In 2009, President Russell M. Nelson and his wife, Sister Wendy Nelson, were on an assignment while he served as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Armed robbers entered a home they were visiting and put a gun to President Nelson’s head and pulled the trigger.
The gun, however, did not fire.
“Throughout that experience, both of our lives were threatened,” President Nelson recalled. “Yet Wendy and I felt an undeniable peace. …
“Brothers and sisters, the Lord will comfort you, too. He will strengthen you. He will bless you with peace, even amidst chaos.”
President Nelson shared this experience in his closing remarks of the October 2024 general conference on Sunday, Oct. 6. He spoke, in part, of the peace that can come only through the Holy Ghost.
One of the key ways President Nelson promised peace “in a world filled with dizzying distractions” is to serve in the house of the Lord.
“Regular worship in the temple will help us. In the house of the Lord, we focus on Jesus Christ. We learn of Him. We make covenants to follow Him. We come to know Him. As we keep our temple covenants, we gain greater access to the Lord’s strengthening power. In the temple, we receive protection from the buffetings of the world. We experience the pure love of Jesus Christ and our Heavenly Father in great abundance. We feel peace and spiritual reassurance, in contrast to the turbulence of the world.”
President Nelson shared another personal experience from nearly 20 years ago in which he needed and received peace and strength when his wife, the late Sister Dantzel Nelson, passed away unexpectedly.
“Gratefully, through His Spirit, the Lord taught me why my dear Dantzel had been taken home. With that understanding, I was comforted,” he said.
Making peace
When President Dallin H. Oaks, first counselor in the First Presidency, spoke at the conclusion of the Saturday morning session of the October 2024 general conference, he taught about ways that individuals can proactively make peace and receive blessings that come from honoring covenants.
“As we pursue our preferred policies in public actions, let us qualify for His blessings by using the language and methods of peacemakers,” he said. “In our families and other personal relationships, let us avoid what is harsh and hateful. Let us seek to be holy, like our Savior.”
President Oaks said the counsel to avoid contention was among the first of the Savior’s teachings when He appeared to the Nephites following His death and subsequent Resurrection.
“He that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another.
“Behold, this is not my doctrine, to stir up the hearts of men with anger, one against another; but this is my doctrine, that such things should be done away,” the Savior said in 3 Nephi 11:29-30.
The Savior likewise commanded His followers to love their enemies, to bless those who curse them, to do good to those who hate them, and to pray for those who use them in spite and persecute them.
“This is one of Christ’s best-known commandments — most revolutionary and most difficult to follow,” President Oaks said.
Throughout his conference message, President Oaks referred to the Savior as the perfect role model who didn’t ask His followers to do anything He hadn’t done or wouldn’t do.
“We need to love and do good to all. We need to avoid contention and be peacemakers in all our communications,” he said, underscoring that this is the example Jesus Christ set during His mortal life.
Avoiding ‘deadly poison’
When Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles spoke on Saturday afternoon about burying weapons of rebellion, he noted the anger used increasingly in today’s world.
“There is much in public and personal discourse today that is malicious and mean-spirited,” he said. “… This sort of speech is a ‘weapon of rebellion’ against God, ‘full of deadly poison’ (James 3:8).”
The antidote to using such weapons, Elder Christofferson explained, is learning to follow the Holy Ghost.
“In the end, burying our weapons of rebellion against God simply means yielding to the enticing of the Holy Spirit, putting off the natural man and becoming ‘a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord’ (Mosiah 3:19). It means putting the first commandment first in our lives. It means letting God prevail.”
Making the choice to put down weapons of rebellion and follow the influence of the Holy Ghost is tied to the chance to be back with Heavenly Father after this life.
Elder Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said the peace that comes from making right choices and the Savior’s Atonement will last forever.
“Our hope of eternal life is assured through the grace of Christ and our own choices, allowing us the remarkable blessing of returning to our heavenly home and living forever in peace and happiness with our Heavenly Father, His Beloved Son, our faithful family and precious friends, and the righteous men and women from every continent and every century,” he said.
The challenges of mortality can make it hard to feel peace in the present and to hope for peace in the future, but Elder Andersen encouraged patience through those trying times.
“In times of difficulty, we choose to trust the Lord in faith. We quietly pray, ‘Not my will, but thine, be done’ (Luke 22:42),” he said. “We feel the Lord’s approval for our meek willingness, and we await the promised peace the Lord will send in His chosen timing.”
Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said peace is something that all of Heavenly Father’s children need in these latter days.
“We all need to be lifted up by the Lord with peace, with comfort and, most of all, with personal revelation to counter the fear, darkness and contention encompassing the world,” he said.
Elder Rasband recalled President Nelson’s rededicatory prayer of the Manti Utah Temple earlier this year. He said that President Nelson asked the Lord to sustain and hold up those who enter the temple that it may be a “house of peace.”
The joy of peace
Elder Patrick Kearon of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles shared his second general conference message since being sustained as a member of that quorum. He focused on the joy of Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness and the joy that members of the Church should feel and express because they are a part of the restored Church of Jesus Christ.
“Even as the storms of life in an often-troubled world pound upon us, we can cultivate a growing and abiding sense of joy and inner peace because of our hope in Christ and our understanding of our own place in the beautiful plan of happiness,” he said.
Elder Kearon also taught that partaking of the sacrament each week can be a time of joyful reflection because of the peace and other promises that come from the Savior’s victory over mortal and spiritual death. He expressed concern that individuals may too often linger on the “sufferings and injustices” faced by Jesus Christ.
“We fail to move upward to the joy of the tomb bursting open, the defeat of death and Christ’s victory over all that might prevent us from gaining peace and returning to our heavenly home.”
Elder Kearon shared that his own conversion to the Church as an adult was a “great discovery” and invited others to discover for themselves the promised blessings of the gospel.
“If you have yet to discover this joy, embark on its quest. This is an invitation to receive the Savior’s gift of peace, light and joy — to revel in it, to wonder at it and to rejoice in it every Sabbath.”
In Brother Bradley R. Wilcox’s conference message to the rising generation, the first counselor in the Young Men general presidency said that Heavenly Father’s promised gift of everything He has can casually be summed up as a heavenly mansion. But everything He has also includes spiritual blessings.
“Like Abraham of old, you receive greater happiness and peace, greater righteousness and greater knowledge,” he said, noting that Heavenly Father gives those things because “His desire is to help you become all that He is.”
Bishop L. Todd Budge, second counselor in the Presiding Bishopric, counseled that in working to have peace in this life, it may be necessary to slow down and do a little less in order to feel the benefits of spiritual gifts a little more.
“Being always in motion may be adding to the commotion in our lives and robbing us of the peace we seek,” he said. “I testify that as we return often to the Lord with full purpose of heart, we will in quietness and confidence come to know Him and feel His infinite covenantal love for us.”
President Nelson invited individuals to study the messages shared at general conference and to put these teachings into practice through next April’s general conference.
“Use them as a litmus test of what is true, and what is not, during the next six months,” he said.
