The Inexhaustible Gospel | Neal A. Maxwell

The highest education is coming to understand the truths of the Plan of Salvation.

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/neal-a-maxwell_inexhaustible-gospel/

Neal A. Maxwell was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when this devotional address was given at Brigham Young University on 18 August 1992.

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"I give my sincere appreciation to President Lee and to those who have planned these important days for you and for this opportunity to be with you, brothers and sisters. My appreciation goes to Michael Ballam for the beautiful music and, just as important, for the quality of his and his wife’s personal discipleship.

The title of my address, “The Inexhaustible Gospel,” is intended to convey the vastness and preciousness of that enormous body of knowledge we call the gospel and—if I am at all successful—some of my ever-growing excitement over it.

Before using terms like truth, knowledge, intelligence, education, and wisdom, I stress at the outset that the scriptural definitions of these terms give us, as Latter-day Saints, an added understanding of these concepts. They differ from those of the world—markedly, in fact. Each is “added upon” by the relevant revelations. These differences are especially worth noting during an Education Week. Please be patient while I attempt to note certain of these distinctions.

For example, our being saved by gaining knowledge obviously refers to a particular form of knowledge, a “knowledge of God” and knowledge of the things of God (see D&C 128:19; Teachings, p. 217). Nephi lamented, as you know, over those who “will not search knowledge, nor understand great knowledge” (2 Nephi 32:7). Clearly he was referring to a particular kind of knowledge. In fact, Joseph Smith’s translation of Jesus’ lamentation—about how those in his time had lost the “key of knowledge”—provides a definition; it adds five words defining what the word key means: “the fulness of the scriptures” (JST, Luke 11:53; see also D&C 84:19–20). So we view knowledge differently. Furthermore, Latter-day Saints know that certain knowledge comes only by revelation and, thereby, is only “spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). So we are in some important respects on a different footing from the people of the world.

In addition, brothers and sisters, multiple scriptures make it clear that knowledge is meant to be closely associated with other virtues such as patience, humility, charity, and kindness (D&C 4:6; 107:30–31; 121:41–42; 2 Peter 1:5–9).

Truth includes, but is not limited to, knowledge that corresponds to reality—things as they were, things as they are, and things as they will be (Jacob 4:13; D&C 93:24). Gospel truth is “morally richer,” therefore, than the world’s definition of truth, as Terry Warner has written (Encyclopedia of Mormonism, vol. 4 [New York: Macmillan Co., 1992], p. 1490). Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). He has “received a fulness of truth” (D&C 93:26). Hence, we are to seek to have “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16). Furthermore, as to the “manner” of people we are to become, it is clear we are to strive to become “even as” Jesus is (3 Nephi 27:27; see also 2 Peter 3:11). If we keep the commandments, the promise is that we will receive “truth and light” until we are “glorified in truth and knoweth all things” (D&C 93:28).

Therefore, gaining knowledge and becoming more Christlike “are two aspects of a single process” (Warner, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, vol. 4, p. 1490). This process is part of being “valiant” in our testimony of Jesus. Thus, while we are saved no faster than we gain a certain type of knowledge, it is also the case, as Richard Bushman has observed, that we will gain knowledge no faster than we are saved (Teachings, p. 217). So we have a fundamentally different understanding of knowledge and truth—behaving and knowing are inseparably linked."

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