Clifford E. Young

Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (April 6, 1941 – August 21, 1958)

General Conference Addresses

• April 1958 General Conference
  • We Lay Our Coats Away
    • “You multiply that attitude of sympathy and thoughtfulness throughout the world—and no one is immune; it is an experience vouchsafed to everyone—and you will comprehend the saving grace that lies in sorrow, anguish, and affliction. The Lord knew what it would mean to his children; how such would rekindle in the hearts of men love, sympathy, and greater compassion and thoughtfulness toward one another.”
• April 1957 General Conference
  • Know the Truth
    • “We have heard the truth. The truth will make us free if we will just permit it to.”
• October 1956 General Conference
  • Repent Ye Therefore
    • “The Lord recognizes that his children are not always aware of the things required of them, and hence his compassion and love are extended to his children. The great principle of repentance is vouchsafed to them, that they may turn from error and evil and return to God and feel the power of these blessings that come through faithfulness and devotion to his work when once his work is understood by his children. So we have in this a message of hope.”
    • “We may disagree with our neighbors as to policy or methods, but let us not question the integrity of anyone. This leads to bearing of false witness. It leads to enmity and the cankering of one’s soul.”
• April 1956 General Conference
  • Debt—a Great Hazard
    • “I have seen young couples start out happily in life and finally bring to themselves distress, not only financially, but also spiritually and emotionally, all because their debts had reached a point where they could not pay them. They became upset, and friction and quarreling ensued, which brought about a condition in the home that is in contravention to the spirit and the ideals taught us in this conference.”
• October 1955 General Conference
  • His Wonders to Perform
    • “I am grateful for my testimony. I am grateful for the cleansing power of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank the Lord for faith in God. I thank him for his blessings that come even in the face of adversity and affliction, for the power to see even beyond the affliction. I am grateful for these blessings.”
• April 1955 General Conference
  • The Good We Accomplish
    • “As you think of that with me, can you not see how ultimately peace will come to the world? And it will only come through the gospel of the Son of God, his great message of eternal truth, and it is our responsibility, my brethren and sisters, to proclaim it.”
    • “As one visits the missions of the Church, he becomes impressed more than ever with the need of our fulfilling the purposes for which the Lord has placed us here, bearing witness of the gospel as it has been restored in this day, not preaching anything new, not changes, merely changes because men perchance have changed in their own minds, but the eternal truths being the same.”
• October 1954 General Conference
  • If the Gift of Faith Is There
    • “So, my brethren and sisters, with a heart full of gratitude and a testimony in my soul of the divinity of this work, I stand before you acknowledging the goodness of God to me, and to my family, for the gift of faith, realizing that no matter what comes in one’s life, if the gift of faith is there, one may safely walk without wavering and without complaint.”
• April 1954 General Conference
  • Sharing the Blessings
    • “And so I am grateful with you, my brethren and sisters, for the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ It is not narrow in its application. It is unlimited in its privileges and blessings to all of God’s children who will/ to do right when once they understand. For those who are mentally deficient, through no fault of their own, someday these pressures will be lifted. The healing power of the Almighty will come to their bodies, just as it will come to ours, and as it came to the body of the Savior; and their spirits, which are the offspring of God, will have the privilege of inhabiting bodies, their own bodies that will be healed and free from pressures and affliction so that there will be no limit to possibilities of the spirits, their minds, and their souls.”
• October 1953 General Conference
  • The Joy of Missionary Service
    • “Our position as Latter-day Saints is that we are entrusted with the responsibility of establishing the kingdom of God in the earth, that it may prepare mankind for the kingdom of heaven that is to come. We feel that there is no greater message that can be brought to the children of men than one that will make men conscious of error and turn them to the truth. Repentance is a grand Christian act. It is not only Christian, but it is also divine.”
• April 1953 General Conference
  • Lessons of the Easter Day
    • “The Lord is merciful and just and kind because he recognizes that there is a difference in degree, that his children are not all reared under the same environment. Some come from good homes, from Latter-day Saint homes, where they have been taught the truth and where they know, or should know, the truth. Others have come from broken homes, where there is some question in their minds as to the divinity of this work and where there is a lack of understanding of the truth and of its great power. To them the Lord is merciful and kind.”
    • “Our spirits are eternal. They do not die. It is the cloak that covers our spirits that we lay aside. I know, brothers and sisters, that we do not understand the processes, but that does not change the eternal truth.”
• October 1952 General Conference
  • A Short Testimony
    • “We have pledged here today that as we sustain this work,, and I take it that in sustaining the Authorities that means we will sustain this work, we will sustain ourselves. We will sustain all that pertains to the Church and kingdom of God in the earth. We have that obligation. This is not just a perfunctory exercise that we witness every general conference, at stake conferences, but it is a solemn service. We enter into an obligation that we are in harmony with the work of the Lord. We renew our covenant that we will keep his commandments, if you will, because in keeping his commandments, we uphold this work, God’s work, and we sustain all that pertains to it. And so we have witnessed here today a sacred part of our services, renewing our faith, and witnessing by our uplifted hands that we will sustain those whom God has chosen and thus sustain his work.”
• April 1952 General Conference
  • Seeing Beyond the Shadow
    • “And so it is, my brethren and sisters, in our lives. Sometimes the shadows overwhelm us, but behind them all comes the sun, with its glory, as we saw today, and it radiates into our souls the reality of God, the consciousness of his great blessings, and the assurance that he is our Father, and that we are his children.”
• October 1951 General Conference
  • A Lesson from the Missionaries
    • “That is the way testimonies come. Those are the promises that are given by our missionaries to the world. Can we do less at home than to accept those promises, to accept the Lord as we ask our friends in the world to accept him?”
• April 1951 General Conference
  • Blessings of the Gospel
    • “We can lose our agency. We have the agency to make these things possible; we also have the agency to lose them because God, in giving his promises to his children, has not taken it from us. We have the right to do, or not to do, and we have the right to establish righteousness. We have the will to do it or the will not to do it”
• October 1950 General Conference
  • A Pure Religion and Undefiled
    • “Lip service is not the service that is required in this Church. It is a constant daily service to our fellow men.”
    • “Now, I do not regard this as difficult. I believe we can do it. I believe the Lord is cognizant of our weaknesses sufficiently to overlook them, and to make it possible, in spite of those weaknesses, for us to carry out to the world that we do have a living, vital religion, that we have something that the people can live and exemplify in their lives. Otherwise the gospel would not mean to us what it does. I repeat again, it isn’t a lip service. It is one that presents a constant challenge of daily labor, laboring for good, for the establishment of truth, for the amelioration of suffering. We’ll never have peace in the world in any other way. It will come only if we translate into our lives these divine concepts and these truths.”
• April 1950 General Conference
  • God’s Abundant Blessings
    • “But there is another phase to it that transcends all the material costs. I have reference to those who have made great sacrifices in coming into the Church. Brother Widtsoe touched on it briefly this morning when he mentioned the immigrants who come here many learning a new language, making new adjustments, the conditions altogether different from those they left in the Old Country. Many of them have had to sacrifice their own kindred and loved ones, being told in some instances that they had to choose between this new religion and their own families, and their new-found religion has been their choice. This has been a common experience in this Church from the beginning.”
    • “The greatest cost of all is that cost we pay which gives strength and character to our people, a cost that has built a foundation against which the gates of hell cannot prevail.”
    • “Easter means something to you and me. It is worth while—this great cost. It was worth while to our forebears, my brethren and sisters, and it is worth while to us.”
• October 1949 General Conference
  • A Working Faith
    • “No religion is of much value unless it has a practical application.”
    • “I know that the Lord can hear and answer our prayers, but he does not always answer them in the way we would like to have them answered. He answers them in his way, and in a way that gives strength and character to his people, gives faith to them.”
• April 1949 General Conference
  • Hate
    • “This attitude of hate, this spirit of revenge is not in harmony with the teachings of the gospel of Christ. The gospel is a message of love and tolerance and does not foster the spirit of hate or intolerance.”
    • “Intolerance is an evil that has plagued the Latter-day Saints since the organization of the Church, founded in many instances on the fact that the motives of the leaders of the Church have been misunderstood.”
• October 1948 General Conference
  • Keep the Commandments
    • “None of us know, as I have said many times, all the answers, but we do know that there is a spiritual force in this great work.”
• April 1948 General Conference
  • Walk by Faith
    • “Human experience has taught that when we walk by pure knowledge, we forget the place of God in our lives.”
• October 1947 General Conference
  • The Philosophies of Men
    • “But, after all. my brethren and sisters, there is nothing that equals in power and in strength the message of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a simple thing.”
• April 1947 General Conference
  • The Welfare Program
    • “As a matter of fact, the welfare program is not measured in dollars and cents but in kind, and it may be possible in the future that our money may have little value. But we shall still be in a position to render relief to those who may be in need by reason of this program of producing through the concerted efforts of all the members of the Church.”
• October 1946 General Conference
  • Follow the Brethren
    • “These brethren whom God has called to preside and give us direction, when they speak they do not speak flippantly, they officially declare to us what we should do. “It is the same,” the Lord says. “It is my word,” and we should recognize it as such.”
• April 1946 General Conference
  • Joseph Smith
    • “The Prophet Joseph lives as real a living Prophet today as he ever did. His motives were misunderstood then; they are misunderstood now, but there is no question about his integrity or his divine calling.”
• October 1945 General Conference
  • Returning Soldiers
    • “Our boys must learn that an obligation is an obligation, and when entered into, it must be paid. We must not permit our boys to let down in their morale. I realize it is going to be difficult, but we need, as never before, to inculcate in our youth, in the boys of whom I speak, the fundamental concepts that have always prevailed in this Church, namely, that we must stand largely on our own.”
    • “Hardship and poverty did not hurt your parents and mine, nor our grandparents. Indeed, the very foundation of this Church, its growth here, its strength here, was made possible because of the hardships and the struggles, because of the fact that our parents had to pay, and they had to pay from their own resources.”
    • “When every effort is being made to soften our youth, we must stand firm and secure and abide by those concepts that have made us what we are today, that have given us character and strength.”
• April 1945 General Conference
  • War and Righteousness
    • “If we can bring again righteousness into the hearts of the people, we will be able to outlaw war, and the terribleness and the tragedy of it will be no more, but we can not do it until we put into practical application some of the teachings we have heard here today.”
• October 1944 General Conference
  • Teachings of Jesus
    • “I would like to say just a word or two regarding those who preside over these missions. I never realized before what a tremendous responsibility it is. The men who are called to preside in these missions must take the young boys and girls who come to them and help them make their adjustments. They are called from all over the Church, they are not trained in the same homes, nor by the same home standards; they are not alike in their education, nor in their gospel training. Their temperaments and dispositions are different, and yet these mission presidents, with their wives who stand by their sides, take these young girls and boys and help them to adjust; and the marvel, my brethren, is that they do adjust, and very quickly do they get the spirit of their mission, and do a marvelous work. This is not a trite expression. It is a reality.”
    • “Here is the Church in action, away out in these little outlying places. One of the brethren in his prayer the other day, thanked the Lord that we were here in the tops of the mountains. We are grateful for that, but this Church is no longer a Church of the tops of the mountains. It is a Church of the plains, it is a Church of the islands of the sea, it is a Church for the world, and everywhere we go where the message of Jesus has been taught, we see the reflection of these truths, and men and women are living them, and are reflecting them in their lives, and that is What we found in the mission field.”
• April 1944 General Conference
  • Missionary Reports
    • “As we listened to these reports, I thought of the great contribution the missionary system has made to the Church. The leaders of the Church—you—we, all of us largely received our schooling through the opportunities afforded in laboring in the mission field. We may not have converted very many people, but we did convert ourselves, and thus the mission field became a school, from which has come the leaders of the Church. It was not only a mission field, but an institution, the results of which we see in evidence today.”
    • “War in and of itself is not a constructive force; it is not an agency that produces righteousness.”
• October 1943 General Conference
  • Many Evidences
    • “We sometimes measure our blessings by a temporal standard. We frequently hear it said that we are blessed in these days more greatly than ever before, measuring our blessings by the temporal things that we have—wages are up, crops are bringing high prices, and there is plenty of money, seemingly, everywhere—but I am not sure that those are the blessings we want to emphasize. I am not sure but what in these blessings there may be great danger. If we, however, can preserve the spirit of sacrifice and the spirit of devotion that have characterized our people, then we need have no fear, because those are the attributes that endure.”
• April 1943 General Conference
  • Standards for the Priesthood
    • “It seems to me the Lord has here set forth the standards by which we should operate in this great Priesthood work, and thinking of the fields as referred to in the revelation and trying to apply them to our own everyday work, I have thought that they might be classified in five divisions.”
    • “It is not a good policy and never has been to say unkind things about other faiths; we are not concerned about that. We are concerned about the faith of our own Church; we are concerned about the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, with all of its virtues, with all of its strength, and in going forth in kindliness, and in charity, and with faith, we may preach the gospel in that spirit.”
• October 1942 General Conference
  • The Power in this Work
    • “It was this, my brethren, it was this attribute that was manifest in Carthage Jail that Stephen A. Douglas never felt. He saw only, but he did not feel. That is one reason why today it is recognized by people around us that there is a bigness in the coming together, as we do here on these occasions of the general conference, but those who do not know as we know do not sense the bigness of this thing. They do not know what it is that impels men to come hundreds of miles in answer to a call such as this. They do not know what it is that impels men in our outlying stakes to give their all, almost, for the benefit of their brethren, to help build up their social life, their physical life, and, above all, their spiritual life. These are the things that men do not realize when they come in our midst. These are the things that men did not realize when they came to Nauvoo, in the days of the Prophet Joseph. They saw merely the external, not the internal; but there is a power here that you and I feel, and we are grateful to God tonight for it, for the testimony that God has given us of the divinity of this work, and I rejoice with you in it with all my heart, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.”
• April 1942 General Conference
  • Helping the Seventies
    • “We have faith in you. We believe in you. We know that many of you, if not most of you, have passed through our organization, and we hope that you will be able to retain an interest in the seventies, that you will help them, and in doing that help us.”
• October 1941 General Conference
  • Following Good Advice
    • “The epistle is an interesting one and all of it is worth our reading, but the point I wish to emphasize is the point that President Young made with Samuel Brannan, that the Saints must be consistent, must be loyal to their trust, but must stand independently and aloof except for the help that they themselves might contribute to a common cause.”
    • “So my brethren and sisters—my time is limited—if I may just say this: if we will DO, we will know of the doctrines. If we will contribute of our energies, and our efforts, we can accomplish much.”

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