Borrowed Light

The Eternal Importance of Righteous Choices

By Elder Quentin L. Cook

Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

From devotional addresses given at Brigham Young University–Hawaii on November 20, 2018, and at the Utah Valley Institute of Religion on February 1, 2019.

Many of you, if not most, have a testimony. We each need a personal testimony. President Joseph F. Smith (1838–1919) said, “One fault to be avoided by the Saints, young and old, is the tendency to live on borrowed light [and] to permit … the light within them to be reflected, rather than original.”¹¹

President Heber C. Kimball (1801–68), a counselor to President Young, said:

“The time will come when no man nor woman will be able to endure on borrowed light. Each will have to be guided by the light within himself. If you do not have it, how can you stand? …

“… If you don’t have it you will not stand; therefore seek for the testimony of Jesus and cleave to it, that when the trying time comes you may not stumble and fall.”¹²

The 76th section of the Doctrine and Covenants refers to the three degrees of glory and compares the celestial glory to the sun. Then it compares the terrestrial kingdom to the moon and the telestial kingdom to the stars (see also 1 Corinthians 15:41).

It is interesting that the sun has its own light, but the moon is reflected light or “borrowed light.” Speaking of those who inherit the terrestrial kingdom, verse 79 states, “These are they who are not valiant in the testimony of Jesus.” We cannot obtain the celestial kingdom and live with God the Father on borrowed light.