…Opposition In All Things

1. …Opposition In All Things www.kevinhinckley.com

2. Gila Academy vs University of Arizona (1912.) It is a great occasion. Many people came tonight who have never been before. Some of the townspeople say basketball is a girl’s game but they came in large numbers tonight. Our court is not quite regulation. We are used to it, our opponents not. I have special luck with my shots tonight and the ball goes through the hoop again and again and the game ends with our High School team the victors against the college team. I am the smallest one and the youngest on the team. I have piled up the most points through the efforts of the whole team protecting me and feeding the ball to me. I am on the shoulders of the big fellows of the Academy. They are parading me around the hall to my consternation and embarrassment. I like basketball. I would rather play this game than eat. Spencer Kimball, 1912 Biography, p. 65

3. The importance of words Elder Cecil Samuelson once attended a fireside meeting with Elder Maxwell in Seoul, Korea. Neal was speaking "a hundred miles an hour, as he always does." A young interpreter was trying very hard to keep up. Neal told a funny story that required several sentences. The translator paused, said about a half dozen words, and the audience roared with laughter. When Elder Samuelson afterward asked the interpreter how he'd handled that, he replied, "I was so far behind and so tired I just said, 'Brothers and sisters, Elder Maxwell just said something very funny. Please laugh.'"

4. Lehi’s choice of words to Laman and Lemuel O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal gulf of misery and woe. arise from the dust, my sons, and be men, and be determined in one mind and in one heart, united in all things, that ye may not come down into captivity; Awake, my sons; put on the armor of righteousness. Shake off the chains with which ye are bound, and come forth out of obscurity, and arise from the dust. Question: How would you describe this “sleep of hell?”

5. President Kimball "[There] are Church members who are steeped in lethargy. They neither drink nor commit the sexual sins. They do not gamble nor rob nor kill. They are good citizens and splendid neighbors, but spiritually speaking they seem to be in a long, deep sleep. They are doing nothing seriously wrong except in their failures to do the right things... To such people as this, the words of Lehi might well apply… (Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, p149) Can we being sleeping and not know it?

6. Lehi continues… And now, Jacob, I speak unto you: Thou art my first-born in the days of my tribulation in the wilderness. And behold, in thy childhood thou hast suffered afflictions and much sorrow, because of the rudeness of thy brethren. Nevertheless, Jacob, my first-born in the wilderness, thou knowest the greatness of God; and he shall consecrate thine afflictions for thy gain.

7. Elder Maxwell We can, if we are obedient, be gentled by afflictions; we can be tamed by afflictions; we can be softened by afflictions; we can be consoled in the midst of afflictions; we can be humbled by them. Wherefore, Ye Must Press Forward, 57 Might we choose to cope with: Afflictions Through Spiritual Sleep?

8. Brother Spencer Condie Father Lehi explained in great detail how this testing is to occur and why it is that Heavenly Father created a plan through which our moral agency, the freedom to choose, can be maximized. Lehi taught his son Jacob: "For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things". He did not forewarn his young son that there might be opposition, or that there could be opposition, or even that there would be opposition. Lehi clearly taught that, in keeping with the very purpose of the plan, there must be opposition. He explained further that this opposition was in all things. Opposition is an inherent, indispensable ingredient in all things. He continued his explanation by teaching that if this were not so, "righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must be a compound in one.“ In Perfect Balance, 1

9. Leo Tolstoy In 1900, Thomas J. Yates, a Mormon student attending Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, had an interesting conversation with the cofounder of that institution, Andrew Dixon White. Dr. White had served as U.S. foreign minister in Russia several years earlier and told Brother Yates of a visit he had had with the famous Count Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy, as you know, is considered by many to be the greatest Russian philosopher, social critic, and novelist of all time. … According to Brother Yates' recollection of what Dr. White told him concerning the exchange with Tolstoy, the great Russian scholar asked Dr. White to tell him about the American religion. Puzzled, Dr. White explained that we don't have an American religion, "that each person is free to belong to the particular church in which he is interested." Tolstoy is reported to have shown a little impatience in replying: "I know all of this. . . . But the Church to which I refer originated in America, and is commonly known as the Mormon Church. What can you tell me of the teachings of the Mormons?" "Well," said Dr. White, "I know very little concerning them. They have an unsavory reputation, they practice polygamy, and are very superstitious." Then Count Leo Tolstoi . . . rebuked the ambassador. "Dr. White, I am greatly surprised and disappointed that a man of your great learning and position should be so ignorant on this important subject. . . . If the people follow the teachings of this Church, nothing can stop their progress--it will be limitless. There have been great movements started in the past but they have died or been modified before they reached maturity." "If Mormonism is able to endure, unmodified, until it reaches the third and fourth generation, it is destined to become the greatest power the world has ever known." [Thomas J. Yates, "Count Tolstoi and the 'American Religion,''' Improvement Era, February 1939, p. 94]

10. Sister Vilate C. Raile, speaking of our pioneer ancestors They cut desire into short lengths And fed it to the hungry fires of tribulation. Long after when the fires had died, Molten gold gleamed in the ashes. They gathered it in bruised palms And handed it to their children And their children's children forever. Quoted in Lawrence Flake’s BYU Address, July 1995