Now my brethren and sisters do not get
into confusion about this matter. The Holy Ghost is an individual, is a
personage of spirit, one of the great Three that the Prophet Joseph Smith spoke
so plainly about so many times just before his death.
PERTAINING TO THE STATEMENT IN THE
LECTURES ON FAITH.
There is one little point in regard to
that which I will mention: In the book of D&C we have a number of lectures
inserted in the first part; which are not revelations. There are seven
lectures, and in the fifth lecture, particularly, we are told that there are
two personages in heaven, the Father and the Son, and that the holy spirit is
the mind of God. That is true, so far as it goes. But the revelation through
the Prophet Joseph Smith as to the personality of the Holy Ghost came many
years after; it was given in 1843. In that revelation we are clearly instructed
concerning the third personage in the Trinity. Now, as far as Sidney Rigdon,
and some others who delivered those lectures, went, they spoke the truth. There
are two persons in the heavens, the Father and the Son, but the Holy Spirit is
passed by almost, as the "mind of God." It is true that the Holy
Spirit conveys the mind of God; that is, I am speaking now of this universal
spirit which is the life and the light of all things, which is in and through
and round about all things, and God says he made the world by the power of that
spirit. That is his agent; but the personage, the Comforter, which Jesus Christ
said he would send when he went away, that was a personage of the Trinity. He
promised to send this Comforter to reveal the things of the Father and to bear
witness of the Father and the Son.
When Joseph the Prophet saw the Father
and the Son in the grove where he was praying, the Holy Spirit made them
manifest. When he commenced to pray, or tried to pray, he could not say
anything. He was seized upon by an opposing power which seemed to almost
overcome him, but he struggled against it and continued to pray, until a light
came, a pillar of light, the manifestation and presence of the Holy Spirit, and
by the power of that Spirit, which quickened his spiritual vision, he saw two
personages in that cloud of glory, and they conversed with him, or rather one
did. The Father does not converse much with mankind individually. He said:
"This is my beloved Son, hear him;" and he is the person we want to
hear and to obey as representing the Father. As we read in the Book of Mormon
he is, in some respects, both the Father and the Son. He represents the Father
to the full. We are in the image of God, but the Christ, the great Jehovah, is
the express image of the Father's person, God manifest in the flesh, and he has
gone into his glory. We will follow him to that glory if we will keep his
commandments. He is the resurrection and the life. God has entrusted that to
him, given him that power and made him heir of all things, in the heavens and
in the earth. "All power is given to me, in heaven and upon the earth.
Tarry ye at Jerusalem, until ye are endowed with power from on high." That
is what he told his apostles. (Charles W. Penrose, Conference
Report [April 1921], 15-16)
