Commending young people who are part of "a new generation" familiar with the word of the Lord, President Gordon B. Hinckley said that the youth of the Church, for the most part, are meeting the challenge of living in the world without partaking of the evils of the world.
"It is wonderful to feel the pulse of this generation of young people," President Hinckley said at the April 1995 general conference. "Of course, there are some who do not measure up. That has been the case since the time of the great war in heaven described by John the Revelator. The issue then was free agency, as it is today. Then, as now, choices had to be made."
President Hinckley spoke of the account in the 12th chapter of the Book of Revelation of the war in heaven, and then said: "That ancient struggle continues, the unrelenting battle that comes of free agency. Some, unfortunately, choose the wrong. But many, so many, choose the right, including so very many of our choice young men and young women. They deserve and need our gratitude. They need our encouragement. They need the kind of examples that we can become before them. May they be blessed as they pursue lives of virtue, of learning, of growing with faith and purpose, all the time remaining 'true to the faith that [their] parents have cherished, true to the truth for which martyrs have perished.' " (Hymns, no. 254.)
