“Lord, to Whom Shall [I] Go? Thou Hast the Words of Eternal Life” (John 6:68)
2024 BYU Women’s Conference
Thursday, May 2, 2024
Introduction
“When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?
“And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.
“He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
“And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
“And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.”
I love these few passages of scripture from Matthew. I think one of the primary reasons these verses are so striking to me is because of the Savior’s open inquiry to His disciples. He asks a question that compares His mistaken identity, taken from the point of view of worldly men, to the personal revelation received by His followers that testifies confidently of His mission and His majesty.
Also remarkable to me is that in the subsequent verses, Jesus teaches His disciples that He will establish a church, even a church that He qualifies as His church. And it will have priesthood keys and priesthood power and even the power to seal every covenant, “every contract, every obligation, every performance that pertains to the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise.” Even a church filled with the new and everlasting covenant. What an exquisite amount of knowledge that can come from such a simple question!
President Russell M. Nelson teaches that “all covenants are intended to be binding” and that “they create a relationship with everlasting ties.” He further teaches that we, as members of God’s restored Church, are therefore children of the covenant. And at the center of our covenants are Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. They are the source of the covenant. It is to Them that we bind ourselves in a relationship that cannot be measured by any duration of time found in our natural world. Everything temporal presumes that its existence must inevitably come to an end. Nature is temporary. But the quality of our covenant relationship with Heavenly Father and our Savior is eternal.
By considering the question and ensuing responses the Savior gives in these passages in Matthew, I’ve gained a better understanding of a few things. Specifically, (1) the interconnectedness of who our Savior is and what His mission is, (2) our need to be close to His Spirit, (3) the knowledge that the Savior has established His Church, and that (4) through our covenants Jesus Christ seals us “his, that [we] may be brought to heaven [and] have everlasting salvation and eternal life.” These teachings have allowed me to frame my testimony, some of my life experiences, and even the uncertainties and unknowns that may persist in my gospel understanding through the lens of these principles. They’ve allowed me to weather personal upheavals that have arisen in my life and have helped me stay grounded and firmly rooted when sudden bursts of forceful winds begin to blow.
Jesus the Christ
My seeking to come to know Jesus the Christ has been a continuous exercise in learning from and answering for myself questions that the Savior has put to His disciples throughout the scriptures. This has allowed the Spirit of God to reveal His nature, His character, His purpose, and His desired relationship with me as I study His doctrine, listen and respond to the counsel of His prophets, and participate in His ordinances and bind myself to Him through divine covenants. Every time I’ve moved closer to the Savior through these tools, I’ve heard the Spirit whisper His question quietly to my willing spirit: “Whom say ye that I am?” And through my own experience, I’ve come to recognize Him, unmistakenly, as “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” In a beautiful symmetry, my personal exploration of the Savior’s questions has allowed me to also recognize an important aspect of my own identity as a disciple of Jesus Christ. Every answer that I give to His questions as His disciple has also allowed the Spirit to reveal to me who I’m becoming and has prompted me to reflect on my faith, understanding, and commitment to following Him. I have found our Savior’s scriptural questions to be deeply instructive. Other times, I have found them to be more introspective.
Take, for example, the occasion where the Savior fed the multitude of more than 5,000 with “five barley loaves, and two small fishes,” described in the Gospel of John. This substantial gathering of people, after having more than just witnessed this miracle performed by the Savior but also having had their stomachs filled by His divine act, was a short time later confused and upset and, ironically, asking for signs when He declared to them a divine truth. Distinguishing Himself as “the bread of life” and repeatedly declaring to them His identity and purpose, the crowd, who had been comfortable when His blessings matched their temporary needs and were therefore desirous for Him to be their king, quickly shifted away from Him when His doctrine did not match their understanding or expectations. The scripture tells it plainly that “from that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.” Those who walked away from the Savior felt His doctrine was hard to hear and were offended. They were not numbered to be only a few people but many.
And then the Savior’s question comes. After witnessing the desertion of so many, Jesus turns to His Apostles and asks, “Will ye also go away?”
But Simon Peter’s answer gives voice to the depth of feeling within my own soul when I’ve been tempted to withdraw or when I’ve been confronted with the limits of my own understanding. It’s an utterance of meekness and deep humility: “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.” And again, an Apostle confidently affirms Jesus’s identity and purpose, saying, “And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.”
President M. Russell Ballard explains these verses in this way: “In that moment, when others focused on what they could not accept, the Apostles chose to focus on what they did believe and know, and as a result, they remained with Christ.”
And he further teaches that “in the end, each one of us must respond to the Savior’s question: ‘Will ye also go away?’ We all have to search for our own answer to that question. For some, the answer is easy; for others, it is difficult.”
In my personal searching for my answer to the Savior’s question, I’ve come to understand that an important lesson that comes from the miracle that Jesus performed in feeding the multitude of 5,000 is to deeply recognize that whatever we lack, Jesus Christ has. Whatever we need, He can fulfill. And this is not just a truth about His general omniscient capacity, but it is also true about the very personal, intimate, and specific relationship that can exist between Him and us in the here and now. While we seek to clearly hear and listen carefully to the real difficulties and questions expressed by those who withdraw, the choice to stay for those who remain or for those who return may not have come with relative ease. But their hard-won, quiet conviction is powerful nonetheless.
Our Savior’s sacred title of “the Christ” is a sign that can draw our mind to reflect on the salvation that only He can offer. We can remember that He is the promised Messiah who was anointed to be our Deliverer. Coming to understand the purpose and mission of our Savior’s ministry invites us to know where to place our confidence and whom to hold fast to when we may feel unstable and when challenges obscure the path that we should be on.
The Spirit Reveals—We Respond
Several years ago, I had a dream that deeply affected me in such a way that I can still vividly remember the details and the strong emotions I felt as my mind laid out several scenes before me.
In this dream, on a bright and beautiful day my husband and I, along with our two children, were peacefully out for a drive in our car on a long stretch of good road. After some time, my husband and I noticed the figure of a personage standing on the side of the road. This entity was completely shrouded in dark clothing, with a long dark hood that obscured their face from view. My husband pulled over to the side of the road toward them, and I immediately felt a heaviness in my stomach that echoed a strong warning. But I said nothing about this forceful impression, and soon this figure was positioned in the back seat of our family vehicle. I can recall the intensity of the anxiety that was building inside of me as I would continuously and nervously look into our car’s rearview mirror to get a glimpse of this person’s face. I was searching for some reassurance and unsuccessfully trying to convince myself that they were more friend than foe to ease the strong sense of danger that was growing within me. Soon enough, my worst fears were confirmed, and the figure made menacing moves toward my children and my husband, and our car veered off the road and came to an abrupt and unexpected halt.
The dream ended, and I awoke the following morning profoundly unnerved. I had never experienced a dream quite like that before, so at my earliest opportunity, I poured the details of the dream to my husband and discussed the depths of my troubled feelings. I felt strongly that it was more than just a passing nightmare. I recognized a message, communicated through symbols, that held meanings within a set of circumstances that was common in our lives.
As my husband and I counseled and prayed about this dream, we felt the Lord extending our vision. I felt the resonance of a clear reminder taken from Proverbs that says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” And so we went forward, examining and seeking for the Lord’s vision in our counsel.
In our conversation, my husband and I discussed first how the opening sequence seemed to reflect the relative peace of our family’s spiritual life at the time. We were comfortably moving forward along the covenant path and would characterize our home as a place where we felt safe together and which was the conveyor for our journey along the covenant path. Next, we turned toward something that invited danger into our family’s safe space. The jeopardy we were in wasn’t clearly seen but could be felt. And even still, we ignored the strong impressions of peril that persisted in the hope that we could be wrong. And then by the time the threat was undeniably unmasked, our journey was derailed. We were driven to the side of the road—off the path—and our family’s progress was halted.
We recognized the implicit warning in this message that cautioned us to be careful about what we allowed to enter into our family’s sanctuary. It was also evident that we needed to have the companionship of the Holy Ghost with us to help discern things that may be obscure. We were certainly cautioned to never delay responding to the impressions that came from the Spirit. That ignoring direction, especially caution signs, that the Spirit sends will lead to disastrous consequences. President Nelson, teaching about distractions that entrap and destroy, provides powerful instruction that I feel summarizes what I learned from this dream. He said: “The lesson is obvious. Your ultimate safety lies in never taking even the first enticing step in a direction you do not want to go.”
I recognized that in this dream, while I knew we were headed toward danger and that ultimately the danger had made its way into the safety of our family, I remained silent and allowed us to move in a direction that was away from that good path we were on and ended with us in a place we did not want to go.
My husband and I determined that we would together gather our children, and rather than go through the details of the dream, we held a family council where we talked through ways we could strengthen and protect our family by being careful about maintaining the Spirit in our home. We discussed the types of media we would allow into our home, the types of personal behaviors that we would try to eliminate, even our level of tidiness and other things that may seem harmless on the surface but could, from our view, diminish the light and joy of the Savior within our home. We also talked through what things we could do more of that invited protection and peace into our family life. We planned to increase the time we spent at home enjoying each other’s company—playing games, eating meals together, having meaningful conversations, studying, and saying prayers.
We all agreed that keeping our home a place that provided respite, relief, and renewal and that was filled with as many good things that the Spirit of God would provide was a priority for our family. Consequently, we each decided to do our personal best to be intentional about what we brought into and kept out of our home. Our family was not and is not perfect, but we were willing, and we made thoughtful efforts over the years to put into practice what we felt was right for us.
This experience came back to my mind recently when my daughter, in her reading of the Book of Mormon, shared with me some thoughts she had about those very familiar words from 1 Nephi: “having been born of goodly parents.” They took on a new meaning for her this year in her study. She expressed to me that she was grateful that she was counted alongside Nephi in having goodly parents and had made a little note in her scriptures to remind herself of that knowledge in her life. It was a tender expression of love that softened my mother’s heart and compelled me to let her know that her parents were simply trying to be “good,” and we hoped that in our efforts there was light offered in her life and in our home. She quickly replied, “There’s always light in our home.”
It was with that simple statement that I remembered the dream, and I became full of additional gratitude because I knew that our family’s efforts had borne lasting fruit and that my beloved daughter was responding to the feeling of light within our home impressed upon her by the Holy Ghost. In my rejoicing I could have echoed the Savior’s response given to Simon Bar-jona in the gospel of Matthew: “Blessed art thou, [my beloved daughter]: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but [our] Father which is in heaven.”
I knew that that message from God sent to me in a dream those very many years ago was offered as preparation and as a protection for our family that allowed us to maintain peace and preserved the shelter of our home from the outside world.
Summarized, from this experience I learned a few P’s that the gospel of Jesus Christ offers through the gift of the Holy Ghost that come as we make and keep sacred covenants with God. I know that the Spirit of God protects, preserves, provides peace, and can prepare us for things in our future that God sees but we cannot. The Holy Ghost can expand our vision and prevent us from perishing if we respond to His messages and instructions.
President Nelson has petitioned:
“I renew my plea for you to do whatever it takes to increase your spiritual capacity to receive personal revelation.
“Doing so will help you know how to move ahead with your life, what to do during times of crisis, and how to discern and avoid the temptations and the deceptions of the adversary.”
Staying close to God’s Spirit is critical in coming to know Jesus Christ and inviting His influence into our lives. Through the Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ reveals Himself as the “Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.” And our belief can be manifested through our obedience to the whisperings and promptings of His Spirit so that we can experience the fulness of His ability to save us personally and alongside those we love.
God’s Restored Church
I would also invite you to remember that a portion of our Savior’s teaching that He gave to His Apostles when He asked them, “Whom say ye that I am?” was about establishing His Church. The Savior proclaimed, “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
This connection between coming to understand who our Savior is and that part of His work was to form His Church, built upon revelation to His prophets, has also been deeply instructive to me. Christ’s miracle of feeding the 5,000 is repeated in all four Gospels. But one unique detail that is found in the telling in the Gospel of Mark has presented me with an additional understanding about the character of the Savior and why a church may be important to Him.
In the account in Mark we learn that the Savior directed His Apostles to make the 5,000 “all sit down by companies upon the green grass.” The passage further goes on to explain that “they sat down in ranks, by hundreds, and by fifties.” It was only after they were arranged in this manner that the Savior blessed and broke the bread and had the Apostles distribute it to the multitude along with the small fishes.
As I’ve reflected that the vast multitude received their blessing from the Savior in an organized manner and not at random, I recognize one of the reasons that our Savior likewise institutes and organizes His Church is to bless God’s children through the principle of order.
Consider this instruction from Elder D. Todd Christofferson:
“The Church is the creation of Him in whom our spirituality is centered—Jesus Christ. It is worth pausing to consider why He chooses to use a church, His Church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to carry out His and His Father’s work ‘to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man’ [Moses 1:39].”
Elder Christofferson goes on to say:
“In the meridian of time, Jesus organized His work in such a way that the gospel could be established simultaneously in multiple nations and among diverse peoples. That organization, the Church of Jesus Christ, was founded on ‘apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone’ [Ephesians 2:20].”
Our Savior has provided us with a divinely organized institution in which He stands at the head and is the chief cornerstone. And like the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus Christ invites millions today to be gathered unto Him so that He can offer to us His greatest blessing—“the immortality and eternal life of man.” He invites imperfect people to gather themselves into His Church, to participate in His work of salvation and exaltation, and to unify ourselves as the body of Christ and become perfected in Him. His Church is a living church wherein Jesus Christ reveals His will in His time. This is done by revelation given to His prophets, seers, and revelators, who received the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” promised by our Savior. Staying close to His Church keeps us moving toward eternal life and can be one of the miraculous ways that our Savior uses to administer His blessings that He knows we need in our lives.
Ordinances and Covenants Matter
Lastly, it’s only through this divinely organized institution, His Church, even the restored Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that those promised priesthood keys, taught in the Gospel of Matthew, are found. By means of these keys, our Savior binds us to Him and seals us His through ordinances and covenants.
This was the culminating response that the Savior gave to His all-so-important question “Whom say ye that I am?” I often reflect on something that President Boyd K. Packer once said. He remarked that “if we will enter into our covenants without reservation or apology, the Lord will protect us.” He then shared the promise that “we will receive inspiration sufficient for the challenges of life.”
Our Savior uses covenants to help express His nature, character, and desired relationship with us. He is a covenant-maker and the best covenant-keeper throughout all time, even an everlasting covenant-keeper.
We have been invited to come and be gathered in the waters of baptism, come and be gathered each week around the sacrament table, come and be gathered in the house of the Lord, come and be gathered through priesthood covenants, come and be bound on earth and in heaven to God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. And in all these ways, we can come and claim our blessings.
My beloved sisters, I invite you to consider the Savior’s two questions. First, “Whom say ye that I am?” I testify that Jesus will reveal Himself to you as the Christ, the Redeemer, our Lord and our Savior, the Creator of the ends of the earth, our wonderful Counselor, our Mighty God, our Prince of Peace, and our Bread of Life.
He will reveal Himself through His Spirit, sent to be a guide, to prepare, and to protect us. He will reveal Himself through the miracle of His restored Church and through His covenant relationship with us.
And when the time comes—when you find that you’ve reached the limits of your understanding or are tempted to withdraw—His second question will emerge: “Will ye also go away?”
I pray that you will have considered all that you’ve come to know and experience with Jesus Christ and in all humility and meekness and with quiet confidence reply, “Lord, to whom shall [I] go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And [I] believe and [am] sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.” In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.