Jack I'm resisting a terrible, terrible driven feeling to dedicate this grave.
Paul Gaechter said you were a remarkable and gifted young man,
and what young man gets to keep popping to the pulpit for his own Eulogy.
It's just uh,
its been a wonderful, wonderful evening. Sister Holland and I have loved it as much as you have.
We're thrilled to be here and to have been part of everything with what we've seen and heard.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t get invited to many jubilees.
Stake Conferences, yes.
Missionary meetings, yes. An occasional barn raising, yes.
But it's rare to be part of a jubilee.
This whole thing has made me, jubilant.
To all, all of you who've made this evening, as Yogi Bear once said, “necessary,” we say thank you.
And the “we” that I'm representing, and this is important,
includes the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
In that spirit, with that reference, I wish to say at the outset
that the presiding officers of this Church appreciate and applaud, more than perhaps you know,
the exceptional work being done by so many
to search out and to substantiate, to defend and promulgate
the history and doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including and especially that dealing with the Book of Mormon,
this done in ways both scholarly and spiritual.
Obviously one of the influential, representative figures in this generation of such work
is our friend and colleague John W. Welch, being honored tonight.
I've known and loved Jack and other members of the Welch family who are our neighbors
for at least 40 of the 50 years that we're commemorating here tonight.
In deference to the clock and the evening, I will not recount
all of the academic accomplishments, Jack has experienced and pursued
much of which has been referenced here tonight,
but suffice it to say, Jack, that the Brethren are grateful for your faith, your loyalty,
your productivity, and what is increasingly your scholarly legacy
in defending the kingdom of God. That compliment is, of course, extended to a legion of other men and women
across the Church many of whom have been at this pulpit tonight,
who are putting their shoulders to the wheel of reasoned, determined, persuasive gospel scholarship.
I'd also like to thank the many donors and other supporters who've aided the scholarly pursuit
and publication of materials important to the Church of Jesus Christ in these latter days.
I won't even begin, I wouldn't dare to start naming names
because I would inevitably miss too many.
but please know that as officers of the Church and trustees of the university,
we know it takes money and other resources
to research and write and publish these marvelous pieces of scholarship that we've all enjoyed for so many decades now.
Your generosity and devotion have helped us do that.
Some of the agencies, departments, institutes, and scholars doing such work
are often enough an institutional part of and integral to Brigham Young University.
Other groups and like-minded colleagues
are not necessarily part of the university per se but maybe near by or spread out around the Church.
Our heartfelt thanks go to all of you, wherever you are and whom ever you are
and to President Kevin Worthen and commissioner Kim Clark, and the BYU and CES administration
who facilitate the inside and coordinate at least some of the outside scholarly activity,
that we have been celebrating tonight and to which I'm referring.
Now faith and testimony,
gospel devotion and Church loyalty,
conviction so strong it leads to covenants and consecration are ultimately matters of the Spirit.
They come as a gift from God, delivered and confirmed to our soul
by the Holy Ghost,
in His divine role as revelator, witness, teacher of truth.
But it should be noted that truly rock ribbed faith and uncompromised conviction
comes with its most complete power when it engages our head as well as our heart.
“Behold, the Lord requireth the heart and a willing mind,” Jehovah declared to the early Saints,
and to Oliver Cowdery specifically, He said, “I will tell you in your mind and in your heart,
by the Holy Ghost.
Behold, this is the spirit of revelation.” closed quote.
I've always loved that particular definition of revelation.
For one thing,
it makes clear that all revelation that can be called revelation,
comes through the influence of the Holy Ghost that is to say that the receipt of any truth
is ultimately a spiritual experience,
an enlightenment facilitated and confirmed by the Holy Ghost.
Secondly, that definition makes it clear that truth borne by the Holy Spirit
comes with, in effect,
two manifestations, two witnesses if you will
the force of fact as well as the force of feeling.
Peter assumed that two-fold aspect of our conviction
when he said,
“Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.”
Reasons,
reasons for the hope that is in us. Reasons for our belief.
I'm not a lawyer as virtually all the Welch family men are,
but I don’t have to be one to understand in a court of law the power and primacy of evidence.
In making our case for the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, I believe God intends us
to find and use the evidence. Evidence He has given reasons, if you will
which affirm the truthfulness
of His work.
One of the seldom told but for me truly striking stories of conversion in all of scripture
is the success the later Nephi and Lehi
had on their mission to the Lamanites,
it's the one outlined in the book of Helaman.
After a dramatic sequence of earthquakes and voices from heaven,
of angels appearing and prison walls crumbling,
Mormon records that the people and I quote
“were bidden to go forth and marvel not,
neither should they doubt.
And they did go forth
declaring throughout the region all the things
which they had heard and seen, inasmuch that the more part of the Lamanites
were convinced of them,
because of the greatness of the evidence
which they had received.”
In his classic definition of faith,
the Apostle Paul suggests, with one of those paradoxes that so frequently crop up in the gospel,
that evidence is still evidence even if it is not immediately evident.
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for,
the evidence of things not seen,” he wrote.
For me a classic example of substance I hope for and evidence of things I have not seen
is the 531 pages of the Book of Mormon
that come from a sheaf of gold plates
some people saw
and handled and hefted but I haven’t,
seen or handled or hefted,
and neither have you.
Nevertheless, the reality of those plates,
the substance of them if you will,
and the evidence that comes to us from them in the form of the Book of Mormon
is at the heart,
at the very center,
of the hope and testimony
and conviction of this work
that is unshakably within me forever.
It is with reference to evidence and in this case literal, corporeal substance
that Luke introduces the book of Acts:
“The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach,
“Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost
had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen:
“To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs,
having seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.”
In one of the earliest such manifestations after His Resurrection, Jesus came to the eleven,
inviting them to touch His hands and feet
as He sat to eat meat
and honeycomb.
To those who doubted,
Mark says He “upbraided them,
upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart.”
The message there to me
is that if members of the Godhead
go to the trouble of providing “many infallible proofs"
of truth,
then surely we are honor bound
to affirm and declare that truth
and we may be upbraided
if we do not.
My testimony to you tonight
is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is infallibly true
and that a variety of infallible proofs
supporting that assertion
will continue to come
until Jesus descends
as the ultimate infallible proof
of all.
Our testimonies aren’t dependent on evidence
we still need always and forever,
that spiritual confirmation in the heart of which we've all spoken
but not to seek for
and not to acknowledge intellectual, documentable support for our belief
when it is available
is to needlessly limit an otherwise incomparably strong theological position
and deny us a unique, persuasive vocabulary
in the latter-day arena
of religious investigation
and sectarian debate.
Thus armed with so much evidence
of the kind we've celebrated here tonight,
we ought to be more assertive
than we sometimes are
in defending
our testimony of the truth.
To that point I mention that while we were living and serving in England,
I became fond of the writing of the English cleric Austin Farrer.
Mentioned by President Worthen earlier.
Speaking of the contribution made by C. S. Lewis
specifically and of Christian apologists generally,
Farrer said:
“Though argument does not create conviction,
lack of argument destroys belief.
What seems to be proved
may not be embraced;
but what no one shows the ability to defend
is quickly abandoned.
Rational argument
does not create belief,
but it maintains a climate
in which belief may flourish.”
May we leave to Moroni,
appropriately, the last word
regarding our celebration of chiasmus and gospel scholarship generally tonight.
The same Moroni who gave his farewell testimony three times,
at the conclusion of the Book of Mormon.
The end of his Father's book,
Book of Ether, and his own book.
That makes him to me something of a one man version of the three witnesses.
Said he in the first of those valedictory testimonies, and I quote:
“And now,
you know these things
and cannot deny them
[because of the] many evidences
which you have received;
yea, even ye have received all things,
both things in heaven,
and all things which are in the earth,
as a witness
that they are true.”
When such revelation comes,
when that complete witness is borne to our heart and to our head,
then surely we will know how Martin Harris felt
when, after considerable struggle of both body and spirit,
he was able to behold the angel Moroni
holding the gold plates,
turning their leaves one by one before his very eyes.
In response to that spiritual and temporal evidence
he shouted for all of us,
“Tis enough,
‘tis enough;
mine eyes have beheld,
mine eyes
have beheld.”
May our Father in Heaven bless us
and an ever-larger cadre of young scholars around the Church
to do more and more
to discover and delineate and declare
the reasons
for the hope
that is in us,
that like those converted Lamanites,
we may with bold conviction
hold up to a world that desperately needs it
“the greatness
of the evidence which [we have] received,”
especially
the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, the keystone
of our religion.
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.