And I Must Obey

In the Official Declaration 1 at the end of the Doctrine and Covenants we have from President Wilford Woodruff some of the teachings he gave around the time the Manifesto ending plural marriage was given. I wrote yesterday about a couple lessons we can learn from his words. There are two other passages which I think are particularly important and relevant for us today. The first is this powerful statement about how God will lead His Church: “The Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as President of this Church to lead you astray. It is not in the programme. It is not in the mind of God. If I were to attempt that, the Lord would remove me out of my place, and so He will any other man who attempts to lead the children of men astray from the oracles of God and from their duty.” That is a fundamental part of our faith as Latter-day Saints—we believe that our prophet, though imperfect and mortal, will not lead us astray. As Joseph Smith said, “I never told you I was perfect—but there is no error in the revelations which I have taught.” There is a humorous saying about Latter-day Saints and Catholics that goes something like this: “Catholics teach that the pope is infallible and nobody believes it; Latter-day Saints teach that the prophet is not infallible and nobody believes it.” Well, we do believe that the prophet speaks for the Lord but he is mortal and fallible like the rest of us. But President Woodruff’s testimony is that we can hold fast to the prophet and leaders of the Church and we will not be led astray, even if they are imperfect people. The Prophet Joseph also said this about the importance of following our prophets and apostles: “I will give you a key that will never rust,—if you will stay with the majority of the Twelve Apostles, and the records of the Church, you will never be led astray.” One thing was clear from President Woodruff’s remarks that we have now recorded in Official Declaration 1: as the prophet he was certain that the Lord wanted the practice of plural marriage to end at that time.

               The other passage from this declaration that I believe is very instructive for us is this one: “But I want to say this: I should have let all the temples go out of our hands; I should have gone to prison myself, and let every other man go there, had not the God of heaven commanded me to do what I did do; and when the hour came that I was commanded to do that, it was all clear to me.” President Woodruff was willing to do whatever it was that the Lord wanted, and that included continuing the practice He had put in place even to the point of losing temples and suffering in prison himself. He was fully committed to doing whatever the Lord wanted. President Woodruff lived by the same principle as the Prophet Joseph: “As my life consisted of activity and unyielding exertions, I made this my rule: When the Lord commands, do it.” There were many good reasons to end the practice, as he outlined in this declaration, but President Woodruff only made the change when he also knew that it was indeed the will of the Lord. His example here is a powerful one for us and we should seek in our own lives to similarly be committed to doing whatever the Lord commands. Nephi was also an example of living by this philosophy, telling his brothers when those commands seemed too hard to follow: “If God had commanded me to do all things I could do them. If he should command me that I should say unto this water, be thou earth, it should be earth; and if I should say it, it would be done” (1 Nephi 17:50). Whether obtaining the plates or building a ship or crossing an ocean, he always had the faith that he could keep the commandments of the Lord. It is fitting that his final words in the Book of Mormon were these: “For what I seal on earth, shall be brought against you at the judgment bar; for thus hath the Lord commanded me, and I must obey” (2 Nephi 33:15). He and Wilford Woodruff were completely committed to obeying the commands of the Lord, and that same attitude is surely crucial for us to stay faithful in these last days.