Brother _____: Is it possible for any
person outside of the Church to receive the Holy Ghost? Can anyone who has not
been baptized by the proper authority receive the Holy Ghost?
Dr. Widtsoe: The Lord is the giver of
the Holy Ghost, but my opinion personally is that when the Church is upon the
face of the earth and men are within reach of it, the holy Ghost can be
conferred in only one way. That does not mean the Lord may not do something
else.
B. S. Young: The gift of the Holy
Ghost is the birth of the Spirit, and you can only receive the Holy Ghost or
the birth of the Spirit when you have been baptized, which is the birth of
water. The birth by the Spirit is the conferring of the Holy Ghost. That is my
understanding.
Dr. Widtsoe: You are thinking of the
passage in the Pearl of Great Price “by water, and blood, and the spirit.”
(Moses 6:59) We have the three-fold birth. I think that may or may not be
right. It depends entirely upon our point of view. The gift of the Holy Ghost
is the official association with the Holy Ghost of which we spoke a while ago.
When a person has been baptized, has cleansed himself, conquered himself,
turned from sin, developed faith, he has in a sense been reborn, and the Holy
Ghost has come to be his helper, his rescuer at times. I think perhaps I agree
with Brother Young. I am not quite sure that I understand. We do undergo a
change. The repentant man is not like the unrepentant man. Something has
happened within him. He is not the same man. The man who accepts the Gospel
becomes a child of Abraham. A change has occurred in him—narrow, blood, bone,
every part, spirit and all, have been changed. We have correspondents of that
all through nature. I spoke of one the other day: a black piece of carbon
heated under pressure perhaps may be made into a diamond—the same material, the
same element, and yet wonderfully transformed. (John A. Widtsoe, Lecture 4,
“The Government of God,” February 3, 1938, Modern Revelations and Modern
Questions, 28-29)