“The Power of God,” Liahona, April 2017
Until We Meet Again
The Power of God
From a general priesthood session address titled “The Doctrine of the Priesthood,” Ensign,May 1982, 32–34; capitalization standardized.
Faith is power and power is priesthood.
City of Zion Translated, by Del Parson
God is God because He is the embodiment of all faith and all power and all priesthood. The life He lives is named eternal life.
And the extent to which we become like Him is the extent to which we gain His faith, acquire His power, and exercise His priesthood. And when we have become like Him in the full and true sense, then we also shall have eternal life.
Faith and priesthood go hand in hand. Faith is power and power is priesthood. After we gain faith, we receive the priesthood. Then, through the priesthood, we grow in faith until, having all power, we become like our Lord.
Our time here in mortality is set apart as a time of probation and of testing. It is our privilege while here to perfect our faith and to grow in priesthood power. …
The holy priesthood did more to perfect men in the days of Enoch than at any other time. Known then as the order of Enoch (see D&C 76:57), it was the power by which he and his people were translated. And they were translated because they had faith and exercised the power of the priesthood.
It was with Enoch that the Lord made an eternal covenant that all who received the priesthood would have power, through faith, to govern and control all things on earth, to put at defiance the armies of nations, and to stand in glory and exaltation before the Lord.
Melchizedek was a man of like faith, “and his people wrought righteousness, and obtained heaven, and sought for the city of Enoch” (Joseph Smith Translation, Genesis 14:34). …
What, then, is the doctrine of the priesthood? And how shall we live as the servants of the Lord?
This doctrine is that God our Father is a glorified, a perfected, and an exalted being who has all might, all power, and all dominion, who knows all things and is infinite in all His attributes, and who lives in the family unit.
It is that our Eternal Father enjoys this high status of glory and perfection and power because His faith is perfect and His priesthood is unlimited.
It is that priesthood is the very name of the power of God, and that if we are to become like Him, we must receive and exercise His priesthood or power as He exercises it. …
It is that we have power, by faith, to govern and control all things, both temporal and spiritual; to work miracles and perfect lives; to stand in the presence of God and be like Him because we have gained His faith, His perfections, and His power, or in other words the fulness of His priesthood.
This, then, is the doctrine of the priesthood, than which there neither is nor can be anything greater. This is the power we can gain through faith and righteousness …
Truly there is power in the priesthood—a power which we seek to acquire to use, a power which we devoutly pray may rest upon us and upon our posterity forever.