Gene R. Cook

First Quorum of the Seventy (October 3, 1975 – October 6, 2007)

General Conference Addresses

• April 2002 General Conference
  
  • Charity: Perfect and Everlasting Love
    • “It is part of the gift of charity to be able to recognize the Lord’s hand and feel His love in all that surrounds us. At times it will not be easy to discover the Lord’s love for us in all that we experience, because He is a perfect, anonymous giver. You will search all your life to uncover His hand and the gifts He has bestowed upon you because of His intimate, modest, humble way of granting such wonderful gifts.”
    • “Receive it. Feel it. It is not enough just to know that God loves you. The gift is to be felt continually day by day.”
    • “As a man first immerses his thoughts in love and conveys those feelings to God, man, or self, a magnified portion of that attribute will surely follow from the Spirit. That is true of all godly attributes. Righteous feelings generated by a man seem to precede the increase of those feelings from the Spirit. Unless you are feeling love, you cannot convey true love to others. The Lord has told us to love one another as He loves us, so remember: to be loved, truly love.”
• April 1993 General Conference
  • Receiving Divine Assistance through the Grace of the Lord
    • “The doctrine of the grace of the Father and the Son and how it affects us is so significant that it is mentioned more than two hundred times in the standard works. If we can obtain the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that divine enabling power to assist us, we will triumph in this life and be exalted in the life to come.”
    • “Thus, unless one has done all in his own power, he cannot expect the grace of God to be manifest. What a glorious principle to understand: the Lord’s assistance to us—whether we have strong faith or weak faith; whether a man, a woman, or a child—is not based just on what we know, how strong we are, or who we are, but more upon our giving all that we can give and doing all that we can do in our present circumstance. Once one has given all he can, then the Lord, through His grace, may assist him.”
• October 1988 General Conference
  • Inviting Others to “Come unto Christ”
    • “We do not visit the active just to “visit,” or the less active just to get them out to church, although that may be part of what happens. In essence, we visit to help the heads of those homes, male or female, to become the spiritual leaders in their homes, to lead their families to Christ, to pray, to fast, and to read the scriptures together. If that happens in our visits, all else will take care of itself.”
• April 1984 General Conference
  • Home and Family: A Divine Eternal Pattern
    • “At times when one speaks of home and family, some who are single, widowed, a single parent, or a grandparent might be tempted to feel these teachings don’t apply to them. But may I remind all that when the Lord sent us here for our individual growth, he sent us to live with and be nurtured spiritually and temporally by a family. The Lord organized the whole earth this way. There is no other way to enter mortality.”
• April 1982 General Conference
  • Spiritual Guides for Teachers of Righteousness
    • “Satan, in another illusion of vain imagination, teaches a man that the man is spiritual and humble. He begins to believe it and then acts in the eyes of the people as if he were. He begins to drift but full well believes, because of the illusions being created, that he is still on the strait and narrow. He develops a holier-than-thou attitude, but in his heart he is hardened, “past feeling” (1 Ne. 17:45), and prideful. The master of illusion teaches men to honor the Lord with their lips, while their hearts are far from the Lord.”
    • “I would like to suggest eight standards against which a person can measure his own teaching of the gospel as well as the doctrines taught by others, to help him unravel illusions and discern the truth. These standards might be entitled “Spiritual Guides for Teachers of Righteousness.”
• October 1980 General Conference
  • Miracles among the Lamanites
    • “Yes, the descendants of Lehi have learned much from us, the Church in general, as we have established the Church among them. They appreciate the fulfillment of the prophecy indicating “that every man shall hear the fulness of the gospel in his own tongue, and in his own language” (D&C 90:11). Thanks belong to you who serve or have served in these countries, and to the parents who worried about you but sent you anyway, trusting in the Lord, and who found that their sons and daughters received far more in their service to this people than they were capable of giving.”
• April 1978 General Conference
  • Seek Out Your Spiritual Leader
    • “I have often wondered how many of us might have been deceived had we been in the very presence of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in the meridian of time. The great majority saw Jesus as nothing more than a man. The few with spiritual discernment knew who he really was. If one is to make judgments with only his natural senses, he will never perceive the truth of the spiritual world. Have you listened, my brothers and sisters, really listened, to the inspired counsel of these good brethren who have spoken to you during this conference? Are you willing to obey and follow their counsel and the counsel of your local leaders as well?”
    • “We recognize that in any presidency or bishopric the president or bishop may obtain counsel from his counselors, and perhaps from some others, before he, by inspiration, makes the decision. However, we do not in the Church subscribe to a participative-management type of direction, wherein the opinions of all are gathered in, weighed and measured, a consensus drawn, and then a decision made according to the majority. There may be some few exceptions to that statement, but generally speaking that type of approach is representative of the way the world manages its affairs. Many other churches are in the same category because they have nothing better. All the world can do is to dispute an issue, share an opinion, exchange an experience, and then try to draw the best conclusion from the given amount of facts available on the subject.”
• April 1976 General Conference
  • Are You a Member Missionary?
    • “First, you can stand up for the truth wherever you are, at all times, and in all places. Sometimes our members are fearful to speak up for the truth in clubs, associations, or even, at times, among members of the Church. As the Lord has said, it should be done with boldness but not overbearance. Speak out for the Lord and for his prophet on the vital issues of the day.”
    • “When we are performing the Lord’s work, we must do it the Lord’s way. I suggest to you that if you prayerfully approach this work and ask your Father in heaven to reveal to you the means by which you might be an instrument in his hands in bringing individuals into the Church, the way will be provided for you to do just that.”
• October 1975 General Conference
  • Let All Thy Doings Be unto the Lord
    • “I have begun to realize more fully that this last thirty-four years has represented the time for preparation—not today, but that which has gone before, the many, many yesterdays. The preparation has come from those persons who have been close to me and my family—priesthood leaders, mission presidents, these good Brethren of the First Council of the Seventy for whom I have worked for a number of years—I realize that it’s in those yesterdays, those many early mornings, those many long hours, as has been described here today, that most of the battles are fought and won.”

Articles in Church Publications

Other Publications and Resources