Harold B. Lee

In 1944, the committees came in and started reviewing church publications.

Then in 1947, Harold B. Lee was put in charge of a broader review of kind of everything, like priesthood quorums and the auxiliaries themselves.

So they were specifically initially looking for duplicated work, but they were supposed to also kind of do some oversight, right? Make sure that the auxiliaries were functioning under priesthood direction.

Can I ask a quick question? When you say look for duplicated work, what does that mean?

And the authority to make that distinction now sits much closer to the center.

So efficiency wasn't the only argument for greater coordination.

In the same month, Harold B. Lee called priesthood correlation a program of defense that was designed to be a refuge from the storm.

He described it as protection against forces that he believed threatened the family and the church.

You could show the following clip from general conference from timestamp 5:58 to 7:35.

A favorite quote of mine comes to mind here from President Harold B. Lee.

"You may not like what comes from the authority of the church.

It may contradict your political views.

And maybe that does have something to do with the rise of the international church and questions of grace being far more about a Latter-day Saint's place in the wider world of Christian theology.

I mean, again, on that conference corpus, you can see that in the mid-1950s, you have people like Harold B. Lee quoting it.

This is, uh, um, where he's, he's quoting the verse.

Um, all of these blessings are ours on one condition, and that is spoken of by Nephi when he said, "For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children and also our brethren to believe in Christ and be reconciled to God, for we know it is by grace that we are saved.

Now, Joseph, we've talked about this, Joseph taught that when receiving revelation in the, the Council of Fifteen minutes, that you need to actually put forth all of your own effort before you receive that revelation.

So, I mean, there you kind of see a different interpretation.

That, that interpretation, uh, by Harold B. Lee much more, uh, the, the, the saving grace applies to you because you've done all you can do.

Um, Marion Hanks in 1856, uh, Marion D. Hanks, um, again quoting the verse says, uh, that, that, uh, "Latter-day Saints understand that through the gift of God, through the great atoning sacrifice of His divine Son, all that we might achieve is made possible for us, but he understands also that in the plan of God it's necessary that we accept this free gift if we would enjoy all of our eternal possibilities.

But the act of him doing so will be a recognizable event rather than something merely just like spoken in general conference, for instance.

Like President Harold B. Lee said, the only one authorized to bring forth any new doctrine is the president of the church, who when he does, will declare it as revelation from God, right? Joseph Smith always did this.

He was very clear what was a revelation and what wasn't.

and it will be so accepted by the council of the 12 and sustained by the body of the church.

And so I rode my bike from Provo to Salt Lake and attended all seven sessions of General Conference in those days from Friday through Sunday.

That may give an indication of how old I am because the prophet was Harold B. Lee at the time.

And yeah, I somehow got into the tabernacle for every one of them.

And for me, it became the formation of my path, my spiritual path in those days, my mission, my marriage, my having five daughters, the choices to have daughters immediately because of talks given in general conference, all formed by my involvement in the church and guided by these councils or doctrines that were coming across those from those big red chairs.

I do believe, you know, to, you know, people have dreams or, you know, visitations or things.

And so, you know, even I shared with you a clip that was online with Harold B. Lee talking about he's traveling the world.

I think he might have been a prophet at this time.

And he is on a plane and he felt hands laid on his head and receives this blessing, right, on the plane.

So we'll get into that, but really fun stuff.

This one is Harold B. Lee, 50 years ago, gave a second coming reading list.

He said everybody should read so they know the basics.

And this is on the list.

"We feel that every member of the Church is entitled to make his own decision as to what he thinks he owes the Lord and to make payment accordingly.

Sincerely your brethren, Joseph Fielding Smith, Harold B. Lee, and Elton Tanner." So the son of the man who said, "Who has means," um, is making the point that, hey, it's income, but every member of the Church gets to make their decision as to what they think they owe.

Everyone gets to make that decision for themselves, which it feels incongruous with the idea that you're presented in a meeting with the amount that you've paid, and you're asked if that's enough.

Is this a full tithe?