F.F. Bruce in his book, The Hard Sayings of Jesus, reminds us that Christ made many enemies. Bruce states: “The Jesus whom we meet in the Gospels, far from being an inoffensive person, gave offence right and left. Even his loyal followers found him, at times, thoroughly disconcerting. He upset all established notions of religious propriety. He spoke of God in terms of intimacy which sounded like blasphemy. He seemed to enjoy the most questionable company. He set out with open eyes on a road which, in the view of ‘sensible’ people, was bound to lead to disaster.”
The Restoration began with Joseph Smith on his knees in the Sacred Grove and that is where the testimony of every Latter-day Saint must begin, on their knees in a sacred moment asking of God. Everything that we believe as Latter-day Saints rests on the reality of what God said that spring morning to Joseph Smith and the great irony of it all is that the harder the saying, the more offensive it seems to the world, the more peace it brings, it is the very light that chases away the darkness of contention with all that are honest in heart.
That such texts will give offense to some is true. Truth, however, is more important than harmony. Were that not the case, there would have been no war in heaven, no gospel of Jesus Christ, and no reason for the Father and the Son to appear to Joseph Smith in the Sacred Grove. If we are to be a Christ-like people, we must value truth above life itself.
If the gospel message is true, it must by its very nature have things in it that require faith to accept. If we are going to get serious about it we can hardly expect to find gospel truths getting along compatibly with worldly fashions, nor can we expect them to get an approving nod from those who worship at the shrine of their own intellect.
The plain fact of the matter is that you cannot build strong testimonies out of weak doctrine. As there is no courage without a struggle, so there can be no spiritual strength without a challenge. We have claim to neither peace nor safety save we build on a strong foundation.
Any time we declare something to be true, we have picked a fight with that which is untrue. We cannot, as Marion G. Romney assured us, do the Lord’s work without offending the devil. [12] It is as certain as the night following the day that we will never be able to declare our message without opposition or without giving offense to some.
The cry is “I will remove you, excise you, expunge you and pretend you don’t exist because I am too fragile to live in a world with ideas that are different than mine or words that might offend me.” Prepare to be expunged, oh you Christians. You seem to be an offense.
Some lie in wait in our day, as during the ministry of Jesus, seeking to "provoke him to speak of many things," seeking to "catch something out of his mouth that they might accuse him." (Luke 11:53–54.) The Pharisees actually "took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk." (Matt. 22:15.)