Pornography:Satan's Counterfeit

DoctorBradleyWilcox
ThisCyberSecrets:TheProblemofPornographydiscoursewas givenon7Feb2001byDoctorBradleyWilcox.

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What a wonderful conference this has been today! I am grateful to be a part of it. I was very honored when I was invited to be among the presenters because I realize that this is a wonderful chance for us to use Brigham Young University as a source of help for young people, for parents, for families, for church members, for everyone in the world as we address this very sensitive issue. Someone asked me if I felt that by having this conference we were admitting that there was a huge problem on campus. I said, No, I think that what we are trying to do is use this campus as a source of help, a source of information for church members and for those who aren't members of the church and for people all over the world as we confront this ever growing problem. I have enjoyed the presentations that I've heard so far and I plan on staying until the end of the conference and hearing each presentation because this has helped me a great deal as a father and as a bishop. It will help me a great deal as I work with the youth. It's given me a lot of insights that will help me as I interact with them. I need a volunteer. I need to have a volunteer come up. It's got to be somebody who thinks he can tell something real from something counterfeit. So lets see, let's have this young man right here (young man walks to the podium). What's your name? Blake. This is Blake and Blake is from Texas. Now, do you think you can tell something real from something counterfeit? Positive. All right, close your eyes. I'm going to hold up two 20 dollar bills. One of them
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is real, one is counterfeit. All right, open your eyes. Which one is real? (Blake chooses the obviously real 20 dollar bill). Oh, he's good. He's good. Thank you very much. Glad to have you here, Blake. It was an easy choice for him to make. In real life that distinction is not always quite so clear and that choice is not always quite so easy to make. In 1996, the U.S. Treasury issued a new design of the U.S. currency. It started with the 100 dollar bill. Ben Franklin and I don't spend a lot of time together so I didn't really see the new currency until the 20s started coming out. That's when all of a sudden I saw it and I went, Whoa. I remember once in the bank, I remember actually saying to the teller, "I feel like we're starting this big monopoly game. You know I feel like this is like play money. She said, "No, it's real." And I said, "Why did they change it?" She said, "It's because our society has become so high-tech that it became too easy to counterfeit the older bills, with scanners and computers and copy machines, it was just way too easy to counterfeit the bills. So they had to produce a new bill that had security features built in. Security features that would be able to help us distinguish between something real and something counterfeit." Its good that they did it because I once read an article about a man who got a job to clean out a big semitruck. The truck driver hired him and he cleaned out the whole truck. He had to clean the truck down, inside and out. Cleaned the whole thing out and reloaded the entire truck. The truck driver paid him. He thought the truck driver was paying him very generously. So he was so grateful. He was thanking the truck driver profusely because he had been so generous and given him so much money and he just felt really lucky until he tried to spend the money. At that moment when the cashier looked at the

money and then called the manager over and the manager looked at it and said, "I'm sorry, this won't be acceptable because its counterfeit." At that moment he didn't feel so grateful anymore. He wasn't feeling thankful. Now all of a sudden he was feeling ripped off. Now all of a sudden he was feeling bitter and angry and discouraged because he had nothing to show for his time but a handful of worthless counterfeits. Now when I read that story I felt sorry for the man but all he really lost was money. I feel much more sorry for young people I know who are settling for a different kind of counterfeit, Satan's counterfeit of pornography. What is more beautiful than the human body? What is more wonderful and pure than true love between husband and wife? These sacred things have incredible eternal value. No wonder Satan tries to counterfeit them. So are we going to let him rip us off? Are we going to settle for his cheap imitation? One LDS young man that I'll call Matt became involved in pornography when he was visiting at a friend's house. His friend showed him some magazine pictures. Matt said, "I have always heard pornography described as dirty, smutty, filthy, ugly. But what I saw in those pictures didn't look all that ugly to me. It looked pretty appealing." You see, Matt allowed himself to be fooled. He found himself tempted to view pornography more and more. He started to buy magazines, rent videos, look up pornographic sites on the internet. He said , "It wasn't hard to find once I started looking." In the months that followed, Matt found himself less and less satisfied with the soft stuff. He said, "I wanted pictures that were more graphic and extreme. He soon found that his unworthy thoughts led to unworthy acts one after the other after the other. He said, "I let my hormones override all of my better
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judgment. Guilt, fear, and depression became my constant companions. Guilt because I knew what I was doing was wrong. Fear because I was terrified that my secret indulgences would be found out and depression because I could no longer feel the spirit and I began to hate myself." Matt was caught in a very dangerous downward cycle. In an effort to ease his depression he would view pornography. Then he would feel bad about what he'd done and hed feel depressed. Then in an effort to ease his depression he would turn again to pornography. And this cycle continued and continued and continued until he found himself just as addicted to pornography as other young people find themselves addicted to alcohol or to drugs. He said, "I first started viewing pornography because it was exciting and it gave me a rush. Later I no longer turned to pornography to feel good, but to stop from feeling bad." That sounds like an addiction. He was hooked. "Over and over," he said, "I'd tell myself that I would never view pornography again and then Id go right ahead and do it." Like the man who received counterfeit bills from the truck driver. Matt realized that what he originally thought was good was just a fake. Matt felt embarrassed. He felt frustrated. He felt angry. He said, "I think of the time and money that I spent on that stuff and I feel sick. It affected my relationships with others. It affected my church activity. It affected my grades in school. It consumed my life and I feel angry about that, but I know I have no one to blame but myself." Empty-handed, broken-hearted, this young man finally found the courage to approach his bishop. With the help of a priesthood leader he began the long process of repenting and breaking unworthy habits. Matt said, "Turning away from pornography has been one of the most difficult things I have ever done. Sometimes it is such a battle to control my thoughts by the end of the day

I feel physically, emotionally, and spiritually drained. I would give anything if I had never started in the first place." Now, I admire Matt's determination to make positive changes. I admire his determination to repent. And I also admire him for letting me share his story with you because he says , "Perhaps it can help others be smarter than I was. Maybe it can help them avoid my struggles." So how do we do it? How do we keep from getting sucked in? How do we avoid Matt's struggles? How do we keep ourselves from getting fooled? The new bills have security features. Each one of those security features is going to help us. They are going to remind us of things we can do to detect and reject Satan's counterfeit of pornography. The first security feature on the bill is an enlarged portrait. How many have noticed that? How many have noticed the pictures are bigger? The bigger pictures have more detail and so they are more difficult to counterfeit. Isn't this the same way with us? We have to keep a bigger picture in mind. Consider our bodies. Satan will never have one. No wonder he would want us to devalue our bodies, to disrespect them. Consider the sacred nature of sex in marriage. Consider the bonding that takes place between a husband and a wife and consider the wonderful opportunity to be able to bring children into this world and have a family. No wonder Satan would want us to degrade that. No wonder he would want us to look at that in a negative way. But if we can keep a big picture in mind of what our bodies are for, of what a marriage is for, and the role of sex in a marriage--if we can keep that bigger picture in mind it can help us reject the counterfeit. We need to keep a bigger picture of who we are eternally. Who we are, not just right now, but who we are eternally. And if we can keep that in mind, then we'll have the
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information that we need that will really make a difference when it comes to resisting temptation. I talked to a young girl one time who came to my home and said, Brother Wilcox, I need to talk to you. I said, Fine come on in. She said, "No. I don't want to come in because I don't want anybody to hear what I'm going to say." I said ,"We'll just go out front." We sat right on the curb in front of my house and I said, "Honey, what's wrong?" And she said, "I'm just sick of it." I said ,"What? What? What are you sick of?" And she said, "I'm sick of it, okay? I'm just sick of it, you know." I said, "What? What?" She said, "Okay, I am sick of never getting asked out, all right? All of my friends get asked out. I never get asked out. I'm sick of never getting asked to the dances. All of my friends get asked to the dances. I never get asked to the dances." She said, "I'm sick of being stupid. I'm sick of being, you know, unpopular." She went through a list. She had a list 50 items. "I'm sick of my eyebrows because they don't quite match right here and I'm sick of my nose because it looks just like my mother's and I'm sick. . . " and she went through a list. And when she finally finished I said Honey you're looking in the wrong mirror. Brother Stephen R. Covey talks about circus mirrors. How many of you have ever been to a carnival? You've seen the circus mirrors? You walk in front of one mirror and all of a sudden your head disappears and you go in front of the next one and your hips are huge. You see a reflection of yourself but you're not fooled. You don't go, "Oh my gosh, I better go buy new pants." You recognize yourself, but you know that what you're seeing is a distorted image. Its an exaggeration of who you are. I said to this young girl, "As you look in the eyes of those around you, as you look in the eyes of your peers, you are only seeing a distorted image of who you are. Don't buy that as reality. Recognize it is a distorted image. You have the anti-drug speaker who

comes to your school screaming, You're awesome. And you walk out going , "Man, I'm awesome, I'm awesome." And you go into your English class and your teacher is like, "You are challenged. You are definitely challenged." And then you go home and your mother goes, "You're so special. You're so special." So who do you believe? Who do you believe? Do you believe the anti-drug speaker? Do you believe your teacher? Do you believe your mom? Do you believe the cops? Who do you believe? As people are trying to tell you what and who you are, who do you believe? We need to recognize that all of those images are distorted. Some for the positive, some for the negative, but were looking in circus mirrors if we look around us in the eyes of those who surround us. We must lift our gaze and we must look in the eyes of a Heavenly Father who knows us, not just for who we are right now but who for we are eternally. In his eyes we begin to see a reflection we can count on. Why? Because God is an anti-drug speaker? Because Gods screaming, You're awesome, you're awesome? No, we see the negative as clearly as we see the positive, but we will see an image that we can believe in because we will see an image that is not distorted. That is something you can count on and that is something that you can believe in. Young ladies, stop! Stop doing what that little girl was doing when she came to visit me at my home. "Oh, he didn't notice me. He didn't notice that my finger nail polish is the same color as my eye shadow and its all color coordinated with my scrunchy." He does not even know what a scrunchy is. Girls, stop it! Quit putting your whole self esteem in the hands of some 16year-old boy who would rather be with a taco. Now quit it. Quit it! Quit letting every ounce of self esteem that you have be so dependent on boys and their responses to
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you, their reactions to you. No, young ladies, look up, look up. You do not need a boy. You do not need a boy. You need a man. And trust me, sisters, you do not need a man as much as you need the man. You need the man and as you can turn to the man upstairs then you'll gain the acceptance that you long to have, the security that you need. Then you'll get the approval that you're seeking so desperatelynot in the arms of a boy and not even in the arms of a man, but in the arms of your Father in Heaven and of your Savior, Jesus Christ. Keep an enlarged portrait in mind. Remember who you are, who you are eternally. The next security feature is a new background. The new background has a lot of lines, a lot of details which make it harder to counterfeit. Sometimes when we're trying to make changes in our behavior we need to find a new background. There may be stores that you're just going to have to put off-limits to yourself. There may be friends homes that you simply are not going into. You need to pull that computer out of your bedroom and put it into a public place and you may need to get some sort of protection software that is not going to be controlled by you, with a password that you do not know. Youre going to have to make an effort to change your background. If somebodys trying to quit drinking, hes not going to get much help around the bar. If I'm trying to lose weight, I am not going to be hanging around the bakery. We have to have the courage to change our backgrounds. But notice that the new background on the bill is filled with little lines. It is not so much a matter of saying, These things I won't do, as it is a matter of saying, Here is some positive, productive, building, uplifting things that I am going to fill my life with. That's a way that we can detect the pornography counterfeit. And we can reject it because we will be so engaged in other more positive

building things that are truly meeting the needs that we have. The third security feature is called micro-printing. If you look at the 20 dollar bill you will see the little letters right at the very bottom of the portrait. If you look at the 50 dollar bill, check out Grant's collar and you'll see little tiny letters so small that you really can't read them with the naked eye, but you can see that theyre actually words. If you scan this into a computer, that gets lost, it won't surface and so you'll be able to recognize that it's a counterfeit bill. The micro-printing gives us the security of knowing what is real. Its the same way in our lives. It is the small things that make a difference. Its the little things that start adding up to make a huge difference in our lives. In Alma 37:6 we read about how small and simple things allow great things to come to pass. When my little daughter was in second grade we were having family night and I asked her, "Honey, what do we need to do to be happy?" And she said , "Just, just do all that stuff." And at first I thought she was being a little flippant, and then I started realizing that she was right--just do all that stuff. By all that stuff she means say your prayers, read your scriptures, go to church, talk to your priesthood leaders, read the New Era. The what? The New Era, a nice little handy publication that comes and usually sits on your toilet lid. Open it up and actually read something besides the joke page. Actually read something there that is aimed directly at young people and focused directly on the challenges that they face. That is going to be able to give you something. Its a little thing but it will give you something. It will give you the help that you need to be able to keep going and to be able to make correct decisions. Just do all that stuff.

The fourth security feature is a glowing thread. We can't actually see it as we hold up a bill, but if the bill is placed under ultraviolet light then you see a vertical thread that has been embedded that actually glows. How many of you have ever been to an amusement park and had your hand stamped and didn't even see the stamp until later when you put it under the light? How many have ever had that happen? Under the ultraviolet light this bill glows, and that is how we can recognize that its real. It is the same way in our lives. Brothers and sisters, a marriage that is filled with love, a marriage that is filled with trust, a marriage that is filled with faithfulness, filled with fidelity, that is a marriage that glows. It glows with love. There is no love in pornography. There is only lust. There is no concern for another, there is only concern for self. There is no relationship to be strengthened, only nameless bodies, dehumanized sexual objects. Victor B. Cline, another presenter at todays conference, has stated that most pornography presents highly inaccurate, unscientific, and distorted information about human sexuality. It is in a sense sex miseducation, sex mis-education marketed for financial gain. Where there is no love there is no glow, and where there is no glow then Satan's counterfeit is seen for the dull, dark, lifeless forgery that it is. Young people, I know you've heard stories. I know you've been in a locker room and you've heard somebody bragging about some sexual escapade be it real or not. I know you've heard jokes. You've heard dirty jokes and you've heard people talking about all of their little different sexual adventures. And you've seen previews to movies and maybe just maybe inside your head you've thought for just a second, Dang it, I'm getting ripped off here. You know, I'm missing something. Everybody else in the whole world is getting something and I'm not
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getting it. I've even had young people tell me , "I wish I could stop being Mormon for just one day. I want a day offjust one day to not be Mormon. Then I could go out and get all of this stuff that I'm not getting and then I could come back and be a Mormon again. That kind of perspective worries me. Not just because of the consequences that could follow such behavior, but it worries me because it tells me that in their minds they think they're the ones getting ripped off. They look at their friends and think they are the ones who are getting something and that people who are living standards are the ones getting ripped off. If I could do anything today, I want you to be able to flip that thinking around and I want you to realize that you're the one who is going to get it. You're the one who will have what they want. Theyre the ones who are getting ripped off. Oh yes, they may be having sex. But having sex and making love are two completely different things. If what they were getting were so satisfying, if what theyre getting were so wonderful, if what they are getting were as great as they would have you believe, why are they always looking? Why are they continually searching? Why do they jump from internet site to internet site to internet site, from magazine to magazine to magazine, from bed to bed to bed, from partner to partner to partner? Why are they always searching, if what theyre getting is so great? My wife and I aren't looking. We're not searching. We have what theyre looking for because in our marriage, sex is combined with love and trust and fidelity. In our marriage we have something that they could never even dream of. They could never even dream. They couldn't even touch what we have with a ten-foot pole. Sure they've had sexual experiences, physical experiences, but they don't know anything about the emotional experiences, the spiritual experiences that can be associated with those sexual feelings.
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And there is a fireworks show, there's a fireworks show that they can't compete with. Theres a fireworks show that is going to leave them completely in the dust. Young people, believe me when I tell you that if you can enter your marriage without carrying a lot of sexual baggage with you then you are setting yourself up for success. If you can enter a marriage without 30,000 images in your mind that your spouse is going to have to compete with and be compared to, you are going to be much better off. If you can enter a marriage with the attitude that sex is something you give and not something you get, then you will be setting yourself up for something that your friends will never have, then you're setting yourself up for something that they will never be able to reach. You're not the one getting ripped off, theyre the ones getting ripped off because they are settling for something that is so unsatisfying. By living the law of chastity, by keeping our standards, we are preparing for sex at its best. We are preparing for something that is truly satisfying. We will have something that glows and they will not. And its the glow that sets something real apart from something that is fake. The next security feature that the bill has is color shifting. We've talked about the enlarged portrait. We're talked about the new background. Weve talked about the micro-printing. We've also talked about the glowing thread embedded vertically in each bill. Now let's talk a little bit about color shifting. If you've ever noticed on the new bills if you look at the number on the lower, right corner, you'll look and from one angle its black, from another angle its green. How many have ever noticed that? It is called color shifting and maybe the world would try to convince us that there are no absolutes when it comes to good or bad, that right and wrong exist only in our minds and

that what is moral or immoral depends completely on the angle from which it is viewed. Do not be fooled. The shifting colors on the new bill provide security but the shifting values of the world do not. From any angle pornography is wrong and it is sinful. President Spencer W. Kimball has stated, "Pornography pollutes the mind. The stench of obscenity and vulgarity reaches and offends the heavens. It putrefies all it touches. Pornography and erotic stories and pictures are worse than polluted food. Shun them. The body has power to rid itself of sickening food. That person who entertains filthy stories or pornographic pictures and literature records them in his marvelous human computer, the brain, which cannot forget this filth. I once attended a youth conference and I was being hosted in the home of one of the stake leaders. As we went up to the bedroom of his son, the stake leader says, "Brother Wilcox, I kind of need to warn you my son has a very interesting, you know, taste in posters in his room and you may be a little bit shocked by some of the things he's chosen to put up on his wall. We've talked to him. We've told him we don't agree. Weve told him this isn't something we would like to have him do. But he says he has his free agency, and he says that its not bugging him and all of his friends do it and its no big deal and to lay off. I just want to warn you that you may not like everything that you see in the bedroom." I walked into the bedroom, I put my bags down, I looked up at the walls and the ceiling. The entire place was covered with beautiful women who were not wearing not much more than smiles. Beautiful smiles, beautiful dental work all around me on the walls. I thought, Oh, my goodness, how does this child sleep at night? And I put my bags down and we went to the youth conference. I came home that night and got ready for bed. I knelt down at this young man's bed and I started to say my prayers
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and there I was, praying in front of all of this beautiful dental work. I thought, This young kid has no idea what hes doing. No, they weren't naked, but he was crossing lines that he just didn't want to cross. He was stepping into situations and circumstances that he just didn't want to put himself in. He was playing with fire that he just didn't want to get close to. And I thought, How am I going to communicate this to him? So I got creative and I thought, I'm going to put clothes on every one of those girls. Just like Barbies, you know, Im going to cut out the clothes and I am going to put those paper clothes up on those girls but I thought that it would take me all night. So finally, I thought, Let's see. I have another idea. I cut out little cartoon bubbles, little circles out of paper with a little arrow coming out of the mouth. You have probably seen the bubbles that come out of cartoon character mouths in the newspaper. I cut out a bunch of bubbles and I put one by every mouth of every girl in that room. And in the bubbles I wrote messages like: I am a daughter of Heavenly Father, I love him and he loves me. And in the next bubble I wrote, I'm a child of God. In the next bubble I wrote, I am only going to marry a returned missionary. In the next bubble I wrote, I love to see the temple. I'm going there some day. When the young man came home to his room I apologized for taking liberty and redecorating his room. He walked in, looked at it, and then he started laughing. Oh my gosh. This is so cool. This is so funny. I am going to invite all the kids from youth conference to come and see. I thought, He has missed my point. It made me think of something that Elder Richard G. Scott said when he addressed students here at Brigham Young University. He said , "Do you thirst after righteousness or are there times when the allure of stimulating images is allowed to temporary fill your mind because after all

they are not really that bad? Do your actions focus on entertainment and immediate satisfaction, self-interest, personal gratification, even though your goals are elsewhere?" I thought the boy had not understood my efforts until I got a letter that assured me that he did. He wrote, "At first, I took what you did in my room as a big joke. I even invited a bunch of kids from youth conference to come and see your masterpieces. Everyone thought they were pretty funny. But then I started to really think about what you'd written on those papers. It's true. Those girls are daughters of Heavenly Father and I certainly hadn't been looking at them that way. To see words about temple marriage on those kinds of posters seemed so inconsistent. Suddenly it hit me that by having those pictures up on my walls I was being inconsistent too. Needless to say the posters came down." Now, you know other young people have justified their involvement in pornography by saying, Its art. Its just art. It is the same thing you see in an art museum. So, whats the big deal? I took an art class right here at BYU in which we saw slides of famous paintings and in some of the paintings there were nudes. One girl in our class raised her hand and asked the professor, "Aren't we looking at pornography?" The professor did something very important that I've never, never forgotten. He defined two words : sensuous and sensual. He said, "Art can be sensuous, appealing to our senses without being sensual, sexually erotic, stimulating, sexually exciting." Those two words and those definitions have helped me a lot as I have drawn the fine lines that we all have to draw between art and pornography, between literature and lewdness and I hope that those two words and those definitions can help you as well.

Finally the last security feature in the bill that I'm going to mention today is called a watermark. It's made visible as you hold the bill to the light. If you hold the bill a certain way you cant see a thing. But if you hold the bill to the light then you see some watermarks. You see a copy of the portrait. You see a bar with some words. You see markings that are only made visible when theyre held to the light. It is the same way in our lives. We must hold our actions to light. We must hold our behavior to light and that is the way that we can get help. We must be willing to have the courage to talk about our struggles with a bishop. In a bishop youll find a valuable friend. Youll find annually in private interviews some bishops will ask directly about pornography, about masturbation. Other bishops won't. Other bishops don't even feel comfort saying those words. Whether a bishop asks you or not it does not change your personal responsibility to bring your choices, your actions to light. How many have ever started an exercise program? How many have ever quit an exercise program? How many have not even lasted two days? We start and we have these good intentions and we say we are going to do it and then we quit. But if you start with a friend, if you have somebody there whos going to be helping you out and whos going to be encouraging, you stand a much better chance of actually reaching your goal even when it gets hard. Young people who wake up for early morning seminary start the year with great intentions but pretty soon it's too easy to lean over and turn off the alarm clock unless they have a mom who is coming in singing the Cougar Fight Song. Unless they have a dad who comes in marching up and down and saying, Its wonderful to be alive. Up and at em. Unless they have friends who are coming in a car pool and who are going to knock on that door and give you one choice. You either go to seminary in your
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clothes or you go to seminary in your underwear. It doesn't matter but you're going. I mean if you have those kinds of friends. If you have that kind of support system then it makes it easier for you to keep positive commitments. The bishop can offer that kind of support system. As he asks you what you did on Saturday night on Sunday morning, it may help you to keep your Saturday nights clear. But a bishop is not just a friend, a bishop is not just a support system, a bishop is one who holds priesthood keys. Keys he can use in your behalf. A bishop is one who can give blessings and one who can give you inspired counsel. A bishop is one who can help you set a positive plan of action and can help you follow through on your commitments and goals. A commitment to ourselves so easily overlooked. Even a commitment to God is so easy to postpone. I'll start next time. I'll start next week. But when we make a commitment to another person it puts us in a very strong and positive position. The bishop is a person who can help you and he can guide you to other professionals who can help as well. Parents can help. As we bring our actions to light then we put ourselves in the position of getting the help that we need. Three years ago I had a very life changing experience as I was called to be the bishop of a singles ward. I have worked with the youth my entire life, but it was not until I was called as a bishop that I realized how many of our good, wonderful, solid young people struggle with private personal concerns. Young people, a bishop is one who can help you find the blessings of Jesus Christ's atonement in your life. If you depend on willpower alone, if you depend on willpower alone, it will not be enough. But if you can find God's power, if you can depend on God's power then you will have the power to make any change in your life.
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Young people, I know many of you are here at this conference not because you struggle, but because you're wondering how you can help others. I hope perhaps some of the suggestions I've offered will help you. But I also know that there may be a few here today who are here for very personal reasons because you are struggling. If that is the case, my challenge is to seek help, bring your actions to light. My challenge to you and my promise to you is that you're not alone. You're not alone. Help is available and you can change things for sure. You can make positive changes. Through the atonement of Jesus Christ all change is possible, and all change is real. I'm very grateful for the opportunity that I've had to be here today. I'm grateful to be able to share these thoughts with you and I hope that the money that we've talked about will be a constant reminder to you of what we've discussed. I hope next time you see a 20 dollar bill, I hope you lean over and tell the guy next to you, "Wow, man, I know the security features. Let me tell you how you can tell a counterfeit from something real." I hope the next time you see a 50 dollar bill I hope you look right at Grant's collar. I hope you find that micro-printing. I hope the next time you see this money itll remind you of what we've discussed. Next time you see a one hundred dollar bill, think of the points we've discussed and let it be a reminder to you that there are security features in your life just like there are security features in the new currency. And if we use those security features we can protect ourselves from falling for Satan's counterfeit and we can protect ourselves from getting ripped off. I leave you with my testimony that its worth it. Its worth it. We are in truth and that means that the efforts we make, however small, are worth it. We are not on a treadmill. We are not just going and going and going and not getting

anywhere. We have an end in mind. We have a destination that is clear. We have a goal that is real and possible and each step we make, however private, each step we make toward that goal is real progress. It's worth it. Hang in there. I know, I know some of you have tried before and you've said, Man, I've tried and I've tried and I keep falling back into it and maybe I ought to just step back and say the church a wrong because it is a lot easier to say the church is wrong and the church's standards are wrong. It is easier to say that than it is to say that I'm wrong. So maybe I'm just going to go that direction. Young people, don't be fooled. Try again. You try once more because I promise you, your efforts are not in vain. They may be private but they are noticed and they matter. I leave that testimony with you in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
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