Learning From Our Conflicts

Sometimes I can't help wondering just how unusual I really am. Recently, for instance,I read a couple of paragraphs in my Primary 5 book that filled me with pretty intensevcuriosity. No way around it, I had to find out more! If you had read this from page 77, would you have gone bonkers till you knew more too? "While Joseph and Emma Smith were living in Harmony, PA, a few months after the Church was organized, Oliver Cowdery disagreed with the wording of one of the revelations Joseph had received from the Lord. Oliver wrote to Joseph Smith and said, "I command you in the name of God to erase those words!" Joseph immediately wrote back to Oliver and asked him "by what authority he took upon him to command me to alter or erase, to add to or diminish from, a revelation or commandment from
Almighty God" (History of the Church, 1 : 105).

"A short time later Joseph and Emma went to Fayette, New York, where they found that Oliver Cowdery and the Whitmer family were convinced that this revelation Joseph had received had an error and should be changed. Joseph spent much time trying to reason with Oliver and the Whitmers. Eventually Christian Whitmer became convinced that the revelation was correct as Joseph had given it, and helped convince the others." What revelation! What was the supposed error! I finally found it, and I am impressed and inspired by my finding. A speech given at a BYU devotional contained the answers I sought, and much more. Conflicts? Joseph had them. Oliver had them. Captain Moroni and Pahoran had them. Wisely, they learned from them. (Well, Oliver had some problems with that.) This speech, unlike any other I've ever found, shows us how we can learn from our conflicts! This speech is timeless, full of true principles. As relevant 20 or 30 or more years from now as it is today. Or, am I just unusual?

Learning from Our Conflicts-GERALD R. WILLIAMS