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We believe in the gift of prophecy. We can see today the fulfillment of prophecies from long ago, and they give us faith to follow our living prophets now.
This speech was given on November 28, 1978.
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"After an introduction like that and the beautiful song we just heard, I ought to be able to say something even if I am nearly a hundred years old. I greet you all this morning; I feel highly honored in having been invited to come and occupy this place to speak to you, particularly since I have learned that you have two thousand Mormon missionaries sitting over here on the right-hand side. I greet all of you and tell you how happy I am and how much I love this institution and its officers and its faculty and you students who are here today.
During the past week we have celebrated Thanksgiving Day, and I suppose all of you have counted your blessings. I counted mine, and after doing so I figured that I was about the most blessed man in the world-but I shall not take time to tell you why, because it would take too long. Then I thought of having to speak to you here this morning. I assume that all of you have reasons to be grateful, and one of them is that you are privileged to be students at this great institution. Not all of our youth have the privilege of attending a Church institution like this, where you sit in classes with men of God who have faith and testimony and who not only teach you the words of your lessons but inspire you to want to live to be something worthwhile in the world. There are those who have opposite opportunities. I thought, as I tried to decide what to talk about today, that I would use for a text a couple of little experiences that are opposite to your experience here.
A few years ago I attended a conference in Ogden. One of the presidents of the Young Men’s organization of the entire Church also attended that meeting, and I had him speak. In his talk he said that a professor in one of our non-Mormon universities threw out a question like this in his class: “Is there anyone in this class who believes that there is any way in the world that one can know a thing is going to happen before it happens?” Nobody answered. Then he said, “I am glad to know that none of you believes in that silly idea of your parents that one can know a thing by prophecy.”
The speaker did not say any more about it, but when my turn came to speak I said, “If one of my children had been in that class they might not have said anything but they would have thought, ‘The poor man; I feel sorry for him. He did not get his training out of the right books, or he would have known better than that.’”
Then I had another experience. One of our secretaries in the Church office building had a daughter attending a non-Mormon university. She had been in charge of the Junior Sunday School in her ward and had prayed with our people and so forth, but her professor had so destroyed her faith that she resigned from the Sunday School and refused even to kneel in prayer with her own family. Her mother came to me broken-hearted to see if she could get some help, and I said, “Well, I can’t help her because I’m not a college graduate, but I know how I can get you some help. I can make an appointment with a man who can get her back on the track, I’m sure, if she is willing to fill the appointment.” She was, so I made the appointment with Brother Henry Eyring, and he got her back to her place in the Church. A few years after that I was down in Los Angeles attending a conference; after the conference I ordained a young man a bishop, and I learned that he was the husband of this girl that I mentioned to you who had lost her faith temporarily in that university.
The teacher in the first story said that there is no way we can know a thing before it has transpired, but I like the statement of Isaiah that tells of the Lord “declaring the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10). That is prophecy. The Lord had a definite program and he was able to declare it, and the way he declared it was through his holy prophets. Isaiah said, “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever” (Isaiah 40:8). Peter said,
We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that..."