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S. Michael Wilcox

S. Michael Wilcox received his PhD from the University of Colorado and taught for many years at the LDS Institute of Religion adjacent to the University of Utah. He has spoken to packed crowds at BYU Education Week and has hosted tours to the Holy Land, to China, to Church history sites, and beyond. He has served in a variety of callings, including as bishop and counselor in a stake presidency. He has written many articles and books, including House of Glory, Sunset, 10 Great Souls I Want to Meet in Heaven, Twice Blessed, and Finding Hope. He and his late wife, Laurie, are the parents of five children.

August 14, 2023 07:00 AM MDT
Joseph Smith taught that “a welding link … between the fathers and the children …” must be “whole and complete and perfect” (Doctrine and Covenants 128:18). The words welding link suggest a chain. Chains are strong things. They hold under great stress and pressure.
7 Min Read
June 14, 2022 09:28 AM MDT
When I was a junior in high school, I came under the influence of a brilliant English teacher. She was tough on her students, always insisting that they clearly and thoroughly defend any position they took.
3 Min Read
March 16, 2022 07:55 AM MDT
The most common inquiry I receive from members of the Church is, “How do I get answers to my prayers?” The next most common is, “How can I know I have been forgiven?”
5 Min Read
May 26, 2021 01:02 PM MDT
I remember vividly my first “faith crisis.” I was 14 or 15 years old. It centered on my desire to receive for myself, independent of my mother, a testimony of the Book of Mormon. Except for a period of rebellion when she left the moorings of her youth and wandered in the wilderness for a season, she was a believing, committed Latter-day Saint and the godliest woman I knew. The solid base of her faith was the Book of Mormon, which restored her to her roots and anchored her there for the rest of her life. I can’t recall a day when I did not see that book lying on her bed stand or on the lamp table next to her chair. I started reading the Book of Mormon fully expecting that its concluding promise would be fulfilled in my life as it had been in my mother’s. I was filled with Alma’s “desire to believe” (Alma 32:27). I wanted my own tree.
7 Min Read
September 28, 2020 12:00 PM MDT
The September pick for LDS Living Book Club is What Seek Ye? by S. Michael Wilcox. Follow the LDS Living Book Club Instagram for more insights with the author.
9 Min Read
August 24, 2020 12:00 PM MDT
First and last words have always intrigued me. Their positioning adds a dimension of importance. The first and last words of Jesus in the Gospel of John are questions—very relevant questions for us all, very simple questions, which is wonderful to me. Let’s look at Jesus’s first three words. John the Baptist was standing with John the Beloved and Andrew by the Jordan River just north of the Dead Sea when Jesus walked by, drawing from the Baptist the words, “Behold the Lamb of God! And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye?” (John 1:36–38; emphasis added).
7 Min Read
November 30, 2019 11:53 AM MST
There are many reasons why Jesus came to earth, and our word Atonement has come to embody them all, but I think, if I had to be specific, I would say that the essence of His life centered on forgiveness. In the great hymn of the Restoration, Joseph Smith caught that spirit when he wrote, “Now, what do we hear in the gospel which we have received? A voice of gladness! A voice of mercy from heaven” (D&C 128:19). The Savior is the incarnation, the personification, the grand architect of forgiveness and mercy. It is inherent in almost every act of His life. It is the one single most significant quality of the Father that Jesus came to teach us with His words and show us by His example. Indeed, the most beautiful words He spoke during those last agonizing hours of His life are, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Whenever I feel the difficulty of forgiving in my own life, I read those words and the feeling of forgiveness moves into my soul.
6 Min Read
November 26, 2019 09:46 AM MST
When I was just a baby, my father, because of concerns in his own life and challenges that he was having, left our family. Our mother alone, therefore, raised my sisters and me, and as I was growing up, my father had very little to do with us as children. I realize he was working with things in his own life, but his decisions created certain challenges and hardships for my mother, my sisters, and for me. At age fourteen or fifteen, if you were in my situation, and you knelt down and said: “Father in Heaven, help me find peace concerning my father leaving us and really having nothing to do with us for all these years. Help me forgive my father,” would you not think that was an appropriate prayer, one that deserved an answer? But no answer came at age fourteen and fifteen. Twenty, twenty-one comes, same prayers, still no answer. Twenty-five, twenty-six passes, same prayers, yet still no answer. Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-three, thirty-four all come and go. Surely I’m in the fourth watch by now, would you not agree?
3 Min Read
July 18, 2019 03:00 PM MDT
This article originally ran on LDS Living in January 2015.
4 Min Read
March 26, 2019 11:00 AM MDT
In lesser moments in my life—and perhaps in lesser moments in your life—I must admit I am sometimes tempted to be critical of the way that God is running the universe, at least our corner of it. I have a tendency occasionally to look heavenward and quote Shakespeare, and say as Macduff said, “Did heaven look on, and would not take their part?”
7 Min Read
February 18, 2019 01:54 PM MST
There is what we might call a sweet spirituality in many of the stories we are told. My mother introduced me to this quality through some very simple stories, and I have searched for it in its deeper invitations ever since.
4 Min Read
February 16, 2019 03:49 PM MST
God spoke to the great prophets of the Old Testament in some rather unique ways, most of them deeply visual. Ezekiel had wonderful visions that would grasp his hearers’ imagination, causing them to pay attention and think profoundly. In one of those visions he saw a great valley of dry bones bleaching in the sun. Visualize that scene with me for just a moment. Before us is a wide valley, filled with bones as far as the eye can see in every direction. A great army or a mighty people have all died, and their bones lie exposed to the weather. Ezekiel stands “in the midst of the valley,” when the Lord enters the scene and causes Ezekiel “to pass by [the bones] round about . . . and, lo, they were very dry” (Ezekiel 37:1–2). After Ezekiel makes a circuit of the valley, the Lord addresses His prophet with a question: “Son of man, can these bones live?”
4 Min Read
December 06, 2018 02:15 PM MST
A number of years ago I had a wonderful dream. In most of my dreams I am frantically trying to find a class at school and I can’t remember where it is, my books are in my locker, and I can’t remember my combination. Or I am moving in terribly slow motion, running from something or toward something and making no progress whatsoever. Do you have those sorts of dreams? I call them school nightmares. But this was a lovely dream. The kind sent to us by God, not drawn from our own subconscious fears and aspirations.
2 Min Read
April 30, 2018 03:30 PM MDT
The following is an excerpt from S. Michael Wilcox's House of Glory: Finding Personal Meaning in the Temple, where he discusses how talking about the temple can bless others as long as we speak of it in the right time at the right place.
4 Min Read
August 30, 2017 09:20 AM MDT
Most of us have a vivid memory of the first time we went to the temple to receive our endowments. I was a newly called missionary and had traveled to the Los Angeles Temple. I did not know what to expect. Although some aspects of my own endowment were wonderfully edifying to me, much of it was confusing. I left bewildered and a little frightened. I have since discovered that my experience was not unique. I have also discovered why my first experience was not all what I had anticipated. At the time, I did not understand the manner in which the Lord teaches His children in His house. Had I understood, my anxiety and confusion would have disappeared, even though my comprehension level might have remained the same.
8 Min Read
November 03, 2016 11:42 AM MDT
The following is an excerpt from S. Michael Wilcox's House of Glory: Finding Personal Meaning in the Temple.
4 Min Read
August 08, 2016 09:00 AM MDT
Forgiveness can be difficult not only to give but also to receive. Once we have repented, sometimes the only person left to forgive us is ourselves. But as we learn to put away our past sins and do them no more, we can enjoy both the gift of forgiveness from our Heavenly Father and from ourselves.
9 Min Read
March 13, 2013 04:01 AM MDT
Having learned something of St. Patrick's life finds my mind drifting each March to the Emerald Isle of over 1500 years ago, when a sixteen year old boy was captured and sold into slavery by Irish pirates.
5 Min Read
January 31, 2012 05:04 AM MST
Grieving the Loss of a Spouse
4 Min Read
January 11, 2012 05:04 AM MST
There are some places in the world everyone should see and almost any tour will take you there, but there are times when our most memorable moments come from leaving the ordinary and well known and going where few go. Such was my excitement the first time I visited Beit Lehi …….. I really did not know what to expect. The name alone was fascinating and for a number of reasons. I used to thrill in my early teenage years with the stories of Samson. He fired my imagination with visions of lion attacks, firebrands tied to the tails of foxes, riddles, and of course, his tragic end with Delilah. Then there was the story of fighting a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Samson named the place this heroic struggle took place “Lehi.” Now I was going to visit it. The spring Samson drank from is still there. And I could not help but wonder as we turned south from Jerusalem what connections this site had with Lehi of Book of Mormon fame. Could his name have come from this local? Was I going to walk the hills Nephi walked? This mystery would find no answers, but the spell of the place was irresistible and pulled us magnetically down the road. It was even more intriguing since Fun For Less Tours is the only company allowed on the site and in the many times I had been to Israel I had never walked this path.
1 Min Read
September 07, 2011 04:04 AM MDT
When I was young I used to sit enthralled in the auditorium of my high school listening to John Goddard while staring impassioned at his slides. At the age of 15 he made a "life list" of the places in the world he wanted to explore and was fulfilling his dream. He would then share his travels with children all over America. I remember thinking to myself, "I want that job!" My own head filled with the places I wanted to see--Machu Picchu, the Great Wall, Jerusalem, Florence, the Great Barrier Reef. Our house in California was close enough to the railroad tracks for me to hear the whistle at night. What an inviting sound it was. It held the promise of far-away places as it faded into the distance. And I would dream.
1 Min Read
July 27, 2011 04:03 AM MDT
I undergo a traditional ritual every time I leave Nauvoo. It is a walk from the blacksmith shop down the “trail of tears” to the Mississippi River. I walk slowly, looking frequently behind me to the lovely city and the temple reigning above it and let the land speak. What fears and regrets, hopes and anticipations passed down the road to the river in wagon after wagon? A chorus of emotion still echoes through the dust and around the once abandoned buildings. There was no “Come, Come, Ye Saints” to cheer and strengthen in those early months. I have a journal account of the day by day progress across the plains written by an ancestor. Her entries tersely record what was on the minds of so many as they struggled across the plains towards that final descent into the Salt Lake Valley.
1 Min Read