--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Grant, B. F. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 1 number: 5 published: 1898-03 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'B. F. Grant, "A Talk with an Unbeliever of Mormon Parentage," *Improvement Era* 1, no. 5 (March 1898): 314–322.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera15unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera15unse start_page: 314 end_page: 322 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1898-03) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera15unse publication_year: 1898 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1898, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # A Talk with an Unbeliever of Mormon Parentage —— A TALK WITH AN UNBELIEVER OF MORMON PARENTAGE, BY B. F. GRANT. The following letter written by B. F. Grant to a dear friend, a man very active in some spheres of public life, and many times honored by the people in the locality where he resides, but indifferent to the gospel and the obligations it imposes — so is full of plain, homely reasoning; so quaint and forceful in its illustrations; so full of honest desire to save a friend and ex- tend the kingdom of God; and, withal, so filled with advice suited to the condition of hundreds of young men in our community, as well as to the friend to whom it is addressed, that we give it place in the Era, without apology for what some might consider its crudeness from a literary stand- point. Brother Grant speaks straight from the heart, not so much from the head, though the reasoning in the letter shows clear conceptions of things as they are, that is, of the truth. testimony of and for the It is a truth that we commend to every young man in the Church of Christ, as Brother Grant commends it to his honorable friend. It should be said also that the letter is published with the consent of the one to whom it was addressed. Ed.] Granite, Grant Co., Oregon, Nov. 7, 1897. Hon. B B My dear friend: I suppose you will wonder at receiving a letter from me, but old man, while you may not know it, I often think of you. M and were talking about you the other day, I and I concluded to write you. B you no doubt know , that we lost our little girl of seven on the tenth of June, and as I am now preparing to return home for the winter, the thought of doing so and my darling girl not coming to meet me, makes me very sad at times; and it was while thinking of A TALK WITH AN UNBELIEVER. 316 you and your similar loss a short time ago, that I was reminded of the way you and many of us have viewed this life and the lives we have lived. Just living for the things of this life and never thinking of that to come. I thank God, our Heavenly Father, every day of my life to think that I have been brought from darkness into light, and can now say that I do know for myself and not for another that God lives and that we are all his children, and that he will hear and answer our prayers if we will but humble our- selves enough to call upon him in prayer. Oh, B this , life is but a span long at most, and our darling children have gone but a few days ahead of us, and just think, they were permitted to come on this earth and finish their work and return to their Father in Heaven as pure and unspotted by the things of this life as they were the day they were born. Now we all know there must be some wise purpose in placing us upon this earth, if so should we not find out what that purpose is and then see if we are following it? This is no idle word, it is all-important to us. I now ask you, should we take anybody's word on a question of so much import- ance, or should we not find out for ourselves? You know you have never taken anyone's word for this, and even if you had and did not find it out for yourself, it would do you no good. You can't read or do anything else from the knowledge others possess, but you must go and acquire this knowledge the same as they did and in the same way. When you can learn to read for one of your children, then I will learn the gospel of Christ for you, and when they can get the benefit of your learning to read without learning it forthemselves, then you can get the benefit of my knowledge of the gospel of Christ without learning it. When you can impart your feelings of love you have for your wife and children to me so that I can have the same love for them that you have, then I will impart to you the same feelings I have that make me know that God lives and that he has answered my prayers, and in such a way that I know it just the same as you know you love your family. Now, you may say and think, "Well, Fred has got it bad, poor fellow, it is all right, and it will do him good if he really thinks that way. I wish I did, but I can't. " And there you let it end. Oh, poor blind man, why will we let the devil furnish you these thoughts? I will now attempt to show how blind men are when led by the power of darkness. Suppose you were making an assay, and I was watching you, then you would tell me how you did it, and that you received ;?5oo per month for this work. I would say, "Why, I am work- ing with the pick and the shovel and receiving but $50 per month. I would give anything if I could assay." Then you would turn to me and say, "Well, if you really wish to know as much about this work as I do, all you have to do is to do the same as I do." Then you explain to me all about making an assay, and how you received this knowl- edge; then suppose I should go away saying to myself, "Well, poor B he has got it bad, but it is all right if he can think this way, but I can't," and at that I am content to stop. Now, I ask you if I should go on in that way, how long would it be before I would know how to assay, and what would you think of a man that really wanted to know something and would make no effort to inform himself regarding it? Then suppose you were interested enough in having me gain this knowledge to bring one hundred assayers to tell me that they possessed the same knowledge that you did, and that they acquired it in the same way you told me you did. After all this, what would you think of me, if I still would not believe you, or try to find out for myself, but would simply say, "I think you and all these men are deceiving yourselves." Then you might turn to me and ask what I know about assaying anyway, and I would be com- pelled to say, "I know but very little about it, in fact all I know just makes it that much harder for me to understand it." After all this, if you still found me at work with the pick and shovel, would you think I amounted to very much in this world? Oh, B I now ask you in the name of our Lord , and Savior Jesus Christ, for your sake, for the sake of your dear family, to stop and think of this subject, and consider how blind a man acting thus would be. I beg of you to examine .your condition regarding the plan of salvation, and see if it don't fit your case to the very letter. You know my past life and the way I have viewed A TALK WITH AN UNBELIEVER. 317 these things. now say to you that I have been born again; I I am a new man. I have new desires, new thoughts. I have, as you know, traveled both roads and should know something about them. I now say to you (God being my witness, and the memory of my little girl's death fresh in my mind, and knowing if I do not live an honest life I can never go where she is, and the greatest desire that I now have is to so live that I will have her in the life to come)— that I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true, and that Joseph Smith was a prophet of the true, and living God, and that the Church of Christ has been established on the earth for the last time. I say to you that I know this, .and I gained my knowledge by humbling myself in prayer, and asking God, our Father, in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, to give me a testimony of these things for myself, and I have received it by the spirit of God, Now, B , I don't ask you to take my word for this; it would do you no good if you did, but I do ask you to seek for a knowl- edge for yourself. This is an individual work, no one can do it for us, any more than they could eat for us, and satisfy our hunger. You must humble yourself enough to bow down and call on the Lord in humility to give you a knowledge of these things, and I promise you that you will know for your- self; there will be no counterfeiting it; you will no longer be in doubt. You can go off by yourself and call on him in prayer; you need not make the start in the presence of any- one but your Heavenly Father. Don't let the thought of wh:it will this or that old friend think of me, keep you from doing what you feel and know to be right, but think of the uncertainty of life and what this means to you and your family. The Lord will prompt you when you read this that you should call on him, but I promise you that the devil will be found at work with ten thousand things to keep you from doing it; but you are the only one to decide which of these promptings you will heed. You know you never did anything wrong in your life, that you did not receive the prompting, "Don't do it, it is wrong," and then would come the other prompting, "Oh, go ahead, it is only a little thing anyway, and then no one will know it, and you are a pretty good fellow anyway, your life is all right." It is strange how the adversary will make us think we are all right. Do we require any stronger evidence than this that we are here to make a record, and that we are given these two promptings and left to decide which one we will follow? If this were not the case, we would not be working out our own salvation. If you could not do wrong, then you could not be rewarded for doing right, but if you are prompted to do wrong, and you resist it, then you should be and will be re- warded. If you will be honest with yourself, you will admit that you have never tried to investigate and secure a testi- mony regarding these things. I was thirty- eight years old before I ever offered up a prayer to the Lord, and I do know that he was as pleased to think that I had humbled myself to do this as you or I would be to have one of our children who had been disobedient, come to us and say, "Father, I have sinned, forgive me and I will do so no more, but will obey you." Think of the joy this would give us, and how we would clasp this child in our arms and do all we could to make it feel that we had really forgiven it. Our Heavenly Father will receive you the same as you would your child, and make you know and feel that you were forgiven, and would be so as long as you would follow his promptings. If you wish to know something about farming, you would go to farmers and talk with them and associate with them. If you wish to know about the things of God, go and talk to him and associate with men of God, and you will find they carry an influence with them for good that you can't help feeling when in their presence, any more than you could stand by a red hot stove and not feel the heat from it. I might pick some fruit of a peculiar kind and taste it, and taste it, and then turn to you and say, "It is good, but has a very peculiar taste;" you would think maybe it had, but you would not know. One hundred more might go and partake of this fruit, and turn and tell you the same as I had done regarding the peculiar taste, but this would only strengthen your belief, you would still be in doubt; but if you go and partake of this fruit, then all doubt is removed; you have an actual living knowledge for yourself thereafter, and no amount of talk from others that have not tasted this fruit and don't know of the peculiar taste it has, " A TALK WITH AN UNBELIEVER. 319 could change your knowledge. You yourself might go on all your life telling this to others, and never succeed in finding one that would accept your testimony, still this would not change the fact that you were telling the truth. We find that in the time of our Savior, they would not accept his testimony, but put him to death, not for any wrong he had committed, but for the gospel he preached. We also find in our day they would not accept the testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith, but he died a martyr for the gospel of Christ, and not for any wrong he had committed, and so it has been in all ages and will continue to the end of this world. I might go on telling you that I know this is the gospel of Christ. Your dear old mother whose word you would stake your life on for things pertaining to this life, can tell you that she knows these things, and any number of others might do the same, and still it will count for nothing if you will not try to find out for yourself. Is it not strange how different things will arouse us to action? Now if I were to come to your house and say, B , one of your cows is down here in a mud hole, and will die if you don't get her out at once, you would not doubt my word for one moment, but would hardly wait for me to finish until you would be off to save the cow. Now comes the rub my boy. I say to you repent of your sins, go down into the waters of baptism, take your family with you, then go to the temple of the Lord and have them sealed to you for time and eter- nity, and then strive to keep the commandments of God and I promise you that you will have your little girl who has gone to the Great Beyond and as many more of your children as shall go there as pure as she was, and that you will all gain life eternal, worlds without end. Now, you would take my word and go to work at once to save your cow. Is it possible that you .think more of your cow than you do of yourself and family? Let us admit that I am deceived in this statement, am I asking you anything that you cannot do without any injury to you or your family? If you do it, it will not hurt you, but if you do not, and it is as I tell you, then you will not have your family in the world to come, for you know you are only bound "Until death doth you part. B , I say to you with all the sincerity of my heart that when I went to the temple and had my family all sealed to me for time and eternity that there was a change came over all of us. We thought we loved one another before this, and we did, but there was a new love after we had taken this step. Now, why would I tell you these things if I did not know them to be true? What good would it do me? If I were the only one that could tell you that these things are true, then you might say, and justly too, that I might be mistaken, but when you can find hundreds of thousands that will tell you the same things, among them your own mother, brothers and sisters, are you justified in thinking that they are all deceived, when some of them have spent a lifetime in this work? They must be very dull or they would have discovered that they were deceiving themselves and they would have quit, long before now. But in place of your finding them falling away, you find your own dear mother, now on the verge of the grave, bearing a stronger testimony to you than ever, that she knows this is the work of the Lord, and trying to get you to repent and come and par- take of the blessings that she knows will follow if you will but do it. Would she at the last hour of her life try to get you to do anything that she was in doubt about? Think how absurd it is to contemplate her doing such a thing. I say to you, go like a man and investigate this work, and do it before it is too late and hereby give your poor old mother the greatest joy of her life before she is called away, and save yourself and family while you can. How can I find words to arouse you to action? The church don't need you; that is, in the sense that if it don't get you it will fail and go to pieces it don't — need me; it will go on just the same no matter what you or me may do, but, if this church is what I tell you it is, and by following its teachings we can gain eternal life, and be reunited with our families and friends beyond the grave, not for a short time but for ever and ever — if this be true, I ask you, don't you think we need thechurch? Now, another thing. Don't let the acts or lives of those that you may know who claim a standing in the church and live unrighteous lives A TALK WITH AN UNBELIEVER. SSI keep you from doing what you know and feel to be right. The acts of these men and all hell combined cannot change the principles. They are everlasting and never, no never, change so long as time lasts. Let men do or say what they please, these principles will remain until the end of the world unchanged. Now, old man, you talk to your boy and tell him not to go with this or that boy, for he is a bad boy; and if he don't stay away from him he will get into some trouble. Then you tell him the story of "Old Dog Tray" and try in every way you can think of to get him to mind you. If he will listen to you then you have joy and satisfaction in knowing that he is doing right and trying to carry out your instructions. If this kind of advice is good for the boy, why wouldn't a little of it be good for his father? If his doing your will makes you happy, don't you think your doing the will of your Heavenly Father would make him happy as well as your earthly parents? I can say to you that I have proven for myself that there is no happiness that comes to the human heart like that which comes from keeping the commandments of the Lord, and striving to do right in all things. We are truly born again. We have new love for our family, for our friends and all man- kind. We wish to help them all and get them to come and partake of the blessings that we enjoy, and persuade them to ask God our Eternal Father to give them light that they may know of the things of God, and as the good book tells us, we cannot understand the things of God except by the spirit of God, and that we understand the things of man by the spirit of man. It is with this desire to try and do right myself, and in my humble way, always asking God our Heavenly Father to help me, that I may get others to come from darkness and re- ceive the light of the gospel, that has prompted me to write you today. I do hope and pray that God our Eternal Father will help you that you may ponder over these things and accept them with the same spirit that has prompted me to write them to you. Dedicating these words to you and your family in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, knowing if I have spoken falsely that I must answer for it, I now swear unto you, as sure as God lives, that I do know that these things are true, and I promise you in the name of the Lord that if you will but humble yourself enough to call upon the Lord, in prayer, you can and will receive a testimony for yourself, and you will know of this doctrine whether it is of man or whether it is of God. I know and promise you this for the reason that we are told that our Heavenly Father is not a respecter of per- sons, and he will hear and answer the prayers of all his child- ren. I have tried him and found this to be true. Possessing this knowledge I know I can with safety promise you if you will do the same as I have done, you will receive the same testimony that I tell you I have received. May you do this, and may God bless you and your family and give you all a desire to gain this knowledge and help you to obtain it, is the sincere desire and wish of Your affectionate friend, B. F. Grant.