3.039 We are a Part of Enoch's Vision

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth and the light of the world, reminding us that our lives are meant to preserve, illuminate, and point others to Him. This season on Savory Salt, we'll walk through the Old Testament, one verse and one thought each day. Perhaps these moments will add greater savor and brighter light to our lives as we seek to truly live as Savory Salt.

Hello, my friends. It's a new day with new opportunities. Choose ye this day whom you'll serve.

We're wrapping up this week inside of an entire week of Moses chapter seven. I hope you've enjoyed the readings inside of there, and I hope you've had way more personal time to study than just the episodes that we've done here on Savory Salt. We're going to finish this week actually inside of a conference talk.

Our talk today is going to come from President Benson called "Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon." And this is a talk from October of 1988. I'll make sure that you have the link. In fact, the link is just going to be our talk for the day, right?

Our verse for the day, so to speak. And he's referencing Moses 7:62, which we just talked about yesterday. And in it, he says this in his talk.

This will be our verse for today a little bit. He says the Book of Mormon is the instrument that God designed to sweep the earth as with a flood to gather out His elect. This sacred volume of scripture needs to become more central in our preaching, our teaching, and our missionary work.

At present, the Book of Mormon is studied in our Sunday school and book of prophecy written by its precepts than by any other book. And when we are called upon to study or teach other scriptures, we need to strengthen that undertaking by frequent reference to the additional insights which the Book of Mormon may provide on the subject. Now, isn't that cool?

Did you catch the beginning of that phrase right there? Isn't it cool? He says the Book of Mormon is the instrument that God designed to sweep the earth as with a flood.

That is President Benson saying what Enoch saw and was told by God in Moses 7:62 is right here in our day. We are fulfilling the words of the Lord here. And it got me thinking about the power of the Book of Mormon in our lives.

Just wanted to share a short story here with it about that power. When we were living in Houston, Texas, I was called to be the ward mission leader. And I worked very closely with the missionaries.

We loved to have the missionaries over in our house. The girls loved the missionaries telling the Book of Mormon stories to them. And we put together a plan for our ward called "100 Books in 100 Days." And the idea was that we finish the year from September to the end of the year as a ward, considering who we could give these.

And I ordered a hundred copies of the Book of Mormon too. The missionaries had them. We had people putting them in our cars.

We had people on Sundays. What we would do is in Sunday school class and in Elders Quorum and Relief Society, we would hold up the books and we'd say, "Who needs a book this week to give out?" And some people would say, "I need one." And other people would say, "I need five." And we tried as a ward to give out 100 copies of the Book of Mormon in 100 days. And I think the final number was somewhere around 88 copies of the Book of Mormon that we gave out by the end of the year.

Now, you might listen to that and say, "Oh, you guys, you were so close. You didn't quite make it. You didn't give out 100 books." But my friends, the 88 copies of the Book of Mormon that we gave out as a ward, one, unified the ward in a brand new way.

And two, led to the following year, our ward having two families and several other individuals join the ward through baptism and making covenants. In fact, at one point, our ward had more baptisms than any other ward in the mission the following year. My friends, the Book of Mormon is a conversion tool.

It testifies of Jesus Christ. Make sure as we study the Old Testament here throughout the year that we remember to keep the Book of Mormon side by side in our studies and that we turn to its pages so that we too can always remember that we'll get nearer to God by abiding its precepts than any other book. That is all for today, my friends.

You and I have come here for such a time as this. Step forward in faith and let's be Savory Salt. We will be here tomorrow and we hope you are too.