Elder Jeremiah J. Morgan, a General Authority Seventy, opened with an image: “When I was a young teenager getting ready for school, my mother read to me from the Book of Mormon every day, out loud, whether I was listening or not.” You might assume he grew up a Latter-day Saint, but he did not. His family belonged to a different church that also believes in the Book of Mormon and the prophetic mission of Joseph Smith. He is grateful for that heritage, which began with his third great-grandparents, baptized by Oliver Cowdery in 1831, who helped establish Nauvoo and build the house of the Lord. They did not travel west with the Saints.
His mother named him Joseph after the Prophet and taught him the restored gospel and the Book of Mormon. Honestly, he remembers only two things from all that reading: “and it came to pass” and “wars and rumors of wars.” That’s it. He said, “But more than any words that I heard or did not hear, I knew the Book of Mormon was important to my mother. And I knew she knew it was true.” Even as a single mother, she read it to him daily until it was finished, fulfilling the Lord’s admonition to “Remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon” (D&C 84:57). His lesson: “No time or effort is ever wasted in reading the Book of Mormon. Not for you, not for your children, not for your family, not for anyone.”
He knew the Book of Mormon was true and Joseph Smith was a prophet, yet was confused and uncertain as to where the true church of Jesus Christ was. At 14 he began to question the church of his childhood. Friends who were Latter-day Saints were part of what led him to seek. For two months he attended his family’s congregation and also, secretly, a Latter-day Saint congregation, hiding between the accordion doors of the overflow. He came to know this is the Lord’s Church. Joining took time and brought questions and disappointment from family, but in Joseph Smith’s words, “I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it” (Joseph Smith—History 1:25).
Later, retelling the story, he wondered how a boy like him came to have such interest in religion. Good influences didn’t seem to explain it all. His wife, Rebecca, said, “I know what it was! It was covenants.” His ancestors had made temple covenants in Nauvoo. She read prophetic teachings that because of the eternal sealings of faithful parents and the promises made to them that though some of the sheep may wander, the eye of the shepherd is upon them, and sooner or later they will feel the tentacles of divine providence reaching out after them and drawing them back to the fold. “It was covenants,” he said. “It was covenants that had impacted me, not my covenants but the covenants of those who came before me.”
He was careful about agency. Quoting President Dallin H. Oaks, he said that covenants do not take a day off. The covenant faithfulness of parents and grandparents does not alter the agency of children or grandchildren, yet there is a discernible impact of those covenants on all our posterity. As Elder Patrick Kearon has taught, God “He employs every possible measure to bring [us] back.” It is just as the Lord revealed to Joseph Smith: “And he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers” (D&C 2:2).
He offered a scriptural proof of patience: the Lord covenanted with Enos that a remnant of his people would someday receive the fulness of the gospel (Enos 1:13–16). “Was there a time limit to that covenant? That covenant would take more than 2,000 years to be fulfilled. So, no, there is no limit to the power of God in our covenants.” Covenants “They do not bless just the maker of the covenant but are generational in their impact.” Like gravity, which binds across the universe, covenants with God stretch over all time and all space.
To anyone wondering whether they or a loved one has wandered beyond reach: “I say to you, you have not.” He quoted Elder Jeffrey R. Holland: “You have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines.” The Atonement is the fulfillment of God’s greatest promise, and “The power and reach of that covenant is infinite and eternal.”
For parents crying, “O, God, where art Thou? My child is struggling,” he offered comfort and counsel: God hears and will answer in His own time and way. “Keep your covenants, strive to be faithful, and ‘cheerfully do all things that lie in [your] power; and then may [you] stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed.’” (D&C 123:17) He closed with personal testimony: “Don’t ever give up. Your story, your family’s story, is not all written. God is the author and the finisher of it. I am a standing, breathing, believing demonstration of God’s love and the power of God in covenants.”
