If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

Preeeeow, world!

In the history of mankind, few indeed have been privileged to see God or hear Him directly. Yet the gifts of the Spirit since the restoration of the gospel have been rich in the Church and exist today among the faithful members of the Church.

My dear young friends, as Samuel was told, for those of you who do not yet know the Lord, to whom the word of the Lord has yet to be revealed, please open your spiritual ears and eyes. Tune your hearts and souls, as I had to do on my old crystal radio. Set your receiver to the exact spot in your soul where the spiritual signals are coming through. In so doing you will be able to perceive the simple, ordinary things of life in a marvelous new light. You will have remarkable spiritual insight.

To do this you will have to pray fervently, with a clean mind and a humble heart. You will need to earnestly try to keep all of the commandments. You will need to be in harmony with the leadership of the Church, from your bishop and stake president to the First Presidency.

If you can learn to hear the whispering of the Spirit and be guided by your spiritual leaders, you will avoid many of the pitfalls and heartaches of the world. You will have a comforting feeling of your great worth as a choice son or daughter of God. To this end I bless you.

Mine is the sure witness that God lives, and that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the world. Of this I testify with all my soul

If I were Satan and I wanted to destroy a society, I think I too would stage a full blown blitz on its women. I would keep them so distraught and distracted that they would never find the calming strength and serenity for which their sex has always been known. He has effectively done that, catching us in the crunch of trying to be superhuman, instead of realistically striving to reach our individual purpose and unique God-given potential.

He tauntingly teases us that if we don't have it all, fame, fortune, families and fun, and have it every minute, all the time, we have been shortchanged, we are second-class citizens in the race of life. You would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to get these messges in today's world.

The impact of women on the Lord's work

Much of the major growth that is coming to the Church in the last days will come because many of the good women of the world (in whom there is often such an inner sense of spirituality) will be drawn to the Church in large numbers. This will happen to the degree that the women of the Church reflect righteousness and articulateness in their lives and to the degree that the women of the Church are seen as distinct and different—in happy ways—from the women of the world. Among the real heroines in the world who will come into the Church are women who are more concerned with being righteous than with being selfish. These real heroines have true humility, which places a higher value on integrity than on visibility. Remember, it is as wrong to do things just to be seen of women as it is to do things to be seen of men. Great women and men are always more anxious to serve than to have dominion.

With so much of sophistry that is passed off as truth, with so much of deception concerning standards and values, with so much of allurement and enticement to take on the slow stain of the world, we have felt to warn and forewarn. In furtherance of this we of the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles now issue a proclamation to the Church and to the world as a declaration and reaffirmation of standards, doctrines, and practices relative to the family which the prophets, seers, and revelators of this church have repeatedly stated throughout its history.

We need women who...

"The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue. We have enough popularity; we need more purity."

You should be the change that you want to see in the world.

What a tragic end to such a gifted beginning! What a pathetic farewell to a life that held such promise! And where did it go wrong? It went wrong when ambition became more important than conviction; when corruption transcended fidelity; when power and wealth created a thirst for material goods that honest living could not satisfy. Could there be sadder words than these from the lips of a BYU-Idaho graduate fifty or sixty or seventy years from today: “Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye. Had I but serv’d my God with half the zeal I serv’d my King [or my company or my country club or my BMW], he would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies.”

For BYU-Idaho students it must be the kingdom of God first and forever. Eternal possessions. The restored gospel. Family and friends. Truth and industry and love. Humility and sacrifice and faith. As you stand on the threshold of your bright and beautiful future, may heaven strip from you this very hour, this very instant, any budding taste you may be acquiring for unseemly wealth or authoritarian power or worldly acclaim. I pray you will always have money sufficient for your needs and I pray you will exert a righteous influence wherever life’s journey takes you in the business and professional world, but I ask you not to be lured by the siren song of avarice and greed, or the quest for unrighteous dominion over your fellow men and women.

Student life and student wages should have already taught you that to be happy you do not need the most expensive car, the most fashionable clothing, nor the most elegant furnishings in your home. Furthermore, in the years ahead, neither your self-esteem nor your standing before God will hinge on being at the top of the corporate pyramid.

Don’t advance yourself through compromise. Don’t feather your nest with what you’ve plucked dishonorably from another. Remember that in the end, surely God will be looking only for clean hands, not full ones.

If we are not serving Jesus, and if he is not in our thoughts and hearts, then the things of the world will draw us instead to them! Moreover, the things of the world need not be sinister in order to be diverting and consuming.

For the serious disciple, the cardinal attributes exemplified by Jesus are not optional. These developmental milestones take the form of traits, traits that mark the trail to be traveled. After all, should not Latter-day Saints have a special interest in what is required to become a Saint, virtue by virtue and quality by quality? Hear the words of King Benjamin:

And becometh a saint . . . submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him. [Mosiah 3:19; emphasis added]

These attributes are eternal and portable! Being portable, to the degree developed, they will go with us through the veil of death, and still later they will rise with us in the Resurrection when all else stays behind. Meanwhile, so much of our time is ironically devoted to learning and marketing perishable skills that will soon become obsolete. It isn't just the morticians who will have a vocational crisis in the next world, brother and sisters.