Tad R. Callister
Tad R. Callister is an emeritus General Authority Seventy and was the 21st Sunday School General President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He served in the Presidency of the Seventy from 2011 until 2014 when he was called as Sunday School General President. Brother Callister received a BS in accounting from Brigham Young University, a JD from the University of California-Los Angeles, and an MS in tax law from New York University Law School. He spent most of his professional career practicing tax law. He is the author of the best-selling books The Infinite Atonement, A Case for the Book of Mormon, The Inevitable Apostasy, and The Blueprint of Christ's Church. He and his wife, Kathryn Louise Saporiti, are the parents of six children.
“The man of integrity who is true to self and to God will choose the right whether or not anyone is looking because he is self-driven, not externally controlled.”
“One of the acid tests of our integrity is whether or not we keep the commitments and promises we have made or whether there are loopholes in our word. We might appropriately ask: Do we live the honor code with exactness, or are there loopholes in our word—cracks in our foundation of integrity? Do we honor our commitments as home teachers and visiting teachers, or are there loopholes in our performance? In other words, is our word our bond?”
“Integrity is the very core of our being. It is who we really are. When all the scaffolding is removed, it is our integrity that both defines us and identifies us. Men of integrity are like the Rock of Gibraltar—steadfast and immovable. Men without it are like the shifting sands on the Sahara Desert—tossed to and fro by every variant wind of life.”
“Yes, Joseph Smith did see angels and visions—because he was the instrument in God’s hands to restore the same Church of Jesus Christ as existed in primitive times—all of its powers as well as all of its doctrines. Yet sorrowfully, on occasion, some are willing to set aside the precious gospel truths restored by Joseph Smith because they get diverted on some historical issue or some scientific hypothesis not central to their exaltation, and in so doing they trade their spiritual birthright for a mess of pottage. They exchange the absolute certainty of the Restoration for a doubt, and in that process they fall into the trap of losing faith in the many things they do know because of a few things they do not know. There will always be some seemingly intellectual crisis looming on the horizon as long as faith is required and our minds are finite, but likewise there will always be the sure and solid doctrines of the Restoration to cling to, which will provide the rock foundation upon which our testimonies may be built.”
“Elder Neal A. Maxwell suggests that the prime reason the Savior personally acts as the gatekeeper of the celestial kingdom is not to exclude people, but to personally welcome and embrace those who have made it back home.”