President Hinckley: A Call to Commitment

In the June 2007 Ensign, President Hinckley's First Presidency message addresses common concerns about war and peace. He reiterates his earlier address on issues relating to the war currently taking place.

President Hinckley focuses his primary interest on another war, one that has been waging since the foundation of the world.

In the October conference of 1896, President Wilford Woodruff (1807–98), then an aged man, stood in the Tabernacle on Temple Square and said:

There are two powers on the earth and in the midst of the inhabitants of the earth—the power of God and the power of the devil. In our history we have had some very peculiar experiences. When God has had a people on the earth, it matters not in what age, Lucifer, the son of the morning, and the millions of fallen spirits that were cast out of heaven, have warred against God, against Christ, against the work of God, and against the people of God. And they are not backward in doing it in our day and generation. Whenever the Lord set His hand to perform any work, those powers labored to overthrow it.

President Woodruff knew whereof he spoke. He had then only recently passed through those difficult and perilous days when the government of the nation had come against our people, determined to destroy this Church as an organization. Despite the difficulties of those days, the Saints did not give up. In faith they moved forward. They put their trust in the Almighty, and He revealed unto them the path they should follow. In faith they accepted that revelation and walked in obedience.

President Hinckley calls for continued commitment from the Saints.

In this work there must be commitment. There must be devotion. We are engaged in a great eternal struggle that concerns the very souls of the sons and daughters of God. We are not losing. We are winning. We will continue to win if we will be faithful and true. We can do it. We must do it. We will do it. There is nothing the Lord has asked of us that in faith we cannot accomplish.

There is no equivocation. We face continuing serious challenges in this war.

The men of this Church cannot be unfaithful or untrue to their wives, to their families, to their priesthood responsibilities if they are to be valiant in moving the work of the Lord forward in this great battle for truth and salvation. They cannot be dishonest and unscrupulous in temporal affairs without tarnishing their armor. The women of this Church, be they wives, mothers, or sisters who have not found companions, cannot be unfaithful or untrue to their covenants and blessings and serve as the bulwark in the kingdom that they are meant to be.

President Hinckley then recites the stirring words of a traditional LDS hymn:

Who’s on the Lord’s side? Who?
Now is the time to show.
We ask it fearlessly:
Who’s on the Lord’s side? Who?

We wage no common war,
Cope with no common foe.
The enemy’s awake;
Who’s on the Lord’s side? Who?

He closes with this fervent prayer:

May our God bless us in the work that is so clearly laid out before us. May we be faithful. May we be valiant. May we have the courage to be true to the trust God has placed in each of us. May we be unafraid. “For [to quote the words of Paul to Timothy] God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord” (2 Timothy 1:7–8).