I am delighted to be with you brothers and sisters today. It is not difficult for those of us who have admired President Holland for so long to anticipate joyfully the things he will bring to this new assignment. Among them will be his personal, small-town warmth, which will shrink the size of this big campus, and I foresee that his literacy will prove to be as contagious as is his laughter. If Mark Twain, one focus of Jeffrey Holland’s graduate work, could have experienced Jeffrey’s effective teaching of the Book of Mormon, Twain would not have made his uninformed and unkind remark about that book. At least Jeff would not have let him start reading in the book of Ether. And perhaps Jeff could even have put Twain “under,” but not in the sense Twain meant, rather in the best missionary meaning of those words. In our time, the words “true believer” have come to mean the manipulable and mindless who are part of political mass movements, seeking to escape from the burdens of freedom. Many years ago, a similar phrase was used, but with major definitional distinctions. The Apostle Nephi, and, even earlier, Alma, wrote of the “true believers in Christ.” (see Alma 46:14 and 4 Ne. 1:36.) It is a concept too precious not to bring to the fore simply because of the current connotations of those two words. Someday, perhaps, we can rescue still other words even more sadly abused and inverted, such as “gay” and “welfare.” There are some sobering parallels between our times and these earlier groups of “true believers” in Christ who were “faithful” members of the Church, including the Three Nephites, and who had “gladly” taken upon themselves the name of Christ (see Alma 46:15). They were persecuted by the disbelievers and irreligionists of their time, but they did not retaliate because of their commitment to Christ and because of their humility (see 4 Ne. 1:29–37). Theirs, too, was a time of polarities, for there was a “great division among the people” (4 Ne. 1:35). So much for the background of today’s theme. The “true believers in Christ” will be spoken of for the sake of convenience throughout my discussion in terms of “he,” but, of course, this group includes both women and men. Jesus, of course, knows who His true believers are. Others may know who His disciples are by the central characteristic of love, as we were so well taught by today’s lovely choral hymn, “Love One Another.” To begin with, the true believer, notwithstanding his weaknesses, is settled in his basic spirituality. He is settled, to use another of Alma’s phrases, in his “views of Christ” (Alma 27:28), so his views of everything else are put in that precious perspective. There are, of course, other kinds of believers who are not “true believers.” In the parable of the seeds, one outcome was when the seed had no root, typifying those who “for a while believe” but who “in time […]