Classes Alive and Pulpits Aflame

President Ezra Taft Benson's opening address at the October 1988 General Conference of the church will be remembered in years to come as one of the most profound and stirring conference talks of this generation. His startling declaration of his vision "...of flooding the earth with the Book of Mormon.", will ring in our ears for decades.

There can be no mistaking his message, "...for the present hour He has revealed to me the absolute need for us to move the Book of Mormon forward now in a marvelous manner. You must help with htis burden and with this blessing which He has placed on the whole Church, even all the children of Zion."

President Benson received a revelation and saw a vision which he conveyed to the world during this conference. And what was the vision he saw? He saw a vision "...of homes alerted, of classes alive, and of pulpits aflame with the spirit of Book of Mormon messages...of home teachers and visiting teachers, ward and branch officers, and stake mission leaders counseling our people out of the most correct of any book on earth--the Book of Mormon...of artists putting into film, drama, literature, music, and paintings great themes and great characters from the Book of Mormon...of thousands of missionaries going into the mission field with hundreds of passages memorized from the Book of Mormon so that they might feed the needs of a spiritually famished world...of the whole church getting nearer to God by abiding by the precepts of the Book of Mormon...indeed, I have a vision of flooding the earth with the Book of Mormon." That is the vision and the responsibilityh of the saints.

But President Benson was not the first to see this vision. When Enoch stood before God He showed him the entire earth, Enoch saw this same vision. "And righteousness [or righteous spirits] will I send down out of heaven; and truth [or the Book of Mormon] will I send forth out of the earth, to bear testimony of mine Only Begotten; his resurrection from the dead; yea and also the resurrection of all men; and righteousness [spirits] and truth [Book of Mormon] will I cause to sweep the earth as with a flood, to gather out mine elect from the four quarters of the earth, unto a place which I shall prepare an Holy City..." Moses 7:62