My noble, non-member grandfather asked an astute question that he had no way of answering, but that you and I can.  He asked the question because of some marvelous observations that he’d made.  He wrote the following sometime in the decade before his death in 1962:

My Father's Day and Mine

     “When my father was a young lad on the farm out west of Eugene he followed his father and four older brothers around the wheat field.  Each carried a short steel sickle, and as the wheat fell from the blade, it fell onto the reaper's left arm; and when a sizable bundle had accumulated, the reaper bound it together with a wisp of the newly cut straw, dropped it in the stubble and swung his blade to start another bundle.  Around and around the field, each reaper cutting right at the heels of the man next before him.

     “Grandfather and his boys were harvesting the grain they had planted that the family might be fed.  They knew of no other way of getting the harvest in.  All men harvested just as they were doing.  There was no other way.  Looking back from where we stand today we see that they were practicing the identical method used by the reapers who labored in the field of Boaz where Ruth the Moabitess gleaned.  The picture was the same.  Thirty one hundred years had passed without any change in this most essential and much used process.

     “When these bundles of wheat had lain out in the sun a sufficient time to cure and harden, Grandfather and the boys were again in the field, this time with oxen and wagons and hauled the bundles to the barnyard where they were piled in great weather proof stacks.  Then when thrashing day came, the bundles were pitched down on the hard-beaten ground of the yard, and horses and oxen were driven around and around over the ground until the straw was separated from the wheat.  Again we see the picture as no different than that of the Children of Israel thrashing out the grain on the thrashing floors of Pharaoh thirty five hundred years before.

     “And Grandfather had told his sons of the trip to America from Scotland just a few years before.  How they had made the crossing in a wind-driven sailing ship.  Just such a ship as had bourn the venturesome Phoenicians on their voyages into the unknown world of two thousand B.C.

     “Since those remote days the world had stood still with little change.  Gunpowder, the printing press, yes, and a few of man's new ideas had come on the scene, but the progress of mankind and of the world was largely unchanged.  It can truly be said that at the time my people came to the Oregon country the forward progress of man was still geared to the slow, measured tread of the oxen.

     “Note now the things which have happened in my father's day and mine.  Things which were unknown to an earlier generation.  The new things which have come about.  The list is limitless.  The harnessing and uses of electricity.  An understanding of the world of bacteriology and its uses in protecting human life.  The telephone, the radio, television, radar.  The use of steam and the railways.  Petroleum and its thousand uses.  The airplane and its world-wide service.  Each one of these innovations and a hundred more has stepped up the pace at which the world is moving from the four miles an hour tread of the ox to a fantastic speed much faster than that of sound.  Why has all this come to pass in our time?  Why was it that God in his infinite wisdom did permit the world to stand still for three thousand years and then in your time and mine pull the plug as it were and permit the world to rush to its full and final destiny?  That is truly the sixty-four dollar question of our day.”  (Elwin A. McCornack).

The National Bureau of Economic Research (whatever that is) noticed this same phenomenon, did a study, and published its findings in 1999.  Their report stated:

“New ideas, including scientific inventions and discoveries of better ways of doing things, were being produced annually at 39 a year from 4000 B.C. to A.D. 1, contrasted to 3,840 new ideas a year in the (1800s), while today they are created at the rate of 110,000 a year.”  (James E. Faust, The Ensign, May 2000, pg. 18, quoting from National  Bureau of Economic Research, 1999).

In the 14 years that have passed since that was written, I would suppose that number has doubled.  The current deluge of new ideas and technological advances leaves me gasping for air and feeling as if I’m drowning.  I often wonder if I even belong in this world.

My son told me—and I believe it—that in the Dark Ages, before the Renaissance, and maybe clear up to A.D. 1300 or 1400, it was possible for one man to know everything there was to know in the world.  Things began to slowly happen thereafter.  Johannes Guttenberg had an idea that set this all in motion and that revolutionized the world.  His idea was a necessary precursor for all that has happened since.  It took him years of planning and experimentation, but acting upon his idea he built a moveable-type printing press in 1455.

The first book he printed was the Bible.  Before that the few copies of the Bible that were then existent were all hand-written and laboriously copied by monks in monasteries.  The ability to mass produce Bibles inspired within others the desire to have their own copies, and to make Bibles widely available to all who wanted one.

Within the heart of William Tyndale was kindled a desire to make the Bible available to the common people in English.  What he did was monumental.  He was fluent in eight languages.  Desiring to improve upon the Latin Vulgate Bible then in use, he went back to the earliest Greek and Hebrew texts and retranslated the entire New Testament and much of the Old Testament.  His desire was irrepressible.  He translated at the peril of his life.  He was hounded, hunted, threatened, and persecuted.  He was shipwrecked, lost his precious manuscript, and had to retranslate what he’d already done.  He was so single-minded about his project that the only way to stop him was to kill him, which his enemies eventually accomplished.  Eighty percent of our King James Bible is the wording of William Tyndale.

It was the Holy Spirit that planted the idea in the mind of Johannes Gutenberg to build a printing press.  It was the Holy Spirit that urged William Tyndale to translate.  As William Tyndale worked feverishly upon his project, the Holy Spirit worked upon others, planting other ideas in other minds.

Three decades before Tyndale the Holy Ghost gave an Italian, named Christopher Columbus, the idea that he could reach China and the Far East by sailing west instead of east.  It was a radical idea.  Many think he made his voyage to prove the earth was round.  He didn’t.  Many or most people already knew that.  Some people complain that Columbus wasn’t the real discoverer of America because the Vikings had discovered it earlier.  Maybe they did, but their discovery didn’t stick.

In the timetable of the Lord it was time for the Americas to become connected with the rest of the world, and it was Columbus who was chosen and sent to open the way.  Columbus himself had no doubt about the source of his idea.  He wrote:  “Our Lord unlocked my mind, sent me upon the sea, and gave me fire for the deed.  Those who heard of my emprise called it foolish, mocked me, and laughed.  But who can doubt but that the Holy Ghost inspired me?”  (N. Eldon Tanner, The Ensign, May 1976, pg. 49).

While William Tyndale translated, a Catholic priest in Germany became more and more distressed with what he felt were incorrect doctrines and practices of his church.  He finally compiled his complaints into a list of 95 grievances which he nailed to his parish door.  That was the Holy Ghost at work on the mind of Martin Luther.  Martin Luther began translating the Bible into German.  William Tyndale fled England, went to Germany to continue his work, and became fast friends with Martin Luther.

The Holy Ghost was simultaneously working upon many others whom we now know as the Reformers.  Their purpose was to reform the existing church, and to bring it back into conformity with the Church as established by Jesus and the Apostles.  Martin Luther didn’t set out to establish a church; but he “discovered to his surprise and disappointment that he had founded a new church, (and) complained that he did not want to give his name to a community that should take its name only from Christ.”  (The World Book Encyclopedia, 1988).

Luther and the other Reformers were successful in creating an atmosphere and climate in which the Lord could restore His true Church.  Later, an amazing collection of great minds and patriots in America was successful in creating a place where the Restoration could occur.  George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, and those who drafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights won a battle for freedom, established a new nation with a new and unique system of republican government, and gave its citizens the unheard-of right to freedom of religion.  Such a radical idea was then not existent anywhere else in the world.

There is no denying that all this was inspired of the Lord.  From our perspective as the benefactors of these blessings, it’s plain to see the Lord’s hand guiding the process step by step.

In 1455 Johannes Guttenberg invented the printing press.

 

In 1492 Columbus discovered America.

In the 1520s William Tyndale translated the Bible into English, and Martin Luther initiated his reforms.  Against great opposition the Reformers worked tirelessly throughout the 1500s.  Explorers were simultaneously learning all they could about the New World that Columbus had discovered.

In 1611 the King James Version of the Bible was published.

In 1620 the first successful colony was established in America.  It was done by a group of Reformers who fled from the religious captivity of Europe.  They were followed by many thousands of others who were similarly seeking freedom of religion.  The 1600s and 1700s was a time of immigration and nation building for America.

1776 independence was declared by the United States of America.

In 1789 the U.S. Constitution was adopted.

In 1791 the Bill of Rights was approved which guaranteed freedom of religion.

Fourteen years later Joseph Smith was born.

In 1820 the Father and the Son appeared to the boy, Joseph, and cut the ribbon, so to speak, on the work that had been performed since Guttenberg’s printing press was invented 365 years earlier.

In 1829 the priesthood was restored.

On 26 March 1830 the Book of Mormon was published.  Eleven days later the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized.  It was the stone “cut out of the mountain without hands” (Daniel 2:45) that is destined to break in pieces all the other kingdoms and to fill the earth.

 

1830 is the year that the world took off.  Interestingly, that is the identical year pinpointed in a study initiated by the Union Pacific Railroad as the year in which the world’s ideas, inventions, and knowledge began its explosion.—A coincidence?—No.  A restoration, and a rush to the world’s “full and final destiny,” as my grandfather termed it.

In 1835 the Doctrine and Covenants was published.

In 1836 the sealing power and the keys for the gathering of Israel were restored.

In 1844 Joseph conferred all of the keys upon the twelve Apostles.

Bit by bit, and piece by piece the Restoration was effected.  The Restoration was not an event, but a process.  The entire world is reaping the benefits.  Because of the Restoration we have books that we can hold in our hands.  Because of the Restoration most of us have the ability to read them.  Because of the Restoration we have electric lights to read them by.  Because of the Restoration we can travel quickly from one place to another, and instantaneously communicate with others in far-off places.

Best of all, because of the Restoration we can effectively communicate with our Father in heaven, read His word, and know the truth of all things.  A flood of knowledge is sweeping the world.  The Lord has opened minds, opened doors, opened understanding, and opened opportunities the like of which the world has never seen.