I must tell you of a work that has moved quietly
forward in the Church virtually unnoticed.
It had its beginning in Old Testament times
and is the fulfillment of a prophecy by Ezekiel, who wrote:
"The word of the Lord came ... unto me, saying, Moreover,
thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it,
For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions:
then take another stick, and write upon it, for Joseph,
the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his
companions: And join them one to another into one stick;
and they shall become one in thine hand."
The sticks, of course, are records or books.
In ancient Israel records were written upon tablets of wood
or upon scrolls rolled upon sticks.
The record of Judah and the record of Ephraim,
according to the prophecy, were to become one in our hands.
Two events connected with the fulfillment of the prophecy
were centered in print shops.
The first on the second floor of a building
on Main Street in the village of Palmyra, New York.
In June of 1829 Joseph Smith and Martin Harris
called upon Mr. Egbert B. Grandin, the proprietor,
to discuss the publication of a new book of scripture.
Mr. Grandin, then 23, was three months
younger than Joseph Smith.
Only three months earlier he had advertised his intention
to print books, a very ambitious undertaking
for so small a shop with only a hand-operated, cast-iron press.
Others had refused to print the book, and young Mr.
Grandin, a very religious man, was very skeptical himself.
But as the contract was secured by a mortgage
on the farm of Martin Harris, it was signed
and printing commenced in August of 1829.
No sooner had the project begun than one
Obadiah Dogberry Jr. began to steal pages of the work
and print them with accompanying ridicule in his weekly paper,
The Reflector.
But in March of 1830, the Book of Mormon came from the press
and was advertised for sale.
It met with such destructive and bitter response
that it did not sell, and Martin Harris lost his farm.
An epoch of scriptural history had begun.
The Prophet Joseph Smith and his successors to this day
would proclaim the Book of Mormon
to be another testament of Jesus Christ.
Obadiah Dogberry and his successors,
moved by another spirit, would, with the same methods,
to this day revile it.
One hundred forty-eight years later, in June 1977,
again in a print shop, another step
in the coming together of these two sticks occurred.
James Mortimer, long experienced in publishing
scriptures, and Dr. Ellis T. Rasmussen,
recently dean of the College of Religious Instruction
at Brigham Young University, called
at the Cambridge University Press in Cambridge, England.
Bibles had been printed at this prestigious press for 293 years
before Egbert Grandin opened his shop in Palmyra.
They met with Mr. Roger Coleman, director
of religious publishing, to discuss
the publication of a most unusual edition of the King
James Bible.
The printers were quite as skeptical about the proposal
as Egbert Grandin had been nearly 150 years before.
The Cambridge Press had been publishing the King James
Bible since the first edition in 1611,
but they had never been asked to do anything like this.
The text was to remain as it was, no changes, not one.
But all footnoting, cross-references,
chapter introductions, indexes, and so on, were to be replaced.
Only the chapter and verse numbering for the 66 books
would be retained.
And that was just the beginning.
This edition of the Bible would be cross-referenced
with three other books of scripture: the Book of Mormon,
the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.
The printers had barely heard of them.
But there was more.
A new, innovative system of footnoting was to be used.
Instead of progressing from A to Z in each chapter,
it would start over in every verse,
for innumerable verses would have many footnotes in them.
The technical problems seemed insurmountable.
Computers could help, but there was always the human factor.
How could you cross-reference the Bible with any other book?
To cross-reference it with these three volumes
was to require tens of thousands of footnotes.
And thereafter there would be hundreds of thousands
of possible combinations of information.
It was too big even to think about.
The technical challenge alone was staggering,
to say nothing of maintaining accuracy and harmony
and consistency with the Bible text itself.
It could not be done!
But in that meeting was Mr. Derek Bowen, editor,
a most remarkable man.
A World War II injury had left him unable to hear.
Thereafter he devoted his remarkable compensating
abilities to the editing and typesetting and printing
of Bibles.
He was, perhaps, the one man in the world who could
direct such a printing project.
All of the problems mentioned so far related
only to the printing part of it.
The actual compiling and organizing of tens of thousands
of footnotes would require many hundreds of workers.
This work had already been underway for several years.
Without the computer it would be manifestly impossible!
That also was but a beginning.
There would be a combined concordance and topical guide,
listing hundreds of subjects; a Bible dictionary; maps;
and a new format.
New chapter headings would be written.
And all of it in harmony with the sacred message of the Old
and the New Testaments.
Several years into the project we asked for a report.
How were they progressing with the tedious, laborious problem
of listing the topics in alphabetical order?
They responded, "We have been through Heaven and Hell,
past Love and Lust, and now we're
working toward Repentance."
The 750 headings for the Topical Guide
were painfully rendered down from a list
nearly twice that long.
For there was a practical consideration:
the book had to be of a size for everyday use.
There was a spirit of inspiration brooding
over their work, and those working with it talked often
of how it was blessed.
There were humbling spiritual experiences.
After more than seven years of quiet, intensive work,
the Latter-day Saint edition of the King James Bible
came off the press.
Already work was well under way on the Book of Mormon,
the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.
Over the years manuscripts had come
into our hands which made possible the correction
of printers' errors which had crept into the earlier
editions.
This work would be seen by more than the sympathetic students
and the devoted members of the Church.
The cold, impartial eyes of the research scholars
would study it, and the angry eyes of enemies and detractors
would pore over it.
It must be correct in every detail.
Finally, after two more years, the books
came from the press, the most accurate we have ever had.
Three months later, Derek Bowen, master editor of Bibles,
passed away in England.
You should know also that by recent decision of the Brethren
the Book of Mormon will henceforth
bear the title "The Book of Mormon:
Another Testament of Jesus Christ."
The stick or record of Judah--the Old Testament
and the New Testament--and the stick or record of Ephraim--the
Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ--are
now woven together in such a way that as you pore over one you
are drawn to the other; as you learn from one you are
enlightened by another.
They are indeed one in our hands.
Ezekiel's prophecy now stands fulfilled.
With the passing of years, these scriptures
will produce a successive generation
of faithful Christians who know the Lord Jesus Christ
and are disposed to obey His will.
The older generation has been raised without them,
but there is another generation growing up.
The revelations will be opened to them
as to no other in the history of the world.
Into their hands now are placed the sticks of Judah
and of Ephraim.
They will develop a gospel scholarship
beyond that which their forebears could achieve.
They will have testimonies that Jesus is the Christ
and be competent to proclaim Him and to defend Him.
Without the inspired help of hundreds of dedicated workers
it would have been impossible!
Among them were scholars in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Old
and New Testament studies.
More than this, they are worthy men and women in whose lives
the gospel of Jesus Christ is the dominating influence.
Their work, if they only knew it,
may well be their crowning contribution in mortality.
As the generations roll on, this will
be regarded, in the perspective of history,
as the crowning achievement in the administration of President
Spencer W. Kimball.
As a very direct outgrowth of this scripture project,
two new revelations were added to the Doctrine and Covenants.
That had not occurred in over a hundred years.
And before the books were closed,
there came that glorious revelation on the priesthood,
just in time to be bound in with all else
that the Lord had said to His Saints
in this, the dispensation of the fulness of times.
Even all of this is but a beginning,
for we have it only in English.
Already work is well under way in Spanish,
with the other languages to follow in the years ahead.
Concurrent with this, another great work was continuing.
The entire curriculum of the Church was restructured.
All courses of study for children, youth, and adults
were revised to center on the scriptures, on Jesus Christ.
A veritable army of volunteer workers--many of them experts
in curriculum, instruction, and other related fields--worked
for years to complete it.
Now, while we have been about the work of anchoring ourselves
to the scriptures, others have been busily cutting
themselves loose from them.
They have been drifting downstream, interpreting
and revising the scriptures to agree
with the philosophies of men.
We, on the other hand, have been struggling upstream
against that same current.
We are determined to reach the headwaters of divine
communication and revelation and to have it,
as the Doctrine and Covenants demands,
"that every man [can] speak in the name of God the Lord, ...
the Savior of the world."
There are Church watchers, in and out
of the Church, who show great interest in what we do.
They watch what they define as the power
structure, the resources of the Church,
the changes in organization, the political and social issues;
and they draw conclusions from their watching.
They write their observations and print them in publications
and represent them to be accurate,
objective reports of what is going on in the Church.
In all of their watching and claiming,
they have missed the most important of all the things
that we have done in recent generations.
Some of them say that we have lost our way,
that we are not Christians.
Should they turn to that one thing
in which they show the least interest
and in which they have the least knowledge, the scriptures
and the revelations, they would find now
in the Topical Guide 58 categories of information
about Jesus Christ; 18 pages of small print,
single-spaced, list literally thousands
of scriptural references on the subject.
These references from the four volumes of scripture
constitute the most comprehensive compilation
of scriptural information on the mission and teachings
of the Lord Jesus Christ that has ever been assembled
in the history of the world.
The work affirms an acceptance of, a reverence for,
and a testimony to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Follow those references and you will open the door to whose
church this is and what it teaches and by whose
authority--all anchored to the sacred name of Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, the Messiah, our Redeemer, our Lord.
I began by quoting Ezekiel, prophet of Judah.
Those Old Testament verses, two of them, show 10 footnotes.
One of the 10 leads us to the Book of Mormon:
Another Testament of Jesus Christ, where
half a world away Lehi, prophet of Ephraim, wrote:
"Wherefore, the fruit of thy loins shall write;
and the fruit of the loins of Judah shall write; ...
that which shall be written by the fruit of thy loins,
and also that which shall be written
by the fruit of the loins of Judah, shall grow together,
unto the confounding of false doctrines
and laying down of contentions, and establishing peace
among the fruit of thy loins, and bringing them
to [a] knowledge of their fathers in the latter days,
and also to the knowledge of my covenants, saith the Lord."
Now, one footnote may seem a flimsy thread
to tie the two together, but 5 of the 10 footnotes
lead us to headings in the Topical Guide
where 611 other references broaden
our knowledge of this one subject
and speak as voices from the dust.
Threads are wound into cords that bind together in our hands
the sticks of Judah and of Ephraim--testaments of the Lord
Jesus Christ.
I say again, these references constitute
the most comprehensive compilation
of scriptural information on the mission and teachings
of the Lord Jesus Christ that has ever been assembled
in the history of the world.
Do not mistake our reverent hesitation
to speak glibly or too frequently
of Him to mean that we do not know Him.
Our brethren of Judah knew Him in ancient times,
our brethren of Ephraim also.
He is no stranger to His Saints, to His prophets and apostles
now.
He lives.
He is our Savior, our Redeemer, our Lord.
Of Him I bear an apostolic witness,
in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.