God’s Timeless Principles

FOR NEARLY 96 YEARS, Music & the Spoken Word has been broadcast live here on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah. Today I’m in the Tabernacle, where each of my three predecessors has offered timeless spiritual messages to the world. As I’ve studied their many messages, it has struck me that even though the world has changed dramatically since our first broadcast aired in July of 1929, the Spoken Word messages given are just as applicable today, even years later. God’s timeless principles remain the same.

On July 13, 2025, we will celebrate our 5,000th continuous weekly broadcast.

Over the next few months, we’ll share some of God’s timeless principles as presented by Richard L. Evans, J. Spencer Kinard, and Lloyd D. Newell, all former presenters of this program. Today we share a timeless message given 64 years ago in this very hall, titled “The Pace, the Purpose, the Principles.”

“Frequently we hear it said that times have changed. Young people say it. Others do also. In some ways it is true. But it is a statement that can be seriously misleading. Many things have changed—some for the better, others for the worse. … Almost every outward aspect of life has changed, and anyone who attempts to do business as it was once done would likely not long be in business. The pace of life has changed. We live in a faster and different world, both a worse and a better world, and in some ways we have to adjust to the times and be flexible enough to face the facts.

“The pace has changed—yes. But not the purpose or the principles. Let no one be deceived about flexibility as to fundamental principles. We cannot afford to be flexible in matters of hon- esty. We cannot afford to be flexible in matters of virtue, old-fashioned as the word may seem. Flexibility must not mean setting aside considerate manners, or sound morals, or honorable ob- ligations—or setting aside the commandments or tampering with the basic laws of life. We must discriminate as to changes and know where it is safe to be flexible and where it is imperative to be firmly fixed. To change the superstructure—the facing and the fashions—is one thing, but to tamper with the foundations is another.

“The pace has changed, but the purpose and the principles have not. The age-old, God-given rules of honesty, morality, responsibility—‘commandments’ if that’s what we want to call them— and even the inner voice called conscience are still what they always were, no matter how times have changed, no matter how modern we feel, no matter how flexible other things may be.” 1