The Great Gulf

Wilford Woodruff related the following experience, “When I was a boy eleven years old, I had a very interesting dream, part of which was fulfilled to the very letter.  In this dream I saw a great gulf, a place where all the world had to enter at death, before doing which they had to drop their worldly goods.  I saw an aged man with a beaver hat and a broadcloth suit.  The man looked very sorrowful.  I saw him come with something on his back, which he had to drop among the general pile before he could enter the gulf.  I was then but a boy.  A few years after this my father and mother removed to Farmington, and there I saw that man.  I knew him the moment I saw him.  His name was Chauncy Deming.  In a few years afterwards he was taken sick and died.  I attended his funeral.  He was what you may call a miser, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.  When the coffin was being lowered into the grave my dream came to me, and that night his son-in-law found one hundred thousand dollars in a cellar belonging to the old man….  I think of all the inhabitants of the world having to leave their goods when they come to the grave.”  I love that story because of the reminder it gives to us of the futility of placing the things of this world as a central priority in our lives.  We all must seek them to some extent to live in the world, but we must all likewise face this “great gulf” where we drop our worldly goods behind. 

                I don’t think it is by chance that the Book of Mormon—the book for our day—starts out with a story about someone essentially forsaking all worldly goods.  We read in only the second chapter that Lehi “left his house, and the land of his inheritance, and his gold, and his silver, and his precious things, and took nothing with him, save it were his family, and provisions, and tents, and departed into the wilderness” (1 Nephi 2:4).  He did this in order to obey the commandments of the Lord, even though it would cause great hardship and suffering for many years.  To save his life he had to leave behind all of his worldly wealth, of which it appears he had much.  In a day that is saturated with materialism, as Saints we are called upon by the Savior to “forsake the world” (D&C 53:2).  We may not be called upon in the same way to give up our possessions like Lehi, but we certainly are asked to commit to be willing to do so.  I think in our own personal way we will each have to face the invitation of the Savior to the rich young man: “Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.”  When the man was reluctant to accept this life-changing invitation, Christ commented, “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!”  The question I guess we have to ask ourselves is that if the Savior asked something similar of us, would we too be “very sorrowful” (Luke 18:22-24)?  What hold do our possessions have on our heart?  In the story of Lehi, Laman and Lemuel did not appreciate the sacrifice they had been required to make, complaining, “Behold, these many years we have suffered in the wilderness, which time we might have enjoyed our possessions and the land of our inheritance; yea, and we might have been happy” (1 Nephi 17:21).  They never learned that happiness did not come from those possessions, but as their father taught, through choosing “the great Mediator of all men” so He can encircle us “eternally in the arms of his love” (2 Nephi 2:27, 1:15).  With that love in us, we will gladly get rid of our material possessions at the great gulf so we can cross and be “clasped in the arms of Jesus” (Mormon 5:11).