Church Talks
MY TESTIMONY
[Testimony given by John E. Enslen in sacrament meeting at the Wetumpka Ward of the Montgomery Alabama Stake on September 23, 2012.]
I am grateful to be here today by way of assignment from the stake president whom I love, sustain, and appreciate. He sends his love and appreciation to each of you.
In all likelihood, this will be my last opportunity to speak to you in my capacity as a high councilor. There are changes blowing in the wind. The weekend following our upcoming October general conference, the Lord will reveal our next stake president. Although members of the high council are not simultaneously released with the current stake president, my new civic and governmental duties beginning in January will require me to perform more than 250 marriages a year, many of which will occupy my weekends.
My assigned topic today is the atonement, and I am going to talk about the atonement in a way which is up close and personal. I am going to share with you my own conversion story. Many of you here have been directly affected in some way by my conversion. In at least some degree, I am part of what I will call your “conversion ancestry.”
Some of you know that were it not for my conversion, your conversion would either have been different, or later in life, or non-existent to at least this point in your life. Now that doesn’t make me special or unique in the slightest because each of you are a similar part of the conversion ancestry of others and you will continue to be a part of the conversion ancestry of others in the future. Also, I readily acknowledge the conversion ancestry behind my own conversion, and I am eternally grateful to those who are a part of my own conversion ancestry.
There have been a few times, although not as many as there should have been, when I have magnified my office unto the Lord, taking upon myself the responsibility to teach the word of God with all diligence, laboring with my might. And as a result I have rejoiced with those amongst whom I taught and labored.
It is frightening for me to think of the possibility that at least some of you with whom I rejoiced would not be here had I not been diligent. It is with fear and trembling that I ponder the fact that I would have been required to answer for the sins of my dear friends and fellow saints upon my own head, and would have their blood upon my own garments, had I not been diligent. (See Jacob 1:19) I hope I am not over-estimating the mercy of Christ to cover for me in those situations where I did not magnify my priesthood office.
With that post-conversion perspective in the background, I am going to read to you my very first written expression of a testimony of the restored gospel. I wrote it in the form of a letter in 1973, one week before I was baptized into the Church. But first I want to preface my reading of the letter with the attendant circumstances, although revisiting my pre-Mormon days arouses a certain amount of painful recollection.
I was religiously active as a youth, being a member of the First Baptist Church here in Wetumpka. I attended primary, training union, Sunday worship services, vacation Bible school, Royal Ambassadors, and summer youth camps. At the age of 11, I won the state-wide Bible Sword Drill Contest. These were my natural inclinations, notwithstanding neither of my parents were a part of the more active inner circle of our local church. But my parents sometimes went and always provided me with transportation.
I am very grateful for my protestant heritage and the protestant heritage of my forefathers who came to the American colonies in search of religious freedom. I am very grateful for loving teachers and pastors at my protestant church who taught me the stories of Jesus. I have never forgotten them or the stories they taught me, or the continuing influence for good which they had on my early life. My testimony of the restored gospel has never been about criticizing my past religious affiliation. I view the restoration as being more of an expansion than a contradiction.
I now take you to the years 1972 and 1973. At the time I wrote the letter I will read, no Mormon lived within the jurisdiction of this city, the county seat of a prominent Alabama county. The nearest mission office was situated hundreds of miles away in Tallahassee, Florida—the Alabama-Florida Mission presided over by President Spencer H. Osborn. There were three converts living in a rural part of the county, Duffie and Sally Edwards who had moved here by way of Talladega and Montgomery, and Atlee Evans who had joined the Church in this county in the 1960’s. In the fall of 1972, I was the 25-year-old selfish husband of an angel wife, and the totally incompetent father of a precious, sweet little girl named Georgia Brown. I had a perverted, highly inflated sense of self-worth based on an accomplishment that only a native Alabamian can fully understand. I had quarterbacked two consecutive undefeated high school football teams.
October of 1972 was a momentous milestone in my life. This was seven months before my baptism. I had completed my military obligation without ever being sent to Viet Nam, passed the state bar exam, moved into a brand new house, and hung out my shingle to commence the practice of law. Dianne was five months pregnant with our second child that we would name Jacob. My father was in his first of what would eventually be four six-year terms as Probate Judge and Chairman of the county commission in our home county of seven generations.
An exemplary member and fellow officer in the Army, the only Mormon I had ever known, was about to become the first link in my conversion ancestry. Dianne and I had become what Mormons are prone to call “a referral.” He had aroused just enough curiosity that I was willing to let two young men, six years my junior, into our new home in February of 1973.
Over a period of about three months, the unconditional love of these two missionaries softened me to the point that I became teachable. The pure doctrines of Christ they taught provided me with answers to questions that had always bothered me. By mid-April, I had prayerfully put Moroni’s promise to the test, and the Holy Ghost had confirmed to me the reality of the restoration. Thus, my promising future on the world’s stage was transformed into a state of tumultuous, life-changing upheaval.
At my mother’s suggestion, the preacher visited Sister Enslen and me, but he could not turn us. My sister Emily, who is one year younger than I am, checked out of the library two anti-Mormon books, put them in a large envelop, and mailed them to me. I found them laughable, and I did something of which I remain terribly ashamed but console myself to this day with the thought that I was technically still a Baptist. I burned the two books, put their ashes into the same envelop, and re-mailed the books in their altered state to my sister, who, of course, had to pay the library for the cost of the two books.
As a last resort, my sweet, well-intentioned, but not well informed, mama propositioned me with the only enticement that could have possibly diverted me from baptism, and that was not disinheritance. Dianne and I had already consigned our lives to a future of certain poverty, which at the time seemed as absolutely real as grits and groceries.
“John,” my mother said, “if you won’t get baptized just yet, I will sit down and listen to all of the lessons that these young boys have taught you.” There was nothing that I desired more, but the Spirit immediately warned me that she would not listen with real intent and that procrastinating my baptism was the ploy of Satan. With that preface, I now read my letter under the date of April 28, 1973, one week before my and Dianne’s baptism into the Church.
“To the members of The First Baptist Church of Wetumpka:
The purpose of this letter is to advise you that I wish to humbly withdraw my name from the roster at The First Baptist Church of Wetumpka. I address this to you because I feel I owe you an explanation for my forthcoming absences. I have given countless hours of consideration to my decision to join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and it is a direct result of intense praying and studying.
Everything earthly has pulled at me to remain with your church. It is the church in which I was reared. It is the church in which I attended Bible school and Royal Ambassadors, and the church in which I first came to know Jesus Christ. It is the church in which I have found sincere fellowship and loyal friendships. It is the church in which I could most easily maintain my social and economic security within the community. But I am now free from those earthly pressures which would prevent my following truth as I have found it.
Were I to remain I could only use your church as a personal forum to express the belief in doctrines which are fundamentally new and different from those taught by your denomination, I would not do such.
I challenge each of you to embark upon a diligent search for answers to these three questions: (1) Where did I come from? (2) What is the purpose for my being on this earth? (3) Where am I going?
If the answers I have found are true, then you will witness a change in my life. If the answers I have found are a hoax, then I will return to your church without shame, for I am convinced at present with all of my heart, mind, and soul that new dimensions of truth have been revealed to me of which you have not yet heard, and God calls me to grow in it.
If you be truly secure in your religious beliefs, then fear not the teachings of another. Listen and search with an open mind for the truth shall prevail. And hear the whole, for half a truth is no truth at all. ‘He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.’ (Proverbs 18:13)
I remain the friend of each of you. In Christian witness, John E. Enslen”
There is a scripture in Alma that I profoundly treasure and cherish: “Who could have supposed that [my] God would have been so merciful as to have snatched [me] from [my] awful, sinful, and polluted state?” (Alma 26:17)
When I think about my and Dianne’s conversion to the restored gospel in 1973, I think the greatest practical benefit that came from it, when viewed from the limited perspective of mortality, is that it literally saved our small young family and created for us a larger family. It is impossible for me to estimate the depth of the personal unhappiness and suffering that was prevented by our embrace of and obedience to the restored gospel. There can never be enough thanks to my personal Savior for his atonement and for his two true servants who shared the full message of our Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness, and for the conversion ancestry behind those two true servants.
We cannot let our goals in life be based upon what the world values. The essential elements of a happy life are really quite simple for those who have accepted the restored gospel. Make good choices. Build a righteous family. Find an appropriate way to provide for your family. Serve whenever and wherever you are called. And prepare to meet God. Everything else will take care of itself. I close with my personal witness of the restoration of the gospel through the instrumentality of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith did see God the Father and his son Jesus Christ. Joseph Smith did translate the Book of Mormon by the gift and power of God. Our Father in Heaven is a loving father who is interested in us and I know that he has a plan that blesses each of His children.
I know by the power of the Holy Ghost that Jesus is the very Christ, and that He has restored to the earth His glorious gospel in its fullness. God’s priesthood power is again among the sons of men, and His organized church has been reestablished upon the earth for the last time in preparation for the Son of God’s triumphant return. The Holy Ghost ministers to us and bears witness of these sacred revelations.
We are blessed beyond words for the privilege of participating in the wondrous workings of God in these latter days. Of these things I testify, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.