It is our privilege to do so; we are here for this express
purpose. The God who reigns in heaven is
the father of our spirits and the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ; and we may become heirs of Him and joint heirs with Jesus Christ by
complying with the requirements of the gospel that He has revealed. How plain
and simple is the way of life if we will but open our ears to hear, our eyes to
see, and our hearts to understand. God has revealed it; He has opened up the
dispensation of the fulness of times, which will embrace within its purview all
other dispensations since the world began. In this dispensation will be
revealed the keys of the resurrection, which will enable men to go forth
clothed with power to raise and bring forth the dead. The Lord has commenced
this great work; we are engaged in it; and it will go forth until it covers the
whole earth. The foundation of that kingdom which shall endure for ever and
ever is laid. The principles of the kingdom have gone forth, and have touched
the hearts of many of the children of men—one of a city and two of a family—and
they have been brought together from the nations of the earth to the valleys of
the mountains, as was foretold by the prophets thousands of years ago.
Jesus told the Jews that Abraham saw his day and rejoiced in it. They
queried with Him as to how he—not fifty years old—could know anything about
Abraham, who had been dead so long. Jesus said—"Before Abraham was I
am." This seemed to puzzle the Jews; they did not understand the
principle of pre-existence and that Jesus, who was then clothed with flesh,
had possessed an existence in the spirit world, that he was the first born of
many sons, and had been born before Abraham in the spirit. Jesus understood it,
and once in a while, as in that case, he spoke upon the principle. the Jews prided themselves on serving the God
of their father Abraham, but Jesus told them that the God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob was not the God of the dead but of the living, thus teaching them
plainly the principles of the resurrection. (Daniel H. Wells, “Eternal Life—How
To Find Out The Truth— The Sacrament—Exhortation to The Young,” August 18, 1867,
Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. [Liverpool: Albert Carrington, 1869],
12:134, emphasis in bold added)
