“Divine Helps for Mortality”

General Conference Applied

S5 E3 – Sunday, April 20, 2025 | “Divine Helps for Mortality” by President Dallin H. Oaks; April 2025 General Conference

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Podcast Episode Outline

Introduction

Bio

• followHim Podcast – Easter – Sister Reyna I. Aburto:
  • Hank Smith: “So there you were Reyna and excuse me if I keep asking questions, but there you were, you’re probably eating lunch occasionally with these special witnesses. You’re probably having conversations with these special witnesses. What did you learn there?”
    
    Sister Reyna I. Aburto: “It was wonderful to see the different personalities and I always tell people, you will never guess who I think, of course, this is my personal opinion, who I think is the funniest of all of them. And I honestly believe that is President Oaks. When you are in a very relaxed setting like in a dinner table, he makes everybody laugh over and over. And even Sister Oaks has to say like I do to my husband, okay, I think that’s enough. But I think that is cute because they are human beings. They’re like all of us. They all have different personalities. Each of them is amazing.” (Shared in Mitch’s March 31, 2024, What? Eye. Read. 💡 Newsletter)
• This was President Oaks’s 92nd general conference address. His most recent address was “Following Christ” from the October 2024 General Conference.

Discussion Questions

1. What is the Lord, through President Oaks, inviting us to do?
2. If Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love us, why was “Satan permitted to attempt ‘to deceive and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will'”?
3. How do the four divine helps mentioned by President Oaks “guide us through our mortal journeys”?
4. Why is it that Heavenly Father’s “highest blessings are given to those who promise in advance to keep certain commandments and who keep those promises”?
5. Five of the ten virgins in the Savior’s parable were unprepared. What do you think about the “examples of the unprepared” that President Oaks identified in his address? Is it significant that these “examples of the unprepared” are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

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I.

“Through the Prophet Joseph Smith, the Lord revealed a few things about our pre-earth life. There we existed as spirit children of God. Because God desired to help His children progress, He decided to create an earth on which we could receive a body, learn through experience, develop divine attributes, and be proven to see if we would keep God’s commandments. Those who qualified would ‘have glory added upon their heads for ever and ever’ (Abraham 3:26).

“To establish the conditions of this divine plan, God chose His Only Begotten Son to be our Savior. Lucifer, whose suggested alternative would destroy the agency of man, became Satan and was ‘cast down.’ Banished to the earth and denied the privilege of mortal life, Satan was permitted to attempt ‘to deceive and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will, even as many as would not hearken unto [God’s] voice’ (Moses 4:4).

“Essential to God’s great plan for the mortal growth of His children was for them to experience ‘opposition in all things’ (2 Nephi 2:11). Just as our physical muscles cannot be developed or maintained without straining against the law of gravity, so mortal growth requires us to strain against Satan’s temptations and other mortal opposition. Most important for spiritual growth is the requirement to choose between good and evil. Those who choose good would progress toward their eternal destiny. Those who choose evil—as all would do in the various temptations of mortality—would need saving help, which a loving God designed to provide.

II.

“By far, God’s strongest mortal help was His provision of a Savior, Jesus Christ, who would suffer to pay the price and provide forgiveness for repented sins. That merciful and glorious Atonement explains why faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is the first principle of the gospel. His Atonement ‘bringeth to pass the resurrection of the dead’ (Alma 42:23), and it ‘atone[s] for the sins of the world’ (Alma 34:8), erasing all of our repented sins and giving our Savior power to succor us in our mortal infirmities.

“Beyond that glorious erasing of sins committed and being forgiven, the plan of a loving Father in Heaven provides many other gifts to protect us, including protecting us from sinning in the first place. Our mortal life always begins with a father and a mother. Ideally, both are present, with different gifts to guide our growth. If not, their absence is part of the opposition we must overcome.

• Note that President Oaks was 7 years old when his father, Lloyd E. Oaks, passed away on of tuberculosis on June 10, 1940.

III.

“Our Heavenly Father’s plan provides other helps to guide us through our mortal journeys. I will speak of four of these. Please don’t hold me to my number of four, because these helps are overlapping. Moreover, there are other merciful protections in addition to these.

“First, I speak of the Light or Spirit of Christ. In his great teaching in the book of Moroni, Moroni quotes his father that ‘the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil’ (Moroni 7:16). We read this same teaching in modern revelations:

“‘And the Spirit giveth light to every man that cometh into the world; and the Spirit enlighteneth every man through the world, that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit’ (Doctrine and Covenants 84:46).

“Again: ‘For my Spirit is sent forth into the world to enlighten the humble and contrite, and to the condemnation of the ungodly’ (Doctrine and Covenants 136:33).

“President Joseph Fielding Smith explained these scriptures: ‘The Lord has not left men (when they are born into this world) helpless, groping to find the light and truth, but every man … is born with the right to receive the guidance, the instruction, the counsel of the Spirit of Christ, or Light of Truth.’

“The second of the great assistances provided by the Lord to help us choose what is right is a cluster of divine directions in the scriptures as part of the plan of salvation (plan of happiness). These directions are commandments, ordinances, and covenants.

“Commandments define the path our Heavenly Father has marked out for us to progress toward eternal life. People who imagine commandments as the way God decides who to punish fail to understand this purpose of God’s loving plan of happiness. On that path, we can gradually achieve the needed relationship with our Savior and qualify for an increase of His power to help us on our way to the destination He desires for all of us. Our Heavenly Father desires all of His children to return to the celestial kingdom, where God and our Savior reside, and to have the kind of life of those who reside in that celestial glory.

• Commandments are all about freedom. The more we obey the commandments, the more free we become.

“Ordinances and covenants are part of the law that defines the path to eternal life. Ordinances, and the sacred covenants we make with God through them, are required steps and essential guardrails along that path. I like to think of the role of covenants as demonstrating that under God’s plan, His highest blessings are given to those who promise in advance to keep certain commandments and who keep those promises.

[Third] “Other God-given helps for making right choices are the manifestations of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is the third member of the Godhead. His function, defined in scripture, is to testify of the Father and the Son, to teach us, to bring all things to our remembrance, and to guide us into all truth. The scriptures include many descriptions of the manifestations of the Holy Ghost, such as a spiritual witness in response to an inquiry about the truth of the Book of Mormon. A manifestation is not to be confused with the gift of the Holy Ghost, which is conferred following baptism.

[Fourth] “One of the most significant of God’s helps for His faithful children is the gift of the Holy Ghost. The importance of this gift is evident in the fact that it is formally conferred after repentance and baptism by water, ‘and then [the scriptures explain] cometh a remission of your sins by fire and by the Holy Ghost’ (2 Nephi 31:17). Persons who have this remission of sins—and then regularly renew their cleansing by daily repentance and living according to the covenants they make through the ordinance of the sacrament—qualify for the promise that the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of the Lord, ‘may always … be with them’ (Doctrine and Covenants 20:77).

“Thus, President Joseph F. Smith taught that the Holy Ghost will ‘enlighten the minds of the people with regard to the things of God, to convince them at the time of their conversion of their having done the will of the Father, and to be in them an abiding testimony as a companion through life, acting as the sure and safe guide into all truth and filling them day by day with joy and gladness, with a disposition to do good to all men, to suffer wrong rather than to do wrong, to be kind and merciful, long suffering and charitable. All who possess this inestimable gift, this pearl of great price, have a continual thirst after righteousness. Without the aid of the Holy Spirit,’ President Smith concluded, ‘no mortal can walk in the straight and narrow way.’

IV.

“With so many powerful helps to guide us in our mortal journeys, it is disappointing that so many remain unprepared for their appointed meeting with our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ. His parable of the ten virgins, spoken of so frequently in this conference, suggests that of those invited to meet Him, only half will be prepared.

“We all know examples of the unprepared: returned missionaries who have interrupted their spiritual growth by periods of inactivity, youth who have jeopardized their spiritual growth by separating themselves from Church teaching and activities, men who have postponed their ordination to the Melchizedek Priesthood, men and women—sometimes the posterity of noble pioneers or worthy parents—who have departed the covenant path short of making and keeping covenants in the holy temple.

• Elder Hans T. Boom, “True to the Faith That Our Parents Have Cherished“, April 2025 General Conference: “Why is it that some of us take for granted the faith and testimonies of our parents who through all their hardships have remained faithful? Do we think that they do not have a clear understanding of things? They were not and are not deceived! They just have had too many experiences with the Spirit and can say with the Prophet Joseph, ‘I knew it, … and I could not deny it.'”

“Many of such deviations occur when members fail to follow the fundamental spiritual maintenance plan of personal prayer, regular scripture study, and frequent repentance. In contrast, some neglect weekly renewal of covenants by not partaking of the sacrament. Some say the Church is not meeting their needs; those substitute what they perceive as their future needs ahead of what the Lord has provided in His many teachings and opportunities for our essential service to others.

• “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t” by Jim Collins: “If you successfully apply these ideas, but then stop doing them, you will slide backward, from great to good, or worse. The only way to remain great is to keep applying the fundamental principles that made you great.”

“Humility and trust in the Lord are the remedies for such deviations. As the Book of Mormon teaches, the Lord ‘doth bless and prosper those who put their trust in him’ (Helaman 12:1). Trusting in the Lord is a particular need for all who wrongly measure the commandments of God and the teachings of His prophets against the latest findings and wisdom of man.

What is the speaker inviting me to do?

• In my own words: Humble ourselves and trust that the Lord’s ways are higher and more glorious than our ways.

Why does it matter, or why is it important? (Doctrines, Principles, Christlike Attributes)

• Christlike Attribute: “I strive to be submissive to God’s will. (Mosiah 24:15)” (Humility)
  • “[15] And now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord.”

What’s in it for us? (Promises)

• No promises identified.

How will we take action? (Directives, Personal Revelation)

• “
• Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “Joyfully Receive the Unexpected Messiah“, April 15, 2025, BYU Devotional: “Didn’t the Lord say, ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts’? We don’t have to look far to see examples of this principle in action. There are so many things in life that God sees differently than we do.
  
  “Let’s take, for example, the well-known scripture from the Book of Mormon. Adam fell that men might be and men are that they might have joy. We tend to think of joy as the absence of sorrow. But what if joy is not the absence of sorrow? What if joy and sorrow can co-exist? What if they have to co-exist?
  
  “It’s interesting that Lehi’s declaration about joy comes in the same breath as his observation about the fall of Adam and Eve. He seems to be saying that their transgression in the Garden of Eden, which brought pain and death and sickness and sorrow into the world, also made way for joy. In other words, if you wait for sorrow to end before you experience joy, you might miss joy completely. …
  
  “I believe that scripture study and daily prayer are part of these excursions into higher and holier places, where the ideal and the earthly reality are better understood. My dear young friends, connect with Heavenly Father daily. Elevate your view and raise your perspective on life and your personal situation.
  
  “Connect with your Father in heaven by praying to Him and by pondering His words. He is your Father, and He wants you to speak to Him, just as any loving Father would. Personal prayer and scripture study are perfect ways to communicate with Him. Personal prayer will help you to focus your life on the weightier matters.”
• Mitch:

“I have spoken of the many mortal helps our loving Father in Heaven has given to help His children return to Him. Our part in this divine plan is to trust in God and seek and use these divine helps, most notably the Atonement of His Beloved Son, our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ. I pray that we will teach and live these principles, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.”

What is the speaker inviting me to do?

• In my own words: It’s not only important to practice what you preach, but it’s important to preach what you practice.

Why does it matter, or why is it important? (Doctrines, Principles, Christlike Attributes)

• Christlike Attribute: “I strive to live in accordance with the laws and principles of the gospel. (Doctrine and Covenants 41:5)” (Obedience)
  • “[5] He that receiveth my law and doeth it, the same is my disciple; and he that saith he receiveth it and doeth it not, the same is not my disciple, and shall be cast out from among you.”

What’s in it for us? (Promises)

• No promises identified.

How will we take action? (Directives, Personal Revelation)

• “
• Mitch: I will have a Family Home Evening discussion with my wife and children to consider how the four divine helps mentioned by President Oaks “guide us through our mortal journeys.”

What will you do?

How will you take action on the invitations extended in this General Conference address?

Conclusion

The focus of our next podcast episode will be the April 2025 General Conference address that was delivered by President Henry B. Eyring and was entitled “‘Draw Near Unto Me’“.

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Tags

Agency | Atonement | Commandments | Covenants | Holy Ghost | Jesus Christ | Light of Christ | Ordinances | Plan of Salvation

Additional Content

Previous Podcast Episode (“Confidence in the Presence of God” by President Russell M. Nelson)

Next Podcast Episode (“‘Draw Near Unto Me'” by President Henry B. Eyring)

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