John H. Taylor

First Council of the Seventy (October 6, 1933 – May 28, 1946)

General Conference Addresses

  • October 1945 General Conference
    • Home
      • “Someday, brethren and sisters, we will all have another home to go to. We are building it as we live our lives on the earth. I trust that we won’t be disappointed in the place that we have chosen for it. If it is to bring us the maximum of happiness and security, and be numbered among the mansions of the Lord, we must build it on a foundation of faith, good works, and obedience to the commandments of the Lord. May we be like unto the wise man who built his house on the rock, and when the rains came and the winds blew, it fell not, because it was founded upon a rock.”
  • April 1945 General Conference
  • October 1944 General Conference
    • What you Do
      • “I wonder whether we are making the necessary effort to prove to the Lord that we not only have faith but also works in honoring and keeping his holy day sacred. Perhaps we need to repent and indicate to our friends that our religion has the vitality in it not only to keep our meetinghouses open, but also to crowd them with our membership because we love the Lord enough to keep His commandments.”
  • April 1944 General Conference
    • Missionary Work
      • “There is another agency that has always been used in missionary work, and that is the foreign missions. We are doing all that we can with the few missionaries who are available. Our ranks are practically depleted as far as the foreign missionaries are concerned. In mission offices we are having lady missionaries to take care of the business part of the work, but in a few months the boys will be back home and taken into the army.”
  • October 1943 General Conference
    • Pioneers
      • “The pioneers measure their success in life by their ability to give to their children a heritage that eventually, if cherished, would lead them back into the presence of God, the Eternal Father.”
      • “As we live our lives, I hope and pray that all of us will not be satisfied to be merely born in the Church. There is no royal road to learning, neither is there a royal road into the presence of God, the Eternal Father. Whether they be our children or somebody else’s children, gaining salvation and attaining God’s kingdom is totally dependent on the type of life each one lives as he spends his time here upon the earth.”
  • April 1943 General Conference
    • The Tabernacle
      • “I grant you that the opportunity of coming into this building is a choice one. Inside this building there are a sacredness, a spirit of worship, and a quietness that reach into the hearts of men and women and in some way go down deep into their souls. It makes them remember the great faith and courage of our pioneers who made it possible to have this building, this block, and this city of ours. However, I am quite sure that many of us forget that the Block is also a sacred spot and that in it there is the spirit of worship, that God is here with us, and that all men and women who come within our gates are blessed and may feel the inspiration of the Lord as they come among us.”
  • October 1942 General Conference
    • Warned and Forewarned
      • “We all know that as far as each one of us is concerned the time comes when for us there is no tomorrow. The Lord has also said that today is the time to repent.”
      • “When the time comes for the summons, to ourselves or to our family, if we have not repented, if we have not done the things that should have been done, the praying comes rather late.”
  • April 1942 General Conference
    • Kindness
      • “I suppose when we do an act of kindness, when we do something for somebody else, which seems to be lost, that all those fine, good things—the kindness and the mercy and the good will and the forgiveness and all the rest of the things that help men and women to be better—keep going until some day they reach somebody who has the proper receiving set, and all the truths and all the worthwhile things that have been said by you, or by anyone else, reach somebody’s heart, just as the words of the guide’s message reached the son’s heart, although the father did not quite understand.”
      • “May we be kind and thoughtful of other men and women, and even though things do not seem to come back to us, or we cannot see the results of them, may we be assured that in some place, somewhere, they are being registered on somebody’s heart.”
  • October 1941 General Conference
    • Temple Square Mission
      • “Among some of the interesting things to the tourists as they visit the Block are the way we handle our young people, both in a religious and a social way ; our Temple work and the conception we have of the justice of God in requiring both the living and dead to do the same things in order to receive the same rewards ; that men and women are able to obtain help and assistance, even though they may be on the other side. To them it is a new and thought-provoking doctrine. They are interested in our conception of marriage and family relationship, both here and hereafter. The doctrine that men and women, if they are faithful and true, may have each other, may have their children, may have their fathers and mothers in the eternities, is startling but satisfying. In speaking to a group one time, mention was made that women might have their husbands on the other side. A woman spoke up and said, “What! No rest in heaven” ? Undoubtedly this lady had not had such a happy married life, but as we talk about the Temple work and its possibilities, I notice that the older people who are in the crowd look at each other and draw a bit closer and one can almost hear them say, “That is what we would like to have happen to us.” And the young couples who are traveling, perhaps on their honeymoon, hold each other’s hand more firmly and one can almost hear them say, “God being willing, we will live this life righteously and have each other forever and ever.””
  • April 1941 General Conference
    • Dreams
      • “There are people who, in order to have the things that they want, assume that they are dreaming, and that these dreams are coming from God. It is only a way of disregarding the word of the Lord, and doing the things that they want to do, whether they be right or whether they be contrary to the word of the Lord.”
      • “We may say we love God, but if we haven’t the strength, the faith or the courage to make sacrifices for the truth, then surely we are not loving God as we should love Him.”
  • October 1940 General Conference
    • Prove All Things
      • “The Lord in His mercy gives to us a testimony and demonstrates it to us in such a conclusive way that we know that we do have a basic religious truth for our testimony. For example, we know and we testify individually and collectively that God is a personal being and that we are made in His image. If our experiences and investigations, and His inspiration to us have proved this to be a basic truth, we should hold fast to it because it is good.”
  • April 1940 General Conference
    • Assigning Missionaries
      • “At home we send out missionary calls all over the Church only knowing in a small way the disappointment that sometimes comes to the missionary and the parents when they find that he has been assigned to a mission field different from the one most desired. But with good courage and faith in the work, they do not ask for a change.”
  • April 1939 General Conference
    • Opportunities Given the Saints
      • “We are given the Priesthood so that we might act in the name of the Lord, and perform services for him to benefit and help our brothers and sisters in the Church. If we are only going to hold the Priesthood because it is offered to us, or because we have arrived at a certain age, I am sure that it is not very valuable to us.”
      • “I am convinced that the Lord did not intend that we should have the Priesthood just to hold, but that he expects us to function honorably and progressively in this Priesthood.”
  • April 1938 General Conference
    • Missionary Work
      • “Before any punishment has been meted out to a people because of their disobedience or their lack of faithfulness, the Lord, in sending his servants to preach and teach among the people, has always given them an opportunity of repenting of their sins and of coming back to him.”
      • “While we have no hope of getting everybody that we contact to come into the Church, we do have the hope, the prayer and the desire to acquaint them with the Gospel of Jesus Christ so that if they move away they can carry with them a correct knowledge and understanding of why we worship God and a correct conception of our religion.”
  • October 1937 General Conference
    • Scriptural Criticism
      • “I can see no objection to analyzing the scripture in a way that will help people understand some of its statements. But we should be careful that we do not go to the extreme in our Church that other men and women have gone in this analysis, stressing words and losing the spirit of the message.”
      • “My thought in mentioning these matters is that we have so many things in the Church that are established by the word of the Lord and that are plain and easy to be understood under the Spirit and inspiration of the Lord, and when we try to complicate these things or the doctrines and principles in the Church, we only confuse the minds of men and women and help to destroy the very thing we are trying to build up in the hearts of these people. I know we have to study, we have to be up-to-date, we have to progress, we must not be static. But why discourage people unnecessarily in their faith in the scriptures and their faith in their leaders?”
  • April 1937 General Conference
    • Being Devoted
      • “There were two things that interested me particularly while in the mission field. The first was the integrity and the good spirit manifested by the Saints in trying to do what they could in preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They are interested in having the message go to other people, and they give of their time, and their energy, and their money, in order that they may be helpful in the progress of the Lord’s work here upon the earth.”
      • “Even in our day, with the four standard works of the Church, we are not successful in our worship of the Lord, without our prophets, seers and revelators to receive inspiration and revelation from God day by day, in order that we may constantly know the Lord’s mind and will concerning us.”
  • October 1936 General Conference
    • The Two Great Commandments
      • “You will notice that the two commandments which I have quoted commence with the affirmative, “Thou shalt.” There are people who feel that the Lord is behind the times educationally when he uses the negative form “Thou shalt not” in some of the commandments, so to bring the Ten Commandments up to date they want to reword them, or at least feel obliged to apologize when they quote the ones that are stated in the negative.”
      • “I can understand why some people outside the Church desire to change and make constant explanations about the negative form of some of the Ten Commandments but it is hard to understand why any of us belonging to the Church should want to modify or think it necessary to reword the Ten Commandments so that the phrase “Thou shalt not” will be eliminated. I hope that we shall have the good sense, the propriety, and the faith to retain the thought and the wording as it came from God.”
  • April 1936 General Conference
    • The Sabbath
      • “When we get to looking at it from every angle we find we are losing out by using such arguments. The attitude that if we do a few things that are right on the Sabbath day it makes the others all right only confuses the question and hurts us. Such an attitude places no restriction on what we as a people shall do on the Sabbath provided we have been to meeting.”
      • “To me it seems that attending the sacrament meeting is one thing that the Latter-day Saints should do if they shall in any way feel that they are worshipping God Almighty on the Sabbath day and are remembering the day to keep it holy. This thing we can do, and there is no argument, there is no reason, there is no way of getting away from this commandment. In order to do one thing in the worship of God “with a broken heart and a contrite spirit” we ought to attend our sacrament meeting.”
  • October 1935 General Conference
    • The Simple Ways
      • “The ways of the Lord. are those of simplicity. They are effective because of the intelligence, wisdom, and love back of them.”
      • “Our only safety, when it comes to the revealed laws and words of God, is to hold to that type of perfect faith that President Grant had as a young man. If we do not, and if we are not capable of developing that degree of faith, eventually we will lose our faith in the revelations of God.”
      • “Correctness of doctrine and spirituality are our safeguards. They are absolutely necessary if we shall make progress and maintain our faith in the revealed principles of the Gospel.”
  • April 1935 General Conference
    • Missionaries Should Prepare
      • “It is true that our Heavenly Father blesses us and guides us and protects us, but it always seems to me that our Heavenly Father can be relied upon to protect and help us more if we do our part in protecting ourselves. When missionaries are careless and do not give proper care to their bodies, I am sure that they cannot be protected in the same way or to the degree that missionaries can who are careful and live according to the commandments of the Lord.”
      • “We desire them to equip themselves spiritually, because without the Spirit of the Lord and a knowledge of the Gospel they hamper themselves and they hamper the work. The reason that missionaries receive a testimony so rapidly in the missionary field is because they devote their time, their energy, their thoughts and their prayers to finding out about God and his work, and doing the things that God wants them to do. And when they do that they receive, almost instantly, a testimony of the divinity of this great work.”
  • October 1934 General Conference
    • Treasure the Scriptures
      • “At times it seems to me that because of the many scriptures available, they have become very common to us. When problems of life come before us we are prone to look to other sources for comfort, knowledge, and instruction, rather than going to the word of the Lord, where we might be guided rightly in the things that he wants us to do.”
      • “Nowadays we are getting away from that. It is not the custom to read the word of the Lord, and while we may find testimony, I believe that testimony would come quicker if we would be firmer in the foundation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ ; if we would be frequent readers of God’s word to us, and really believe the things which he has said and does say to us.”
      • “If we will not show the signs of humility and of repentance, and a desire to know, we can not understand the things which are written in these books for us.”
  • April 1934 General Conference
    • Follow the Brethren
      • “In these days of indecision, uncertainty, and confusion concerning the things that have to do with the economic life of the country, concerning education and science, it is not remarkable that men’s hearts begin to fail them when they stop to consider the question of religion. It seems as though men are running to and fro, trying to find their way out, but because of the darkness it is more difficult than they anticipated to get into the sunshine again.”
      • “One thing essential to the faith of the people is confidence in the leadership of the Church, in God’s servants whom he has chosen to lead and direct his people. I say that unless we have that confidence and the determination to follow our leaders and accept their guidance and counsel, our faith will grow weaker, we will not have the strength to stand and do the things which God would have us do.”
      • “I think I would be the most miserable of men if I had to sit in an audience and continually decide whether the leaders of my Church were speaking by the gift and power of God or whether they were speaking of themselves. I have found in my experience that when I have followed the counsel and instruction given to me by my leaders, even though I could not understand the thing at the time, I have always come out better in the end, and God has blessed me because I have given my allegiance and confidence to the men who have a right to guide and direct me in the affairs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
  • October 1933 General Conference
    • Grateful for Family
      • “I have a testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. From my youth up I have been taught concerning the Gospel, and while I didn’t understand the full import of the Gospel message when I was young, because if the teachings of my father and mother I was able to hold to the Church and gradually find out for myself about the divine work in which we are engaged at the present time.”
      • “Sometimes I think that we men think that we have accomplished great things because of ourselves, but I can bear testimony that the good things that I may have in my life, and the good things that I may have done, have been helped and encouraged by my mother and by my wife. Surely we are all grateful when we are thus blessed and helped in our work.”

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