I am pleased to state that three
of your number—Brother Ellis T. Rasmussen, Robert J. Matthews, and Robert Patch—are
working with great insight, with incisive scholarship, and with superior
spiritual ability on some scriptural projects that in the process of time will
provide material for the Church of incalculable worth. Through their good
offices in the Church will soon have one of the greatest Biblical publications
in the world. I think these brethren must have been trained and qualified in
the pre-existence, to do the things that they are now doing; and out of it will
come some blessings to the Church, where Biblical and scriptural scholarship is
concerned that none of us full envision. I can’t say too much about the high
calibre of the work that they have done and are doing. Brother Rasmussen heads
the work, Brother Matthews is the world authority on the Joseph Smith
Translation of the Bible, Brother Patch is of like spiritual and scholastic
stature, and their united spiritual insight is of surpassing import to the work.
(Bruce R. McConkie, “This Generation Shall Have My Word Through You,” in Seventh
Annual Sydney B. Sperry Symposium: The Doctrine and Covenants [Brigham
Young University Religious Instruction, January 27, 1979], 17, emphasis in bold
added [unpublished manuscript])
