No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States.

We and God have business with each other. In opening ourselves to his influence, our deepest destiny is fulfilled.

A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour; light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.

I know with all my heart and soul that God lives. I believe He will enlighten our lives with His love for each of us if we strive to be worthy of that love.

In the very year Mr. Emerson gave his Divinity School address implicitly pleading for such, Elder John Taylor, a young English immigrant to this country, was called to be an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, a prophet, a seer, a revelator. In that calling Elder Taylor once said in sympathy with honest seekers of truth: “Whoever heard of true religion without communication with God? To me the thing is the most absurd that the human mind could conceive of. I do not wonder,” said Brother Taylor, “[that] when the people generally reject the principle of present revelation, skepticism and infidelity prevail to such an alarming extent. I do not wonder,” he continued, “that so many men treat religion with contempt, and regard it as something not worth the attention of intelligent beings, for without revelation religion is a mockery and a farce. … The principle of present revelation … is the very foundation of our religion.”

The principle of present revelation? The very foundation of our religion? Let me return from those foundations to the present, the here and now, the 21st century. For one and all—ecclesiastics, historians, and laymen alike—the issue is still the same. Are the heavens open? Does God reveal His will to prophets and apostles as in days of old? That they are and that He does is the unflinching declaration of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to all the world. And in that declaration lies the significance of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, for nearly 200 years now.

Also at issue is Job’s relationship with his dogmatic comforters. While Job could have—and should have—received true comfort from his friends (see Mosiah 18:9), what he received instead was glib explanations about why they think he suffers. Job rejects their pious counsel that he accept his calamities as punishment for sin. To accept their heartless pieties, Job would have to confess that he feels deserving of his afflictions—which he does not, and should not, feel. Instead, he stoutly maintains that, weighed on the scales of justice, his suffering is disproportionate to any sin that could be laid to his charge. (See Job 31:4–40.)

Repeatedly, he cries out for an encounter with the Lord. He doesn’t want theology, he wants theophany. Job begs God to come into the dock so that he might prove his own innocence. (See Job 16:21; Job 23:3–4; Job 31:35.) Job vows to entrust his life into the hands of God, who prefers honesty to hypocrisy: “Let me alone, that I may speak, and let come on me what will. …

“Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.

“He also shall be my salvation: for an hypocrite shall not come before him.” (Job 13:13, 15–16.)

We sense Job’s powerful integrity and genuine depth of feeling for the Lord—qualities seemingly absent from his coldly “correct” friends. Yet we also sense a measure of pride, even arrogance, that he, Job, a mere man, was prosecuting a case against the Almighty. No wonder Job stands condemned by the Lord in the final chapters of the book as one “that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge.” (Job 38:2.)

But while Job is condemned for attempting to instruct the Lord (see Job 40:2), he is also approved in the end. His comforters, by contrast, are only condemned. The Lord says: “My wrath is kindled against thee [Eliphaz], and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.” (Job 42:7.)

How has Job spoken the thing that is right? Perhaps it has been his speeches of repentance. Or perhaps it has been his refusal to pretend he understood what he didn’t understand; he has kept his integrity. He has steadfastly looked to the Lord for answers, pleading for revelation rather than accepting the pat human answers of his comforters.

Job’s example teaches us about the proper relationships between the sufferer and God, as well as between those who would give solace and those who suffer. It is instructive that the Bible clearly focuses on Job’s relationship with God and the comforters, not on his physical suffering. To be sure, Job’s boils remain etched into our memories, but his physical complaints are not the main topic of the long dialogues that make up most of the book. In fact, when Job finally cries out, after abiding seven days and nights in complete silence, he complains not of boils but of betrayal:

“Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul. …

“Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?” (Job 3:20, 23.)

Job’s physical pain is most embittering to him for what it seems to betoken: a violated relationship. Job’s relationship with God remains at issue throughout the ensuing dialogues.

I'm impressed that the book of Job vividly illustrates a teaching from the Lectures on Faith, that if anyone is to endure in faithfulness in his life, he must know three things: that God exists, that he is perfect in his character and in his attributes, and that the course of life which one pursues is pleasing to the Lord. If any one of these elements is missing then the full basis for faith is missing.

Do nothing to mar that moment [when you enter the Lord’s presence]. Do not allow yourselves to be deflected from that straight and narrow path, but seek to arrive at that rendezvous in such a circumstance, spiritually, that you can be drenched with joy and know the touch of those arms, for His arms of mercy and love are extended to you. I certify to you that that rendezvous is a reality. For some of you, it will come soon and some later, but it will come, if you are faithful. Of that, I testify!