Church Talks
WE WORSHIP A POWERFUL, YET LOVING GOD
[The following sacrament meeting talk was given by John E. Enslen at the Wetumpka Ward Chapel, Montgomery Alabama Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on May 23, 2010.]
I am grateful to our bishopric for the assignment and privilege of addressing you today. I pray that my remarks will justify the occupation of your valuable time. Your silent prayers will be most welcome.
One aspect of Heavenly Father’s power is His universal and absolute power over life and death. He “willeth to take even them whom He will take, and preserveth in life them whom He will preserve.” (D & C 63:3; see also Moses 6:32)
We are powerless to challenge his power over life and death. There are an unlimited number of ways in which He can instantly retransfer us to our prior world. He can do it with a single invisible particle of contaminated dust, or he can crush us in a massive earthquake.
Another truth that relates to the power of God is that God is the God of the unborn, the living, and the dead, and He is personally involved in redeeming all of them. He will not allow His work of redemption to be permanently thwarted by misguided souls.
We have examples of His exercising power over life and death in the scriptures. In protecting a yet unborn posterity, He said to Abraham: “I have come down…to destroy him who hath lifted up his hand against thee. *** [M]y power shall be over thee. *** And the Lord smote the priest that he died.” (Abr. 1:17;18;20)
In protecting the living, “the power of God was upon Alma and Amulek,…and every soul within the walls [of the prison], save it were Alma and Amulek, was slain….” (Alma 14:25;28) “[H]e will preserve the righteous by his power,…even unto the destruction of their enemies.” (1 Ne. 22:17)
On another occasion, God both protected an unborn nation and preserved an important record of the dead. The Plates of Brass of Laban contained, among other things, an unbroken genealogy of Lehi’s “forefathers, even from the beginning.” (Alma 37:3; see also 1 Ne. 3:12) This genealogical record of the dead, as well as scriptures for a yet unborn nation, was preserved by slaying Laban, for God “slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes, [for] [i]t is better that one man should perish than…a nation should perish….” (1 Ne. 4:13)
Why don’t stories like these from the ancient scriptures occur in our day? I testify that they do, and I wish to present a true Alabama story which has never before been told in any Church meeting in Alabama. I knew each participant, and made it a point to carefully obtain first hand accounts with respect to those portions of the story which took place outside of my presence.
In late 1977, the Church through its Genealogical Society of Utah undertook to film family history records located in the probate offices of Alabama’s 67 counties. These records contained identification datum on hundreds of thousands of Heavenly Father’s deceased children then living in the spirit world.
Although he pretended to be a friend of the Church, State archives director Milo Howard was secretly determined to prevent the filming, and he was a powerful bureaucrat. He had served as Alabama Director of Archives and History for more than a decade; he was long-time chairman of the Alabama Historical Commission; and he was a frequent speaker at civic clubs throughout the state regarding Alabama’s glorious past, as he viewed it, when cotton was king.
After he learned that the Church desired to film Alabama’s records, he commenced an intense subversive campaign to prohibit the filming. He would obtain information from the Church with regard to where the Church intended to pursue its filming. Then, using the authority of his office, he wrote and telephoned the probate judges in the counties where the Church was about to undertake its filming. In his communications to the probate judges, Howard would take the position that it was illegal for the Church to film these records. He would even threaten suit by the state if the local probate judge allowed the filming to take place.
My father, who was never a member of the Church, happened to be the Probate Judge of Elmore County, and I lived next door to him. My father showed me a threatening letter he received from Milo Howard and said to me: “This does not sound right.” My father saw no legal reason why the Church should not be allowed to film public records, but he wanted my legal opinion as an attorney he trusted. My opinion agreed with his, and that was plenty good enough for him.
Despite the warnings of the state archives director, my father allowed the filming to go forward in Elmore County. In accordance with the Church’s standard procedure, Elmore County was given a free copy of all records that were filmed, a magnificent cost-effective way for the county to preserve its records.
As divine providence had decreed beforehand, my father was the President-Elect of the Probate Judges Association of Alabama, and he was scheduled to play a significant role at the upcoming annual judges’ conference. At my suggestion, he secured a spot on the program for Brother Wayne Morris, the regional manager of the Genealogical Society having oversight of Alabama.
Brother Morris made an excellent presentation at the judges’ conference held on January 19, 1978. He was able to use the Elmore County experience as a positive example of what the Church would do, and this seemed to resolve some of the concern. At the conclusion of the presentation, a handful of probate judges signed up to have their records filmed. There were enough requests to keep cameramen busy for a few months.
Unfortunately, Milo Howard was infuriated and only intensified his opposition to the Church’s record-gathering activities. It was at this time that Brother Morris discovered that the information he had been providing to Howard regarding the Church’s plans, was being used by Howard to sabotage the Church’s efforts. Morris went to Director Howard’s office in Montgomery and confronted him with what Morris then knew.
On that occasion, Howard grabbed his gold-headed walking cane, arose from his chair, and walked around his desk to where Morris was seated. While shaking his raised cane over Morris’ head, Howard angrily said: “The Mormon missionaries won’t ever set foot on my front porch, and you and I would be facing one another on a dueling field had we lived in an earlier age.” Perhaps that was the age in which genteel Milo Howard often imagined himself as he walked the streets of Montgomery with his gold-headed cane in one hand and his plantation hat in the other.
Morris, a small humble man from North Carolina, knew the meeting was over. He silently and gracefully walked out the door, leaving Howard to stew in his own anger.
On Thursday, March 15, 1979, a senior couple from Salt Lake City named Clarence and Opal Willis approached Probate Judge Melba P. Barnes at her courthouse office in Dadeville, Alabama, the county seat of Tallapoosa County. My law office was in this adjoining county, and I knew Judge Barnes. Her son Rex and I had played football against one another, and Rex had dated my younger sister in high school.
The Willis couple kindly introduced themselves to Judge Barnes as representatives of the Genealogical Society of Utah and then politely inquired into the possibility of filming the early records of Tallapoosa County. Judge Barnes responded with a direct, three-word question: “Are ya’ll Mormons?”
Following her receipt of an unhesitating answer in the affirmative, Judge Barnes, who was large in stature, immediately stood up, banged both fists loudly against the top of her desk, and boasted with resolve and determination: “If any records in this office get microfilmed by the Mormon Church, it will be over my dead body!” She then, in a rude and uncivil manner literally drove the senior couple from her office.
Sister Willis told me that as they walked down the courthouse steps, they felt an amazing, comforting peace. They confirmed one another’s feelings and decided that Judge Barnes had simply been supplied with incorrect information, and that they should hold no ill will against her. With their charitable heart and forgiving attitude, they made their way to the adjoining county of Coosa to continue their labors.
That very evening, Judge Barnes suddenly and unexpectedly died. She had unwittingly imposed a death sentence upon herself.
In short time, the work of the camera operators was completed with respect to the few probate judges who had originally agreed to the filming of their records. About that same time, Milo Howard lost a personal duel with an enemy just as deadly as an accurately fired single-shot, muzzle-loaded dueling pistol at 20 paces. He died at the age of 48 on November 3, 1981, after losing a 10-week battle with lung cancer. All opposition to filming Alabama’s records died with him.
That same year, 1981, the records in Tallapoosa County were filmed by the Church, figuratively speaking, over the dead body of Judge Melba P. Barnes. Since then, these Tallapoosa County records and the other Alabama county records have been the subject of important temple extraction programs of the Church.
Following the death of Milo Howard, the State of Alabama appointed a new Director of Archives and History. His name was Ed Bridges. Bridges had previously worked as an archivist in his home state of Georgia and had enjoyed favorable experiences with the Genealogical Society of Utah. He had worked closely on a project with Noel Barton, who happened to replace Wayne Morris as the new regional manager responsible for Alabama.
Director Bridges saw not only the obvious value of free copies of filmed records, but also the value of using senior LDS missionaries to assist with indexing and other records-organization work at the state archives building in Montgomery. Thus began a long-term relationship of mutual cooperation and respect between the Alabama archives department and the Church which continues to this day.
In 1987, all U. S. camera operators for the Church held their annual weeklong seminar at the archives building in Montgomery, Alabama. They met in a conference room which bore the commemorative name of “The Milo B. Howard Room.” My friend Mike Benson, a camera operator at the time, told me that they conducted their meetings, ironically, under the watchful glare and stare of a large portrait of Milo Howard which hung on the wall of the conference room.
In August of 2000, Sister Enslen and I had the privilege of escorting Director Ed Bridges from room to room through the new Birmingham Alabama Temple during its VIP open house.
I want to counter-balance that story with the indisputable historical fact that persecutors and outspoken enemies of the Church do not usually meet the same mortal fate as did Judge Barnes and Director Howard. The overwhelming majority of such persecutors live prosperously to a ripe old age, to be dealt with in the due time of the Lord. Nevertheless, there remains at all times, in tact and ready for use, the power of God the Father to shorten or extend the mortal life of any man or woman as it may please Him.
Despite some original reluctance, I have decided to conclude the last third of my talk with a first hand, non-hearsay, personal experience. I would like to share with you my very first written expression of a testimony of the restored gospel. I wrote my testimony in the form of a letter in 1973, one week before I was baptized into the Church. I need to preface my reading of the letter with some of the attendant circumstances.
I was religiously active in the Baptist Church as a youth. I lived within 15 miles of the Alabama Baptist headquarters in Montgomery, Alabama. I attended primary, Sunday school, training union, Sunday worship services, vacation Bible school, Royal Ambassadors, and summer youth camps. At the age of 12, I won the statewide Bible Sword Drill Contest. Two busloads of members rode to Shocco Springs to watch me compete.
I will fast-forward 14 years from age 12 to the month of October 1972. In that one month, I had completed my military obligation, passed the state bar exam, and “hung out my shingle,” as they say, to commence the practice of law. I had a perverted, highly inflated sense of self-worth that only a native Alabamian or native Texan can fully understand. I had quarterbacked two consecutive undefeated high school football teams.
In our prominent county adjacent to the state capital, my great-grandfather had been city marshal and a city councilman. My grandfather had been the county chairman of the only political party in existence. My father was in his first of what would be four six-year terms as probate judge and chairman of our county commission. This county had been our home residence for seven generations. I had an abundance of connections and relationships.
By February 15, 1973, I was the 26-year-old selfish husband of an angel wife and the incompetent father of two precious little children, the youngest of which was born three days earlier. February 15, 1973, was the same day I brought my wife home from the hospital and the same day I met the two young Mormon elders who would help me to dramatically change my life.
The good example of a fellow officer in the Army, the only Mormon I had ever known, had aroused just enough curiosity that I was willing to let the two young men, six years my junior, into our new home. Over the next few weeks, their patience and unconditional love softened me to the point that I became teachable. The pure doctrines of Christ they taught provided me with answers to questions that had bothered me. I decided to put Moroni’s promise to the test, and the Holy Ghost confirmed to me the reality of the restoration.
By mid-April of 1973, I had progressed first from a confident theological Bible-basher to the possessor of an insecure feeling of fear that the young elders might be right. Then study and prayer brought me to a point where my soul was racked with pain, torment, and inexpressible horror that comes only from a full consciousness of guilt (see Alma 36). My promising future on the world’s stage had been transformed into a state of spiritually traumatic, life-changing upheaval. But genuine godly sorrow cannot long remain within us without our beginning to feel the comforting love of God toward us.
At my mother’s insistence, the Baptist preacher visited Sister Enslen and me, but by then he could not turn us. My sister checked out of the library two anti-Mormon books, put them in a large envelope, and mailed them to me. I found them laughable, and I did something of which I am terribly ashamed, but console myself with the thought that I was technically still a Baptist. I burned the two books, put their ashes into the same envelope, and re-mailed the books in their altered physical state to my sister, who of course had to pay the library for the cost of the two books.
As her last resort, my sweet mama propositioned me with the only enticement that could have possibly diverted me from baptism, and that was not disinheritance. Sister Enslen and I had already willingly consigned ourselves to a life of certain poverty, which at that time seemed as real to us as grits and groceries.
My mother had another idea. “John,” she 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 I wanted 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.
At the time I wrote the following letter, no Mormon lived within the jurisdiction of our city. The jurisdictional mission office was situated hundreds of miles away in Tallahassee, Florida.
With that prologue, I now read my letter addressed to the members of The First Baptist Church of Wetumpka dated April 28, 1973.
“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, and 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 treasure: “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)
The opportunity to repent and receive forgiveness is a special gift from the Savior, motivated only by His perfect love for the Father and for each of us. His invitation to come unto Him remains an open invitation, despite repeated mistakes. “Behold, he sendeth an invitation unto all men, for the arms of mercy are extended towards them, and he saith: Repent, and I will receive you.” (Alma 5:33; see also Mosiah 16:12) “Yea, and as often as my people repent will I forgive them their trespasses against me.” (Mosiah 26:30)
May we each be grateful for, and take advantage of, the special privilege that we have been given to repent. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.