What we could not have anticipated when planning the trip two months earlier was that on Saturday, February 2 we would visit Carthage jail where Joseph Smith was killed, drive through the countryside traversed by the martyred prophet’s body, then arrive at the Nauvoo visitor’s center in time to watch the televised funeral procession of our own prophet, Gordon B. Hinckley, making its way through the streets of Salt Lake City.
We joined more than a hundred senior missionaries who serve in Nauvoo, standing as one when President Hinckley’s casket began its short journey from the parking structure into the conference center he commissioned. We watched as President Monson stood at the pulpit made from the wood of President Hinckley’s tree. We cried with the family and smiled with Church leaders who paid their tributes.
After the funeral, we drove to the graves of Joseph and Hyrum Smith and contemplated what it might have meant to the early Saints to lose their prophet in June of 1844, a young and vibrant leader who had galvanized a people to build a Zion city, a holy temple, and a body of scriptures for a new dispensation. And we contemplated what it was like for us to lose our prophet, equally vibrant, equally if not as personally loved. A prophet who had galvanized us to build temples, education, and stakes of Zion for a new generation.
I don’t know how the Saints handled their loss. I can’t begin to imagine how devastated they must have been. They lacked clear patterns for succession. Their lives, too, were threatened. The journey Joseph’s death sent them toward was long and difficult, requiring them to leave behind so much they had come by so hard.
Like those early Saints, we are called upon to transfer our allegiance to new leaders, even while we mourn the passing of the old ones. We should be used to this, I suppose. Even without the intervention of death, our bishops, Sunday School teachers and visiting teachers come and go with predictable regularity, like children playing musical chairs. Then the music stops and someone has to leave the circle. Last year the music stopped on President Hinckley.
Both death and the rotations of Church service require us to accept change and let go, but they also give us at least two sweet opportunities. First is the opportunity to gain a witness from God of the truthfulness and vitality of this work. I can tell you the precise moment when I received such a witness for each prophet of my lifetime. The first time I heard someone pray for President Monson as the president of the Church I felt the spirit confirming his appointment. I am grateful to remember that this is the Church of the Living God, the one who speaks to His people today.
A second opportunity, even more important, is the reminder that our allegiance is not to a man, even as great a man as a prophet of God. Our allegiance is to the Savior. The One who came back from death, and who promises us that death will not be the end of us either. That is a vital reminder. The Saints didn’t cross the plains because of Joseph, or Brigham. They crossed the plains because of their testimony of Jesus Christ. We still live out that legacy.