Orson F. Whitney

Orson F. Whitney

Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (April 9, 1906 – May 16, 1931)

General Conference Addresses

April 1931 General Conference
- Right the Ship
  - “I love to hear kind and generous expressions of appreciation for any good thing well done by anybody. But I do not believe in thanking people for keeping the commandments of God, nor for rendering service to him in any capacity.”
October 1930 General Conference
- Liberty
  - “Freedom is the Gospel’s sign manual. Tyranny has no place therein. There is no room in all the Government of God for the exercise of unrighteous dominion.”
  - “The churches of men are built upon books and traditions, handed down from the dubious past—what God said to other peoples in other times, under circumstances vastly different from our own. And mixed with these things are other things that God is said to have said—but never did say—and they are palmed upon the world as utterances of divine authority. In many lands God’s children, millions of them, are yearning and longing for the Light, hungering and thirsting for pure Gospel truth, which they find not in man-made religions and philosophies; and blind leaders of the blind, turning their backs upon New Revelation, are endeavoring to feed a spiritually starving world with the mutilated menu card of a banquet ages old.”
April 1930 General Conference
- Testimony
  - “We call them testimonies—and testimonies they are; for testimony means evidence. Anything that furnishes evidence that this is God’s work, is a testimony concerning it.”
October 1929 General Conference
- God’s Greatest Gifts
  - “There are millions of good, honest people all over the world, in all the churches, but they have not the fullness of the Gospel. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is its one depository.”
  - “God’s greatest gift is eternal life, but that pertains to Eternity. The greatest blessing that our Heavenly Father can bestow upon us in time, or while we are here, is the power to lay hold upon eternal life.”
April 1929 General Conference
- Our Father’s Mercy
  - “The conference opened in due season, and Brother Kimball arose to speak. The first thing he said that interested me was this: “There isn’t one man in a thousand that knows how to treat a woman.” And the sisters all over the house looked at each other and nodded their heads approvingly. Then Golden fired off the other barrel : “And there isn’t one woman in a thousand that knows when she’s well treated.” I came home more than ever convinced that there are two sides to every question.”
  - “You parents of the willful and the wayward! Don’t give them up. Don’t cast them off. They are not utterly lost.”
  - “Our Heavenly Father is far more merciful, infinitely more charitable, than even the best of his servants, and the Everlasting Gospel is mightier in power to save than our narrow finite minds can comprehend.”
  - “There is but one way to build up the Church of God—and that is God’s way, not man’s. Faith, repentance, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, and the reception of the Holy Ghost under the hands of divinely authorized ministers of the Gospel—these are essentials in the process.”
October 1928 General Conference
- We Have the Truth
  - “I don’t wonder that they love the Gospel. I love it. We all love it. It is the greatest, grandest and most glorious thing under the sun.”
  - “And how reasonable, how logical it is. What simple, plain common sense. For if God made man in his own image, then God must be in the image of man. And if men and women are indeed God’s children, his sons and daughters, what more reasonable than the conclusion that we have a Mother as well as a Father in Heaven, in whose likeness we are, male and female?”
  - “The churches were also teaching that God made this beautiful earth and all that it contains out of nothing. Why, a ten-year old boy ought to reject such a dogma as that. How can something be made out of nothing? Think of it a moment! God never gave such a doctrine; Jesus never taught it; neither did his apostles.”
  - “Here we walk by faith, whereas in the spirit world, we walked by sight. We kept the first estate and won the privilege of coming into this second estate, with the promise that if we manifest equal integrity here, we shall have glory added upon our heads forever and ever.”
  - “Does any sane man or woman believe that an all-wise God would create an earth like this, and place his children upon it to become expert and skillful as farmers, as artisans, as engineers, bankers, merchants or what not, and then whisk them away to some distant part of the universe, some world “beyond the bounds of time and space,” where they would sit down and twiddle their thumbs and stare somebody out of countenance for a million years? Is it reasonable? Is it sensible?”
April 1928 General Conference
- Strength of the Church’s Position
  - “No servant of the Lord should ever arise before a congregation and say, I have nothing upon my mind. A people who have been commanded of God to “seek for wisdom out of the best of books”—to “seek learning by study and also by faith,” ought to have something upon their minds.”
  - “There is but one way to understand “Mormonism”—and that is God’s way, not man’s. Books and schools cannot give a testimony of the Truth. Those who sneer at the Everlasting Gospel, and pelt it with nicknames, will never understand it—unless they repent, and are baptized, and receive the Holy Ghost, whereby the things of God are made manifest.”
October 1927 General Conference
- Working Out Our Salvation
  - “Our missionaries today can say the same, when they preach these principles in the power and demonstration of the Holy Spirit, testifying to the Restoration of the Gospel, and letting alone such unprofitable questions as, Who wrote the Book of Genesis? Was Job a fictitious or an historical character? Does God save man or does man save himself? This Church was not established, nor are its missionaries sent forth to quibble and contend over these or any other questions. With a world’s salvation trembling in the balance, it matters very little which was first—the chicken or the egg, or whether a house burns up or burns down.”
  - “Contention is “of the devil,” the Lord says, and the time is so precious and so short between Now and the End, that we need every minute of it to deliver our message, to cry repentance, and warn the world of divine judgments that will follow the rejection of the gospel.”
  - “We all admire courage, fortitude, and the power to patiently endure. We recognize such traits as essential to success, both in spiritual and in temporal pursuits. But these heroic qualities, admirable though they be, and desirable -withal, cannot lessen one jot or tittle the need for a Savior, to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.”
  - “”Faith without works is dead.” We work out our salvation. There is no question about that. But we work it out through Jesus Christ, and not independently of Him. We do not save ourselves. We but avail ourselves of the means of salvation provided by our Lord and Savior, the God who died that man might live.”
April 1927 General Conference
- Gospel Dispensations
  - “President Heber J. Grant, the now visible head of the Church, by virtue of his general presidency presides over all the stakes of Zion, over all our outside missions, over every organization and institution in the Church; and yet each one of these has, under him and those associated with him, its local head, its immediate presiding authority. In like manner Father Adam presides over all the gospel dispensations.”
  - “The death, on Calvary was no more the ending of that divine career, than the birth at Bethlehem was its beginning. The Savior’s mission is universal, extending from eternity into time and back again into eternity.”
October 1926 General Conference
- Build Better Than They Know
  - “All have equal rights to life, to liberty, to the pursuit of happiness, and are entitled to equal opportunities for possession and promotion. That is America’s doctrine, and it is God’s doctrine, too—yet to be emphasized when Zion’s children, the pure-in-heart, become equal in temporal as in spiritual things, and are of one heart and mind, “every man seeking the interest of his neighbor, and doing all things with an eye single to the glory of God.””
  - “All great builders build better than they know. Some realize in part, but others not at all, that they are instruments of Deity, used for carving out his sublime and beneficent purposes.”
April 1926 General Conference
- Miracles
  - “They who doubt the divinity of Jesus Christ can hardly be expected to believe in the wonderful works wrought by him. But they who accept him as the Son of God can accept his miracles also.”
  - “It were indeed a pitiful begging of the question for any one to say: Because I cannot do a certain thing, therefore it cannot be done; I cannot work a miracle, consequently no miracle was ever wrought. Miracles are the fruits of faith. Nobody claims that unbelief can perform them.”
  - “He was astonished. It was something he hadn’t thought of. He felt very much as Goliath did when the stone sank into his forehead—such a thing had never entered his head before.”
  - “We are here for education and development, through joy and sorrow, through smiles and tears, through pleasure and pain, bitter and sweet, light and darkness, enduring the vicissitudes and contrasts of mortal life, that we may become wise and gain a glorious experience.”
October 1925 General Conference
- Evolution and Science
  - “I do not believe that the first of our race was a savage, or a cave man, who courted his wife with a club and carried her off by force. Such creatures there may .have been, and there may be now. I do not dispute the findings and the facts of science—real science—which is knowledge, not guess-work. But I do deny that the great father of the human family was a creature of that kind.”
  - “It was Adam’s mission to bring us into this world. It is Christ’s mission to lift us up out of this world, when the object of our sojourn here is accomplished.”
  - “How can anyone whose soul has been fed with the revelations of God, whose mind has been illumined by the spirit of the Gospel, the gift of the Holy Ghost, conceive of Adam, the first of the human race, as anything less than the Bible represents him to be—a man formed in the image of his Maker?—which is tantamount to saying that the Maker is in the form of man.”
  - “Revelation does not depend upon books. It is an eternal principle, a perennial, ever-flowing fountain. Books may come and books may go, but revelation goes on forever.”
April 1925 General Conference
- Miracles
  - “They who doubt the possibility of miracles are indeed without the power to perform them. But this does not prove that believers lack that power. Miracles are the fruits of faith.”
  - “Miracles belong to no particular time or place. Wherever and whenever there is a legitimate demand for the exercise of divine power, that power will act, and marvels will result.”
October 1924 General Conference
- Testimony of the Holy Ghost
  - “It is not our smartness, not our native intelligence that enables us to understand these things. We have come out from the Gentile world. We have their blood in our veins. We are no more intelligent than they, naturally; but we have received something that they do not possess; that is the whole solution. The credit is not to us; it is to our Father in Heaven, who has given us this precious gift, the power to comprehend him and his purposes, and rightly interpret his word.”
  - “With the Spirit of the Lord upon us, we can see and comprehend God, so far as he chooses to make himself known. This is the great differentiating feature between the Latter-day Saints and those who have not received the gift of the Holy Ghost.”
April 1924 General Conference
- Mission Report
  - “I do not testify that the Gospel is true; that would be superfluous—a mere truism. One might as well say that truth is true, or that white is white, as to say that the Gospel is true. Of course it’s true, or it wouldn’t be the Gospel, which is Truth itself.”
April 1921 General Conference
- Serving Missions
  - “I have never called myself upon a mission; have never appointed myself to an office; and have never thought it my privilege to resign, or ask to be relieved of any responsibility in connection with the Lord’s work. I have responded to every call made upon me thus far, and I expect to do so as long as I live.”
  - “True, the Latter-day Saints have been persecuted under the Stars and Stripes in various States of the Union; but we must not make the mistake of supposing that it was (because of the Flag, or of the Constitution, or of the genius of the American government, that these deplorable happenings took place. No; it was not because, but in spite of them.”
October 1920 General Conference
- Temples and Keys Restored
  - “There never has been and never will be another gospel; but this one, framed in heaven, has been upon earth again and again, in a series of dispensations reaching like a mighty chain from the morning of creation down to the end of time.”
April 1920 General Conference
- Idolatry
  - “The man who adores his possessions, and forgets that they were given for a good, a wise, an unselfish and an altruistic purpose, is an idolater, akin to those ancient peoples, who in their spiritual blindness worshiped things that God had made and given, instead of the Maker and Giver.”
  - “War, famine, pestilence, earthquake, tempest and tidal wave—these are among the predicted signs of the Savior’s second coming. Earth must be freed from oppression and cleansed from all iniquity. It is God’s House, and he is coming to live in it, and to make of it a glorified mansion. House-cleaning is in progress, and Saturday’s work must be done and out of the way before the Lord of the Sabbath appears.”
October 1919 General Conference
- The Gathering
  - “We must not despise the small things, for they are often the seeds of great things. Flake on flake piles up the mighty avalanche, and the stir of a stone on the mountain-side hurls the whelming mass into the valley below.”
  - “We must not expect miracles unless the occasion demands them. God is a wise economist. He would not take a bludgeon to brain a gnat, nor a thunder-bolt to kill a flee. He always suits the weapon to the warfare, the tool to the task required of it.”
  - “There is always an alternative—no “dead-open-and-shut”, business about God’s dealings with men. He gives them a chance.”
  - “The gathered Saints are up here in the Rocky Mountains, out of harm’s way, comparatively speaking, founding Stakes of Zion, as a preliminary to the establishment of Zion proper; and we shall remain here until our preparation is complete. When the right time comes, and all things are ready, the pure in heart, chosen from the midst of this people, will go down in the might of the Lord and redeem Zion.”
- This Great Nation
  - “In the Constitutional Convention, when the fundamental law was framed upon which the State of Utah now stands, I stood for Woman Suffrage, because I believe it to be a principle of freedom and justice, and I there voiced the conviction that the union of these states was a type arid a foreshadowing of the union of the nations of the world. Somehow I drank in this idea from my boyhood. I cannot see it in any other light.”
June 1919 General Conference
- Tribute to Joseph F. Smith
  - “President Joseph F. Smith was not only a Prophet; he was also a Patriarch^a fatherly man in every sense of the term. Second only to his loyalty and devotion to the work of God, was his warm and tender love for his family—his wives and children. Their welfare and happiness in time and for all eternity were his constant care.”
October 1918 General Conference
- America
  - “Great are the promises of God concerning this nation, provided it be a righteous nation; for he says in other parts of this sacred book that he “will fortify this land against all other nations,” that there .shall be “no king upon this land,” and that they “who fight against Zion shall perish.”
  - “Men have been persecuted under the Stars and Stripes for their religious convictions. But it was not the Constitution that did it; it was not the Declaration, not the Flag, that was responsible. These things occurred, not because of the Constitution, but in spite of it, and because the laws were not enforced for the protection of the weak against the strong.”
April 1918 General Conference
- The Gospel Preached
  - “Is it possible that God will compel men to be saved? No. Compulsion is the doctrine of Lucifer.”
  - “God will never coerce the human mind—never fetter the human will. He will force no man into heaven; no man into hell. But he has never said that he would not create compelling situations, and so shape human affairs as to induce men and women to do things of their own volition that they would not do if circumstances remained unchanged.”
October 1917 General Conference
- Wars Prophesied
  - “The supernatural is nearly always discounted, if not derided, by ultrapractical minds. “The natural man is an enemy to God.” All miracles are myths to modern pseudo-science and its arrogant handmaid, the so-called “Higher Criticism.””
April 1917 General Conference
- Calling of an Apostle
  - “The first requisite in an apostle is that he shall be a willing worker for God, to go where he is sent, to stay where he is put, to say what the Lord wants him to say, to be what the Lord wants him to be, to go and come as directed by proper authority, and do whatever the Lord requires at his hands. This is the spirit that should animate and inspire every member of the Church of Christ.”
October 1916 General Conference
- Revelation and Its Fulfillment
  - “No book presides over this Church, and no book lies at its foundation. You cannot pile up books enough to take the place of God’s priesthood, inspired by the power of the Holy Ghost.”
  - “No man ought to contend for what is in the books, in the face of God’s mouthpiece, who speaks for him and interprets his word. To so contend is to defer to the dead letter in preference to the living oracle, which is always a false position.”
April 1916 General Conference
- The Prophet Joseph
  - “I am convinced of the uselessness of dreaming too much upon the past, or of speculating too much about the future. I regard the duty of the present hour as paramount.”
  - “Brigham Young was Joseph Smith’s executor. The Prophet had beheld these scenes and foretold these happenings. God had spoken to him concerning them. And we of today are participating in the fulfillment of his wonderful prophecy. We are building upon the foundation that he laid. President Young built upon it, the Latter-day Saints have built upon it, and are still fulfilling his inspired words concerning this western land.”
April 1915 General Conference
- The Scope of the Gospel
  - “The Gospel embraces temporal as well as spiritual duties; that it is intended to save the souls of men; and that the soul is not spirit alone, nor body alone, but spirit and body combined.”
  - “There is a work for every man, woman and child in the preaching of the Gospel, and woe unto those who have had this commission put upon them, if they neglect it!”
  - “We cannot safely substitute anything for the Gospel. We have no right to take the theories of men, however scholarly, however learned, and set them up as a standard, and try to make the Gospel bow down to them.”
  - “We should hold up the Gospel as the standard of truth, and measure thereby the theories and opinions of men.”
  - “Uninspired men are prone to judge by outward appearances, and to allow prejudice and plausibilities to usurp the place of divine truth as God has made it known.”
  - “A man who is wallowing in sensuality, giving himself up to the gratification of his base appetites and desires, he does not love the person who comes to him and warns him to stop these evil practices; he hates him—hates him for the message that he bears, for he wants to be let alone to continue his wallowing in the mire.”
October 1914 General Conference
- How We Know the Truth
  - “We are dependent upon the Lord for this testimony, and I feel the need of it every day, everv hour— the need of guidance by that Spirit which manfests the things of God, which brings things past to remembrance, shows things to come, explains the otherwise mysterious present, and puts within the hand of man the key to celestial glory, the power to lay hold upon eternal life, God’s greatest gift.”
April 1914 General Conference
- The Power of God
  - “When God wants light, He has only to say, Let there be light, and there is light. Nay, He would not have to do even so much as that, for God Himself is Light, dwells in the midst of light, in the midst of eternal burnings, and He would only have to appear, and darkness would flee away.”
  - “It is not the sagacity of its leaders, it is not its members, that constitutes its strength. We are only a handful in the midst of many millions. The strength of this Church is in the testimony possessed by every man and woman belonging to it, that it is indeed the work of God.”
October 1913 General Conference
- Things of Most Worth
  - “The most profitable work that men or gods can engage in is the salvation of souls. Consequently there is nothing so important to me or to you or to any of the children of men, as that great plan of life and salvation, devised in the heavens and delivered to man upon the earth in a series of Gospel dispensations of which this is the last and the greatest.”
  - “Exaltation is salvation added upon.”
  - “The obligation of saving souls rests upon every man and woman in this Church—if not with equal weight, at least proportionately, according to their strength, their time, their opportunities, their abilities; and they cannot get out from under this responsibility on the plea that it belongs only to such and such persons.”
April 1913 General Conference
- Gathering and Unity
  - “”Mormonism” does not scatter, does not disintegrate, does not divide; it gathers, unifies, and proposes to bring together all things in Christ.”
  - “It does not matter how intelligent he may be, how learned, how educated, how well trained; if he have not the gift of the Holy Ghost he cannot comprehend the things of God.”
October 1912 General Conference
- Continuous Revelation
  - “The world was unwilling, as ever, to give up its false traditions, to believe all that God had revealed, that it might be prepared for what He will yet reveal before man can be made perfect and the kingdom of God firmly established.”
  - “History is repeating itself: The Jews were expecting a Messiah, but when He came they crucified Him, and still went on expecting him to come. The Christian world has put to death the prophets of God, sent as forerunners of the Messiah’s second advent. What will be its attitude toward the One who sent them?”
April 1912 General Conference
- The Power of Testimony
  - “Mormonism has in its hand the mightiest weapons that man can wield, divine authority and the power of pure testimony that cuts like a keen two-edged sword.”
  - “Joseph Smith said, “I saw and I heard,” and who can gainsay it, especially when the words are accompanied by the mighty power, the convincing power of the Holy Ghost? No argument can stand against it, and there is enough force and virtue in such a testimony to bring the whole proud world under condemnation if they reject it.”
October 1911 General Conference
- Memorial to Orson Pratt
  - “There were many who knew Orson Pratt better than I, but none admired or esteemed him more.”
  - “The American nation—the whole civilized world, or a great part of it, has gone money-mad, grasping after gold, and caring little or nothing as to how they acquire it; marrying for money, stealing for money, killing for money—anything to get money. “Put money in thy purse,” seems to be the slogan of the present hour; which might be well enough, as to money honestly obtained, if more people were found willing to open their purses, take the money out again, and use it as the divine Giver intended it to be used.”
  - “”How much is he worth in dollars and cents?” or “What is his capacity for making and keeping?” is too often the gauge of a man’s greatness in these modern times. A false standard, unworthy of a great nation and a great people.”
  - “God’s greatness is shown not so much by His ability to create and possess, as by His willingness to bestow, to give, to share, to minister to the welfare and happiness of His children, to provide ways and means for their advancement, opening for them the avenues of progress leading to those summits of glory which He Himself has attained.”
April 1911 General Conference
- Science and Religion
  - “The spirit of this work is necessary to a proper understanding of it, and only those who have received of that spirit can possibly comprehend the marvels that it makes manifest.”
  - “Look to your idols; for everything that can be broken will be broken, and the debris removed to make way for a better and higher order of things. But truth will endure, and withstand successfully every assault made upon it.”
  - “Truth cannot contradict itself. If science and religion—true science and true religion—seem, in the least, to disagree, it is simply because man has not discovered enough, and God, perhaps, has not revealed enough, to bring us to the point of reconciliation; but that time will come.”
October 1910 General Conference
- Obedience and Blessings
  - “It is not for man to sit in judgment upon the decrees of the Almighty.”
  - “What is celestial law? It does not mean any one thing; it means all things. It is the fullness of obedience: it is living by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. If today, you are keeping those commandments that are now in force, you are living a celestial law, and your chances are good for celestial glory.”
- The Lord Has No Favorites
  - “The Lord does not give men and women high office because they are His pets or favorites, or because He wishes to honor them or their families above the rest of the people. Rather is it because He can use them in those places better than anywhere else, for the general good.”
April 1910 General Conference
- The Gospel’s Plainness
  - “I like to speak so that people can understand me. I do not care a fig for eloquence if it be obscure.”
- A Gathering
  - “Men and women become Latter-day Saints, not to better their temporal condition, not for the wealth of the world, nor the honors of men, but for the love of God, the love of truth, and righteousness.”
October 1909 General Conference
- Mission of Salvation
  - “This is the Lord’s work, and it is the Lord who makes His servants mighty.”
  - “I don’t want to think my neighbor a worse man than he is; I want to be just to him, and I desire, also, to be merciful.”
  - “If we get a man into a corner who has injured us, we cannot afford to condescend to his level, and treat him as he has treated us. We ought to do unto others as we would that they should do unto us. That is Christ’s doctrine.”
  - “That man or woman who cannot forgive, who seeks revenge and has no higher conception of duty than to cherish hatred and practice retaliation—has a small soul and needs to have it expanded and enlarged by the Spirit of Christ.”
  - “We are here to save men; we have been chosen and sent into the world for this purpose, and we must show men that we love them —not their wickedness; God does not love the wickedness of the world, but He loves His sons and daughters, and is anxious to save them.”
April 1909 General Conference
- The Spirit of God
  - “I rejoice in the fact that the members of the Church cannot all get into the Tabernacle, nor into any other building. It is a sign of increase, of prosperity. It is a sign of zeal, of interest and enthusiasm in the work of the Lord, when overflow meetings must be held in order to accommodate His people.”
- Zion
  - “Numbers do not determine great principles, and that bigness is not always greatness.”
  - “Let us remember that God has some rights as well as the people. While the people are duly considered, and a jealous care exercised for them and for their rights, the Lord must also be taken into account. He will not be deprived of His prerogatives. It is God and the people who make up the government of the Church of Christ.”
October 1908 General Conference
- God Cannot Fail
  - “The present condition, however superior to the conditions of the past, furnishes no argument to justify stagnation and stand-still.”
  - “Right in line, you see, with the argument of this learned man, that in the matter of self-restraint there is a laxity, even among those who are otherwise just and kind—not just, not kind to themselves, however. And in this spirit of self-indulgence, this unwillingness to curb and control the passions, there lurks a danger that threatens the disruption of society. It behooves every good man and every good woman to stand in a solid phalanx against any tendency that imperils the happiness of the human race and nullifies in any degree, the good that is being done in the interests of temperance, virtue and philanthropy.”
  - “If God and Satan are pulling against each other, what will happen must be plain to every reverent, thoughtful mind. The issue is not in doubt. God will not be mocked; Omnipotence will not be defeated. While He allows the agency of man and the agency of Satan their full play, never at any time has He given to man or to Satan the power to destroy His work or prevent the fulfillment of His predestined purpose. Strength will prevail over weakness. Truth will triumph over error. No matter what trials and persecutions the cause of Christ may have to undergo before its victory is assured, the final outcome will be glorious. Christ will complete His work; the righteous will be saved; the wicked, damned; and the world will attain perfection.”
April 1908 General Conference
- The Gospel of Salvation
  - “There is something in the human heart that prefers the affirmative to the negative in the presentation of the Gospel message.”
  - “When the end comes, and Christ’s mission is consummated, it will be found that He has exhausted every means for the salvation of man; and those who stand condemned after the Gospel has done its work, will be found to have condemned themselves. God is bent upon saving, not damning, the human race; and He will use every possible means to that end.”
  - “These powers will be put forth for salvation—not for damnation. Condemnation follows, as the night the day, the rejection of the means of salvation; it is the alternative, the inevitable consequence of a refusal to accept and make use of the redemption that God has provided.”
  - “Two great thoughts are borne in upon the mind when reading this wonderful passage of modern Scripture: one is, that the past belongs to Mormonism, and the other is, that the future belongs to it also. Mormonism is no mere nineteenth century religion; it is not merely a religion of time. It is the religion of the eternities, and has come down from the presence of Jehovah, as the preordained plan for the salvation of the children of men. It has been upon the earth many times in a series of dispensations, and this great and crowning Gospel dispensation has been introduced for the purpose of binding together all the dispensations, welding the present and the past, and preparing the world for still greater things in the future.”
  - “Adam’s fall was a step downward, but it was also a step forward—a step in the eternal march of human progress; and it is by means of this everlasting Gospel, and our own individual efforts in making use of the powers that God has given us, that we lay hold upon eternal life, and go on to perfection.”
  - “The Gospel designs to save all men, but it will save them upon the principles of eternal justice, every man according to his works.”
October 1907 General Conference
- Enemies of the Church
  - “Our religion is against everything in the nature of treason, disloyalty, anarchy or rebellion.”
  - “It is not true that the teachings of our missionaries are against public morality, or private morality. It is a falsehood, and it had its origin here in Salt Lake City, in the utterances of such men as the Episcopal bishop whom I have quoted, and in the Culminations of a political and partisan press, bent on the accomplishment of certain selfish ends.”
April 1907 General Conference
- Sustaining our Leaders
  - “The Holy Ghost is the great teacher, and all that God’s servants can do, all that they are expected to do, is to put themselves in a position and keep themselves in such a state of heart and mind that they can be acted upon by that divine Spirit which makes manifest the things of God.”
  - “The men who have been chosen to preside over the Church, over the Stakes of Zion, over the various Wards, and the men and women who are officers in the auxiliary organizations-are only a portion of the people. They have the same faults and weaknesses, and the same virtues, as their fathers and mothers, and are no better and no worse than the average of the people from whom they came.”
  - “Because they are prominent, because they have been placed on high, their weak points are more manifest than they would be if they had remained where they were. They are not one whit more perfect for having been lifted into prominence, although they are expected to set an example to the people.”
  - “These men who hold authoritative positions in the Church have been chosen for those positions, not only by God Himself, but also by the people of God. That is the difference. Joseph F. Smith is God’s prophet, because God wants him to be; and he is our President because we want him to be. And he could not be the one nor the other a moment past the time when he would cease to be acceptable to God and to His people. Neither could any man, nor any woman, in this Church, perpetuate their power and authority beyond the time that God and the people were willing to sustain them.”
  - “God chose him to be His Prophet, and the people sustained him as their President. Yes, this man who had looked upon the face of the Father and the Son, who had communed with angels, who had had revealed to him the “sacred record” long “concealed,” concerning which we have been singing, who had received the imposition of hands by holy angels, conferring upon him the priesthood—the Aaronic priesthood, which empowered him to preach faith and repentance and to baptize for the remission of sins, and the Melchisedek priesthood, which empowered him to bestow the Holy Ghost upon those who had been baptized, after all these wonderful exhibitions of the power of God, this man and his associate, Oliver Cowdery, were required to submit their names to a little congregation on the 6th day of April, 1830, when this Church was organized, that it might be seen whether or not those assembled—a little over thirty in number—would sustain them as their leaders. They were sustained, and thus became the first and second elders of the Church. But the query arises, Suppose they had not been sustained? Suppose that little flock had voted against, instead of for, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, what would have been the consequence? Would it have taken from those two elders the priesthood which God had conferred upon them? Would it have taken away the gifts which He had given them? Would it have blotted out the fact that the dispensation of the fulness of times had been opened by the personal appearing of the Father and the Son to Joseph Smith? Would it have reconsigned that sacred record to the Hill Cumorah? Would the work have gone backward from that hour? Not at all. It would have had this effect, and this only that little congregation would have been without the gifts and powers that God had conferred upon those men. It could not have been the Church of God. It would have been a body without a head. The priesthood would have been separated from the people.”
  - “God and His people constitute this Church, and these men who have been chosen to be the teachers, the counselors, the leaders are the Lord’s servants, His representatives, the instruments and agents through whom He acts, to guide and bless His people.”
  - “There is little danger to this work from the outside. The worst perils that threaten us are always from within. God has pledged His word that this kingdom shall never be thrown down nor given to another people. But if there ever was a time when this work was really in danger, it was because there was something wrong within, and not because the powers of earth and hell were arrayed against it.”
October 1906 General Conference
- The Gospel is Eternal
  - “It is Lucifer, on the other hand who seeks the overthrow of free institutions, free churches, free government, and who saps wherever he can the foundation of the rights of man. That same fallen being, once called the Morning Star, presented himself before the Father, at the beginning, and offered himself as a candidate for the saviorship of this world. He declared—had the audacity to declare—that his purpose was to save man in his sins. “Not one soul shall be lost.” He proposed to compel all to be saved, and sought to destroy the free agency of man. But his plan was rejected, and he and all who followed him were cast out of heaven, because they were the enemies of freedom and sought the overthrow of that freest of institutions, the Gospel of salvation.”

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Orson F. Whitney

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