I Knew The Author

I recollect the story of a very voracious reader, a woman who had a study filled with books. Each night she came home and read from books in her library, and she always finished every book she read.

One night she came to a particularly interesting crossroads: She decided that she would read a book that she had been especially avoiding. Finally she picked the book up, sat down, and began to read. It was very dull and uninteresting, but she had made herself a promise that she would never read a book without finishing it. She continued, night after night, until days later she finally turned the back cover of the book, took it back, placed it on the shelf, and made this mental note to herself: "That was the dullest book I have ever read in my life."
Sometime later she was out with a gentleman friend, and after dinner they started talking. He asked if she had ever read such and such a book. The mental note came back, "That was the dullest book I have ever read in my life."

She said, "Yes; why?"

He said, "I wrote it."

Then they talked about the book. Finally, that evening about midnight when he dropped her off, she went into her study, pulled this same book off the shelf, and read through the long hours of the night. When the first streaks of sunlight shafted across the sky, she closed the back cover of the book, placed it back again in its place on the bookshelf, and made another mental note to herself:
"That was the most beautiful book I have ever read in my life." The difference was that she knew the author.

In the forty-fifth section of the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord said:

Hearken, O ye people of my church, to whom the kingdom has been given; hearken ye and give ear to him who laid the foundation of the earth, who made the heavens and all the hosts thereof, and by whom all things were made which live, and move, and have a being.

And again I say, hearken unto my voice, lest death shall overtake you; in an hour when ye think not the summer shall be past, and the harvest ended, and your souls not saved.

Listen to him who is the advocate with the Father, who is pleading your cause before him--

Saying: Father, behold the sufferings and death of him who did no sin, in whom thou was well pleased; behold the blood of thy Son which was shed, the blood of him whom thou gavest that thyself might be glorified;

Wherefore, Father, spare these my brethren that believe on my name, that they may come unto me and have everlasting life. [D&C 45:1­5]

We can know the author, and everlastingly so much is at stake whether or not we do know Him.