Well, the road back more from Kennedy will now address it. I'm not nervous with the gross misunderstanding. I generally, in my career, have managed to come up with a poem or a story or something to fill in when I'm called upon to stand before an audience and speak. However, in lots of cases, I've been told that that has crowded out the spirit of the Lord to such an extent that I spoke under the inspiration of the devil.

Tonight I am absolutely determined, brothers and sisters, if I have anything to say to you tonight, it will be guided by pure inspiration or I don't want to say anything. I have reached a point in my life that through the impressions or the seeing of the natural eye and the hearing of the natural ear and the impressions of what I am pleased to call the Spirit of God, if I cannot tell when I am activated upon by the Spirit of God, I think I have wasted 45 years of my life.

I was sitting in the back room in there enjoying a nice big easy chair all to myself back in the corner where I could meditate and relax and enjoy it. I was having a good time and all set. There was a loud speaker right alongside me so I could listen to everyone. Naturally a man has a lot of thoughts running through his mind when he's off in a little corner like that by himself. I got to thinking of some of the fearful things that I'd done and said while occupying a position of this nature.

I sometimes imagine that if there is such a thing as a good angel that comes down and looks after me, and there must be, otherwise I'd have been dead a long time ago. What do we do about this man, Ray Blackmore? Do you think we'll prompt him to say something that the Lord would like to have him say tonight, third one? No, I don't think so. He's deteriorated into such a lily-livered...

the yellow face that he wouldn't say what we prompted him to say because he'd be afraid that somebody would take offense. So this little discussion goes on back and forth, so we'll just leave him utterly void of all inspiration. Well now, brothers and sisters, if this is the work of God, and I am firmly convinced that it is, and if these are the servants of God that are sitting behind us, and I am firmly convinced that they are, And they call a man to speak, that man should have the privilege of receiving the inspiration and the revelation of God to direct him in his thoughts, words, and actions. And if we can't tune in on the inspiration of God and speak as directed by his spirit, it would be far better that we're sitting on the chair. Now, I know in lots of times that I've offended the spirit of God more by refusing to say what I've been prompted to say than any other one thing.

And I know that if I refuse to do as I am prompted by the Spirit of God, He withdraws His Spirit from me, and I'm immediately in the power of the adversary. And according to my understanding, the adversary, or Jesus and Satan, are dedicated to the complete destruction of each other. And when I join forces with a power that will fail and can be destroyed, I can expect nothing more nor less than complete destruction.

Now, brothers and sisters, I rejoice at this opportunity of standing before you tonight. And if I am blunt in some of my remarks, it's because I intend to be blunt. Maybe I was seditionated wrong in my youth. Maybe my dear old mother, when she'd teach me not to steal and lie and curse and profane, maybe she was activated on by the wrong spirit.

When my dear old bishops and stake presidents taught me to honor my body as a temple of God, taught me to get down on my knees and pray to my Father in Heaven for guidance, taught me to put my temple and spiritual welfare in the hands of God, they were traditionating my mind. And I don't think it was false.

I have never yet been able to associate with a man, woman, or child in whom I have placed any confidence that they haven't, some way or another, been able to just sway the thinkings of my mind just a little bit. Or I am pleased to call it prostituting my mind, or traditionating my mind, or anything that you might want to call it. As a matter of fact, to show you what I'm talking about, I just picked up a book in there.

Somebody had written about the prophet Joseph Smith. Mrs. Brody, I think it was. Some of the remarks there she'd made about the prophet Joseph Smith, I'd never heard of. And they didn't make sense and they didn't strike home to me. And right off the bat, I was on fire. I was ready to go to war. And I still am. And I don't take it kindly for anyone to try to prosecute my mind or to say that...

Some of the things that my dear old bishop and my dear old mother have taught me are a false tradition. Some of them may be. But we've still got to prepare ourselves, brothers and sisters, to become a pure people or God can never redeem Zion. And that pure people means a righteous, honest people. A people that will not lie unless the Lord commands them to, but are just as ready to lie as tell the truth if he commands them.

A people that will not steal unless they're told to steal by the Spirit of the Lord, and they'll be just as ready to steal then as they would be on another occasion. A people who will not commit sins of a grievous die. A people who will stand foremost in the ranks and defend the truth. A people who will keep their own counsel, who will refuse to prosecute the mind of their neighbor against anyone.

who refuse to allow their own mind to be prostituted against anyone. We're all guilty of such a thing, and we're all susceptible to it. Heber C. Kimball put it this way. He said, I am very careful what I tell President Brigham Young because President Brigham Young regards me as a man of honor. And if I was to tell Brigham Young an untruth about a brother or a saint, I would prostitute his mind against that saint.

And it would be a very hard thing to eradicate that from the mind of Brigham Young until he found out the truth. Even our great prophet Joseph Smith and his presidency of the priesthood were susceptible to such a thing. And I want to tell you, brothers and sisters, that we cannot play with these things and allow them to take effect upon our minds because we may approach the state when it is physically impossible to cast them from us.

And recall to my mind in reading from the Church History, period 1, volume 2, of a letter that President Joseph Smith, the prophet, and his counselors, a chastening letter that they had sent to the twelve apostles. Apparently they had heard, they had received a letter from a bishop by the name of Warren Cowdery. And Warren Cowdery had complained to the president of the prophet Joseph Smith that the twelve apostles were not teaching the doctrines that they should be taught.

should be teaching, and they weren't doing the things that they should do. And the Church Presidency acting on that letter immediately sent a chastisement and a rebuke in a letter to the Twelve Apostles. The next conference held by the Presidency of the Church and the Twelve Apostles were in assembly. Thomas B. Marsh, the President of the Twelve at that time, arose and took up a labor with the Prophet Joseph Smith. It's in the Church history. Read it.

And he said, we think as a 12 that we have been grossly misrepresented by the lies of a man who has sought to destroy us. And we think we have an apology due. And they went on, I wonder why it was that the prophet would take action without going to the bother of checking to see that his information was correct.

The prophet Joseph Smith, the great man that he was, seeing the mistake he had made, got up and publicly apologized to those twelve apostles. And then it was that he made the famous covenant of brotherhood with the twelve apostles. It's in the church history, read it. Now, brothers and sisters, that is one of the dirtiest, low-down tricks that can be played by one human being upon another, and it's to seek to try to destroy that human being in the eyes of one of his superiors.

Is my reputation safe in your hands, brothers and sisters? Is your reputation safe in my hands? Is the reputation of our priesthood council as it sits before us tonight safe in your hands and in my hands? Will God Almighty approbate our words and actions when we speak of those men?

take time before speaking to make sure that what we say and what we act on is the truth and the God-given truth and that we are prepared to lay down our lives in defense of what we have said? Are we men and women enough to stand forward and care of our priesthood and our friends and our relations and our associations in this work to such an extent?

That without taking the covenant of brotherhood, they can feel absolutely certain in our, wherever we are. Brother Aller sits in the back room, and I want to tell you something that went through my mind one day. We were working to get together one day sawing wood. He was running the chains off. I had an axe, and I was splitting the blocks that he was sawing to make them small enough to load them into a wagon.

Just as I raised my axe up and he was bending down with his back to me on there, the thought came to me. The man has absolute confidence in you. You wouldn't destroy his life physically. But does he have that much confidence in you that you wouldn't destroy his character? That thought apprehended to me to such an extent that I had to stop and meditate.

And I told him about it. And he made a jocular remark about, so that's the thought you're thinking when my back's turned to you. But brothers and sisters, their pillars wet with sobs, their noble hearts broken in silence from what comes no cry of party, their gentle, sensitive nature seared and warped, their old-time friends separated and walking different paths with hope dead and memory but a pang.

because of the crimes of the town. How many of us can control that unearthly evil desire in our hearts to wreck and spread devastating ruin upon our brother and our sister through the crimes of the town? You all know, brothers and sisters, as well as you know that you're sitting here before me this night and I am standing before you.

that you cannot build yourself up in this kingdom on the bones and the destruction of your brother and your sister. Don't try it. It cannot be done. You'll pardon me for getting a little bit warmed up. I have seen men and women's reputations so ruined and so destroyed in my sight.

But after I got to associate with those people and found that 99% of the things that were told about them were false, one of the hardest things I have to this very day is to greet those people with any sense of decency. I know people that have been so thoroughly indoctrinated against some of the counsel of this priesthood that you couldn't draw them in the same hemisphere with them if they could get out of it.

And I know that 99% and nine-tenths of it is nothing but pure rot and lies. Now, brothers and sisters, I have no apologies to make for the way that I'm speaking tonight. I told you before when I stood up, I'd absolutely refuse to call on myriads of poems and stories that I've managed to store away in my mind in the past decade or so. Yes, I could stand up here and recite to you all night. I've done it before.

And I could tell you stories half the night. But if I can't stand up here and speak to you the way I feel that I'd like to speak and the way the spirit prompts me to speak, it may be the spirit of the devil. That remains to be seen. If it is, then I stand to be corrected. But I know that when we speak of what is pure people, that I know that Zion cannot be redeemed except on any other principle than the people pure in heart. And I know that if it comes down to the test when we are forced to take the covenant of brotherhood before we can resist the temptation to destroy our brother or our sister, we will never be a pure people. We will be a pure rotten people. I hope that many of you, most of you, are not guilty. I know that I have been, and I'm not proud of it. I'm not a bit proud. God being my helper, I'm going to try to overcome it.

Because I realize that when the spirit of God is withdrawn from me and the spirit of evil takes over, I don't know what I'll do. If I can just manage to control myself long enough to get out and put in three miles of fresh air walking, I'll come back a better man. But if I want to get alongside of somebody and start loading them up with all the filth that's in my mind, I'll be a worse man and they'll have a load that's hard to get rid of. Let's don't do our brothers and sisters dirt.

Let's don't do ourselves dirt. Let's try and purify ourselves and our thoughts and our actions by working on this one thing. Let's try and control the evil that is in us. If we have good thoughts in us, there's no room for evil thoughts. If we have evil thoughts in us, there's no room for good thoughts. Let's remember there's a time to resist and there's a time to yield. And if we're in...

If the Spirit of the Lord is with us, we'll know the differentiation between those two times. We'll know when to resist and we'll know when to yield. Now, brothers and sisters, whether this is my responsibility or whether this is my right to speak as I have done, be that as it may, I feel that this is something we need and we need badly. And I plead with you and I plead with myself as one of the main offenders that the time is short.

That it's time we attended to our knitting, as Uncle Roy says. It's time we took this one step, if none other, towards becoming a pure people. It's time we got over the habit of trying to destroy our brothers and sisters and build ourselves up on their skeleton. I know it and I've seen it among the people. I've seen people come into a community to live and they were so filled up with...

with venom against other people that to this day they haven't visited some of the people that are in that community. When you undertake to prostitute my mind or to rape my thoughts or to destroy my mentality, you ought to be mighty careful that you have got something better to fill it up with than what's there. Let's remember the second deadly most instrument of destruction is the atomic gun. The first is the human tongue.

The gun merely kills bodies and the tongue kills reputations and oft times ruins characters. Each gun works alone, but each loaded tongue has its hundred accomplices. The full havoc of the evil of the gun is visible at once, but the full evil of the tongue lives throughout all the years, and even the eye of God himself might grow tired in trying to trace it to its banality. I plead with us, brothers and sisters, As men and women of God, as people who have cast our lot with God's priesthood, as people who are ready to put our bodies and our lives and our wives and our families and every possession we have on the altar of sacrifice for God's work, let's don't try and put our neighbor's body on that altar of sacrifice for them. Let's let them have that privilege themselves.

And I think that if we can just bring our thoughts and our minds and our actions and our words under control to that extent, that the Lord will be ever willing to help us across some of the other chasms that are there. The lesson we had in Sunday school this morning, the members of the twelve apostles who were excommunicated, who were dropped by the prophet himself, without one exception, One accusation brought against every one of those men was that they had fought to slander and destroy the character of their prophet. Am I wrong on that, Brother Doc? Absolutely correct. Get it, brothers and sisters, and read it. The Lord is looking for a pure people. Does he have to put us under covenant and oath before we can rise to the mark and be a pure people?

Do I have to go to my brother and say, look, I covenant with you that I will refuse to speak evil of you or even listen to what's spoken of you until I come to you face to face before I'm man enough to stop and control myself? If I can't control myself before, I'm liable to be a covenant breaker after. Well, brothers and sisters, I feel good standing before you tonight. I'm happy for this privilege.

I rejoice in this privilege. It's been over a year since I had the privilege of speaking to you. I've always managed to sneak away and get off in the back room. In lots of cases, it was because I was nothing more nor less than a moral coward that I didn't dare stand up here and tell what the Lord inspired me to tell. Nothing but a moral coward. Maybe it isn't the Lord that's telling me that, but I can see that there's a lot of you people that agree that it is.

Because that is a thing that a lot of us need, and a lot of us need that. Our greater united people. If I could be just as confident that you wouldn't destroy my reputation as if you wouldn't take a knife and slay me. If President Johnson could be just as confident that this people wouldn't slay him with their tongue as he is that they wouldn't slay him with a knife. If the council of our high priest apostleship could feel the same way.

as they go through their work, that their lives and their secrets are protected in the bosoms of this people. If rather than destroy their reputations and seek to ruin them by building ourselves up, we would suffer our tongues to be torn from our mouths, as John Taylor said when they wanted him to sign the bill, getting rid of the only true principle pertaining to God and the royal priesthood, never.

Where is the faith that God put down among the ancients? Where is it, brothers and sisters? Where is it in the hearts of the men and women that surround the high priest apostles? What's the matter with you and I? Why is it that we want to drain, drain, drain, drain, drain, drain, drain away the spirit from them instead of filling them up with some of ours? Why don't we come to this meeting with more spirit of God than we need so that we can give to them? Why can't we build them up?

Why can't we go to Uncle Roy and say, is there anything I can do to help you, Uncle Roy? I would be delighted to help you. Here, let me help you. I have no problems. What are yours? Let me help you solve them instead of driving the men crazy with ours. Where's our faith? Where's our spirit? Where's our courage? Where's our belief? Where's our knowledge? I think it's horribly lacking in a lot of us.

I don't know why it is that I seem to be glued to this one subject. I don't seem to be able to get away. This microphone I got here seems to hold an attraction. I want to tell you, brothers and sisters, until we can bring our thoughts and our feelings under control, until we can lay them at the feet of God by laying them at the feet of his servants, until his servants can have absolute confidence and certainty in we as a people, in the integrity of our hearts.

I imagine that there isn't one of the high priest apostleships here that would dare tell us what some of their troubles. Before we got through it, we'd have it so twisted and warped that it wouldn't even be in the same similarity as the thing they told us. I remember reading a sermon of Heber C. Kimball where he told the people, for goodness sakes, why don't you come up and build up the apostles in Brigham instead of coming and sapping away what energy he had. And I think that's the same thing among this people.

So brothers and sisters, let's put forth more effort. Let's put forth more faith and determination to be men and women of God. Let's purify ourselves so God can establish and redeem Zion through we, his people. For he can do it no other way. And he cannot do it until he has confidence that we will not reveal the secrets of the priesthood.

are the secrets of our brothers and our sisters. We can do it gently. We can put forth that extra effort. We can have that extra faith. We can control ourselves that little bit extra. And we can go out and take our automobiles down and have them safety checked for winter so they'll have less slippage on the highway. Are we more helpless to safety check our own tongues and mouths so that they won't slip in slippery places?

Heaven forbid, if we can take care of all our mechanical devices, then we'd better turn on our own devices and see if we can't, in this next coming year, build up more confidence of the priesthood in us to see if we can't start carrying our own load and shouldering our own responsibilities and throwing back our heads and putting our chests out and then come around and say, well, Uncle Roy, I am ready to help you in some of this kingdom work. I don't need your help now, except when you see me starting to flip a little bit. I'd appreciate it if you'd just flip over and say, look, brother, I knew it this way. I can't help but think of the words of a cowboy poet. What good to me is a vague may be or mournful might have been? The sun's will shift from morn to morn. The world began.

When I was born, the world is mine to win. I waste no thought on my neighbor's birth or the way he makes his prayer. I grant him a white man's room on earth if only his game is square. If he treats me straight, I'd call him mate. If he cheats me, I'd drop him flat. Old class and rank are a worn-out lie. For all clean men are as good as I, and a king is only that.

God bless you, brothers and sisters. I feel the blessing tonight. I feel good. I'm happy for this opportunity. I know that the Lord is pleased with this people. If he wasn't pleased with this people, he wouldn't be trying to straighten us out. I pray that we'll drink to the spirit of the Lord that is here and rich abundance tonight. I pray that we'll exercise the necessary mental effort among ourselves as the speakers.

speak as they will be moved upon by the power of God. If we do not drink of their spirit, we will drink in vain. God bless you, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.