One day many years ago I was crossing Amsterdam Avenue in New York City. It was noon, and armies of people were going in every direction. As I got to the middle of the street, I glanced up at the throng crossing the other way. My eyes met those of a comely young lady, and she smiled at me. I smiled back and we passed each other, neither breaking stride. But I nearly collapsed and could barely make it to the other side of the street.
Now if you have lived in New York City, you know what it is to be pressed among throngs of people. And you know that you never are to smile at anyone on the street, for that leads to big trouble. Needless to say, I had just had a very unique experience.
The smile was not what made the experience so different; the smile was just the frosting. What was so unusual was the overpowering sense of wholesomeness that I felt radiating from that young lady. It was not a romantic or physical attraction. What I felt was that I had just seen an angel, a holy person, and that she had looked me in the eye, smiled at me, and had left an indelible impression on my mind and heart.
At that moment, I did not understand what was going on. I just knew that I had seen a very unusual person, one who radiated goodness and light. I wondered if I would ever see her again.
And see her again I did. The next Sunday as I came to church at the Manhattan Ward, there she was, still radiant. I got to know her, but soon she was gone, as were so many who passed through Manhattan Ward in those days. But I have never forgotten her, even though I no longer remember her name.
But now I understand what happened back then, decades ago. What happened was that I had made contact with an especially pure and holy person, a Latter-day Saint who was truly a saint in deed as well as name. Which idea is my theme for this talk this evening. I will speak of holiness, and how we may become holy.
The word “holy” means whole, sound, healthy. It means whole in the sense that as children of God, when we are whole, we have the full set of attributes and powers that are the heritage of the children of God. We may not have those attributes and powers in their fullness, but we have them and exercise them if we are holy and whole. The most important of these attributes is love, the pure love of Christ, which itself centers in forgiveness and a reaching out to assist others to come to and know the goodness of Christ. So to be holy is to be whole, and to be whole is to be wholesome. To be in the presence of someone is holy and wholesome is to feel their goodness and love for us, and to know that unless we love evil, we have nothing to fear from them.
The word “saint” means one who has been sanctified, which is another way of saying, has been made holy. Little children are born holy and lose it only as they sin. Those of us who have sinned can become holy again only through Jesus Christ. The purpose of the life and mission of Christ is to make it possible for all who have sinned again to become holy, that they might then have the opportunity to become as God, to be good and pure and wholesome, and return to live with Father. To live with Father, to be whole as He is, to do His work of love as He does, is called “eternal life.”
The enemy of holiness or wholesomeness is sin. When we break the commandments of God, which is sinning, we cut ourselves off from the abundance of the gifts and blessings of God, and are no longer a whole child of God. We as sinners may look to the untrained natural eye as if we are whole physically, and may indeed have marvelous human gifts and powers, including physical attractiveness, physical strength, keen intellect, or special discernment. But the sinner is always short on love and forgiving of others. Vengeance is the special weapon of the sinner. It is as though the sinner knows that evil in others hurts him, and he is going to punish those who hurt him. The saint, on the other hand, extends love and forgiveness to all, knowing that any of us, ourselves or our enemies, have the opportunity to become whole, wholesome, happy and blessed only in Christ and through His Gospel and its ordinances.
In the Pearl of Great Price there is a marvelous passage in which Enoch lays out the great plan of the salvation of mankind from nastiness, littleness and misery unto health, wholeness and love. Let us look at chapter 6, beginning with verse 55. I will comment after each verse.
And the Lord spake unto Adam, saying, Inasmuch as thy children are conceived in sin, even so when they begin to grow up, sin conceiveth in their hearts, and they taste the bitter, that they may know to prize the good.
Little children are conceived into a fallen, sinful situation, in which Satan has power to tempt them eventually. As babes, they are holy, but as they become accountable, Satan attacks them and is able to get every one of them to sin by the age of eight years.
And it is given unto them to know good from evil; wherefore they are agents unto themselves, and I have given you another commandment.
The knowledge of good and evil is the reason for our earthly existence. Adam fell so that each of us might be tempted by both good and evil, and we, being agents, perforce must choose between good and evil in almost every decision of our lives. We are in mortality to build an eternal character, and we do so by our daily choices between good and evil.
Wherefore, teach it unto your children, that all men, everywhere, must repent, or they can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God, for no unclean thing can dwell there, or dwell in his presence; for, in the language of Adam, Man of Holiness is his name, and the name of his Only Begotten is the Son of Man, even Jesus Christ, a righteous judge, who shall come in the meridian of time.
Once having sinned, we become stunted, deprived, unwholesome and incomplete persons. The only remedy for this is to put our trust, our faith, in Jesus Christ, and repent. To repent is to stop choosing evil and choose only good as we are led by Christ. Then we, too, can again become holy, even as Father, the Man of Holiness, and as our Savior, the Son of Man of Holiness.
Therefore, I give unto you a commandment, to teach these things freely unto your children, saying: That by reason of transgression cometh the fall, which fall bringeth death, and inasmuch as ye were born into the world of water, and blood, and the spirit, which I have made, and so became of dust a living soul, even so ye must be born again into the kingdom of heaven, of water, and of the Spirit, and be cleansed by blood, even the blood of mine Only Begotten; that ye might be sanctified from all sin, and enjoy the words of eternal life in this world, and eternal life in the world to come, even immortal glory;
When we put our trust in Christ and obey His commandments by being born again of water and the spirit, our Savior does two things for us. First, because of our expression of willingness to choose only the good from now on in order to be holy, He forgives us of our past choosings of evil. Second, He sends His Holy Spirit to be with us that we might have special help in choosing and doing good and in avoiding doing evil henceforth. For adults, there is no holiness without the atoning blood of Christ.
For by the water ye keep the commandment; by the Spirit ye are justified; and by the blood ye are sanctified;
So by allowing ourselves to be immersed in the waters of baptism, we keep the commandment to repent and be baptized. By receiving the Holy Spirit we have a personal tutor to help us learn to know and keep every commandment of God; God’s word is His law, and when we obey His word, we become lawful or just. And through the atoning blood of Christ we are forgiven of our sins and made whole so that we can do all the good that a child of God of our age and station should do.
Therefore it is given to abide in you; the record of heaven; the Comforter; the peaceable things of immortal glory; the truth of all things; that which quickeneth all things, which maketh alive all things; that which knoweth all things, and hath power according to wisdom, mercy, truth, justice and judgment. (Moses 6:55–61)
When we are whole, we do enjoy the peace of Christ and all the peaceable things of the kingdom of God on earth, and we have a lively hope for the things of immortal glory. We may enjoy the truth of anything we need to know, and be quickened for any task or assignment, to be make fully alive to all things in wisdom, mercy, truth, justice and godly judgment.
So there it is. You and I are all invited to a party. This is a work party. The work is helping souls come unto Christ. You and I come to Christ only by helping others to come to Christ, which is to become holy, to become pure, to keep Father’s law fully even as does our Savior. Then we are wholesome, spiritually healthy, able to fill every and any mission our Savior has for us.
Let us make no mistake: life is a mission. We are sent by God to learn to be as He is. When we find the Gospel of Jesus Christ and enter into the covenant, then our mission becomes more specific: to help others to come to Christ and become wholesome, happy and powerful in the work of righteousness.
Through Moses, God said to the children of Israel while they were in the wilderness: “For I am the Lord your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy.” (Lev. 11:44)
In His earthly ministry, our Savior told us: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)
To be perfect means to be complete, whole, holy, through our Savior.
In these latter days our Savior spoke through the Prophet Joseph Smith: “Therefore sanctify yourselves that your minds may become single to God, and the days will come that you shall see him; for he will unveil his face unto you, and it shall be in his own time, and in his own way, and according to his own will.” (D&C 88:68)
Though ultimately we are forgiven through the grace of God and are sanctified only through the blood of Christ, still we must do all we can do. That “all we can do” is to keep the commandments of God. In Section 43 of the Doctrine and Covenants we read:
And now, behold, I give unto you a commandment, that when ye are assembled together ye shall instruct and edify each other, that ye may know how to act and direct my church, how to act upon the points of my land and commandments which I have given.
And thus ye shall become instructed in the law of my church, and be sanctified by that which ye have received, and ye shall bind yourselves to act in all holiness before me—
That inasmuch as you do this, glory shall be added to the kingdom which ye have received. Inasmuch as ye do it not, it shall be taken, even that which ye have received.
Thus we are sanctified, made holy, by keeping the commandments of God which we have been given. Another way of expressing this is to say that faith in Christ leads to keep the commandments of God, thus it is our faith ln Christ which allows him to make us whole. Remember the times when the Savior healed someone and said to them, “Thy faith hath made thee whole.”
From the days of Adam to the time of Moses, to the time of Christ, to the last days, the message is always the same: Be ye Holy, for I, God, am holy.
Let us turn from consideration of what we must do to how it is done. The first step in becoming holy is to learn to recognize that which is holy. There are holy persons, holy places, holy books, holy experiences. First another story about a holy person.
I had a friend and colleague who became a general authority of the Church. I had not seen him for many years when he came to talk at BYU. After the talk, I went up to greet him and to congratulate him on his helpful presentation. As I did so, I experienced something like that which I felt with the young lady in the middle of Amsterdam Avenue. As I approached this man, I could literally feel his presence and power as I got close to him. By the time I was within ten feet of him, the phenomenon was powerful, as though I was entering a force field. My how he had grown spiritually since I had known him. What a wonderful thing to see a friend who had acquired the power of God. And how wonderful to be able to sense that acquisition. The first step in becoming holy is to be able to recognize someone or something that is holy when we experience it.
The reason this recognition is so important is that the root ability we must have is to be able to tell the differences between the Holy Spirit and the evil spirit. Each human being who comes into this world is given as a gift from God: the ability to know good from evil. We are constantly in the presence of both good and evil, and if we are careful, we have the opportunity to distinguish them. But they do not come labeled. It is our agency to decide for ourselves which is the good and which is the evil spirit. Having made our choice, we promote that which we think is good and shun that when we think is evil. Woe unto us if we call evil good, and good evil.
But if we have made a correct identification of which is the good and which is the evil spirit, then we are in a position to recognize the Holy Spirit when it comes to us to bring the special witness of Jesus Christ, and in our dispensation, of Joseph Smith. Building on what we know is good, we can go on to more good, following as a little child, until we become holy in Christ.
There are places that are holy. Temples come to mind. Every temple of the Church is a holy place and has a feeling which seldom is matched outside the walls of a temple. It is special to be in the Sacred Grove in Palmyra, New York, for that is no ordinary grove of trees. It is special to be at Adam-ondi-Ahman; but for me the holy place there is more the valley below than the hill where the altar was said to be. I grew up in the desert, wandering alone where there was no trace of civilization. The desert is holy to me, a place that is clean and beautiful. But I often feel the same thing when I am on a mountain top or in a pristine forest. And there are places which are evil. The most pointed experience I have ever had of an evil place was at the coliseum in Rome, Italy. It was dead, totally dead, as to any good spirit.
There are holy books. Let me tell you a story about one man’s experience with a holy book.
This person as a young man emigrated from Sweden to the United States and settled among a number of his countrymen from Sweden in South Dakota. He was a faithful Lutheran. He lived alone, not being married, and attended church every Sunday. Each day as he came in from his work on his farm for lunch he would read something. He liked to keep his hat on in the house and put his feet up on the table and read for a while. But when he read the Bible, he would always take off his hat and bring his feet down off the table because he knew he was reading something holy.
One day as he was reading the Bible, he came across the Savior’s instruction about little children, how the Lord wanted them to be able to come unto him that he might hold them and bless them. He got to wondering about infant baptism, but could find nothing in the Bible which gave clear instruction on the matter. He resolved that he would bring up the matter and get help from his pastor the next Sunday.
After the meeting the next Sunday, he broached his question to the pastor, who looked at him sharply and told him that he was not to ask such questions. He took the reproach very personally, because he had been a real supporter of the local congregation. He vowed that he would not return.
The next day he went to town and stopped at the local public library and asked for a copy of the Koran. He was informed that someone else had already checked the Koran out, but that they had another heathen book which he might read if that would please him. It was a Book of Mormon. He opened it and began to read. After reading a bit his feet came down off the table. In another few minutes his hat came off. He became so engrossed that he sat there reading until he had finished the whole book, which was noon the next day. He knew that the book was holy. But the story does not end there.
He found the address of the Deseret Book Company in the book and wrote for further literature. He obtained the Articles of Faith and Jesus the Christ among other works, and devoured them completely. He still had never met a Mormon.
When fall came and the crops were in, he got in his car and took off for Salt Lake City, Utah, for he was determined to be baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He went to Salt Lake City, got a room in the Temple Square Hotel, and went over to Temple Square and joined a group being guided about the grounds. At the conclusion of the tour, the guide asked if there were any questions. Our friend said he had a question: How could he be baptized into the LDS church?
The guide immediately turned him over to the missionaries and he repeated his question to them. They told him that he must first be instructed. He told them he was already instructed and that they might question him to see if he knew enough. They began questioning him and he was able to answer every question. So they gave in. They interviewed him for baptism and set a time and place. And they warned him that Satan would try to stop him from being baptized.
He went back to his hotel room. Once there he began to have doubts, and they became a fierce torment. He recognized that these were not thoughts from the Holy Spirit, for he had felt it many times. So he fasted and prayed until the time of his baptism appointment the next day.
He was baptized in the tabernacle font and confirmed there also. At the conclusion he bore his testimony to those present, many of whom were non-members. Then he got in his car and went back to South Dakota. But the story is not over yet.
As soon as he got home, he began visiting his friends and neighbors, telling them about the Book of Mormon and the Restoration. Tirelessly he combed the county around him. In the course of this missionary labor he converted 75 of his friends and neighbors, among whom was a young lady who became his wife. He was a branch president to these people, then district president. The kingdom of God prospered where he was.
How did all of this happen? It happened because Ivor Sandberg could tell that which was holy from that which was not. And he had the good sense to pursue with vigor that which he knew to be holy. And in the process, he himself came to be holy.
Just for curiosity, is there anyone here who is a descendant of Ivor Sandberg of South Dakota, or is a descendant of someone whom he brought into the church? Ivor Sandberg is a legend. I know what I know of him from word of mouth, so please forgive me if all of the details are not exactly as it was related to me. But I know that the main thrust of the story is true, confirmed by family members.
So what is the point of all that I have said? There are two main points that I hope you will remember.
Point no. 1: To be holy is good. It is to be wholesome. Wholesome people are happy, hardworking, self-sacrificing, fun to be around. They make wonderful companions. To find a wholesome person you have to be a wholesome person. There is nothing more important to be in this life than to be a wholesome, holy person. For then you will have power to do every good thing which you desire to do in bringing souls to Christ. To be whole is to have power, the power to do good. And if you gain that power while yet in mortality, you will enjoy and enjoy using it into all eternity.
Point no. 2: We become holy by coming unto Christ in the waters of baptism, receiving His Holy Spirit as our constant companion, and learning then to keep every commandment of God. It is not the easiest thing in the world to do. As a matter of fact, it is the most difficult thing in the world to do. But everyone who desires to do it can and will do it, for all that God asks is for each of us to do what we can, then He makes up the difference through His grace.
It is good to be holy. It is good to be faithful. I hope and pray that each of us will search our souls and choose that which is holy and good in our friends, our entertainment, our vocational pursuits, our community service, in our families, in our dress, in our eating and drinking, and especially in our marrying.
I would like to conclude with some scriptures. The first is a description of the times in which we live. I quote from the Joseph Smith version of Matthew 25 found in the Pearl of Great Price:
And, as I said before, after hearing the tribulation of those days, and the powers of heaven shall be shaken, then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn; and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory;
And whoso treasureth up my word shall not be deceived, for the Son of Man shall come, and he shall send his angels before him with the great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together the remainder of the elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. Now learn a parable of the fig tree—When its branches are yet tender, and it begins to put forth leaves, you know that summer is nigh at hand;
So likewise, mine elect, when they shall see these things, they shall know that he is near, even at the doors;
But of that day, and hour, no one knoweth; no, not the angels of God in heaven, but my Father only;
But as it was in the days of Noah, so it shall be also at the coming of the Son of Man;
For it shall be with them, as it was in the days which were before the flood; for until the day that Noah entered into the ark they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage;
And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.
What to do to prepare for the Second Coming? The answer is partly in D&C 87:8: “Wherefore, stand ye in holy places, and be not moved, until the day of the Lord come; for behold it cometh quickly, saith the Lord. Amen.”
Holy places are the stakes of Zion and the temples, the places where holy persons, true Latter-day Saints, gather.
The other part of the answer comes from Moroni 10:32–33:
Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind, and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in no wise deny the power of God.
And again, if you for the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot.
It is my prayer that we will not sell our souls to Satan for the pleasures, powers and rewards of this world, but that we will get on our knees, seek that which is holy, and cling to it until we become holy in Christ. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.