Alvin R. Dyer – Gospel Study

Alvin R. Dyer

Counselor in the First Presidency (April 6, 1968 – January 18, 1970)
Apostle (October 5, 1967 – March 6, 1977, but never sustained as one of the Twelve)
First Quorum of the Seventy (October 1, 1976 – March 6, 1977)
Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (October 11, 1958 – October 5, 1967; January 18, 1970 – October 1, 1976)

General Conference Addresses

April 1972 General Conference
- The Last Dispensation
  - “In working out the plan of life and salvation down through the stream of time, men have developed among themselves periods of obedience to God’s holy laws and, on the other hand, periods of rebellion against these same laws.”
  - “For it is in the culture of freedom and the use of agency in that freedom that men come to know the difference between good and evil. This progress leads to yearnings in the hearts of good men, and eventually to gospel dispensations. This is the pattern to be noted down through the era of the historical writings.”
October 1971 General Conference
- The Nobility of Man in Choosing Good Over Evil
  - “Formulas for living—how to attain a peaceful world civilization—are common today, as exponents of opposing ideologies hurl their challenges. Men are constantly seeking for an answer to an easier and better way of life.”
  - “There is weakness in the thought that one can indulge heavily in both evil and good things at the same time.”
  - “Man is the sum result of what he thinks and does. Habit is the instrument that molds his character and makes of him essentially what he is. Habit can become a monster to tarnish and destroy, yet proper behavioral traits can bring lasting joy and achievement. To say no at the right time and then stand by it is the first element of success.”
  - “The practice of restraint is a necessary attribute of every gentle and good man. Women without it become coarse and unrefined. To curb the appetites and passions, to screen wisely the thoughts that are permitted to enter our minds, to avoid the habit that does not produce the spiritual and abundant life, are experiences of life to be concerned with if the crown of achievement and the nobility of good character are to be possessed.”
April 1971 General Conference
- Ye Shall Not Fear
  - “The turbulent and awesome conditions of the last days of mortal existence, some of which we now observe, have been spoken of by many of the prophets.”
  - “Ye shall not fear, for as the Lord said upon another occasion, the gathering and the faithfulness of the Saints is for a refuge against the awesome conditions which we must face. The Lord has given to us the pattern in all things, that we may not be deceived, for Satan is abroad in the land and he goeth forth deceiving the nations.”
October 1970 General Conference
- Blessed Are the Meek
  - “Concerning the inheriting of the earth by the meek, this no doubt has reference to its condition after it has received its regenerated glory unto that of a celestial glory.”
  - “I believe there is perhaps a distinction between humility and meekness. It may be said that meekness is a condition of voluntary humility.”
  - “It is the good and honest of heart among the people of the world who most readily respond to the message of the Restoration as declared by the missionaries who bring it to them. And these who are truly spiritually converted become and are the more faithful of the Latter-day Saints.”
  - “The course of the true Latter-day Saint is to nurture and live by that truth which we accept, casting aside the extraneous things that can only mar and distort the simple effectiveness of the gospel.”
April 1970 General Conference
- The Last Dispensation
  - “Each of the declarations which the Lord made to the Prophet Joseph Smith in the Sacred Grove has far-reaching meaning and is to have full effect upon the plan of salvation in this final dispensation of the gospel. The answers which the Lord gave were not a disparagement of the existing Christian bodies who had departed from the truth, though, as announced by him, they were all wrong in teachings and practices intended to redeem mankind. There was no vindictive reprisal announced by the Lord against Christian societies who were using his name, some no doubt sincerely, but who were fully unaware of the truth of his person and real mission pertaining to the plan of salvation as contained in his gospel.”
  - “The appearance of God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ to Joseph Smith, while giving answer to his simple faith and prayer, proved to be of far greater significance than that which he could possibly have anticipated, for the time had come to usher in the final period of preparation in the culmination of God’s work for his children here upon the earth. Joseph Smith was chosen and had been foreordained to be a prophet and instrument through whom God would establish his kingdom here upon the earth as it had been in former intermittent dispensations. But this final one was to be characterized by even greater truth, for it is the dispensation of the fulness of times. It is the depository period when all truths, all laws, all covenants, all promises made by God our Heavenly Father in the premortal period of earth-life preparation, and revealed in part to man at various times in mortality for the redemption and glorification of his spirit children, are now to be fully revealed and made available to mankind. The Lord had thus spoken unto the Prophet Joseph Smith.”
  - “Human behavior can be noble and lofty, following the patterns which God has given us, but when these patterns are mutated by perspectives of evil that are aimed at the destruction of the fundamental right of agency and spiritual freedom, the result will be as it ever has been, that of decay and retrogression.”
October 1969 General Conference
- Repentance
  - “The need of adherence to the principle of repentance has been reiterated many, many times in the history of mankind, and when man has earnestly and sincerely sought the will of God, he has responded to this principle of personal salvation.”
  - “Repentance is a principle of eternal growth for the individual and is, therefore, a basic principle of our Christian faith, as declared in the fourth Article of Faith.”
  - “It can be a crucial misfortune to any man who fails to recognize the difference between right and wrong. But when he does recognize this difference and brings his own life into harmony with that knowledge through repentance, he attains conviction and power in many ways.”
  - “Repentance, as an eternal law, is not confined to conversion. Its use and application is broader than that. It is a principle of eternal progression. After faith, repentance, and baptism, which are first principles, repentance leads the way to many regenerations, without which the soul shall never reach perfection.”
  - “As sin is looked upon, we are led to conclude that not until man is humbled, not until the heart throbs with genuine sorrow for repeated violations of God’s holy laws, not until the citadel of sin is surrendered, can man hope for forgiveness or expect exaltation.”
  - “There is nothing wrong with an individual that faith and repentance will not cure.”
April 1969 General Conference
- The Precepts of Men
  - “The divine declaration, which gives unto man the right of moral agency as once declared—”Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil” (Gen. 3:22)—has come under question, and man is seeking by the concepts of men to destroy moral agency by creating what they have chosen to call the “new morality.” If we accept the evil doctrines of slanted educational programs, we will witness a breakdown of morals that could bring about a depraved new social order.”
  - “The “new morality” requires that young people solve their own sex problems without the help of teachers or parents. What is moral and what is not moral, or whether morality is involved at all, is to be decided by the student. The most surprising and devastating of all is the effort that is being made to isolate sex education as being completely devoid of moral responsibility, fear, inhibitions, and emotional restraints.”
  - “Moving forward under the umbrella of the “new morality” is sensitivity training, which, as a tool to shape human behavior, can be, and is, used to ends that are inconsistent with gospel principles. Certain methods of sensitivity training develop a form of induced hysteria, meant to break down morals, manners, and the traditions of civility. Such approaches can do infinite harm, especially to young people.”
  - “The greatest gift from God unto his children is that of personal agency. It is the foundation of spiritual culture, the principle upon which our Constitution was founded, and is the underlying obligation of our school system to maintain, yet we see it being jeopardized in the teaching methods of sensitivity training.”
  - “If we are to safeguard our children against the evils of the day, we must walk in paths of righteousness and keep close to that way of life found in the pattern of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
October 1968 General Conference
- The Destiny of America
  - “America of today will need to learn the lesson, as did our Founding Fathers, that freedom must be sought after with courage and sacrifice, and that she cannot maintain it at home or convey it unto others, unless this type of pursuit is involved.”
  - “I have a firm conviction that the true destiny of America is religious, not political; it is spiritual, not physical.”
  - “America as Zion will not fail. Since America is the land choice above all other lands, and it is in the “Center Place” that Zion will be established, it will not fail.”
  - “America as Zion will not fail, not simply because it is the land of our illustrious independence and constitutional fathers, but because it is the land of Joseph, the son of Jacob, and has been so established by God’s covenant. It is the land for the gathering of Israel in the culminating period of the last dispensation, which God has established through the Prophet Joseph Smith.”
April 1968 General Conference
- The Rebirths of Life
  - “Being born again is an essential part of conversion to the gospel, as Jesus instructed Nicodemus. Men, in a similar way, perhaps with less portent, have many rebirths in different ways in the course of a mortal lifetime. Usually these are associated with important events or near tragedies. But being born again is part of regeneration in the changing vicissitudes of life.”
  - “I often feel a remorse in the thought that I might not have thought well of men—and also perchance they have not thought well of me. There are some issues that men pursue to which I am opposed, but I try not to have adverse feelings toward the men who pursue them.”
October 1967 General Conference
- Semaphores of Life
  - “But it matters not as to its entirety, for I am committed to serve the president of the High Priesthood, whom we call the President of the Church. He is the one declared by the Lord to be like unto Moses, to preside over the whole Church and there is only one appointed to this high and holy position upon the earth at one time. I know with all my soul that President McKay is that servant of God upon the earth today.”
  - “May joy and happiness continue as a possession of those who love and are obedient to the gospel, and may the gospel be the hope and the opening of the door of light to the honest in heart who seek its golden truths the world over, that they may be thus numbered with the children of our Heavenly Father in this great latter-day work.”
April 1967 General Conference
- The Carnal Mind is Enmity Against God
  - “Mortal existence is such that man must give concern to material progress, but since he has been given, by divine right, dominion over all things upon the earth, all material things can be made to serve him. But, as to carnal things, God has given man a special warning, with the commandment to cultivate the attributes of spirituality and intelligence, the opposites of carnalism.”
  - “Man’s spiritual decay in the face of material advancement, the evidence of which surrounds us, must then be attributed to intensive drifts to carnalism.”
  - “When we “water down” or compromise standards, we weaken our personal selves, and our chances of true happiness grow less and less as each sliding step is taken downward.”
  - “To be truly happy, our thoughts and deeds must be on the side of good, not evil. When men love darkness rather than light, their deeds are evil.”
  - “I love the restored Church of Jesus Christ, because I know it helps me to be a better person. I cannot say how good I am, but I know that without the gospel I would be less good. Like all men, I have inherent weaknesses, and if yielded to, they could take me down to sin and carnal-mindedness; but this will never happen so long as I magnify the priesthood that I bear and stay close to the Church and its gospel influences. And so it is with all men. To know and love the truth is to be free.”
October 1966 General Conference
- Conference: Feast of the Saints
  - “The camel trains of that time had no difficulty in traveling that distance in 11 days, and yet it had taken Israel 40 years. I have often thought that in our own way of life, in our own problems, many times we take the long way, instead of the short way, in accordance with the laws and commandments of our Heavenly Father.”
April 1966 General Conference
- Man’s Eternal Destiny
  - “What of Christ today? Nearly 2,000 years have passed since his glorification. Men ignore the purpose and the meaning of existence for which he gave his life, yet will give credence to the exhumed doctrines of the madman Nietzsche and the immoralist Plato, who taught that God is dead and that man drifts in an endless nothingness, that mankind generally has no spiritual contact with God the Father and his glorified Son.”
  - “Without divine communication man stands confused about his own existence. He is faced with many conflicting concepts of the meaning of life and of his destiny, or no meaning and destiny at all! To find the way to an understanding of himself, man must, as a beginning, rely upon normal innate instincts. This inner force is personal; it is instinctive. But he must be consciously aware of what this power can do for him as he responds to the forces of good and the teachings of truth for which the Christ sacrificed his life.”
October 1965 General Conference
- The Laws of Man and God
  - “Unfortunately, however, man is not willing to accept all of the revelations from God. And often, as we have observed with regard to physical or natural laws, man assumes a position of selection as to which of the laws of God he will obey.”
April 1965 General Conference
- False Loyalty
  - “Honor is the principle of power that must weigh in the balance all opposing principles of indulgence contrary to the will of God and the spirit of the priesthood.”
  - “Seeds sown in honor spring forth to become jewels of eternity, while seeds sown in dishonor for whatever purpose decay and die in the corrupted soil where they are sown.”
  - “When honor and integrity are sacrificed to gain some cheap and fanciful end, a change takes place within the inner structure of the individual.”
  - “What I am suggesting here is that basically and inherently a man cannot be both evil and good; he cannot, as the Lord has said, serve two masters. Any attempt at double-mindedness can produce but one thing, and that is instability.”
April 1964 General Conference
- Conviction—A Need of Today
  - “There is necessity for a changed attitude in recognizing the difference between right and wrong. If we cannot recognize this difference, then we cannot know what to repent of.”
  - “The agency of man is not a power to be left dormant or itself to be moved upon solely by exterior forces for good or evil. Man, if we understand the true meaning and purpose of agency, is to be an agent unto himself, assuming the prerogative of acting as a result of his own volition.”
  - “There should be no discrimination against that man or woman who may have done wrong in his or her life. Wrong as it may be, unless it is the unpardonable sin, is not always the tragedy. The real tragedy is when one fails to rise above a weakness—to expose that weakness to the light so that emotional stress and the dishonor of sin may be banished forever. The unhappiest people in the world are those who try to hide their sins and then stubbornly will not repent and forsake their ways of wrong.”
October 1963 General Conference
- We Believe in Being Honest
  - “Well might we ask ourselves this question at this crucial time, “What is it that produces moral and physical dishonesty in the lives of people?” The facts that have been reported here refer to overt acts of moral dishonesty, in a supposedly noncriminal cross section of the people. Can we possibly believe that any act of such dishonesty is born as of that minute when the act is committed? This cannot be true, for it goes back even to childhood where little traits of dishonesty go undetected. I once heard a father jokingly tell of how his little son was always able to find loose change around the house. Perhaps the urge to take something that does not belong to an employee can be traced back to the lack of respect which adolescents have for the property of others, even members of their own families.”
  - “Generally speaking, moral dishonesty tends towards insincerity and hypocrisy. These three are evil companions and can destroy the majesty of the will, nullifying the power of agency. Nothing displeases the Master more than hypocrisy.”
April 1963 General Conference
- A New Dispensation
  - “They not only worship through the utterances of their lips, but by their hearts also; this will mean complete sincerity of purpose and intent based upon truth. We will be bound family to family; we will be linked one with another by the sealing authority which the Prophet Elijah held, reaching to the very realms of the family of God and his Son Jesus Christ. There all shall be bound forever by lips or stated committed purpose; and bound by heart also, thus manifesting obedience to God’s will and purpose in glorious family relationship.”
October 1962 General Conference
- Three Challenges
  - “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stands poised on the threshold of its greatest hour. Regardless of the many accomplishments of the past, and there have been many, its greatest challenge is ahead. We must believe this and adjust to it.”
  - “It is not enough to keep the commandments of commission only, as Jesus clarified, for if one is to find the real meaning of a successful life and to understand fully the message of Jesus Christ, there must be service given unto others.”
April 1962 General Conference
- Each Member to Convey Gospel
  - “For the purpose of awakening interest in the hearts of people, we have learned that nearly all converts to the Church today sense that the gospel message is true the first time they heard it proclaimed by the missionaries.”
  - “Our obligation is to convey the message of the gospel unto the people of the world. This means our neighbor, as well as those who are afar off.”
October 1961 General Conference
- Accomplish the Work of the Lord
  - “We are living in a tremendous age, my brethren and sisters. It is a day of great progress, of change, of rapid advance. The very structure of our civilization, social, political, commercial, moral, and religious is greatly affected by that which persists before our eyes this day. There can be no question that a new era has dawned upon our planet. Means of travel, trade, association, and intercommunication between countries even comparatively unknown, is before us. But while in almost every field of science, every art is being developed while the mind is awakened to new thought, yet religious knowledge in the world is at a standstill. The creed of the fathers cast in the mold of other ages shows no progress to match the onward strides of man.”
October 1960 General Conference
- A Fulfilment of Prophecy
  - “One of the instructions that the First Presidency gave to me was to go into all of the lands of Europe, to go into every mission, and I think it was President Moyle who said to me that I might well go to the French Mission first. We heeded this counsel, and with my good wife I went into the land of France and in association with President and Sister Brossard, spent some three weeks there last February—a land where ninety-two percent of the population belong to the Catholic Church. We found our splendid missionaries responsive to motivation and a new method of contacting the people and teaching them by the power of the Spirit and testimony.”
  - “Every Latter-day Saint desires to be a missionary. I think that this is in the heart of almost every member; but why is it, my brethren and my sisters, that we are so afraid to bear our testimonies to our neighbors?”
October 1959 General Conference
- Reviewing the Revelations
  - “One of the great distinguishing characteristics of the Latter-day Saint people is that they are governed by revelations from God, and whether people come into our midst, or whether we go out into the world, this characteristic remains a distinguishing factor.”
  - “I have mentioned these things, my brethren and sisters, only in reflection to bring it down to us today. Can we say, with regard to revelation, in a similar sense, that those who fail in the Church today to accept and live fully the revelations given are somewhat rebellious perhaps not in the same antagonistic manner which was manifest in the early days, but nevertheless rebel within themselves against the word of the Lord. There are some who perhaps sense the great value of these God-given truths, yet fail in their appropriation. They will not let go for fear of losing something greatly worthwhile, but still hold back when it comes to fully accepting the revelations from God.”
April 1959 General Conference
- The Need for Inspired Leadership
  - “Is there a need for a prophet of God? The answer is yes. Look at the evidences of this. The world of politics and relationships between nations is not improving since that statement was made, in fact they have grown worse. There is a worldwide lack of trust between peoples. We stand each dawn, as it were, on the brink of open hostilities.”
October 1958 General Conference
- Be Not Weary in Well-doing
  - “I have a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that it is true.”
  - “I know with every fiber of my being that Jesus Christ is a reality; that he is the Son of God; that he is divine; that he is not an ethereal substance; that he is a glorified resurrected Being, as he is proclaimed to be by the Prophet Joseph Smith.”

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