Marjorie wondered today, “What would it be like to not have the gift of the Holy Ghost?”

I answered, “I can tell you.  I spent a couple of decades there.  It's dark, scary, depressing, and confusing.”

“All the time?” she asked.

“Yes, all the time.  I gave a patriarchal blessing to a 57-year-old man this morning who was baptized just last December.  He said that he has spent his life outside in the cold and storm, but that now he's inside the house.  I like that analogy.”

Arthur Henry King addressed the BYU student body with these words:

“At sixty I have now been a member of the Church four years.  I have undoubtedly come late.  Most of you were always in the Church or came to it early in life.  What I am best qualified to tell you about is the quality of the wilderness outside, and the quality of the wilderness inside those who are outside.  You may sometimes feel an urge to go outside.  You may even sometimes feel that you need to go outside to satisfy your intellectual honesty.  What I have to report, having come in from the cold, may be of value to you.”

Having myself come in from the cold, I can tell you about the wilderness without.  It's a place you don't want to be.  It's darkness and misery.

The gift of the Holy Ghost is light and assurance, comfort and peace.  I've experienced the wilderness, and I never want to go there again.  It's easy to become lost there, and most of the world is feeling their way there through the dark.  It's terrifying.  Most of the people who are wandering around out there would verify that that is so.

We have an obligation to hold up the light and to invite everyone to come inside.  Baptism is the door, and the Holy Ghost is the first thing you're offered once you step inside.  It's then yours forever unless you carelessly lay it down.

I came in out of the storm 56 years ago.  I was given the Holy Ghost and the scriptures, a testimony, the Priesthood, all of the covenants, a family, peace, and opportunities to serve.  The Lord is a most gracious host.

I am so grateful to be in here where I'm safe.