It’s Never About the Man
Several years ago, when President Howard W. Hunter passed after serving as the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for a mere nine months, a friend of mine expressed his condolences. My friend was Catholic, and his expression of sympathy was sincere, but he was perplexed at my response. Although I thanked him for his kind words, he didn’t understand why I wasn’t in mourning.
I smiled at him. “President Hunter was a great man. And even though he wasn’t the prophet for very long, I grew to love him. But, it’s not about him. It’s not about the man. It’s never about the man. He was not the Man in charge.”
Howard W. Hunter was never the Captain of the Great Ship Zion. He was merely the first mate. And like any good first mate, he humbly followed the orders of his TRUE Captain.
And likewise, with the recent passing of President Thomas S. Monson, while I do mourn him, I do not mourn for the Church. I was privileged to sing at his funeral, and I honor him as a great man. He finished his race, he served his Lord, and he is with Him now. And he has been reunited with his beloved wife. I am happy for Thomas S. Monson. And I am grateful to serve in the Choir he loved. I am grateful to have sat at his feet (well, up in the Choir loft behind and above him) and to have listened to his loving and prophetic counsel.
But he was not the Captain either.
I read a number of obituaries in the media published after President Monson’s passing. Some were reasonably fair. Others were barely disguised anti-Mormon propaganda. One particularly disgusting piece called the Church a “leaderless gerontocracy,” and said that we would need to wait for the deaths of five more old men before we had a senior apostle “born after WWII.” The point of the “obituary” is that we must be desperately in need of younger men to lead the Church so that we can get past the outmoded notions of the past.
Well, to such critics I say, “You’d best find a comfortable seat, a pillow, and a blanket. Because you’re gonna be waiting a LONG time.”
The TRUE Captain is and always has been the Lord Jesus Christ. And He is not going to change His mind with the times. He is never going to say to us, “Okay! NOW I get it!!! You wise mortals were right all along. Oopsie, my bad.” He will never say that, because His Father sees the end from the beginning. He knows all truth. He is Eternal. And He changes not.
And His Son is the Captain of the Great Ship Zion.
President Russel M. Nelson will be announced tomorrow as the new President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the newly ordained prophet of the Lord. He will serve humbly as the new first mate as long as his mission on Earth shall last. I already love him. I sustain him. But he is not and never will be the Captain.
If you are waiting for President Nelson or any other man or woman to change the Lord’s mind, you are entertaining a false hope. And if you are offering that false hope to others, you are not helping them—you are aiding in their self-destruction and adding to their misery. There is only one truth. Truth isn’t malleable. Truth doesn’t change with the years, centuries, or millennia. The Lord testifies that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
I testify that Jesus Christ lives. I know that He loves us, that He offered Himself as a sacrifice so that we might be redeemed and cleansed from sin, so that we might be made whole. Whatever your burdens, whatever trials you are suffering through, cast your burden upon Him. Do not be deceived by the philosophies and “wisdom” of mortals. Do not wallow in false and vain hopes. He is the one true Hope.
He knows you. He loves you. And He will save you if you will but let Him.
It’s not about the man. It is about the Son of Man. It always has been.
