The "Shiblons" of the Church

Elder Bruce R. McConkie

"The Probationary Test of Mortality"

Address given at Salt Lake Institute

Jan. 10, 1982

"You don't have to live a life that's truer than true. You don't have to have an excessive zeal that becomes fanatical and becomes unbalancing. What you have to do is stay in the mainstream of the Church and live as upright and decent people live in the Church-- keeping the commandments, paying your tithing, serving in the organizations of the Church, loving the Lord, staying on the straight and narrow path. If you're on that path when death comes... you'll never fall off from it, and, for all practical purposes, your calling and election is made sure."

President J. Reuben Clark Jr.

Conference Report

October 1947

Speaking of the obscure, unknown pioneers who came west with Brigham Young, President Clark said:  "Without them Brother Brigham had failed his mission. These were the instruments, the shovelers, the plowers, and sowers and reapers, the machinists, the architects, the masons, the woodworkers, the organ builders, the artisans, the mathematicians, the men of letters, all gathered from the four corners of the earth, furnished by the Lord to Brother Brigham and the prophet leaders who came after, that he and they might direct the working out of His purposes.

All (these were) the elect of God, measured to their humble calling and to their destiny as fully as Brother Brigham and the others measured to theirs, and God will so reward them. They were pioneers in word and thought and act and faith, even as were they of more exalted station. The building of this intermountain empire was not done in a corner by a select few but by this vast multitude... who came and labored and wrought, faithfully following their divinely called leaders."