From the Maxwell Children: Elder Maxwell “was present in the upper room of the temple that early June day in 1978 when all the General Authorities gathered to receive the revelation and decision from President Spencer W. Kimball making it possible for all worthy male members to be ordained to the priesthood.” Elder Maxwell recounted, “I wept with joy that day. The handkerchief I wiped my tears with I took home and told my wife not to wash it. I put it in my book of remembrance, still bearing the marks of my tears of joy.”
Elder Maxwell later recalled this event as he carried another white handkerchief when he was assigned to create the Aba Nigeria Stake less than a month before the tenth anniversary of the June 9, 1978, revelation. This stake’s formation was a milestone in Church history not only because it was the first stake in west Africa but also because it was the first stake in which all priesthood leaders were Black.
More than 1,000 of the stake’s 2,300 members filled the Aba meetinghouse and courtyard to sustain David W. Eka, whom Elder Maxwell called as the nation’s first stake president. Many years prior to this call, Eka “committed to God that if he survived the Nigerian Civil War, he would devote his life to serving others.” On at least one occasion, he stated that his life was saved by guidance from a divine voice, which made him feel he was being preserved to do later work for the Lord.
Elder Maxwell told the Aba members, “On this Sunday, I have a second handkerchief that has wiped more tears of joy. I will take it home and place it in my book of remembrance next to the other handkerchief.” As Elder Maxwell told the story of the handkerchiefs, the congregation appeared visibly touched. In 2001, Elder Maxwell set Brother Eka apart as mission president of the Nigeria Lagos Mission. Beginning in 2019, Eka served as president of the Aba Nigeria Temple.[1]
Elder Maxwell was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles when he delivered this devotional address at Ricks College on October 16, 1990.
On the tombstone of an English Cavalier are written the words, “He served King Charles with a constant, dangerous and expensive loyalty.” As we serve our King, Jesus Christ, it too must be with a loyalty which is constant, sometimes dangerous, and expensive. So as I talk with you briefly today about who you are, and what God intends for you to do, it’s in the spirit of that kind of dedication, in which there will be our deepening trials. My text is 1 Timothy 4:12: “Let no man despise thy youth,” to which I would quickly add “don’t despise your youth yourselves.” But says Paul, “Be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith and purity.” Conversation, when it’s used biblically, by the way, isn’t just talking to each other. It means the total way of life. And with that text, I should like to talk to you about how important it is that you see yourselves not only for what you are now, but for what you have the power to become.
There’s no way, brothers and sisters, you can be down on yourselves, if you are up on the gospel, because you will understand through the gospel who you really are, and what God intends for you to do while you are here. When you have the light of the gospel playing upon your own personality and your own possibilities, then one other thing becomes quite clear. The seeming restrictions of the gospel are actually emancipations. By that, I mean that just as there might be a circumstance in which you would have to walk a narrow, dangerous mountain ledge in order to get to the top of a breathtaking mountain, so it is with discipleship. The restrictions, or seeming restrictions, are the way you get to the emancipation that comes by having been obedient. So in a sense, God’s standards are your key to happiness.
And I’ll illustrate this, if I can, with several scriptures. Remember the theme? We’re to be examples in faith and purity. We hear a lot in the scriptures about men who are heroes, but too seldom, in my opinion, women. One of the most intriguing verses for me, therefore, in all of scripture is this in Abraham 1:11, about three young women. We don’t have all the details. When we get it, it’s going to be an absolutely marvelous story. But we already know enough. These three virgins “were offered up because of their virtue. They would not bow down to worship gods of wood or stone, therefore they were killed, and put upon this altar, and it was done after the manner of the Egyptians.” We don’t have the rest of the story. But because they believed in the principle of chastity, and because, intellectually, they would not worship a false god, they became three of our great martyrs in all time, every bit as heroic in the proportions and dimensions of their lives as martyrs we read about. And someday we’ll understand what all those words mean. What the taunts might have been, in terms of their adhering to the principle of chastity, we don’t know now, but we will someday. They were examples in faith and purity.
Turn next, if you will, to three young men; we know their names more commonly as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They were to be slain because they, likewise, would not worship a false god. I’m in the third chapter of Daniel. As they approached their death, it is interesting to see how they spoke to the king. Verse 17: “if it be so, God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of thine hand O, King. But if not, be it known unto thee, O King, that we will not serve thy gods. . . . ” We don’t know if God is going to rescue us. But if he doesn’t, it doesn’t matter. Those three words, “but if not” need to become part of your and my life. We plead for certain blessings, we ask to be rescued at times, but our faith need not and should not depend upon whether God performs at that moment in time what we most want him to do, because we’ll still worship Him. So whether it’s the three young women or the three young men, the faith, the example, and the purity are the same.
And this is echoed now in what I will share with you by way of several modern examples. This past spring, as many of you know, one of our missionaries in Dublin, Ireland, was killed by an assailant who stabbed him to death.[2] I went to the airport with Elder Critchfield’s family to meet the casket. They are, what you might say as being a compliment, common garden variety Latter-day Saints who are really quite marvelous. They are from Payson, Utah. And the family had gathered ahead of time when the plane bearing the casket was to arrive at the Salt Lake airport. I stood with them out on the tarmac. Everything was okay until out of the belly of the plane came the casket on the conveyor belt, marked, ironically, with the two words, “extreme care.” And then, of course, the tears understandably flowed. Elder Critchfield, the martyr, has a younger brother who is fifteen. And when he learned of his brother’s death, his father said, “Scott, four years from now, you’re going to be nineteen. And the prophet is going to call you on a mission. You’ve seen what’s happened to your brother Stanley. What are you going to do?” “I’ll go, Dad, I’ll go.” That’s the spirit of this kingdom. It is emblematic of your generation and the devotion that is yours.
There are eight young elders, Liberians by background. They were our only full-time elders in Liberia at the start of the terrible civil war which is still raging in Liberia. The story of their escape from Liberia to the adjoining country of Sierra Leone is one of the great stories of this dispensation. Of these eight young elders, two of them were taken prisoner by the rebel forces. The rebel forces were killing people who belong to a certain tribe. They could tell by accent or facial appearance. And when these two elders were taken into custody, they waited until morning to look them over. They had just shot the person sitting in the line next to the elder I’m telling you about, who was there with his companion. It was his turn next.
In the little account he’s written, he speaks of how he had begun to prepare himself to go to Paradise and felt a tap on his shoulder, which he said sent a chill through his whole body. He turned, and it was a member of the Church, who said, “Come with me, elder, and bring your companion.” This member of the Church took them to the head of the security force and got them excused from the line. They were put in a different detention camp for several days, and then were able to escape.
They wanted to get back with the other six elders, their companions in Monrovia, the capital city. They made their way through streets full of corpses and much fighting. Members hid them out successively. And they got to what was once the mission home, thinking they would have surely arrived too late. The six elders, meanwhile, had been planning to take a little four-passenger Toyota and make what would be a 40- or 50-hour journey to the border. They were ready to leave, but didn’t feel they should leave. But they needed to leave because the situation was deteriorating so rapidly. And here came the two elders. They rejoiced in the spirit we read about in the Book of Mormon to find that “these our brothers were still steadfast in the gospel” (see Alma 17:2).
Then eight of them plus one driver, a member of the branch presidency, in a great and dramatic adventure over the space of many hours, made their way to the border. They sang hymns all the way, usually four of them running alongside the Toyota while four would rest inside. And they sang hymns all the way. They took off their mis- sionary tags so they would be less apt to be incarcerated. They got to the border and only had one passport. And that was a Nigerian passport, which wouldn’t work. And the guard said they must return to Monrovia, which they knew if they did would be certain death. And then one of the heads of the security forces came over and saw on their nametags not their names, but just the word they had printed: “missionary.” And he said, “Let them go through. They’re missionaries.” They drove another forty hours to Freetown, Sierra Leone, where our mission president was. And as they arrived, they sang “Ye Elders of Israel.” They are now serving the balance of their missions in Sierra Leone.[3]
Be the examples you ought to be because this is the generation of which you are a part. We have a young stake president in Aba, Nigeria. A remarkable man, David Eka, who, when they were having the Biafran civil war in Nigeria about twenty or twenty-five years ago, was hiding out in the jungle. A million people lost their lives in that civil war because of starvation or death. David knew nothing about the Church or the gospel at that time. In the jungle where he was hiding out, he came around a big tree. Here was a soldier with a rifle, a fixed bayonet, and instructions to shoot to kill. David, though a young man, said to the soldier, “Sir, I do not hate you. Do you hate me?” And the soldier said, “I do not hate you. Let us turn our backs to each other, and walk away,” which is what they did. And that’s how David was spared. He became the first stake president in the first stake organized in Africa. He is a remarkable man. They now have seventeen units in that stake; it needs to be divided. And he is a great shepherd. And they had seventy-three percent attendance at stake conference recently in the Aba stake, more than the stake conferences of your home stake will ever attain to. But most of the people who came were hungry, physically hungry.
The generation you represent, whether it’s the eight Liberian elders, or whether it’s the Critchfield family from Payson, Utah, or whether it’s those anciently who represented your generation then, are part of those whom you should see as your companions in the trek along the straight and narrow way. And I’d like to talk to you about that trek, having given you those examples.
President N. Eldon Tanner[4] used to say to the brethren, when on occasion they’d get a little bit discouraged, “Well, the Lord never told us it would be easy, did he?” Indeed, He did not. And in fact, the Lord has told us quite the opposite. When He says in Mosiah 23:21, “Nevertheless, the Lord seeth fit to chasten his people. Yea, he trieth their patience and their faith,” patience and faith are what get tried. And He chastens us by events, afflictions, illnesses, disappointments, betrayals. He schools us, if we will let Him, in faith and in patience, just as those eight Liberian elders had to have faith and to be patient in the long trek towards Sierra Leone. It is in this setting that I wish to be, for a moment, a little bit heavy, if I can, with you.
The Prophet Joseph said, “If you wish to go where God is, you must be like God, or possess the principles which God possesses.”[5] That is, God is perfect in love and mercy, patience, longsuffering, all of those cardinal qualities, and you and I are to strive to develop those in each of our lives. And it doesn’t matter, brothers and sisters, whether you’re short or tall, fat or thin, old or young, man or woman, married or unmarried, rich or poor. The obligation that each of us shares who seeks to be a disciple of Christ is to become more like Jesus. And it isn’t just a generalized goal. We are to become like Him in specific ways—to “become a saint, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love”—and then for special emphasis, “willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him even as a child doth submit to his father” (Mosiah 3:19). Those are the cardinal virtues, brothers and sisters. These are the virtues God has perfected and Jesus has perfected. They are perfect in mercy, perfect in love. And here you and I are strung out as it were along the trail at different stages of spiritual readiness, but we have had placed upon us the solemn obligation to become like Them. Other scriptures add just a few words that reflect the same qualities. Gentle, easy to be entreated, which means approachable. Gracious. Remember, when Jesus went back to His hometown, the scriptures say, and the people were astonished at His graciousness. (See Luke 4:22.) Long-suffering, kind, temperate. What does temperate mean? Self-restrained. These qualities, and there are about a dozen of them, are eternal.
The professions and vocations you will go into after you leave Ricks College are quite temporary. It isn’t just the morticians who will have vocational crises in the next world. Everybody will. The skills you will acquire are useful here. They’re important to acquire. But they’re obsolete.
But patience is never obsolete. The capacity to love is never obsolete. So these qualities are eternal. They are also portable. They go with us through the veil of death, they will rise with us in the resurrection to the degree that we have developed them, and we will have so much the advantage in the world to come. Not anything else that I can tell is portable. The bank accounts don’t go, the cars don’t go, the wardrobes don’t go, the press clippings don’t go, the plaques, the honors of the world, they don’t go. What will rise with us in the resurrection are these qualities to the degree that we have developed them and they are eternal and are everlasting. And they are usually developed or further developed in the crucible of trial and affliction when our faith and our patience are being tried. Test yourself if you will. Your sample of humanity that God has given you would be your family, your friends, roommates, classmates. Are they experiencing from you patience, graciousness, gentleness, kindness, love? It doesn’t do us much good here to say how we would like to save the afflicted people of another land for whom we actually can do very little usually. Your sample of humanity and mine are the people right around us.
If the curtain were rung down today on your life, how would you fare in terms of having expressed these qualities in behalf of those who are a part of your sample? It’s a very sobering thing for me as it is I’m sure for you to realize that these are the things that really matter, to keep your covenants and to become more like Jesus, patiently, care- fully. That’s what matters. So much else of life is just fluff. Just fluff. And in that sense, as we go back to the theme from Paul, to be examples in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity is for me the thing I most want to stress with you today.
You’re blessed to be here at Ricks. And many of you, having found Ricks, are now finding yourselves for the first time. And that’s a great adventure. I read to you some lines from King Benjamin, about people you and I know—hopefully nobody here today, but maybe: “For how knoweth a man the master whom he has not served, and who is a stranger unto him, and is far from the thoughts and intents of his heart?”(Mosiah 5:13). How can we know Christ, if we haven’t served Him, if we’re a stranger to Him, if He is far from the thoughts and intents of our heart? But if instead He is our example, and you and I are serious about our discipleship, we’ll be getting more patient, we’ll be more gentle, we’ll be more full of love. And that’s what the experience of mortality is all about. And it’s the basis, I think, on which you and I can reflect and ponder how each of us is doing.
Years ago, I used to play, very unsuccessfully, the game of golf. I could drive and approach the greens pretty well, but I could not putt. I took so many putts to get it in the hole. And my companions used to say, “Neal, if you can’t get it in the hole, just imagine a circle around that hole, that’s three feet in diameter, or six or eight, just get closer, get inside the circle.” That’s what we’re talking about. These attributes sound very intimidating. But we can get closer. We can become more patient with a roommate, we can be more gentle in our response. And these, therefore, are the qualities which are, in fact, everlasting.
How serious is God about these qualities? Remember, the story of the rich, righteous young man who came running, fell at Jesus’s feet. “And Jesus beholding him loved him.” “Master, what thing must I do to have eternal life?” “Keep the commandments.” “I’ve done this from my youth up.” And then notice, “One thing thou lackest, go and sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and come follow me. And the young man went away sorrowing, because he had much goods” (see Mark 10:17–22). Jesus had put his finger on the soft spot. It might have been different for someone else. He couldn’t handle giving up his wealth. For someone else, it might have been foregoing the applause of the human gallery. But you can’t get more customized and direct than that. That’s how serious He is. Oliver Cowdery wanted very much to translate. He tried. He failed. What did the Lord say? He was intellectually lazy: “you took no thought save it was to ask me” and “you did not continue as you commenced” (Doctrine and Covenants 9:7, 5). That’s a pretty direct diagnosis, isn’t it?
The brother of Jared, whom you and I think of as being almost perfect, was reproved for the space of three hours one day, because his prayers were not as they should be. God loves you too much, brothers and sisters, to let you go on being just what you now are, because He knows what you have the power to become. And therefore they will come into your lives, the relevant clinical experiences. You don’t remember asking for them. You don’t want them. Why are you signing up for this course? You didn’t. But here it comes. Can I take it next semester? Now? And on comes the clinical experience.
As I look at my own life, one of my struggles has been patience. There have been times in my earlier, spiritual immaturity when I have wanted to say, “All right, Heavenly Father, if I’ve got to be patient, let’s get it over with and do it right now.” But instead come the relevant clinical experiences. I wish, like the young man who knelt at Jesus’s feet, that I just lacked one thing. The Lord might say, “Thirty-seven things lackest thou.”
He wants us to become like Him. And the resurrected Jesus said, “What manner of men and women ought you to be? I say unto you, even as I am” (see 3 Nephi 27:27). That is discipleship. And it is the only journey that really matters. How does He bring us to clinical experiences in so many different ways? “Take my yoke upon you and learn of me” (Matthew 11:29). I submit to you, brothers and sisters, we cannot learn of Him except we take His yoke upon us. And when you and I love and are not loved in return, on a tiny scale, we appreciate what Jesus’s yoke was when He loved the world, and the world crucified Him.
When you and I are disappointed, misrepresented, misunderstood, as part of bearing His yoke—to us each will come these clinical experiences, until we have taken advantage of them, if we will.
I have, in recent years, come to feel that the parable of the prodigal son is probably a metaphor for each of us. Remember the story: he wasted his inheritance, he lived below his potential. And then some intriguing words are used. “And when he came to himself,” he said, “I will arise and go to my father” (see Luke 15:11–18). That has to do with the atonement, the imagery of the scriptures, the imagery of the holy temple. For all of us, when we come to ourselves, when we get it together, we want to return to our Father. It is the journey of journeys; there is none like unto it. What kind of reception awaits us? For He Himself is the gatekeeper, He employs no servant there (see 2 Nephi 9:41). “I wait for you with open arms” (see Mormon 6:17). It is to return to Him, to be reconciled with Him—that is the journey of journeys. And we cannot be with Him except we become more like Him. And that requires us, day by day, experience by experience, to be more meek, to be more loving, to be more pure.
And that’s what I’ve come to say to you. You can know, if you keep His commandments, if these doctrines are true; that’s what Jesus said. The world doesn’t understand this process of verification because these things are spiritually discerned. I honor the scientific method for all that it has given mankind. It deals with one realm of knowledge very nicely. It, unfortunately, is exclusionary. It rules out a whole realm of spiritual knowledge which is to be obtained and verified only as the Lord has set forth. Do and know, experience and grow. And this, as I said, is what I’ve come to tell you.
As I close, may I share with you three scriptures that keep looping through my mind these last months?
Twice in 2 Nephi 27:20 and 21, the Lord uses words He uses nowhere else in holy scriptures: “I am able to do mine own work.” Is He ever!
Second scripture: Doctrine and Covenants 64:32, “all things come to pass in their own time.” There is a divine calendar. And things come to pass according to the Lord’s timetable, not ours. He does not wear a wristwatch or check calendars. You and I are nervous about time; we’re not at home in time. And whether it’s the coming down of the Berlin Wall, or the opening up of the work in Africa, all these things are on His timetable, if we will be patient and have faith.
And the last scripture: “I will hasten my work in its time” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:73). You will be a part of that hastening. It isn’t just missionary work, though that’s a good part of it; you will see it in your time on a scale and in a variety such as you’ve never seen before. And the work will be hastened according to how faithfully you perform as representatives of our Heavenly Father. And you will perform better, the more you become like Him. He will be able to use you so much more.
Years ago, when I was beset with acne, the scars of which I still bear, and I raised pigs, which didn’t help my standing in the local social order, and I didn’t grow and become an all-state basketball player as I’d always intended to, I nevertheless knew my parents loved me and I knew that God loved me. In the spirit of candor and testimony, if that acne and those scars added something to my capacity to have empathy, then it’s worth it. If being left out, socially, as I was at times, helps me to understand, it’s worth it. If not achieving some temporal goal, like being all-state in basketball, helped me to understand what matters most, it’s worth it. “The Lord seeth fit to chasten his people; yea, he trieth their patience and their faith” (Mosiah 23:21). It’s because He loves you that He is stretching your souls and will stretch them. It’s because He is a true father, who wants His children to be as happy as He is. I salute you as a generation of destiny. But I remind you, if we would go where He is, we must be more like Him. And there is no shortcut. We must walk the path and experience what we must experience, having the faith and the patience.
God bless you to that end in what awaits you in what will be the climactic part of this the last of all dispensations. It is the dispensation for which you have been held in reserve until this moment in time. It is your rendezvous, and you must not fail that rendezvous because thousands depend upon you to be the example to help them. You must be true to your time. You must be true to your testimonies. And if you are, as I think you will be as a generation, thousands upon thousands will rise up and call you blessed in the years ahead and in eternity for being an example in faith and purity and love. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
[1] See Bruce C. Hafen, A Disciple’s Life, 417–418, 470; Don L. Searle, “Four Who Serve,” Ensign (February 1992).
[2] For additional context, see “Death Holds No Bitterness for LDS Missionary, Family Told,” Deseret News, June 3, 1990. (Eds.)
[3] For additional context and retellings of this episode, see Elizabeth Maki, “The Lord Provided a Way,” Ensign, June 2014, churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ ensign/2014/06/the-lord-provided-a-way?; Abby Jennings, “Story of Liberian Missionaries Depicted in the Movie Freetown,” Church News, July 30, 2015, churchofjesuschrist.org/church/news/story-of-liberian-missionaries-depicted-in-the-movie-freetown?
[4] N. Eldon Tanner (1898–1982) grew up in Canada. He served in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from 1962–1963, and as a counselor in the First Presidency from 1963 until his death. (Eds.)
[5] Joseph Smith, History of the Church, 4:588. Compare Discourse, April 10, 1842, as Reported by Wilford Woodruff, 146, The Joseph Smith Papers; also History, 1838– 1856, volume C-1 Addenda, 62, The Joseph Smith Papers. (Eds.)