Powerful Devotional Full of Warnings from President Dallin H. Oaks

Hi everybody. Welcome to Christian Homestead. My name is Jared.

I just got done watching the first devotional with President Oaks at BYU and it was really good. And I don't know if you saw my video from earlier today, but I was kind of guessing what he might talk about. And he talked about exactly what I thought he was going to talk about, but it was just so good.

I wish I had the transcript the transcript right now, but I don't. But I did take notes. So, I want to point out uh some things that I noticed.

So the first thing it's been a while since I've talked about you know hymns sung during general conference or Christmas devotionals but in this case the hymn that was sung at the opening was all creatures of our god and king and one of the most prominent parts of that song is the word allelujah. Now, I don't know if President Oaks chose this song. Uh I I my understanding is that they do choose the hymns for general conference or they have input or spec sometimes specifically request hymns, I believe.

So, I don't know if that's the case here, but whenever I hear the word allelujah, I immediately think about the second coming. The reason why, and here's the hymn right here. It's the one that, you know, it says allelujah.

Hallelujah. And then later on it does it again. And then uh on that last line it does well it does it like four times.

One, two, three, four. So lots lots of allelujah in this song. And when you do a search in the scriptures for allelujah, it only shows up like the actual word allelujah only shows up in the book of Revelation chapter 19.

Um, if you go to the Bible dictionary, it points out Psalms and there's a couple chapters here, but the actual word itself doesn't show up in English. It just says, "Praise, praise ye the Lord. " Uh, which is essentially what it is, right?

See right here? Praise ye the Lord. So, I want to read just really quick um verses 1 through7 just to show you.

Again, I don't know that it's significant, but it's interesting that in his talk, he did reference the second coming by way of the parable of the 10 virgins. But, okay, verse one. And after these things, I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Allelujah, salvation and glory, and honor and power unto the Lord our God.

For true and righteous are his judgments. For he hath judged the great which did, which is interesting because President Oaks is a judge, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his saints at her hand. And again, they said, "Allelujah.

" And her smoke rose up forever and ever. And the four and 20 elders and the four beasts fell down and worshiped God that sat on the throne, saying, "Amen. Allelujah.

" And a voice came out of the throne, saying, "Praise our God, all ye his servants, and ye that fear him, both small and great. And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thundering, saying, Allelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent, oh my gosh, omnipotent reignth. Let us be glad and rejoice and give honor to him for the marriage of the lamb is come and his wife hath made herself ready.

So the second coming is here. Allelujah. So that's why that caught my attention.

And then another small note, oh gosh, let me zoom back in. Another small note, uh, President C. Shane Ree, president of BYU, he used the term profit president.

And I don't know where I've heard this recently from a member of our church, but I wonder if this is a term that is starting to be used. Uh you may think it's no big deal, but once I moved here to Independence and once I started looking into these splinter groups that are based out of here, especially community of Christ, I noticed that they refer to their uh president as prophet president, like prophet hyphen president. So right now, and I was here to witness this, it's Stacy D.

Cra. She became the first woman to be prophet president of Community of Christ and we've been we've been keeping an eye on things that they've been doing. It's been really interesting.

So, I don't know. It's just kind of it's interesting. It's probably no big thing, but I I swear I've heard somebody else do it recently.

Use the term prophet president. Okay. I I by the way I did a search in the scripture citation index which allows you to search general conference talks and I was not able to find any instance of prophet hyphen president.

Okay. Then uh president oaks spoke he was the only speaker he just had this introduction by cshane ree. He pointed out that he was the president of BYU uh during its 100th anniversary and then uh for its 150th anniversary he was now president of the church.

I find that fascinating. I don't think that's coincidence. Excuse me.

I don't think it's coincidence. I don't know what it means. But I did a video about it because um there was this article that came out by BYU marks 150th anniversary by opening 50-year-old time capsule.

And guess when it was opened? Brigham Young University in Provo marked the anniversary of its founding 150 years ago today, October 16th, or in other words, two days after President Oaks became president of the church. That's some pretty incredible timing, I would say.

Um, imagine it from his point of view. Like I said in that video where I first talked about this, imagine looking at this from his point of view. He's president of BYU during its 100th anniversary and then two days after becoming president of the church, they open this time capsule and uh in just that close proximity and inside the time capsule uh there was a gavvel and we typically associate gavels with judges.

President Oaks was a judge. Um, here's a jersey with the number the number 14. He became president of the church on the 14th.

So, I I don't know. It's just it's really interesting. Here's the the gavvel right here.

Okay. Uh, and then he he talked about the mantle of becoming president of the church. He talked about how uh the first reference really to it is the cloak that was given from Elijah the prophet to Elisha and then later on uh we typically talk about it when referring to the martyrdom of Joseph Smith and how the mantle fell on Brigham Young and President Oaks pointed out how at that time some people had visual experiences others heard Joseph Smith's voice and others had other types of revelation.

Uh I was actually recently talking about this with Mindy from Temples of Jesus and uh I want to I need to get into this because this is you know I like capturing these type of experiences uh when there's visions, visitations and stuff like that. And I I haven't done it yet for this. Um, the only thing that I know just from, you know, growing up in the church is that I I remember being told that people saw Brigham Young, but that he looked like Joseph Smith and that's how some people knew.

Um, anyway, and then he talked about how he saw President Nelson become become president of the church and how his gifts were magnified. And it's interesting because his wife Wendy, President Nelson's wife Wendy, talked a lot about just the changes that took place once he became president of the church. And uh we've had President Iring talk about how President Oaks is like a completely different man uh from the man that he knew the day before becoming president of the church.

And then he said when President Nelson passed away, uh the reception of the mantle was very different and very real like the way that he experienced it. And he said that he has felt the heaviness as well as important impressions of what would be required to do now. And I can't help but to think that let's just you know what I had this pulled up.

This is the all these are the first presidency Christmas devotionals. I just wanted to point out with the allelujah with the word allelujah. came it came up at a couple in a couple key years I think in the Christmas devotional where they sung handles Messiah and specifically the Allelujah chorus including President Nelson's first year as president of the church.

In fact, it was the Allelujah chorus that replaced Silent Night as the final hymn. And then the first hymn was Joy to the World, which which is actually it was originally written to be a second coming hymn. But anyway, I want to go to quotes the second coming.

Actually, no. Let's see. Quotes A through Z different man.

Here we go. It's under downh oaks. Look what President Iring said.

Okay. I watched him and suddenly he was a different man. Suddenly, it was clear that he was receiving revelation of exactly what to do in a very extremely quick short time.

And I really had the feeling that this is not the same man I was with a day or two ago. It's another man. There was a quiet there was a kind sorry there was a kind of quiet clear knowing exactly what to do and it was to me a spiritual experience.

And then I wanted to go to probably this. Let's see. Timeline.

Sorry, I wasn't planning on talking about this timeline. Preparing the church for the second coming. Yeah, we have seen like when President Oak says that there were things that needed to be done right now.

Uh I think that these are some of the things. So we have the new sleeveless garments for women a available nationwide. We had the Saturday evening session of general conference that was discontinued.

And then that same month in November the mission age for women was changed from 19 down to 18. And then in December we had the Portland Maine temple that was announced. Uh the first time that a temple has been announced by a member of a area presidency was announced by Elder Alan D.

Haney and then we've been told that that's how temples are going to be announced. Now it's going to be they're going to be announced in that area and uh it could be by an apostle, it could be by the prophet, but it can also be announced by a member of the area presidency. Uh and then we had this thing with new guidance on other translations of the Bible.

how those may be used in lie of the King James version. Um, First Presidency announces one-hour church on Palm Sunday. That's new.

We had this big change with the Utah Salt Lake City Temple Square mission where there's still going to be sister missionaries there, but they're only going to be there for uh a short period of time and they're going to serve in the surrounding missions most of the time as teaching missionaries. And then uh this I don't think this came with President Oaks, but I think this was announced before he became president of the church. But we're going to have these 55 new missions created in July.

So, um I I I I think a lot of that is what he was talking about important impressions, what he would be required to do now. And the way that he said it was like it's it came across to me like he was saying things that need to be done right now. He may have even even said right now.

I can't remember. Okay. And then he talked about how we need to become active members of the church of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

And I think what he means there is just like what President Holland said in motions of a hidden fire where we have to be fully committed um faithfully believing disciples of Jesus Christ. I can't remember how he worded it, but we have to be the real thing. We really do.

Okay. Now, the next part is concerning. Uh, this is a it's a warning that he's repeating.

I have that quote that talks about when prophets repeat something, we pay attention. So, he repeated a warning from President Nelson, the one about in coming days it will not be possible to to survive without the I better just look it up. I better just look it up.

Let's see. Let's do it like this. Russ Russell M.

Nelson in coming days it will not be possible. Survive spiritually. Here we go.

Will not be. Oh, it's it's like it's the excerpt that they put at the top of the talk. So, this is from Oh, it's from his first general conference as president of the church back in April 2018.

Okay. that in coming days it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost. So now in President Oak's first year as president of the church, he's repeating that warning.

And uh this is the first thing that I I thought that he was going to talk about when I made that previous video that it seems like one of the themes of his presidency is going to be distinguishing be between truth and error. He has more to say about that in just a little bit, but um yeah, things are getting crazy. There's a lot of voices.

There's a lot of podcasts. There's AI. Um, and just the world at large, you know, through all the different media, everyone is just becoming kind of radical, I'd say.

I I've talked about this many times on the channel, Heather. It seems like a lot of people are becoming radicalized uh in politics and philosophies of men and just everyone's becoming more extreme. Okay.

Uh he said you live in a season where the adversary has become so effective in disguising truth. Yeah. It's you guys we have to have discernment.

We because the way to do it I mean I feel like this is well-known fact but the way to do it is to mix truth with error. To have most of it be truth but just have a little bit a little bit of it be error. And I feel like one of the biggest dangers uh comes from members of the church that are trying to undermine church leadership or doctrines or reinterpret uh church history.

He talked about church history a couple of times in this devotional. Okay. Active members may sometimes have concerns about history, doctrinal issues.

Whatever those doubts, the way to overcome them is to come closer to Jesus Christ. That is true, you guys. That's the most real thing because you have people with um ulterior motives that maybe have a really a really wellput together argument or presentation or ask questions that you don't know how to answer.

But coming receiving a witness from the Holy Ghost about Jesus Christ and coming closer to Christ, becoming a disciple, you can feel it for yourself. You don't have to rely on other people. It comes directly from the source.

So he gives four ways to um overcome doubts and come closer to Christ. Number one, strengthen our faith in him. Number two, increase our humility.

Three, seek help from others. Four, be patient. He highlighted the need for daily prayer in scripture study.

I think that's really important. I hope that nobody watches my podcast uh instead of reading scriptures or reading the words of modern day prophets. And I hope that we're that we're praying every day.

If you're not praying every day, then you're left to your own devices and your own learning and understanding and your own strength. President Holland said that one of the reasons why he was sent back from his near-death experience was to bring certain messages to the church. And one of them was to pray always, like literally to pray more than you pray.

Pray in more places uh than you pray. uh that it's not it's not just praying really hard, but seriously pray always. And he felt like it had to do with the hastening.

So I if you're if you're just a passive person and you watch YouTube or you watch the news or uh you turn to entertainment, movies, TV shows and you're not being active and you're not actively engaged. you're not an actively engaged learner like like researching for yourself, not relying on other people like me to do research for you. But if you're not researching for yourself and if you're not praying to the Lord for yourself, um that's really not a good place to be and you're probably going to die spiritually.

Okay, he told he talked about um humility. I don't know why I wrote I wrote this. I have nothing to really say about it.

But he talked about how he had to sub uh for a class when he was a professor because the other professor um I think had passed away and how he thought that he was doing a good job. But then there was a student that came up after he was done and uh President Oaks was expecting him to congratulate him and he was like, you know, you did a pretty good job. I think someday you'll become a a good professor.

And so I think the moral of the story there is we may think that we know a lot about whatever the controversial topic is. You know, something in church history or some doctrine, something that you feel doesn't make sense. Like you're overconfident in your knowledge of that thing.

And of course, we shouldn't be overconfident in anything, but I think what he's getting at is these people that bring up doubts, uh, these people that think that they've thoroughly researched um, what they perceive to be some problem with the church and their pride gets in the way. It's like, I know better. I know better than the church.

I know better than the prophet. Um, I I've seen that and I know that I know that you have too because for some reason some of you listen to those voices here on YouTube and other places, people that undermine the church in church leadership. Okay.

And then let's see. Um, he brought up the five wise the five wise virgins. That seems to be something that's being brought up more often, the parable of the the 10 virgins.

I always think back to Oh gosh, I've already forgotten, but I think it was the October, no, I think it was the April 2025 general conference where they installed that statue of the five wise virgins by the Relief Society building. Um, and it it was installed just a couple days before general conference. And in that general conference, there were like three or four talks that mentioned the parable of the f the 10 virgins.

And um, one a bishop in the pres in the presiding bishop brick, I think it was Bishop Wedell, he talked about how that was divine timing. So I I wonder if we're going to see more of this parable as we go forward. Um and then he repeated something that he has said before.

He he talked about his concern over returned missionaries, youth who have separated themselves from church from church teachings. Uh and then some of them with little desire for marriage or children. Again, that that's something I talked about in the last video.

Uh it seems like President Oaks is very concerned about the family and especially putting off marriage and children. So here it is. And he's talking to primarily to um a young adult audience of BYU students.

And then he also brought up men not preparing for me the maledic priesthood. and he said that this is a major source of concern to prophet leaders. Um, you know, I want to I'm just going to do it.

I want to look up when he said that last because I think this is an excerpt from uh one of his recent talks. So, let's go down to Oh my gosh. Let's go down to Oaks, right?

Oh my gosh. Maybe I'll just have to There we go. Down eight jokes and then returned missionaries 2025.

Yeah, this is it right here. April 2025 general conference. Um Oh, and here's the 10 virgins.

Yeah, he was one of the ones that talked about. Okay. So, under section number four, he says, "With so many powerful helps to guide us in our mortal journeys, it is disappointing that so many remain unprepared for their appointed meeting with our savior and redeemer Jesus Christ.

His parable of the 10 virgins spoken of so frequently in this conference, interesting that he points that out, suggests that of those invited to meet him, only half will be prepared. " We all know examples of the unprepared. Th this is a warning.

We all know examples of the unprepared. Returned missionaries who have interrupted their spiritual growth by periods of inactivity. Youth who have jeopardized their spiritual growth by separating themselves from church teaching and activities.

Men who have postponed their ordination to the Melzdc priesthood. men and women, sometimes the posterity of noble pioneers of worthy parents who have departed the covenant path short of making and keeping covenants in the holy temple. Yeah.

So, the wording was a little bit different. And then he included that part about um young people putting off having children and marriage. So, I feel like he's really wanting to emphasize that.

And then he said, "Never let secular learning limit your horizons or something to that effect. " Um, and then he talked about atheists. Those who don't believe in God fulfill a Book of Mormon description of those who live without God in the world.

Um, this is something that he has talked about before. He he has talked about atheism before. Uh let's go to let's see let's go to quotes A through Z.

Let's just look up Atheist. Yeah, here we go. I have this quote in a few different places.

I for Oh my gosh. Why did it Okay. Atheist.

Atheist. Okay. I originally looked up this quote because somebody had pointed this out because he talks about the antichrist.

For some reason, there's a number of members of the church who have listened to other Christian denominations and believe that there's a figure like a big bad guy, a oneperson antichrist that has to appear before the second coming. The church has never taught that. And the reason why is because the reason why Christians are confused is they look at scriptures that have to do with the great apostasy and Satan.

Satan being the great Antichrist. Other Christian denominations don't have the concept of the great apostasy. So they're like, "Oh, who's this talking about?

" And you know what's going on here? and they think that there's like some future figure when it's like no it's it's the apostasy that came after the prophets or after Christ ascended and after the apostles were killed and the priesthood keys were lost and then all these Christian churches were the result. So here he talks about um atheism under section A antichrist.

The apostle John uses the term antichrist to describe one who one who denieth the father and the son. Today those who deny the existence of God are called atheists. Some of these ridicule the faith of those who believe in what cannot be proven.

even as they aggressively deny a god a godly existence they cannot disprove. We are prepared for such denials of God by the Book of Mormon's account of a man named Corore in terms reminiscent of most atheistic writings of our day. Cororhor twice called an antichrist taught you cannot know of things which you do not see.

Therefore you cannot know that there shall be a Christ. uh you look forward and say that you see a remission of your sins, but behold, it is the effect of a frenzied mind and this derangement of your minds comes because of the traditions of your fathers which lead you away into a belief of things which are not so. Yeah, it sounds exactly like today.

Um he goes on, he talks about section B is about moral relativism, section C, secular humanism. Uh section D, the great and abominable church and other churches. Uh this actually came from a BYU Idaho devotional, February 25th, 2014 called Witnesses of God.

All right, back to this one. Um, and then he talked about concerns that people have about doctrine or science or, you know, prophecy things. He talked about the fact that there may be seeming discrepancies when you're trying to reconcile like secular knowledge and spiritual knowledge.

And then he pointed out that God has not told us all that he knows. So something something may seem like a discrepancy. It may seem like well these two truths can't exist at the same time.

Let me remind you this is me talking the world like reality is very complex and you just look at for example things like optical illusions or there's like these puzzles out there that you can buy like you go you know they sell them sometimes I think at Walmart and Target and places like that where you have like these little puzzles where you have to um like you have to get a ring off of a like two connected horseshoes. Uh that's one that I had when I was younger. Like there's like these these two horseshoes and they're connected at the ends with a chain and then there's a ring around the two chains and it's like there's no way that you can get that off.

But guess what? There is in a very like interesting way. You just twist the horseshoes in such a way that and into such a shape and configuration where the ring comes off.

And I feel like that's how life is when it comes to, you know, when it comes to really complicated things like church history or things that happened hundreds or thousands of years ago. um or when you're looking at science, things that supposedly happened millions or billions of years ago, there's just so much that we don't know. We're working with what we have.

And the science may seem sound. I'm not necessarily talking about um evolution or the creation of the earth. like I'm I don't even care about that really.

But whatever it is that that might be causing you discomfort, just realize it may be much more complicated than what you re than what you realize because I think as human beings we tend to simplify things because we want the answer and we want to feel secure and so we take something uh that is actually really complicated but we just like simplify it just to consolidate you know the knowledge and concerns that we have in our head. And uh we have to be flexible and open-minded and realize that we don't know what we don't know. Okay.

And then he talked about associating with other believers. Uh this is something that President Nelson also talked about is stop rehearsing your doubt with doubters. And there are members of the church on this platform and other platforms that will introduce doubts into your life if you listen to them.

I I don't understand why you listen to them. Don't listen to doubters. Unsubscribe.

Leave. Go to faithful sources. If you don't think that I'm faithful, then don't watch me if I'm like introducing any any sort of doubt into your life.

But associate with other believers. And then he repeated again in this same talk the president Nelson's uh quote in coming days it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding directing comforting and constant influence of the Holy Ghost. um he warned about podcasts that there's so many of them that go into these like really strange paths which again typically they undermine I feel like the common thread is that they undermine church leadership whether it's um Joseph Smith or Brigham Young or Wilfford Woodruff sometimes has to do with uh plural marri marriage and it essentially when you go down those paths it starts to undermine your faith that Brigham Young was a true prophet and and all of his successors.

Um or it could have to do with the priesthood ban or it could have to do with like any number of things. But you have these podcasts of members of the church or at least they claim that they're members of the church. And so that gets you to drop your guard because then you're like, "Oh, well, it's a member of the church, so it's no, it's not okay.

" And what's what's bizarre to me is so many times people will say, you know, I never I don't feel right about this channel or I don't feel right about this podcast. And yet you still watch them. So, President Oak says, um, "Be careful, let's see, he touched on how we know very little about the spirit world that follows mortality or the premortal life.

" Um, yeah, because there's people that go off into strange paths. And I think it's okay to read what has actually been said, like quotes from prophets, apostles, general authorities. That's what I do with my timeline of visions and visitations.

Although we should take it with a grain of salt. Um, and that's why I don't like listen to other people's real. I don't really I I don't on this on my channel.

I don't share near-death experiences from other people unless it was like acknowledged by a general authority. I just don't go there because that opens that opens up a door for people to really mislead you because you can't verify that that other person had a near-death experience or a vision or a dream or anything like that and they don't have authority to receive revelation for the church. So that's why I stick to church leadership when these special experiences are shared.

Um, and then he said, "Seek friends and associates who are striving to follow the Lord. Surround yourselves with people that believe. " And then he talked about those who are endowed should regularly attend the temple because this will help protect and strengthen you.

And then he said one more time, science um I wish I would have written a better note here, but essentially we need to be mindful of the incomplete teachings of science and religion. So on the science side, I haven't heard anybody declare that science has been complete, that we now know everything. There's no more research to be done.

That's what's so silly about science is like it's reliable. Like obviously because of science I'm able to talk to you using the internet and computers and electricity. Um we can rely on science for a lot of things.

But it's kind of silly to make um claims such as God doesn't exist or there isn't a spirit world. Um because for because science is still ongoing and we may not even have instruments capable of detecting those things. No matter how sophisticated our science is, no matter if we have the large HDR collider in CERN and um telescopes and satellites and and microscopes, it may not be possible to construct any sort of device that can detect the spirit world or God or anything else.

And it doesn't mean that that reality doesn't exist. Um, so it's just it's just kind of silly, but especially because science is not anywhere near complete. And then on the on the religious side, uh, God has not revealed everything.

And that's what's kind of drives some of us mad is because like we want to know, we want to know, you know, exactly what's going to happen with the second coming. What's the timeline? How are things going to play out?

Uh, what's going to happen in the millennium? And thankfully, we've been we've been given some slivers of information, but we're just going to have to wait and see. So, we just have a basic idea of what's supposed to happen, but then the rest of it is just preparing for that day.

And um and that's what we should really be focused on just like what President Oaks is saying here. We need to be active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints. Like President Holland said, we need to be thoroughly committed disciples and um all the rest of this is nice and good and fine, but that's what really matters.

All right. Well, if you haven't watched it, please make sure to watch the devotional for yourself. I'll put a link for this in the description box below.

But that's going to be all for this one. I'll talk to you guys later.