Elder Jeffrey R. Holland - Lessons from Liberty Jail

Thank You president very much my dear beloved young friends it is a thrill for sister Hollen and for me to be with you tonight for this worldwide satellite broadcast it's always a thrill to be in the Marriott center I wish it were possible for us to be in each of your individual locations seeing you personally and able to shake your hands we haven't figured out a way to do that yet but we send our love and greeting to all of you wherever you are in the world in spite of the vastness of our global audience we hope all of you are individually able to feel the love we have for you tonight and that each of you can gain something from our message that is applicable in your personal lives one of the great blessings of our assignments as General Authorities is the chance to visit members of the church in various locations around the world and to glean from the history that our members have experienced across the globe in that spirit I wish to share with you tonight some feelings that came to me during a church assignment I had last spring when I was assigned to visit the Platte City stake in western Missouri here in the United States the Platte City Missouri stake lies adjacent to the Liberty Missouri stake now a very famous location in church history encompassing several important church history sites including the ironically named Liberty jail from your study of church history you will all know something of the experience the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brethren had while imprisoned in that facility during the winter of 1838 39 this was a terribly difficult time in our history for the church generally and certainly for the Prophet Joseph himself who bore the brunt of the persecution in that period indeed I dare say that until his martyrdom five and a half years later there was no more burdensome time in Joseph's life than this cruel illegal and unjustified incarceration in Liberty jail time does not permit a detailed discussion of the experiences which led up to this moment in church history but suffice it to say that problems of various kinds had been building ever since the Prophet Joseph had received a revelation in July of 1831 designating Missouri is the place consecrated for the gathering of the Saints and the building up of the city of Zion by October of 1838 all-out war seemed inevitable between Mormon and non Mormon forces confronting each other over these issues after being driven from several of the counties in the western part of that state and under the presumption they had been invited to discuss ways of defusing the volatile situation that had developed five leaders of the church including the Prophet Joseph marching under a flag of truce approached the camp of the Missouri militia near the small settlement of Far West located in Caldwell County as it turned out the flag of truce was meaningless and the church leaders were immediately put in Chains and placed under heavy guard the morning after this arrest two more latter-day Saint leaders including the prophets brother Hyrum were taken prisoner making a total of seven in captivity injustice swiftly moved forward toward potential tragedy when a military court convened by officers of that militia ordered that Joseph Smith and the six other prisoners all be taken to the public square at Farwest and summarily shot to his eternal credit Brigadier General Alexander doniphon an officer in the Missouri forces boldly and courageously refused to carry out the ANU inhumane unjustifiable order in a daring stand that could have brought him his own court-martial he cried out against the commanding officer it is cold-blooded murder I will not obey your order and if you execute these men I will hold you responsible before an earthly tribunal so help me God in showing such courage and integrity doniphon not only saved the lives of these seven men but endeared himself forever to latter-day saints in every generation well their execution averted these seven church leaders were marched on foot from far west to independence than from Independence to Richmond parley P Pratt was remanded to nearby Daviess County for trial there and the other six prisoners including Joseph and Hyrum were sent to Liberty the county seat of neighboring Clay County to await trial there the next spring they arrived in Liberty on December 1st 1838 just as winter was coming on the jail one of the few and certainly one of the more forbidding such structures in that region was considered escape proof and it probably was it had two stories the top or main floor accessible to the outside world only by a single small heavy door in the middle of that floor was a trap door through which prisoners were then lowered into the lower floor or dungeon the outside walls of the prison were of rough hewn limestone two feet thick and an inside wall of 12-inch oak logs these two walls separated by a 12-inch space filled with loose rock combined these walls made a formidable virtually impenetrable barrier four feet thick in the dungeon the Florida ceiling height was barely six feet and in as much as some of the men including the Prophet Joseph were over six feet tall this meant that when standing they were constantly in a stooped position and when lying it was mostly upon the rough bare stones of the prison floor covered here and there by a bit of loose dirty straw or an occasional dirty straw mat the food given to the prisoners was coarse and sometimes contaminated so filthy one of them said they could not eat it until driven to it by sheer hunger on as many as four occasions they had poison administered to them in their food making them so violently ill that for days they alternated between vomiting and a kind of delirium not really caring whether they lived or died in the Prophet Joseph letters he spoke of the jail being a Hell surrounded with demons where we are compelled to hear nothing but blasphemer those blasphemous holes and witnesses scene of blasphemy drunkenness hypocrisy and debauchery zuv every description we have not blankets to keep us warm he said and when we have a fire we are engulfed in constant smoke our souls have been bowed down and our nerves tremble from long confinement pan or tongue or angels Joseph wrote could not adequately describe the malice of Hell that we have suffered here and all of this during what by some accounts was considered then the coldest winter on record in the state of Missouri it's not my purpose to make this a speech about the sorrow and difficulty these men confronted in Liberty jail so let me put a few photos on the screen I apologize that not all in this very large crowd will be able to see them and conclude this little introductory portion of my message I promise I have something else in mind to say here's a photo of the jail pretty much as it stood at the time Joseph and his brethren were incarcerated there here's a photo taken some years later when officers and historians from the church visited the location I'm not sure with that fellow on top whether he's trying to get out or get in here is a cross-section of the church's reconstruction of the prison which can now be seen at our visitor center there note the two-story arrangement with a rope and bucket the only link between the dungeon and the upper floor here's a painting by Liz Lemon Swindell showing Joseph in prayer note the forlorn longing look on Joseph's face and here's a portrayal by Greg Olson showing how Joseph may have written some of the revelations that came during this imprisonment and this is my final photo which leads me to the real message I have come to give tonight most of us most of the time speak of the facility at Liberty as a jail or a prison and certainly it was that but elder Brigham H Roberts in recording the history of the church spoke of the facility as a temple or more accurately a prison temple elder Neal a Maxwell used the same phrasing in some of his writings certainly it lacked the purity the beauty the comfort and cleanliness of this kind of temple our true temples are dedicated temples the speech and behavior of the guards and criminals who came there was anything but temple like in fact the restricting brutality in injustice of this experience at Liberty would make it seem the very antithesis of the liberating merciful spirit of our temples and the ordinances that are performed in them so in what sense could Liberty jail be called a temple or at least a kind of temple in the development of Joseph Smith personally and in his role as a prophet and what does such a title tell us about God's love and teachings including where and when that love and those teachings are made manifest as we think on these things does it strike us that spiritual experience revelatory experience sacred experience can come to every one of us in all the many and varied stages and circumstances if our lives if we want it if we hold on and pray on if we keep our faith strong through our difficulties we love and cherish our dedicated temples and the essential exalting ordinances that are performed there we thank heaven and the presiding brethren that more and more of them are being built giving more and more of us greater access to them they're truly the holiest most sacred structures in the kingdom of God to which we all ought to go as wordly and as often as possible but tonight's message is that when you have to you can have sacred revelatory profoundly instructive experience with the Lord in any situation you are in indeed let me say that even a little stronger you can have sacred revelatory profoundly instructive experience with the Lord in the most miserable experiences of your life in the worst settings while enduring the most painful in Justices when facing the most insurmountable odds and opposition you have ever faced now let's talk about those propositions for a moment every one of us in one way or another greater small dramatic or incidental are going to spend a little time in Liberty jail spiritually speaking we will face things we do not want to face for reasons that may not have been our fault indeed we may face difficult circumstances for reasons that were absolutely right and proper reasons that came because we were trying to keep the commandments of the Lord we may face persecution we may endure heartache and separation from loved ones we may be hungry and cold and forlorn yes before our lives are over we may all be given a little taste of what the prophets faced often in their lives but the lessons of the winter of 1838 39 teach us that every experience can become a redemptive experience if we remain bonded to our Father in heaven through that difficulty these difficult lessons teach us that man's extremity is God's opportunity and if we will be humble and faithful if we will be believing and not curse God for our problems he can turn the unfair and the inhumane and debilitating prisons of our life into temples or at least into a circumstance that can bring comfort and revelation divine companionship and peace let me push this just a little farther I've just said that hard times happened to us President Joseph fielding Smith grand nephew of the Prophet Joseph and grandson of the incarcerated Hyrum said something even stronger than that when he dedicated the Liberty jail Visitor Center in 1963 alluding to the kind of history we've reviewed tonight and looking on the scene where his grandfather and grand uncle were so unjustly held he said perhaps such things have to happen not only can they happen perhaps they have to said he and I quote as I have read the history of those days the days that went before and the days that came after I have reached the conclusion that the hardships the persecution the almost universal opposition toward the church at that time were necessary at any rate they became schoolteachers to our people they helped to make them strong well without trying to determine which of these kinds of experience in our life are mandatory and which are optional but still good for us may I suggest just a very few of the lessons learned at Liberty those experiences which were schoolteachers to Joseph and can be to us experiences which contribute so much to our education in mortality and our exaltation in eternity in selecting these lessons I know yet another kind of blessing that came out of this adversity to make the points that I am now going to try to make and my message to you I have drawn directly upon the revelatory words that came from the lips of Joseph Smith during this heartbreaking time words that we now have Canon as sacred scripture in the Doctrine and Covenants I guess we're not supposed to have favorites scriptures and I have enough of them that you won't be able to pin me down to one or two but certainly any list of my favorite scriptures would have to include those written from the darkness of Liberty jail so what we instantly learn is that God was not only teaching Joseph Smith in that prison circumstance but he was teaching all of us for generations yet to come what a scriptural gift and what a high price was paid for them but how empty would our lives as latter-day saints vie if we did not have sections 121 122 and 123 of the Doctrine and Covenants if you have not read them recently I want you to read them tonight or tomorrow at the latest no later that is your homework assignment and I will be checking on you they are contained in total on a mere six pages of text but those six pages will touch your heart with their beauty and their power and they will remind you that God often moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform in any case he certainly turned adversity into blessing in giving us those sacred writings and reflections so pure and Noble and Christian in both tone and content yet produced in such an impure ignoble and unchristian setting now then three lessons from Liberty jail may I suggest that the first of these is inherent and what I've already said that is that everyone including and perhaps especially the righteous will be called upon to face trying time when that happens we can sometimes fear God has abandoned us that we might be left at least for a time to wonder when our troubles will ever end as individuals as families as communities and nations probably everyone has had or will have an occasion to feel as Joseph Smith felt when he asked why such sorrow had to come and how long its darkness and damage would remain we identify with him when he cries from the depth and discouragement of his confinement oh god where art thou how long shall thy hand be stayed yay Oh Lord how long shall thy people suffer before thy bowels be moved with compassion toward them that's a painful personal cry a cry from the heart a spiritual loneliness we may all have occasion to feel at some time in our lives perhaps you have had such moments already in your young lives if so I hope you've not had too many but whenever these moments of our extremity come we must not succumb to the fear that God has abandoned us or that he does not hear our prayers he does hear us he does see us he does love us when were in dire circumstance and want to cry where art thou it is imperative that we remember he is right there with us where he has always been we must continue to believe continue to have faith continue to pray and plead with heaven even if we feel for a time our prayers are not heard and that God has somehow gone away he is there our prayers are heard and when we wheat he and the angels of heaven weep with us when lonely cold hard times come we have to endure we have to continue we have to persist that was the saviours message in the parable of the importune widow keep knocking on that door keep pleading in the meantime know that God hears your cries and knows your distress he is your father and you are his child when what has to be has been and when what lessons to be learned have been learned it will be for us as it was for the Prophet Joseph just at the time he felt most alone and distant from heavens ear was the very time he received the wonderful ministration of the Spirit and wonderful glorious answers that came from his father in heaven into this dismal dungeon and this depressing time the voice of God came saying my son peace be unto thy soul thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment and then if thou endure it well God shall exalt thee on high thou shall triumph over all thy foes even though seemingly unjust circumstances may be heaped upon us and even though unkind and unmerited things may be done to us perhaps by those we consider enemies but also in some cases by those whom we thought were friends nevertheless through it all God is with us that is why we had our marvelous choir sing tonight Sarah Adams traditional old Christian hymn that says forth seldom sung fourth verse which they sang so beautifully of late out of my stony griefs beth-el I'll raise so by my woes to be nearer my God to thee we're not alone in our little prisons here when suffering we may in fact be nearer to God than we've ever been in our entire lives that knowledge can turn every such situation in dual would be temple regarding our earthly journey the Lord has promised I will go before your face I will be on your right hand and on your left my spirit shall be in your hearts and mine angels round about you to bear you up that is an everlasting declaration of God's love and care for us including and perhaps especially in times of trouble secondly we need to realize that just because difficult things happen sometimes unfair and seemingly unjustified things it does not mean that we are unrighteous or that we're unworthy of blessings or that God is disappointed in us of course sinfulness does bring suffering and the only answer to that behavior is repentance but sometimes suffering comes to the righteous - you will recall that from the depths of Liberty jail when Joseph was reminded that he had indeed been cast into trouble had passed through tribulation and been falsely accused had been torn away from his family and cast into a pit into the hands of murderers nevertheless he was to remember that the same thing had happened to the savior of the world and because he was triumphant so shall we be in giving us this sober reminder of what the Savior went through the revelation from Liberty jail records the Son of Man has descended below them all art thou greater no Joseph was not greater than the Savior and neither are we and when we promise to follow the Savior to walk in his footsteps and be his disciples we are promising to go where that divine path leads us and the path of salvation has always led one way or another through Gethsemane so if the Savior faced such in Justices and discouragements such persecutions and unrighteousness such discouragements and suffering we cannot expect that we are not going to face some of that if we still intend to call ourselves his true disciples and faithful followers and it certainly underscores the fact that the righteous in the Savior's case the personification of righteousness that we can be totally worthy before God and still suffer in fact it ought to be a matter of great doctrinal consolation to us that Jesus in the course of the atonement experienced all of the heartache and sorrow all of the disappointments and in Justices that the entire family of man had experienced from Adam and Eve to the end of the world in order that we would not have to face them so severely or so deeply however heavy our load might be it would be a lot heavier if the Savior had not gone that way before us and carried that Berthoud burden with us and for us very early in the Prophet Joseph Smith stre the Savior taught him this doctrine after speaking of sufferings so exquisite to feel and so hard to bear Jesus said I God have suffered these things for all that they and that means you and I and everyone that they might not suffer if they would repent in our moments of pain and trial I guess we would shudder to think it could be worse but the answer to that is clearly that it could be worse and it would be worse and only through our faith and repentance and obedience to the gospel that provided the sacred atonement is it kept from being worse furthermore we note that not only has the Savior suffered in his case entirely innocently but also so have most of the prophets and other great men and women recorded in the scriptures named an Old Testament or Book of Mormon prophet name a New Testament apostle named virtually any of the leaders in any dispensation including our own and you name someone who's had trouble my point if you're having a bad day you've got a lot of company very very good company I mean the best company that has ever lived now don't misunderstand we don't have to look for sorrow we don't have to seek to be martyrs trouble has a way of finding us even without our looking for it but when it is obvious that a little time in Liberty jail waits before you spiritually speaking remember these first two truths taught to Joseph in that prison temple first God has not forgotten you and second the Savior has been where you've been allowing him to provide for your deliverance and your comfort as the prophet Isaiah wrote the Lord has engraven you upon the palms of his hands permanently written there in scar tissue with Roman nails as the writing instrument having paid that price in suffering that they have paid for you the father and the son will never forget nor forsake you in your suffering they have planned prepared and guaranteed your victory if you desire it so be believing and endure it well in the end it shall be for thy good and you will see everlasting Dominion flow unto you for ever and ever without compulsory means thirdly and tonight lastly may I remind us all that in the midst of these difficult feelings when one could justifiably be angry or reactionary or vengeful wanting to return an eye for an eye in a tooth for a tooth the Lord reminds us from the Liberty jail prison temple that the rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only or except upon the principles of righteousness therefore even when we face such distressing circumstances in our life and there is something in us that wants to strike out at God or man or friend or foe we must remember that no power or influence can or ought to be maintained except by persuasion by long-suffering by gentleness and meekness and by love done fent by love unfeigned without hypocrisy and without guile it's always been a wonderful testimony to me of the Prophet Joseph greatness and the greatness of all our prophets including and especially the savior of the world in his magnificence that in the midst of such distress and difficulty they could remain calm and patient charitable forgiving that they could even talk that way let alone live that way but they could and they did they remembered their covenants they disciplined themselves they knew that we must live the gospel at all times not just when it is convenient and not just when things are going well indeed they knew that the real test of our faith and our Christian discipleship is when things are not going smoothly that is when we get to see what we're made of and how strong our commitment to the gospel really is surely the classic example example of this is that in the most painful hours of the crucifixion the Savior could say Father forgive them for they know not what they do that is a hard thing to ask when we're hurting that's a hard thing to do when we've been offended or are tired or stressed out or suffering innocently but that is when Christian behavior may matter the most remember the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled except upon the principles of righteousness and do we need the powers of heaven with us at such times as Joseph was taught in this prison temple even in distress and sorrow we must let our bowels be full of charity toward all men then and only then shall our confidence wax strong in the presence of God and the Holy Ghost shall be our constant companion remaining true to our Christian principles is the only way divine influence can help us the Spirit has a near impossible task to get through to a heart that is filled with hate or anger or vengeance or self-pity those are all and a Fed antithetical to the Spirit of the Lord on the other hand the spirit finds instant access to a heart striving to be charitable and forgiving long-suffering and kind principles of true discipleship what a testimony that gospel principles are to apply at all times and in all situations and that if we strive to remain faithful the triumph of a Christian life can never be vanquished no matter how grim the circumstance might be how I love the majesty of these elegant celestial teachings taught ironically in such a despicable setting and time as a valedictory to the lessons from Liberty jail I refer to the last verse of the last section of these three we have been referring to tonight in this final canonized statement of the Liberty jail experience the Lord says to us through His Prophet Joseph Smith therefore dearly beloved brethren and sisters when we are even in the most troubling of times let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power and then may we stand still with the utmost assurance to see the salvation of God and for his arm to be revealed what a tremendously optimistic and faithful concluding declaration to be issued from a prison temple when he wrote those lines Joseph did not know when he would be released or if he would ever be released there was every indication that his enemies were still planning to take his life furthermore his wife and children were alone frightened often hungry wondering how they would fend for themselves without their husband and father the Saints too were without homes and without their prophet they were leaving Missouri heading for Illinois but who knew what tragedies were awaiting them there surely - say it again it was the bleakest and darkest of times yet in these cold lonely hours Joseph says let us do all we can and do it cheerfully and then we can justifiably turn to the Lord wait upon his mercy and see his arm revealed in our behalf what a magnificent attitude to maintain in good times or bad in sorrow or enjoy my beloved young friends as part of my concluding testimony to you tonight I wish to give you a blessing it seems to me that as our apostolic witnesses taken to the world we have two opportunities and indeed perhaps obligations one is to testify and bear witness as I have been trying to do and will conclude to do but the other is to bless as the ancient apostles did when the Savior invited them to do as he had done except that it would be in all the world so for every one of you in attendance tonight here in this vast auditorium or in other locations Institute building stake centers around the world I bless every one of you each one of you in your individual circumstances as if my hands were on your head but I offer that to you as honestly as I offer my testimony and bless you in the name of the Lord that God does love you does hear your prayers is at your side and will never leave you I bless the Brethren particularly that you that we will be worthy of the priesthood that we bear that we'll live to the discipleship we've been called to live in that great order that great Brotherhood that is the holy priesthood after the order of the son of God that we will really be like the master that we'll think more like he thinks that we'll talk more like he talks that we'll do more of what he did I bless you brethren as you strive to be that faithful that you'll have all the blessings of the priesthood many of which we have quoted tonight from these very sections from the Doctrine and Covenants I bless the sisters within this audience and within the sound of my voice and would have you know how much we cherish you how much God cherishes you and how much the flag of faith has been flown by the sisters of this church from the beginning in every generation it would seem from the beginning of time down to the present hour and beyond so often it has been the women in our lives our grandmothers our mothers our wives our daughters our sisters our granddaughters who have taken that torch of faith in that banner of beautiful living and have carried gospel principles wherever it would take them against whatever hardship and into their own little equivalent of of Liberty jails and difficult times sisters we love you and honor you and bless you and ask that every righteous desire of your heart tonight and forever will be answered upon your head and that you'll walk away from this activity this gathering this devotional with the understanding and the knowledge firmly in your heart how much God in heaven and the presiding brethren of this church love you and honor you I salute you young adults of this church in this great CES congregation and say that the future is in your hands and those of us of my generation have to in the very near future pass the baton to you god bless you to face those times with the valor and the honesty and the integrity that we've spoken off here tonight I testify in closing and sealing that blessing on your heads that the father and the son do live and I testify that they are close perhaps even closest with the Holy Spirit when we are experiencing difficult times I testify and as our closing musical number will testify quoting the prophet Isaiah that heaven's kindness will never depart from you regardless of what happens I testified that bad days come to an end that faith always triumphs and that heavenly promises are always kept I testify that God is our Father that Jesus is the Christ and that this is the true and living God found in this the true and living church I testify that President Thomas s Monson is a prophet of God our prophet for this hour in this day and I love him and sustain him as I know that you do in the words of the Liberty jail prison temple my young friends hold on the way fear not God shall be with you forever and forever in the name of Jesus Christ amen

Channel: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Views: 1,360,086

Rating: 4.7428532 out of 5

Keywords: CES Fireside September, CES Fireside, CES devotional, Jeffrey R. Holland, Joseph Smith, Liberty Jail, young adults

Id: RpOylYSEaqA

Length: 44min 26sec (2666 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 28 2011

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Partial Text

there was no more burdensome time in Joseph’s life than this cruel, illegal, and unjustified incarceration

Cruel, maybe, but illegal and unjustified? Hardly.

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I gave a sacrament talk that was based on this talk. My eyes would probably roll out of their sockets if I could go back and listen to the previous version of myself now.