Not Everybody Quotes More Than Scripture
The current prophet at the time, President Joseph Fielding Smith, Jr. was a stoic, good-hearted man, and faithful to the gospel to the core. He was the prophet of the Church when I was born, but he passed away soon into being prophet, so I don’t personally remember him well. What I do know is, he never quoted more than scriptures in his talks.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this approach – many other of the prophets and apostles also did the same, keeping a tight focus as they felt drawn to do.
Others would reach out into the wider world to give quotes where some author or another referenced concepts that were gospel-compatible, and those quotes became part of our Conference talks, thus part of our scripture canon - but a part of the canon that was regularly updated.
President Kimball – Voices of the Past, of the Present, of the Future
The very first Conference talk that did this was President Spencer W. Kimball, before he officially became prophet of the Church, while he was acting President of the Council of the Twelve.
President Kimball was prophet of our Church until I was 16 years old. His raspy, breathy voice (from surgery for throat cancer) was the first prophet’s voice I ever knew, and one I can still hear in my memory.
This talk referenced the many voices of the world and what they say, versus the voice of the Lord speaking to us from scriptures and prophets and what He would say, notably referencing the great difference between the two.
The very first person quoted outside of scripture in General Conference that we have record of was a Unitarian Universalist minister named Jenkin Lloyd Jones.
The Quote
“A prominent columnist wrote of our day: “One thing is certain. We shall be given no centuries for a leisurely and comfortable decay. We have an enemy now—remorseless, crude, brutal and cocky … [who believes] that we are in an advanced state of moral decline … [and] ripening for the kill.” (Jenkin Lloyd Jones, Human Events, November 24, 1961.)”
The Context
During the 1960s and 70s, society experienced an intense societal change, that we often refer to as ‘the Sixties’. President Kimball was well known for standing against those societal changes that made it harder to live the gospel, and he spent a lot of time talking about belief systems in the world and showing how they did not hold up under scrutiny – in that context, he often referenced the Devil, as did many other apostles of the time. Our faith believes the Adversary to be as real a force as God and Jesus Christ, but in the 70s, the Devil got a lot more mentions than he does today. Our focus now is more on Jesus Christ and His atonement.
It’s my guess (only a guess, mind you) that this greater emphasis on focusing our attention on Christ came about ultimately because of technology, and the way it tends to fracture our attention and our thinking. Society was not the same back then as it is now, which is why we need modern prophets and apostles to help us maneuver through changing circumstances. How they spoke about these issues also changes over time.
Jenkin Lloyd Jones
Turns out, Jenkin Lloyd Jones is family to me – he is my 10th cousin, four times removed. He was a Universalist minister and outspoken pacifist, due to his experiences in the Civil War. His nephew, Frank Lloyd Wright, helped him build the Abraham Center, from where he wrote in his magazine The Unity and taught.
I wasn’t able to reference the sermon this quote came from, called Human Nature. But his journal from the Civil War, called An Artileryman’s Diary, is an intriguing read. If you’re interested in the day to day life of a Civil War soldier, this is a good way to step into the shoes of another in history for a moment. Life then was very different than now.
