In the 12th in a series of 15 videos set to be released by members of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, President Jeffrey R. Holland said the Savior had to feel loneliness in order to comfort the lonely.
President Holland’s Easter testimony video is based on his April 2009 general conference message titled “None Were with Him.” In the video, he shares how the Savior felt everything Heavenly Father’s children would feel in order to empathize with and strengthen them.
“One of the great consolations of this Easter season is that because Jesus walked such a long, lonely path utterly alone, we do not have to do so,” President Holland said. “This Easter week and always, may we stand by Jesus Christ ‘at all times and in all things, and in all places that [we] may be in, even until death,’ (Mosiah 18:9) for surely that is how He stood by us when it was unto death and when He had to stand entirely and utterly alone.”
President Holland on the Savior
President Holland, the acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles since December 2023, was sustained in general conference as a member of the Twelve on Oct. 1, 1994. He has spoken in general conference 60 times.
In his October 1995 general conference address titled “‘This Do in Remembrance of Me’,” Elder Holland said, “every ordinance of the gospel focuses in one way or another on the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
He taught about the importance and sacredness of the sacrament and the eternally significant events in the Savior’s life that are remembered while partaking of the sacrament.
“The Savior’s physical suffering guarantees that through his mercy and grace (2 Nephi 2:8) every member of the human family shall be freed from the bonds of death and be resurrected triumphantly from the grave. Of course the time of that resurrection and the degree of exaltation it leads to are based upon our faithfulness.”
In October 2022, Elder Holland said in his general conference address titled “Lifted Up upon the Cross” that blessings always come to those who are faithful — though not always immediately.
“As the glorious Resurrection followed the agonizing Crucifixion, so blessings of every kind are poured out on those who are willing, as the Book of Mormon prophet Jacob says, to ‘believe in Christ, and view his death, and suffer his cross’ (Jacob 1:8). Sometimes these blessings come soon and sometimes they come later, but the marvelous conclusion to our personal via dolorosa is the promise from the Master Himself that they do and will come.”
