Thoughts from Grandma Beth: "Bide Your Time"

Grandma Beth typed the following on March 22, 1978.

Today I decided that I must write in my journal for I heard something today that really touched my heart that I knew to be true, because while Sister Jasmine Edmunds was relating to me the incident, the Holy Ghost witnessed unto me the truthfulness of what she was saying.

I gave the lesson today in Relief Society and part of the lesson was on Adam and Eve. I was stressing that just as it stated in the book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price, Adam was the first man and the first flesh upon the earth. I quoted from Joseph Fielding Smith, Pres. Joseph F. Smith and an official statement of the First Presidency of the Church that this was the case and that Adam and Eve were born of parents and did not evolve from earlier flesh via the evolutionary route.

After the lesson Sister Edmunds came up and told me of something that happened to her brother, President Marion G. Romney of the First Presidency of the church.

It was at conference and he was slated to be the last speaker in the morning session. He had his talk all prepared, but because time ran out, President McKay said that Brother Romney would be the first speaker in the afternoon session. Brother Romney, between sessions, prayed about his talk that he had prepared and felt strongly that he should not use it and that he should talk on something else.

When he was called on to speak, Brother Romney said that the Lord literally put words in his mouth and that he spoke how Adam was the first man, the first flesh of the earth. (This was in the days before the general authorities had to turn in a copy of their talk ahead of time) He said afterwards that many of his friends that felt that this did not harmonize with the scientific theories of the day called him and said “Did you really mean what you said about Adam being the first man on the earth?”

I have found just in the years that I have lived that man’s theories come and go, but God’s words---whether in the scriptures, or through the mouth of his prophets are truths that will live forever.

I can remember so well that when I attended the University and took quite a number of anthropology classes, that all the books and all the professors stated most definitely that the only way men came to America was by way of the Bering Strait. Since that time there have turned up so many evidences of the Vikings, Phoenicians and other peoples that came to America by ship, that I’m sure there is no scientist today that would dispute this.

Therefore if the theories of men are not in harmony with the revealed truths of God, bide your time, the truths will stand, many theories of men will not. I have found this to be so.

I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Beth M. Henderson