Harold B. Lee
"’…my Spirit will not always strive with man; wherefore, if ye will sin until ye are fully ripe ye shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord.’ (Ether 2:15.)
"This means the withdrawing of that vital light which all could have enjoyed if they had kept the commandments.
"Now, may I take another example to impress how much further one may go. One day there came to my office a man who a few years before had been excommunicated from the Church because of a very serious transgression. After these years of sad, humiliating, tragic experiences, he is wondering how he can find his way back into the Church….This man who had been excommunicated had attended a stake conference shortly before he came to see me. One of the General Authorities was there and said, ’One of the most terrible things that you can experience is to lose the Spirit of the Lord.’…With these things on his mind, he went home and began to write, and he put in my hands the results of his thinking. This statement is one of the saddest things that I have read in a long time. This man had been a teacher, and he said: While I was enjoying the Spirit of the Holy Ghost, I could read the scriptures and the unfoldment of truths would come before me, and I was thrilled. That power is gone today. That day I heard that terrible word in the high council trial, ’You are hereby excommunicated,’ it was as though a pall of darkness fell, and now instead of light, there is doubt and wavering in my faith. I am wondering and I am struggling without that light. I used to be able to kneel down and get a tremendous lift from my prayer. Even while I was sinning, even up to the point of my excommunication, I got some comfort from it, but now it is as though a dome of steel is over my head, and I seem not to be able to pray. The spirit that leads to the presence of our Father has been lost.
“I used to enjoy performing the ordinances of the Church, especially in behalf of my own children-to bless them, to baptize them, to confirm them, to ordain them to the priesthood; and now to have to stand by while some other takes my place has been one of the saddest experiences that has come to me. And, of course, I have been refused the privilege of going to the temple. I no longer can go there and enjoy the sweet peace. I stand as though I had never been within those sacred walls. When I go to sacrament meeting, I can’t partake of the sacrament. I have lost the respect of my family. My children, including a son now grown, tolerate me, but I know that deep in their hearts there is a shame because they bear the name of a father who hasn’t lived worthily.” (Stand Ye in Holy Places, p. 119-20)