From Elder Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (deceased):
. . . . my wife and I were coming home from New Zealand. We had an hour or two to spend and were waiting for our flight to come in. A Pan American plane landed, . . . I didn’t know where it was coming from or where it was going, but I said to my wife, “I will know someone on that flight.” It was just a flight out in the Pacific in the wee hours of the morning.
I went out and stood by the gate. I knew one man as he got off. Four other people came up and said, “Your Brother Packer, aren’t you?” That’s a handicap sometimes to us personally, but there’s a great protection for that for the Church.
Some time ago I was with President Kimball in New York. We had gone to tape an interview that was going to be on the CBS nationwide broadcast. It was a beautiful Saturday morning in April and we decided to walk up Fifth Avenue to see the mission home. Thousands of people were out walking, and President Kimball said, “Look at all these people and they’re all ours. They all should have the gospel and none of them know it. All of them are strangers to us,” he said.
“I know how we can find someone we know,” I said. “How can we find them?” he asked. We were passing a little French restaurant with tables sitting out on the sidewalk. I said, “We can just step over there and order coffee, and someone will find us in a hurry!” Just as I had said that in a joking way, I heard the words, “Brother Kimball! Brother Kimball! Out of the crowd came the wife of a Stake President!
The point that I’m making is that this phrase from Timothy strikes me as being monumentally important: “But continue thou in things which thou has learned and has been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them.” In the pattern of constituted authority in the Church we always know where revelation comes from. Revelation is always vertical. There is no horizontal revelation in the Church. It is all vertical. A bishop will get no revelation for a fellow bishop, or a stake president for a fellow stake president; but a bishop will receive it from his stake president, and his stake president from the general officers of the Church.
In your youth you can learn that the scriptures are powerful, that they’re righteous; that in the Church we learn the scriptures, that we accept them, that we determine to live by them. Learn that there is a constituted authority—that our leaders are ordained by those who are in authority, and it is known throughout the Church. Nothing is done in a corner where there might be room for doubt or confusion or misunderstanding. We all have the right to go before the Lord and appeal in prayer and to receive inspiration and revelation for ourselves, so that each of us will know.
One of the things that the scriptures do is to make it very clear that we’re to follow the prophets. In the Doctrine and Covenants, section after section states, “I, the Lord am speaking,” or “It is I, God, who speaks,” and so on. The declarations show that there is no doubt who is speaking. ~Elder Boyd K. Packer, deceased, (was President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles). In Wisdom and in Order (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2013) p.68-69 (continued)
Now, I would like touch upon another bit of counsel from those who are ordained (and it is known to the world that they are ordained). This counsel has direct and specific application to those who are scattered across the earth, learning the gospel in their own tongues and culture and facing the question: “Where can I serve?” The counsel has been, and the counsel is, that you are to serve among your people, and to bless your people now. Can everyone who lives in foreign lands and in places removed from the headquarters of the Church do that? There may be valid exceptions, of course.
But we need to be careful with the idea of “exceptions.” On one occasion, when I was president of the New England Mission, we were holding a Relief Society conference of several hundred women. Our Relief Society President was a convert. We were trying to get our sewing circles and gossip festivals turned into Relief Societies. We were setting standards for Relief Society, and this lovely sister was told to teach the sisters what a Relief Society should be.
At this Relief Society conference she was explaining that Relief Society should no longer be held on Sunday, that they could hold it on weekdays so to that they could have sewing and activities and so on. A woman stood up in the audience and defied her and said, “You don’t understand. Things are different in Vermont. This is different, we are an exception.”
The Relief Society President was quite puzzled at this confrontation. She turned around and looked at me, pleading for help. I thought she was doing pretty well, so I motioned for her to proceed. She did, and what she said next was so profound that I told her after the meeting I would be quoting her across the world, since I was sure it came by inspiration. For she stood there, frightened and puzzled, for a few minutes while that defiant woman, who was something of a ringleader representing a faction, kept talking for a minute, reemphasizing that they were an exception. Then Sister Baker quietly but firmly said, “Dear sister, we’d like not to take care of the exception first. We’ll see to the rule first, and then we’ll take care of the exception.
Now, what are you going to do in your lives? Accommodate the rule first! If you are to be an exception or if others are to be an exception, that will become obvious in the inspiration that comes. But there is a great power and a great safety in holding to the scriptures and have an abounding obedience to our constituted priesthood authority. We are able to pray and receive revelation on our own and then to obediently say, “Lord, I don’t ask to be an exception.
The counsel to us to gather to our own people is counsel from the prophets, who are known as the constituted authority, having been ordained and known to the Church. Now, there’s a great importance in following that counsel. Sometimes when we go out to seek our fortunes in places far from home, we think that we are an exception and that there are so many other opportunities available in other lands.
We can make obedience our rule—and not the exception—even when it goes against our plans. I remember from my college days the report of an eminent historian. He had gone to southern Utah to gather some of the historical facts. He had looked up the oldest man in the community—a man in his nineties. In the interview he suggested to the man that he was living in what might be termed “a forsaken little place in the desert.” He asked him, “How did you get here?”
The man told him that he had been called on a mission. He said “Who called you on the mission?” The man said, “The President of the Church.” The historian said, “But you stayed here all your life. Why didn’t you go back?” The old man didn’t have much of an answer, and the historian pressed the point, asking, “Why didn’t you go back to a better place?”
Then tears came to the old man’s eyes, and he said, “No, I could not go back. I was called on a mission, and I have not been released.” And then from the porch of this humble little house he pointed over to a sagebrush where there were headstones and said, “I’ll go there before I’ll go back.” ~Elder Boyd K. Packer (deceased), In Wisdom and in Order (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2013). p.68-71
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