My dear young sisters and brothers, what a wonderful sight you are. I am honored and grateful to be with you today. President and Sister Clark and your exceptional faculty and administrators were raised up for this day and time to prepare a generation of excellence and service. Brigham Young University-Idaho is unparalleled as an institution of teaching and learning. Its power and influence for good continues to expand throughout the world. You are blessed to be here in this generation.
The prophet Amulek, speaking to a people who had become distracted by trivial things, reminded them that "this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, . . . this life is the day for men to perform their labors."[1] Today, I am here with a similar desire--to remind us all of the true purpose of mortal life in God's plan.
Premortal Life
I begin by taking us back to a time and place lost to our memory--our premortal life. The scriptures tell us that before coming to live on this earth, we lived as spirit sons and daughters begotten by heavenly parents.[2]
We know that our spirits consist of refined matter[3] in the same likeness of our mortal bodies.[4] As spirits, we enjoyed the gift of agency and the opportunity to grow and progress in knowledge and intelligence.
However, we were limited in the progress we could make as spirits. Heavenly Father, knowing our desires to grow, presented the plan that would open new possibilities for our development. The plan was to add a physical dimension to our being--a physical earth where we could obtain physical bodies and live separated from Him, relying on faith.[5] Living in physical bodies on the earth would provide new experiences and opportunities for growth.[6] The excitement about this possibility created a feeling of great anticipation. The scriptures tell us when we heard the plan, we "shouted for joy."[7] I suppose we were filled with wonder and joy anticipating what it would be like to have our spirit housed in a physical body that could experience the warmth of sunshine, the shock of a plunge into cold water, the comfort of a hug, and, probably most of all, the thrill of holding our own child in our arms.
Mortality
Mortality is the state in which we now find ourselves. Each one present today has a spirit--the same spirit that lived in the premortal world--housed in a physical body.[8] Each spirit brings to earth all of the knowledge, light, truth, and experiences of our pre-earth life. But a veil has been drawn over our minds so that we must live by faith.
That spirit is joined with the physical body prepared for it by earthly parents, containing the physical and genetic characteristics of our earthly ancestors. Our bodies contain the mental and physical systems, susceptibilities, and tendencies that affect our health and our capacity to grow, think, and progress. The combination of our eternal spirit and mortal body define our being and essence in mortality.
However, our mortal state is limited and temporary. It will end with the death of our physical body. Death comes when the conditions necessary for our body to function can no longer be sustained, based on the physical laws of this mortal earth. At that time, our spirit will leave our body--retaining the knowledge, attributes and experiences we have obtained in mortality--and await a reunion with a perfected and glorified body in which to dwell eternally.
The Realities of Mortality
Each person is placed on the earth in a unique setting and circumstances. Despite our uniqueness, the Lord has revealed truths about the purposes of mortal life that apply to all of us. He established them with our first parents, Adam and Eve, and has reconfirmed them in our day. I refer to these truths as the "realities of mortality." If we are to gain the fullest blessings and benefits from our mortal experience, we must understand these realities. Failure to understand and focus on them will result in our time on earth being misspent, underutilized, and perhaps utterly wasted.
Permit me to illustrate this point with a parable. It involves studying at a university--perhaps some of you can relate to that experience.
Here is the parable:
A student wanted to obtain a good education and chose the university that she wanted to attend. She worked diligently to qualify, studying hard during high school, preparing to take the required qualifying tests, working to save money, and participating in other preparatory activities. Happily, she was admitted. She arranged for her housing, signed up for a meal plan, and registered for classes that sounded interesting. When she got to the university, she saw that there were many more exciting things to do--besides schoolwork--than she had anticipated. As a result, she went to class only when it didn't disrupt her other activities. She seldom completed her homework. She considered tests optional--especially the ones she knew would be hard. She focused on things that were convenient, interesting, and comfortable. After four years, she was shocked to learn that she wouldn't graduate. She had qualified for and paid the price for admission and had been on campus for four years, but she had failed to focus on and accomplish the very things she had come to college to do.
I hope this parable does not sound familiar to any of those listening today.
If we are to accomplish our purposes here on earth, it is not enough that we were valiant and faithful in our pre-earth life. It is not enough that we have arrived on earth, have a mortal body, and will live here for a lifetime. To make our time here meaningful, we must live and experience the God ordained purposes of mortality--fully, completely, and whole-heartedly--rather than becoming distracted by things that are interesting, comfortable, and convenient.
When Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden, they were in circumstances similar to what many of you are facing. They were beginning their adult life and looking forward to the challenges and opportunities ahead of them. The Lord prepared them by teaching them the realities they would experience in mortality. I want to review three of these realities with you today.
As we begin, remember that there were those who did not receive mortal bodies because they did not keep their first estate. They are intent on preventing us from experiencing the fulness of mortality. They know we have paid tuition and are enrolled, and they seek to keep us from the experiences that lead to our mortal diplomas.
Reality Number One: Work
God said to Adam, "By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, until thou shalt return unto the ground."[9] Some characterize the Lord's words as a curse on Adam and his posterity for partaking of the forbidden fruit. However, I hear these as the words of a loving Father explaining to a young and inexperienced son the conditions in the fallen, mortal world in which the son will soon live. Like an earthly father preparing a son about to leave home, the Father of heaven is helping the first man prepare to live on his own away from home.
Heavenly Father knew that Adam and Eve would soon have to struggle against the elements and the earth itself to provide food and the other necessities of life for them and their family. In contrast to their experiences in the garden, where everything was provided for them, mortal life would require physical and mental effort, sweat, patience, and persistence to survive. A kind Father was explaining that work was a new reality--a reality of mortality.
Learning to work--training and disciplining our minds, bodies, and spirits to exert, produce, achieve, and progress--is a foundation reality of every mortal life. It is the means by which we become like God and accomplish His purposes on the earth. Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost all work. Their work and their glory is "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man."[10] The reality is there can be no glory without work.
One of the principal reasons men need to work is to provide for their families. "The Family: A Proclamation to the World," lists "provider" as one of the three roles given specifically to men. A man who knows how to work and provide for himself has the confidence that he can marry and provide for a wife and children. Bishop H. David Burton said:
To work--honestly and productively--brings contentment and a sense of self-worth. Having done all we can to be self-reliant, to provide for our own needs and those of our family, we can turn to the Lord in confidence to ask for what we might yet lack.[11]
Satan is ever alert to destroy the purposes of God and to subvert our mortal experience. To counter the emphasis the Father places on work, the adversary has convinced many in our day that a primary goal in life is to avoid work. In today's societies, many people concentrate on finding jobs that pay well but require little work, investments or schemes that pay high returns without effort, and programs that pay for what we want at no cost to us. Some seek to avoid work by borrowing and living on money they never intend to repay. They are unwilling to work, budget, and save before they spend. Our leaders have warned that we should work for what we obtain and avoid debt "except for the most fundamental of needs."[12]
Another insidious tactic the adversary employs in this generation is to channel men's natural ambition to work and achieve into dead ends. God placed in young men the desire to compete and achieve, with the intent that they would use this ambition to become a faithful provider for a wife and family. In our youth, this ambition can be channeled into academic, athletic, or other pursuits that help to teach persistence, discipline, and work. However, Satan would subtly intercept that ambition and channel it into a virtual world of video games that eat up time and ambition, and lead to addiction.
"Addiction," Elder Robert D. Hales taught, "is the craving of the natural man, and it can never be satisfied."[13] No matter how hard you play a video game, no matter what score you get, virtual work can never bring you the satisfaction that accompanies real work. Real work is the effort, persistence, patience, and discipline to achieve worthwhile knowledge, perform a needed labor, or accomplish a challenging goal.
If we fail to learn to work while in mortality, we will fail to achieve our full potential and happiness in this life, and we will not develop the qualities and attributes required for eternal life.
Reality Number Two: Eternal Marriage
When Adam and Eve were created, the scriptures say the Lord "blessed them."[14] In the language of our day, we would say that He performed a marriage or a sealing, binding them together as husband and wife. Eternal marriage is a second fundamental purpose or reality of mortality.
The goal of the Father is to give us everything that He has. The Lord has promised:
Whoso is faithful unto the obtaining these two priesthoods of which I have spoken . . . become . . . the seed of Abraham, and the church and kingdom, and the elect of God. And also all they who receive this priesthood receive me, saith the Lord; . . . he that receiveth me receiveth my Father; and he that receiveth my Father receiveth my Father's kingdom; therefore all that my Father hath shall be giveth unto him. And this is according to the oath and covenant which belongeth to the priesthood."[15]
Our loving Father wants each of His children to receive everything--a fulness, His fulness. This does not mean giving us the deed to a nice little galaxy in a beautiful tropical universe. Rather, it implies His desire to share a fulness of His knowledge, His attributes, His power, His glory, and His joy. In another revelation, we learn that in order to receive this fulness "a man must enter into this order of the priesthood [meaning the new and everlasting covenant of marriage]."[16]
Eternal marriage and all that it is designed to help us learn and experience are the key to obtaining all of the blessings that the Father wants to give His children. Only a family--a man and a woman who live worthy to enter the house of the Lord and are sealed to each other--can be eligible. The full blessings of the priesthood are received together, as husband and wife, or not at all.
It is interesting that in the oath and covenant of the priesthood, the Lord uses the verbs obtain and receive. He does not use the verb ordain. It is in the temple that men and women--together--obtain and receive the blessings and power of both the Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthoods. Having received these blessings in the house of the Lord, it is principally in their home life where they develop godly characteristics and attributes--sacrificing for and serving each other, loving each other with full fidelity, and being united in their love for each other and God.
A crowning moment in the Restoration occurred in 1835 in the Kirtland Temple when Elijah committed the keys of the sealing power back to the earth. His visit fulfilled the words spoken by Moroni to the Prophet Joseph twelve years earlier:
Behold, I will reveal unto you the Priesthood, by the hand of Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. ... And he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers. If it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming.[17] Fulness, priesthood, family--three related words, all encapsulated in the reality of eternal marriage. Doing all within our power to make eternal marriage a reality of our mortal life ensures that the earth and our mortal life on it will not be utterly wasted.
Satan, ever the deceiver, is abroad in our day twisting and distorting the realities of mortality. He is working overtime to destroy the very meaning and importance of marriage in the minds of men and women. To some, he sells the lie that marriage is not necessary, that love is enough. To others, he attempts to use legalized marriage to legitimize immoral relationships. To those diminishing few who believe in marriage, he lowers its priority in relation to education and financial security. He engenders fear of the sacrifices and difficulties associated with marriage. Frozen by fear, many sit still as objects being acted upon, rather than moving forward to act in faith.
Some, overwhelmed by the demands of building real relationships, but feeling a desire for companionship and intimacy, are lured by false hope into the virtual world. Their encounters with "virtual" intimacy can bring nothing but greater emptiness, longing, and shame. Many are drawn into empty searching again and again until their pattern has become an addiction that can never be satisfied. They are caught in a cycle that gradually destroys their will to withstand. They still have their agency but not enough hope in their ability to resist. Caught in this web, they are at risk of missing out on one of the most important realities of mortality. If you are caught in this web--get help. Do not wait. To do so will delay your growth and progress in mortality.
Examine your life. Be sure that your mind has not been darkened by false ideas related to marriage. Remember that successful marriages are built on "faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities."[18] Begin today to build those attributes into your personal life. As you do, the Lord will open the way for you to receive the fulness of the blessings He has prepared for His children--the new and everlasting covenant of marriage. Don't let your mortality be utterly wasted.
Reality Number Three: Bearing Children
At the time He "blessed" or sealed them to become the first family on earth, God gave Adam and Eve their first commandment: be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth.[19] Marriage and children go together. The procreative powers that make mortal birth possible are to be used only between a man and a woman, legally and lawfully wedded. On becoming mortal, Eve, and mortal women in general, became capable of conceiving and bringing forth children. Adam and Eve understood that children were an important reality of mortality. They were obedient to God's commandment, "and Adam knew his wife, and she bare unto him sons and daughters, and they began to multiply and to replenish the earth."[20] Prophets in our day have declared that "God's commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force."[21]
However, in today's world few believe any longer that "children are an heritage of the Lord."[22] Elder Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said in the October 2011 general conference:
Many voices in the world today marginalize the importance of having children or suggest delaying or limiting children in a family. My daughters recently referred me to a blog written by a Christian mother (not of our faith) with five children. She commented: '[Growing] up in this culture, it is very hard to get a biblical perspective on motherhood. ... Children rank way below college. Below world travel for sure. Below the ability to go out at night at your leisure. Below honing your body at the gym. Below any job you may have or hope to get. Motherhood is not a hobby, it is a calling. You do not collect children because you find them cuter than stamps. It is not something to do if you can squeeze the time in. It is what God gave you time for.'[23]
Later in the same talk, Elder Andersen cited a story about President Kimball, who counseled a couple to remember the commandment to have children given by the Lord despite the fact that they were in medical school. President Kimball's question to them was, "Where is your faith?" That is a good question that all married couples need to ask themselves today.
Several years ago, a couple who were about to marry came to me. They asked for my advice regarding children. I reminded them of the commandment they would receive when they were sealed and counseled them that it was a commandment that could only be kept by the two of them in consultation with the Lord. I reminded them that it is a commandment just like tithing or any other commandment. The question is not whether or not to keep it but how to do it in a way that is pleasing to and approved by the Lord.
I watched as they started their marriage. He had a year left of undergraduate studies, and she had another year in a master's program. They felt directed to have their family immediately--despite the schooling and uncertainty over future jobs. It was not easy or convenient to have a child so soon. He had to search for a job, they had to move, and she had to finish her degree. There was stress and sacrifice. He had to rush home early and watch the baby while she completed her thesis and practical training. She studied and wrote between nursing and changing diapers.
The Lord has blessed and prospered them. While many others lost jobs in the economic turndown of 2008, he was retained and promoted. Because they lived frugally, they are out of debt except for a mortgage, and they have been able to completely pay for a master's program. All the while, they have continued to learn the valuable lessons that can come only with parenthood.
Now, my dear young sisters and brothers, together with agency, mortality is one of the greatest gifts our Father has given us. He loves us and wants us to use this gift fully and completely. Only by embracing and focusing on these realities can we fulfill the purposes for which we came to earth. Satan knows that he can do nothing to stop us from obtaining bodies, so now he tries to divert us from the purposes for which they were created--to work, to marry, and to bear children. Remember the young woman in the parable who worked so hard to get to the university only to neglect her purpose for being there. Let us not make that the story of our mortal lives--living aimlessly and without purpose, only to find in the end that we have spent our time on things disconnected from the realities of mortality.
The prophet Nephi saw our day. He saw that all had "gone astray save it be a few, who are the humble followers of Christ; nevertheless, they are led, that in many instances they do err because they are taught by the precepts of men."[24] Let us avoid the illusions of the precepts of men and cling to the revealed realities given by God. That our journey through mortality may be rich, full, and real is my prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Notes
[1] Alma 34:32
[2] D&C 76:24
[3] D&C 131:7
[4] D&C 77:2
[5] Abraham 3:24
[6] Abraham 3:25
[7] Job 38:7
[8] D&C 88:15
[9] Moses 4:25; see also Genesis 3:19
[10] Moses 1:39
[11] "The Blessing of Work," Ensign, Dec. 2009, 43
[12] Neil L. Andersen, "Reverence for God Is the Beginning of Wisdom," Ensign, Jan. 2013, 38; see also Robert D. Hales, "Becoming Provident Providers Temporally and Spiritually," Ensign or Liahona, May 2009, 7-10
[13] "Becoming Provident Providers Temporally and Spiritually" Ensign or Liahona, May 2009, 10
[14] Moses 2:28
[15] D&C 84: 33-39
[16] D&C 131:1-2
[17] Joseph Smith--History 1:38-39; italics added
[18] "The Family: A Proclamation to the World," Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2010, 129
[19] Genesis 1:28; Moses 2:28
[20] Moses 5:22
[21] "The Family: A Proclamation to the World"
[22] Psalm 127:3
[23] "Children," Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2011, 28
[24] 2 Nephi 28:14