I’ve probably rambled a really long time here. And I did have a quote here. And in the April 1925 general conference, which is our church-wide meeting that’s held twice a year where we have talks from the leaders of the church and sometimes receive revelation in an instruction.
One of the leaders of the church at the time, Jay Golden Kimball said, “There has never been a time in my life or any period of my life where I felt better spiritually and more willing to do my duty and serve the Lord and labor for his cause and for his interests.”
And Jay Golden Kimball was a colorful man with colorful language and mostly colorful history. And I feel what he said there. I don’t always want to do stuff for other people. I like sitting on the couch and watching television, but I’m making these efforts, like this video, to make myself accessible or to share and to do my part to help God’s message get out there.
I don’t know if anyone’s made it this far in the video, but I would just ask that if you’re a member of the church, just don’t ever stop being every member a missionary. Keep that mindset. And if you’re against the church, I would ask you to just reflect on why you’re against the church and really evaluate those feelings.
And if you still have them, that’s fine. That’s your prerogative. If you want to be rabidly against us or indifferent to us or for us, I don’t care. That’s your journey, your decision. You got to do all that. I can’t tell you do this or else. And if you’re investigating the church, just keep doing it. Keep reading, talk to members, pray, read your scriptures.
There’s three works right there. That there’s nothing bad in them. Nothing in there says, go kill children and adultery and. It’s the same kind of good advice that’s in the Bible, that’s in a lot of other scriptures like the Quran and the various Hindu texts.
It’s a guidebook to a moral compass that has an underlying theme that tells you what you need to do per our beliefs to have salvation, to have peace, to prosper in the life that comes after this. Just read it, look for the answers, pray. I say these things in the name of the son, Jesus Christ. Amen.
We drove 15, 20 minutes to the Plainfield Islamic center and we learned a little about Islam. We just talked about all these differences and then compared them to the United Methodist church’s teachings. And there was something just about all of these people. You have a million people in this faith and a billion people in this faith.
A couple years earlier in 1995 or 1996, the movie, The Craft came out. It’s about four high school-aged women. They are witches. It’s an okay movie. And it’s just been rebooted with a younger cast. So it’s something that had some sort of cultural impact that ler it’s still around. And the internet was this useful tool at the time, but it was nowhere like it is today.
If you’re familiar with Islam, you’ll also see this with the jinn. The jinn were supposed to worship Adam and Eve. They were this little weekend subclass and then there’s a whole mythos there. But with the joy of Satan, they taught that. And if you worshiped Satan, he would help you and he gave us knowledge, and.
I’ll try to pay attention to these in perpetuity
And I’m reading them and I’m reading all of the translated works of Jules Verne. And I get to Around the World in Eighty Days and there’s a chapter where Passepartout is on a train and it’s going through Salt Lake City if I remember correctly.
And it’s like, yes, this makes sense. So I hang out with these people and I say, “Yeah, I’ll come back the next week.” Then they started doing the missionary discussions at their house. And I knew it wouldn’t go over well at home. I’d have to, my mother would be, “What is this? blahblahblah”
You’re going to do what you want to do
And I almost died. I had a hypokalemic event that got my potassium so low. I was able to move my hands about this much and I was paralyzed. And fortunately, I was living with my mother at the time. And as I laid on the floor, I managed to sit up enough in the bed that I rolled out onto the floor and I’m laying like this and like a half ripped pretzel and I’m shouting for help.
And well, my wife’s right here off a camera and she was a member of the Church that served a mission. So when this thing happened on my patriarchal blessing, I was like, these things are crazy, but part of me was, just take the church seriously. So I moved into this new ward. I got the patriarchal blessing within a week, either before or after moving into the ward.
So could be hundreds, could be thousands of people depending on your geographical location and the population density of members of the church. And I gave a much shorter version of this talk there.
Just do what you have to do. Learn about us. Think about us. Reach out on the comments. Or just find me on social media. I’m Ryan Mercer on Instagram. I’m on Twitter. I’m easy to find on Twitter. There’ll be links down below. Look for my ugly mug on Facebook. Send me a message. If it pops up, I’ll read it and try to respond as quickly as I can.
