It is not, never has been, and never will be the design and purpose of the Lord—however much we seek him in prayer—to answer all our problems and concerns without struggle and effort on our part. This mortality is a probationary estate. … We are being tested to see how we will respond in various situations; how we will decide issues; what course we will pursue while we are here walking, not by sight, but by faith.
| Ensign, Jan. 1976, p. 11
“All of those called to the ministry…are given the gifts needed to perform the work whereunto they are called. These gifts are always the ones needed for the particular work at hand.”
“Sins are remitted not in the waters of baptism, as we say in speaking figuratively, but when we receive the Holy Ghost. It is the Holy Spirit of God that erases carnality and brings us into a state of righteousness. We become clean when we actually receive the fellowship and companionship of the Holy Ghost. It is then that sin and dross and evil are burned out of our souls as though by fire.”
| A New Witness for the Articles of Faith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1985), 290
“Being born again is a gradual thing, except in a few isolated instances that are so miraculous they get written up in the scriptures. As far as the generality of the members of the Church are concerned, we are born again by degrees, and we are born again to added light and added knowledge and added desires for righteousness as we keep the commandments.”
| “Jesus Christ and Him Crucified,” 1976 Devotional Speeches of the Year
“faith and truth cannot be separated; if there is to be faith . . . there must first be truth”
| Mormon Doctrine. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1966.
“Before we can write the gospel in our own book of life we must learn the gospel as it is written in the books of scripture. The Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine and Covenants [and the Pearl of Great Price]—each of them individually and all of them collectively—contain the fulness of the everlasting gospel.”
| “Holy Writ: Published Anew,” regional representatives seminar, April 2, 1982
“A person may get converted in a moment, miraculously. But that is not the way it happens with most people. With most people, conversion [spiritual rebirth and the accompanying remission of sins] is a process; and it goes step by step, degree by degree, level by level, from a lower state to a higher, from grace to grace, until the time that the individual is wholly turned to the cause of righteousness. Now this means that an individual overcomes one sin today and another sin tomorrow. He perfects his life in one field now, and in another field later on. And the conversion process goes on until it is completed, until we become, literally, as the Book of Mormon says, saints of God instead of natural men.”
| “Be Ye Converted” (address given at the BYU First Stake Quarterly Conference, 11 February 1968), 12.
“We receive a remission of our sins through baptism and through the sacrament. The Spirit will not dwell in an unclean tabernacle, and when men receive the Spirit, they become clean and pure and spotless.”
| A New Witness for the Articles of Faith
“We are to solve our own problems and then to counsel with the Lord in prayer and receive a spiritual confirmation that our decisions are correct.”
| “Why the Lord Ordained Prayer,” Ensign, Jan. 1976, 11.
“Baptism is a once-in-a-lifetime ordinance. We are baptized on one occasion only—for the remission of our sins, for entrance into the earthly church, and for future admission into the kingdom of heaven.”
| A New Witness for the Articles of Faith