Triumphant Through the Air
As a part of his 100th birthday celebration, President Nelson recorded a message. In it he said this: “I am very grateful to know that God has plan for his children that makes it possible for us to return to His holy presence. A mortal birthday is not an endpoint. It is a step in our eternal progression. Central to Heavenly Father’s plan is the atoning sacrifice of His Beloved Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. How I love Him! How grateful I am to know Him! How thankful I am for His redeeming and healing power. How grateful I am for His unfailing love and His generous guidance to me as He leads His Church. My dear brothers and sisters, the length of your life is not as important as the kind of life that you live. For each of us, even for a 100-year-old man, life passes quickly. My prayer is that you will let God prevail in your life. Make covenants with Him. Stay on the covenant path. Prepare to return to live with Him again.” It is fitting that central to this summary of what he has learned in 100 years of living is a testimony of the Savior and his atoning sacrifice. This reminds me of Moroni’s final words in the Book of Mormon. After wandering alone for decades, he finished the book with a testimony of the Savior: “Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God. And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot” (Moroni 10:32-33). Like President Nelson, here at the end of his life Moroni bore witness of the power of Jesus Christ and invited us to come unto Him. There was no more important message that he could leave for us, and there is no more important message that any prophet will give us. Their primary role is to testify of the Savior and invite us to make covenants with Him.
In
Tolstoy’s War and
Peace, the character Andrew Bolkonski fought in the Battle of
Austerlitz in 1805 in the Napoleonic wars. He was Russian fighting against the
French, but he had been an admirer of Napoleon. He was critically wounded in
the battle and left for dead. As he lay there in pain, thinking he was at the
end of his life, his view of the world changed: “Above him there was now
nothing but the sky—the lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably lofty, with
gray clouds gliding slowly across it. ‘How quiet, peaceful, and solemn; not at
all as I ran,’ thought Prince Andrew—'not as we ran, shouting and fighting, not
at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with frightened and angry faces
struggled for the mop: how differently do those clouds glide across that lofty
infinite sky! How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I
am to have found it at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that
infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that.’” Later his hero Napoleon
came by, commenting on him lying there, but Andrew was no longer impressed with
the small man: “His head was burning, he felt himself bleeding to death, and he
saw above him the remote, lofty, and everlasting sky. He knew it was
Napoleon—his hero—but at that moment Napoleon seemed to him such a small,
insignificant creature compared with what was passing now between himself and
that lofty infinite sky with the clouds flying over it. At that moment it meant
nothing to him who might be standing over him, or what was said of him; he was
only glad that people were standing near him and only wished that they would
help him and bring him back to life, which seemed to him so beautiful now that
he had today learned to understand it so differently…. So insignificant at that
moment seemed to him all the interests that engrossed Napoleon, so mean did his
hero himself with his paltry vanity and joy in victory appear, compared to the
lofty, equitable, and kindly sky which he had seen and understood, that he
could not answer him.” Bolkonski was taken by the French on a stretcher, and he
thought of his sister—a firm believer in the Savior—who had given him an icon
of Jesus to wear: “‘It would be good,’ thought Prince Andrew, glancing at the
icon his sister had hung round his neck with such emotion and reverence, ‘it
would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems to Mary. How
good it would be to know where to seek for help in this life, and what to
expect after it beyond the grave! How happy and calm I should be if I could now
say: “Lord, have mercy on me!”... But to whom should I say that? Either to a
Power indefinable, incomprehensible, which I not only cannot address but which
I cannot even express in words—the Great All or Nothing-‘ said he to himself, ‘or
to that God who has been sewn into this amulet by Mary! There is nothing
certain, nothing at all except the unimportance of everything I understand, and
the greatness of something incomprehensible but all-important.’”
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