spiral galaxies.
Man has adopted these proportions in famous paintings, sculpture, the wavelength spacing of notes on the musical scale, and in great architecture like the Parthenon and the Taj Mahal.
How blessed we are to learn! My colleagues shared so much information that it’s impossible to share it all with you today.
They spoke of the amazing frequency and consistency of our hearts as they open and close valves for days, months, years, and decades.
They spoke of the lightning speed that our neurological system uses to register that we’ve just touched something hot. That signal runs up our arms to our brains with a message, the brain sends a signal back to the hand that it needs to move—and quick—and all of that takes place in the space of a fraction of a second.
They spoke about the orders of magnitude in sheer computing power that the human mind has over a rodent, a monkey, or over the most sophisticated computer and artificial intelligence applications.
Brothers and sisters, the creations of God are endless and they are a wonder beyond my comprehension! Truly, truly, all things denote there is a god; and we gather in Rexburg, Idaho, for the purpose of learning just a little more about God, His creations, and about our path back into the presence of our loving Heavenly Parents!
I consider President Russell M. Nelson as one of the master-learners of all time. Let’s watch this short video to get a sense of his awe for the Creator and the Creation.
Oh, isn’t learning wonderful! Our God is truly an awesome God. He not only created all things; He also oversees them with the care and concern of the most loving Parent ever—which leads me to my last example, shared by one of our faculty members from the Department of Religious Education.
When I first received this, I thought, “That’s a powerful experience, but it doesn’t have anything to do with my topic about learning and about the creations of God. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized, this is actually the perfect example to end with.
Listen to what a colleague shared about an experience with a student in a BYU-Idaho religion class:
Perhaps the greatest source of evidence of God's love and involvement with the world is in our day-to-day interactions with our fellow men. Since mankind is His master-creation and His greatest concern, it only makes sense that He would make Himself evident there the most.
My friend continued:
I'm enclosing a recent journal entry of an experience which I had that shows God's involvement in the details of the lives of His children.
Here is what he shared:
Recently I taught 3 Nephi 23:6-13 and emphasized the principle that it is a Christian duty to be a record-keeper and to record evidences of the Lord's hand in our lives. Nephi and his people had failed to record the resurrection of righteous saints at the time of Christ's resurrection, as had been prophesied by Samuel the Lamanite, and the Lord mildly rebuked Nephi.
My friend continued:
I then drew out application in a similar way to how I often do in teaching those verses by saying to the class, “If Christ were to enter our classroom right now, is it possible that He would be able to approach you and to say (I then pointed to a randomly-chosen student we'll call Jim), “Jim, may I see your journal?” And Jim here would hand it to Him. Christ would look at it and say, “Hmm, didn’t I answer your prayers on October 22nd?” And Jim would say yes, and then Christ would say, “I don’t find that written down anywhere. Do you think you maybe ought to write it down?”
Then my friend shared this amazing culmination to this story. He wrote:
My class laughed a little, and then we moved on once the point had been made. However, something profound happened after class. Jim approached me and he said, “Brother Rowe, why did you say October 22nd?” Caught off guard by the question, I kind of stammered, and before I could say anything, he asked, “Was that just random?” I replied, “Yeah, in my mind it was just any old date.” Jim then said, “That date is not random to me. You see, I was in a very, very dark place last October and I feared I would harm myself. So, on October 22nd, I went to my father for a priesthood blessing. That blessing gave me the strength to move forward. Since that day and that blessing, my life has completely changed for the better.”
My friend in the Religion Department then concluded with these words:
As you can imagine, I was dumbfounded and still not finding words. Then Jim said to me, “I didn’t write that experience down anywhere—but I’m going to now.” I still struggled to find words but managed to thank Jim for trusting me enough to share that information with me. I testified to him that God did want him to record it.
After Jim left, I thanked God in my heart for using me as an unwitting instrument to let one of His children know that He knew about October 22nd and that He wanted Jim to remember it and to write it down. I consider it too much of a coincidence that of 50 students, I chose Jim for my random example. And I consider it too much of a coincidence that of 365 days of the year, I chose October 22.
What an amazing story! The same God who watches over the creation of stars and planets, who designs the most intricate processes within cells and atoms, is the same God who cared enough to send Brother Rowe to Jim with a personalized message that Jim could not mistake, the message being: “Jim, I know you. Jim, I love you.” And then for some future purpose, “Jim, you need to record this very, very intimate touch of my hand upon your life.”
In conclusion, I congratulate you for being here and for furnishing your mind with thoughts worth thinking. “If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy,”[12] you’re seeking after them. You are people who will do much good with what you’re learning.
Which brings us to a good place to end. What we do with what we learn at Education Week may be our greatest challenge. Elder Maxwell once said:
“[While] knowledge is clearly very important, standing alone it cannot save us. . . .
. . . One cannot improve upon the sobering words of King Benjamin, who said, ‘Now, if you believe all these things see that ye do them.’ Such is still the test.
Deeds, not words—and becoming, not describing—are dominant in true discipleship!”[13]
To become a trusted tool in God’s hands is one of the highest achievements of mankind.
In a moment, we’ll sing “If You Could Hie to Kolob” as the closing hymn. Some people smile at this hymn; I’m not entirely sure why. But I’ve always loved this hymn, and it was one of the inspirations for this message today. In light of what we’ve talked about today, I invite you to note the words as we sing.
Brothers and sisters, I testify that we, as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, possess the greatest truths on earth, the greatest truths since this earth was formed many, many eons ago, and the greatest truths across all creation and all eternity.
Everything, everything, pales in comparison to what I’ll call the four core truths of eternity.
First, it is my testimony that the Father’s work and glory is to bring to pass my immortality and your immortality and, more importantly, your eternal life and my eternal life!
It is my testimony that He will do that and much, much more through the unfathomably vast sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ.
It is also my testimony that we can know of the Father’s work and glory and can know His Son through the one sure guide He has given for helping us navigate His path, the only path back to Him, that one sure guide being the priceless gift of the Holy Ghost.
How I love these three “lovers of my soul”!
And lastly, it is my testimony that this great Church is a miracle unto itself. The kingdom of the Lamb of God was established through the boy Prophet who humbly found his way through the Restoration to become the great leader of this dispensation, and testify that this Church has been continuously lead by revelation from prophet to prophet down to our dear prophet today, Russell M. Nelson.
I share all of this with awe, in the sacred name of the Great Jehovah, even Jesus Christ, amen!
[1] Joseph Smith—History 1.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Alma 30:44.
[6] Doctrine and Covenants 88:41–45.
[7] Doctrine and Covenants 88:47.
[8] John 17:3.
[9] Introduction to the Book of Mormon.
[10] Hebrews 12:1.
[11] Alma 30:44; emphasis added.
[12] Articles of Faith 1:13.
[13] Neal A. Maxwell, “Called to Serve,” BYU devotional, Mar. 27, 1994.