Oct 2, 2023

“If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18).

If you have ever felt singled out because of your membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, you are not alone. As a Latter-day Saint, you are part of a “peculiar people” (1 Peter 2:9)—and it shows. The people of the world have always had it out for anyone who sticks out, and particularly for what they don’t understand. Such has been the case since even before God restored the gospel to the earth through Joseph Smith.

When the gospel first spread to Ephesus, the majority of that part of the world still devoutly worshipped Greek gods. As such, Christianity was not popular among the Ephesians, and it’s no surprise that it caused “no small stir” (Acts 19:23). It posed not just a threat to some Ephesians’ livelihoods, but to the entire Ephesian way of life, which made Ephesus a tense and contentious place to live. However, there were still many Ephesians who accepted and lived the gospel. Through the tumult, Paul assured the Ephesian converts that “Christ . . . is our peace” (Ephesians 2:13–14) and invited them to “let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away” (Ephesians 4:31).

Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father know what they’re asking of their people. They know we will face adversity as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a fallen world. But “in the Lord, and in the power of his might” (Ephesians 6:10), we have been given the strength we need to face this adversity.

The early Saints were given similar encouragement, though this time through an epistle to the Church written by Wilford Woodruff rather than through words from the Apostle Paul.

October 1887 was also a tumultuous time to be a member of the one true Church, much like when the gospel spread to Ephesus, and much like today. But the early Saints, like the Ephesians, faced adversity with “dignity and courage.”1 Many people wanted to harm the early Saints, and many more wanted to provoke and goad the Saints into their own acts of violence. However, by using the strength the Lord afforded them through His infinite Atonement, the early Saints were able to practice “forbearance, patience and fortitude,” which Wilford Woodruff believed was proof “that God ha[d] been with them.

As Latter-day Saints, we need not fear the ideas or opinions of other people. We have the Lord on our side, and through Him, we will have the strength to overcome the adversity that comes with being a member of the true Church of Jesus Christ.

Madi Puzey is a Senior Editorial Assistant for the Wilford Woodruff Papers Foundation. She also works part time as a recruiter and loves spending time with her nephew, Orson.