On Seeing Beyond One’s Time – Sunday, June 25, 1944
“Whereupon, 0 king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision: I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things than those which the prophets … did say should come…” (Acts26:19,22) As it was with Paul standing before Agrippa, so it has ever been with men of inspired vision and men of far-reaching minds. They have seen what they have seen; they have said what they must say, and because it has not met the pleasure or understanding of the generations in which they have lived, they have been ridiculed, persecuted, mocked, and martyred.
If they had done the expedient thing, if they had temporized with the prevailing views of their own day, they might have lived long to enjoy unmolested the normal ways of life, even as other men—if they had only ignored what they knew, and had allowed to remain hidden what they were obligated to reveal, but this they could not do. When a man comes into possession of a truth which lies beyond the common knowledge of his day, beyond the understanding of his contemporaries, he cannot, in honor, keep it to himself. He must, somehow, declare it, even though it meet with abusive unbelief—for unbelief does not destroy reality, and truth, being denied, does not disappear, even though every generation has found difficulty in forgiving those who have, seen beyond their time, who have thought ahead of their time, who have been endowed with an insight beyond other men.
And inevitably the day arrives, perhaps in a hundred, perhaps in a thousand years, or sooner, or later, when we become eager to share in acknowledging as heroes and public benefactors those who have suffered at the hands of their own intolerant contemporaries, for seeing beyond their time. And while, in their own day, they to whom has been given the greater vision may be misunderstood, and even martyred, yet they are the movers of the world, and time has a way of vindicating what they have said and done, even though it may have cost them their lives to say it and to do it. And so the world moves on toward the ultimate purposes of Him who created it, all unmindful of those who flail their arms against the eternal tide of progress and who cast stones at those who see beyond their time.
Heard over Radio Station KSL and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, June 25, 1944. Copyright – 1944.
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June 25, 1944
Broadcast Number 0,775