I want to tell you about two geologists, their discoveries, and the persecutions they endured because of what they knew.

Alfred Wegener was a German who observed that the shape of the east coast of South America matched the shape of the west coast of Africa.  He wondered if the two continents could have once been connected.

He studied the rocks and the fossils on each coast, and found that they also matched.  In 1912 he announced his discovery that the two continents had once been connected, and expanded it by saying that all of the earth's land masses had been anciently connected.  He called that land mass pangaea.

He was laughed at.  Everyone knew that continents don't move.  He was the laughing stock of the entire geologic community.  He died in 1930 still enduring their taunts and criticisms.

It wasn't until the 1950s that the idea of plate tectonics was generally adopted, and that it was learned that the continents ride on giant plates which are actually moving.

(Interestingly, it is now known that the entire Pacific Northwest is slowly rotating in a clockwise direction around a pivotal point near Pendleton, Oregon.)

J Harlan Bretz began studying the scablands of eastern Washington shortly before 1910.  The scablands are a vast area with no topsoil, and where even the underlying basalt rock has been deeply eroded.  He decided the scablands had been made by a gigantic flood.  He was laughed at because all geologists believed in uniformitarianism, which states that geologic processes take place slowly over long periods of time.  In geologic teachings, there was no room for cataclysmic events.  And besides, where could such a huge volume of water have come from?

J Harlan Bretz was derided, abused, and ganged up on for harboring such a ridiculous theory.  But he knew what he was seeing.  He finally decided that a glacier had dammed a river in western Montana, which created a monstrous lake which he named Lake Missoula.  The ice dam had broken perhaps as many as eighty or a hundred times in the past.  The result was a wall of water 500 feet high preceded by hurricane-force winds of the flood's own making.  The volume of the flood was more than 10 times the volume of all the rivers in the world.  The floods went down the Columbia River, and temporarily turned the Willamette Valley into a 400-foot-deep lake.  The rich farming soil of the Willamette Valley all came from Washington.

After many years of Bretz's being mocked and laughed at, another geologist finally lowered himself to come see the evidences for himself.  Bretz took him to Palouse Falls just north of Walla Walla.  The Palouse River at flood stage is 40 feet wide.  In the fall it's just a fraction of that.  Yet it's going over a cataract that is 3-1/2 miles wide.  180-foot-high Palouse Falls goes into a gigantic plunge pool that it could never have created by itself.

When the visiting geologist saw the width of the cataract and the depth of the plunge pool, he gasped and exclaimed, "How could anyone have ever been so wrong!"

Bretz's researches about the Lake Missoula floods were finally accepted by the geologic world in 1967.  In 1979, at the age of 96, he was awarded geology's top honors for his discoveries.  His response was, "All my enemies are dead, so I have no one to gloat over."

It occurs to me that in a coming day the world of religion is going to experience another "How could anyone have ever been so wrong" event.  That day will be when all the world finally comes to understand the character of God.

When I was a little boy, my mother told me about God and Jesus Christ.  I recall wandering around out in a field near my house wondering if God and Jesus Christ were one person or two.  Or are they persons at all?  My 6-year-old mind tried to sort it out, but I couldn't do it.  I gave it up, but retained the question.

At the age of 19 I was given a Book of Mormon.  I was excited because finally I was going to be able to answer my question.

But, do you know what?  The answer isn't in the Book of Mormon, either.  It's just as confusing as the Bible on that point.

When I was halfway through my initial reading of the Book of Mormon, Marjorie sent me a pamphlet entitled, Joseph Smith's Testimony  He told there of seeing two personages in a  pillar of light.  One pointed to the other and said, "Joseph, this is my beloved son.  Hear him."

Reading that was like an electric shock.  There was my answer!  They are two men with glorified bodies!  Suddenly everything made sense.  Everything fell into place.  I knew that Joseph was telling the truth.

When I was a bishop I asked to join the Baker City Ministerial Association so that I could attempt to erase misconceptions about our church.  My request was denied.  It was denied because The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doesn't believe like other churches.  All other Christian churches believe in the trinity.

I tried explaining the Godhead to my sister, she being a Methodist minister at the time. She was offended at my ignorance, and hotly exclaimed about the trinity, "This was all hashed out by the church fathers many centuries ago, and it is truth!!"

"The trinity is a Christian doctrine that states that God is one being that exists as three divine persons:  the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."  It is based upon the Nicene Creed which states that the three of them are not three, but one.  That they are uncreated and incomprehensible.  "As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated; but one uncreated, and one incomprehensible.  So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty, and the Holy Ghost Almighty; and yet there are not three Almighties, but one Almighty."

Elder James E. Talmage said about the Nicene Creed, "It would be difficult to conceive of a greater number of inconsistencies and contradictions in words as few."  (Articles of Faith, pg. 48).

Neither the Christian world, nor the Muslim world, nor Hindus, nor anyone else understands that God is our loving Father in whose image we were created.  They don't realize the magnitude of what the Father's son, Jesus Christ, has done for us.  This is a great, hidden treasure which each of us has to open.  When the character of God becomes plain, we'll each be like the geologist who exclaimed, "How could anyone have been so wrong!"

The whole world might believe that continents don't move, that uniformitarianism is the way that all geologic processes take place, and that God is an incomprehensible trinity; but there comes a day of reckoning for all truth.

If you know something, stick with your beliefs, even if you're the only one in your group who knows what you know.  A day of revealing will come when the whole group will exclaim, "How could anyone have been so wrong!"

Elder N. Eldon Tanner quoted the Nicene Creed in the October 1978 general conference as follows:

"Seeking to end the many disagreements and arguments regarding the Godhead which were prevalent at the time, the emperor Constantine in the year a.d. 325 convened the Council of Nice in order that this body might make 'a declaration of … belief that would be received as authoritative.' This council brought forth what is known as the Nicene Creed, followed some time later by the Athanasian Creed which reads in part:

"'We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the persons, nor dividing the substance. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is all one; the glory equal, the majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate, and the Holy Ghost uncreate. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet there are not three eternals, but one eternal. As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated; but one uncreated, and one incomprehensible. So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty, and the Holy Ghost Almighty; and yet there are not three Almighties, but one Almighty. So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God.'"