As a 19-year-old young man I was given this book.  (The light-blue Book of Mormon with a golden Moroni on the front cover).  Because of a voice which I had previously heard in answer to my very anguished, first-ever prayer—a voice which simply said, “Everything is going to be all right”—I knew that something was going to happen when I opened it.  I took it home and stood it upright in the center of the desk in my room.

I just looked at it.  For two weeks it stood there.  I think that I was savoring the moment.  It was the first thing I saw in the morning, and the last thing I saw at night.  I knew something was going to happen.

I thought that the book was probably an account of Brigham Young crossing the plains with the Saints.  To my surprise the narrative began with a young man my own age telling how he and his father were brought to Christ in Jerusalem 600 years before the Savior was born.  It wasn't a dry book filled with wise sayings like I expected it would be.  Instead, it had a story line.  It was a real-life story about a real family with real problems, how they dealt with them, and how the Lord worked with them and blessed them.

I was hooked.  It was very compelling.  I didn't want to go to work.  All I wanted to do was to sit in my cold December bedroom and read that book.

The reason was what I felt happening inside my head.  Light was coming in.  I could feel it.  I could visualize the light.  The light came in at the front of my head and was pushing the darkness to the back.  I couldn't have told you that my head was full of darkness, but it was.  As I read the Book of Mormon light came flooding in, and tsunami-like, pushed the darkness out.

It was a glorious feeling.  I had been severely depressed before opening the book, and the book set me free.  I can't tell you just how liberating that light was.

I was given a light.  This book is a beacon and a searchlight.  It's a life-saver for the lost and for those who are wandering in darkness.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf in the October 2021 general conference told of a study that was conducted to test the theory that a person who is lost in a forest or a desert will walk in circles.  Participants in the study were told to walk a straight line into the forest.  They were tracked by GPS.  It was found that if the day was cloudy, and when lacking points of reference, that lost persons really did tend to walk in tight circles.  One participant in the experiment initially made a full 180-degree turn, and then the sun came out.  From that point on he was able to walk a reasonably straight course.  The others walked in circles that were sometimes as tight as 60 feet across.

As a farmer I have sometimes had the challenge of driving my tractor or swather straight across a field as I made the first pass with my plow or cut the first swath of hay.  It's hard to make a perfectly straight line.  The trick is to focus on an object on the far side of the field, and to drive toward that object.

One young woman in a talk in church made fun of her brother who used that technique to make that first pass, but made the mistake of focusing on a grazing cow.

Even if the object on the other side of the field is stationary, it's still difficult to not make a line with a big bulge in it.  The solution is to pick out a second object beyond the first one, and to keep those two objects lined up.  If your attention doesn't waver, neither will your line.

I like to think that in our walk through life that first object is the Bible.  If a person focuses on the Bible he can walk a reasonably straight line.  He can waver, and some people can even walk in circles depending upon how they interpret what they read.  But when the lost person has the Book of Mormon as the second point of reference, and he keeps those two points of reference lined up, he won't go wrong or go astray.

Do you know why Mormon wrote the Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ?  He explains it in Mormon chapter 7 verse 9.  “For behold,” he says, “this is written for the intent that ye may believe that (the Bible); and if ye believe that ye will believe this also.”

President Gordon B. Hinckley said that “I cannot understand why the Christian world does not accept this book.  I would think they would be looking for anything and everything that would establish without question the reality and the divinity of the Savior of the world,” and, I would add, of the Bible.  (Ensign, November 2002, 81).

When I was a teen-aged boy I determined that I was going to read the Bible.  People said that was important.  I made the resolution three times to read it.  Each time ended in failure after just a few pages.  I couldn't understand it.

I expected the Book of Mormon to be the same.  But it wasn't.  Instead, this light came flooding into my mind.  I finished the book and started the Doctrine and Covenants.  I understood it, too.  Interestingly, after I'd finished both the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants, I tackled the Bible again, and was amazed to find that it was perfectly understandable and enjoyable.  I read the entire New Testament while standing beside my bunk in Navy boot camp.

Having read the Book of Mormon, and having a burning testimony that what I'd read was true, I asked what I needed to do to be baptized.  I was told that I'd have to meet with the missionaries.  I found out where they lived and knocked on their door one evening.  It wasn't until many years later that I realized that my knocking on their door was a reversal of the roles that we were supposed to have played.  Hopefully Elders Pace and Sullivan had been praying for a golden contact that they could teach.  Hopefully after I'd told them that I wanted to hear their discussions, that I'd already read the Book of Mormon and that I knew that it was true, and that I promised to not give them any trouble, they were able to turn cartwheels after they'd closed the door.

I got not one thing out of those discussions.  They were memorized flannel board discussions directed at “Mister Brown.”  I endured them.  I was anxious and waiting to start talking about the Book of Mormon, the thing I was excited about.  But we never got there.  Everything back then was to be proved from the Bible, which was all right, but that approach failed to hold up the light.

My wife grew up in the Church.  She says that the young people back then were never encouraged to read the Book of Mormon.  It was thought that young people wouldn't be able to understand it.

How wrong they were.  Most of our young people today have read the Book of Mormon cover to cover.  Many have read it multiple times.  Even primary children.

And this is thrilling.  Look what it has done.  Young people come to me for their patriarchal blessings, and they are full of light.  It shines out through their eyes.  Everyone can see it.  They're happy, and they're smiling.  They're beautiful.  They're different in happy ways.

Teddy Kollek was mayor of Jerusalem when Brigham Young University asked for permission to build the BYU Jerusalem Center.  An agreement was made to allow them to do so on the condition that the Church would agree to not proselyte among the Israeli people.  The Church and the school agreed to the conditions.  Teddy Kollek looked at the students and insightfully remarked, “Oh, we know that you are not going to proselyte, but what are you going to do about the light that is in their eyes?”  (Ensign, November 2005, 20).

Two handsome young missionaries knocked on the door of a woman in California.  The woman looked at them, and before they could say a word said, “I don't know what you're selling, but I'll buy it!”  And she did.  She was baptized.

It's because of the light.  It starts with Jesus Christ.  He is the light.  That light is encapsulated in the Book of Mormon.  The Book of Mormon transmits its light to the reader, and the converted reader transmits the light to everyone around him.

President Russell M. Nelson said that “ The light of the Lord can beam from your eyes.  With that radiance, you had better prepare for questions.”  (Ensign, November 2010, 48).

I took the missionaries to an elderly couple who I hoped could become interested in the Church.  The wife told us a most interesting story.  She said that her husband had formerly served as an official with the Oregon Wheat League.  He frequently had to attend meetings and conventions as part of his duties.  She went with him on these trips.  While he was in his meetings she would sit in the hotel lobby and indulge in what she called her “hobby.”  Her hobby was to watch people.  She was looking for Mormons.  When she thought she'd found one she'd approach the person and say, “Excuse me, but don't I know you?”

“No,” the person would say, “I don't think so.”

“Well, maybe from church?” the woman would venture.

And the person would reply, “Well, that might be,” and would then reveal his or her religious affiliation.

“I was rarely wrong!” my friend said proudly.  She could see the light, but wasn't interested in pursuing it.

But I offered it to her.  That's my duty.  That's your duty.  Everyone has agency.  I just wish that everyone could be as happy as I am.  I know what it's like to live in darkness, and I don't ever want to go back.

Other churches will tell you that hell is a lake of fire and brimstone.  I don't believe that at all.  When the scriptures speak of that place it's most often referred to as “outer darkness.”  I think that's a more accurate description.  If Christ is the light of the world, and the light of the sun, and the power by which the earth, sun, and moon were made—and if Christ's influence won't be present in hell, which it won't—then hell is a dark and cold place, and I don't want to be there.

Why would anyone choose darkness over light, or gloom over joy?  Yet the Book of Mormon says that at the final day, “then cometh the judgment of the Holy One upon them; and then cometh the time that he that is filthy shall be filthy still; and he that is righteous shall be righteous still; he that is happy shall be happy still; and he that is unhappy shall be unhappy still.”  (Mormon 9:14).

Give me light.  Be a light.  Your calling is to be a light to the world.  Hold up Jesus Christ as the Light.  Hold up the light that is the Book of Mormon.  Give someone the light.  Be happy.  Be grateful for the light that you've been given.

Share it, and you'll see your own light grow even brighter.