“The Voice of the Lord”
Enos 1:10
10 And while I was thus struggling in the spirit, behold, the voice of the Lord came into my mind again, saying: I will visit thy brethren according to their diligence in keeping my commandments. I have given unto them this land, and it is a holy land; and I curse it not save it be for the cause of iniquity; wherefore, I will visit thy brethren according as I have said; and their transgressions will I bring down with sorrow upon their own heads.
President Harold B. Lee said:
“[One] way by which we receive revelation is the way that the Prophet Enos spoke of. After he had gone up and received the great commission to carry on the work and to write the record, he penned this very significant statement in his record in the Book of Mormon. ‘And while I was thus struggling in the spirit, behold, the voice of the Lord came into my mind again, saying . . .’ [Enos 1:10]. In other words, sometimes we hear the voice of the Lord coming into our minds, and when it comes the impressions are just as strong as though He were talking as with a trumpet into our ear. Jeremiah says something like that in Jeremiah 1:4: ‘Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying . . .’ He was having the voice of the Lord into his mind, as Enos said.
“In the story of the Book of Mormon we have Nephi upbraiding his brothers, calling them to repentance; and in his statement to them he gives voice to the same thought when he says, ‘And he hath spoken unto you in a still, small voice, but ye were past feeling, that ye could not feel his words’ (1 Nephi 17:45). Thus the Lord, by revelation, brings [thoughts] into our minds as though a voice were speaking.
“May I bear humble testimony . . . to that fact? I was once in a situation where I needed help. The Lord knew I needed help, [as] I was on an important mission. I was awakened in the [wee] hours of the morning—as though someone had wakened me to straighten me out on something that I had planned to do in a contrary course—and there was clearly mapped out before me as I lay there that morning, just as surely as though someone had sat on the edge of my bed and told me what to do. Yes, the voice of the Lord comes into our minds, and we are directed thereby.”
(Divine Revelation [address given to the Brigham Young University student body, Oct. 15, 1952], pp. 7–8.)
Randal S. Chase spent his childhood years in Nephi, Utah, where his father was a dry land wheat farmer and a businessman. In 1959 their family moved to Salt Lake City and settled in the Holladay area. He served a full-time mission in the Central British (England Central) Mission from 1968 to 1970. He returned home and married Deborah Johnsen in 1971. They are the parents of six children—two daughters and four sons—and an ever-expanding number of grandchildren.
He was called to serve as a bishop at the age of 27 in the Sandy Crescent South Stake area of the Salt Lake Valley. He served six years in that capacity, and has since served as a high councilor, a stake executive secretary and clerk, and in many other stake and ward callings. Regardless of whatever other callings he has received over the years, one was nearly constant: He has taught Gospel Doctrine classes in every ward he has ever lived in as an adult—a total of 35 years.
Dr. Chase was a well-known media personality on Salt Lake City radio stations in the 1970s. He left on-air broadcasting in 1978 to develop and market a computer-based management, sales, and music programming system to radio and television stations in the United States, Canada, South America, and Australia. After the business was sold in 1984, he supported his family as a media and business consultant in the Salt Lake City area.
Having a great desire to teach young people of college age, he determined in the late 1980s to pursue his doctorate, and received his Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Utah in 1997. He has taught communication courses at that institution as well as at Salt Lake Community College and Dixie State University for 21 years. He served as Communication Department chair and is currently a full-time professor at Dixie State University in St. George, Utah.
Concurrently with his academic career, Brother Chase has served as a volunteer LDS Institute and Adult Education instructor in the CES system since 1994, both in Salt Lake City and St. George, where he currently teaches a weekly Adult Education class for three stakes in the Washington area. He has also conducted multiple Church History tours and seminars. During these years of gospel teaching, he has developed an extensive library of lesson plans and handouts which are the predecessors to these study guides.
Dr. Chase previously published a thirteen-volume series of study guides on the Book of Mormon, Church History, the Old Testament, and the New Testament. The series, titled Making Precious Things Plain, along with four smaller study guides on Isaiah, Jeremiah, the story of the Nativity, and the final week of our Lord’s atoning sacrifice, are designed to assist teachers and students of the gospel, as well as those who simply want to study on their own. Several of these books are also available in the Spanish language.
