STYLISTICS 1
List five
features of each of the following two General Conference talks
that distinguishes them from each other. Give examples.
In the quiet of their living
room, I said to Ben and Emily, "I really don't know why I was directed here
today, but I was. Our Heavenly Father knows. Let's kneel in prayer and ask Him
why." This we did, and the answer came. As we arose from our knees, I said to
Brother Fullmer, "Ben, would you come to priesthood meeting when we meet with
all the priesthood and relate to our Aaronic Priesthood boys the story you once
told me when I was a boy, how you and a group of boys were en route to the
Jordan River to swim one Sunday, but you felt the Spirit direct you to attend
Sunday School. And you did. One of the boys who failed to respond to that Spirit
drowned that Sunday. Our boys would like to hear your testimony."
"I'll do it," he responded.
I then said to Sister Fullmer, "Emily, I know you have a beautiful
voice. My mother has told me so. Our ward conference is a few weeks away, and
our choir will sing. Would you join the choir and attend our ward conference and
perhaps sing a solo?"
"What will the number be?" she inquired.
"I don't know," I said, "but I'd like you to sing it."
She sang. He spoke to the Aaronic Priesthood. Hearts were gladdened
by the return to activity of Ben and Emily. They rarely missed a sacrament
meeting from that day forward. The language of the Spirit had been spoken. It
had been heard. It had been understood. Hearts were touched and souls saved. Ben
and Emily Fullmer had come home.
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Even though nations shall rise against nations, such
turbulence does not justify business partners rising against their partners or
against their stockholders by stealing or bearing false witness, thereby
violating both the eighth and ninth commandments—for which there are no excusing
footnotes . Uncertainty as to world conditions does not justify moral
uncertainty, and distracting churn will not cover our sins nor dim God's
all-seeing eye. Furthermore, military victories are no substitute for winning
our individual wars for self-control. Nor do the raging human hatreds lessen
God's perfect and redeeming love for all His children. Likewise, the obscuring
mists of the moment cannot change the reality that Christ is the Light of the
World! / Brothers and sisters, the spiritual arithmetic has not changed! Our own
intellectual shortfalls and perplexities do not alter the fact of God's
astonishing foreknowledge, which takes into account our choices for which we are
responsible. Amid the mortal and fragmentary communiques and the breaking news
of the day concerning various human conflicts, God lives in an eternal now where
the past, present, and future are constantly before Him.
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