Gerald N. Lund
Gerald Niels Lund is a popular Mormon author who has also been a General Authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Gerald Lund was born on 12 September 1939 in Fountain Green, Sanpete County, Utah, to Jewell and Evelyn Lund. The family moved to Salt Lake City and later to Murray, Utah, where he spent most of his growing-up years. He currently lives in Alpine, Utah. Lund and his wife, the former Retta Lynn Stanard, have seven children, 27 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren. He was called to the Second Quorum of the Seventy in 2002 and honorably released on October 4, 2008.
When Elder Lund returned from his mission around age 21, he set out on a career in construction. It didn't take long, engaging in physical labor, before he realized he needed an education and enrolled at Brigham Young University. There he completed the requirements for a bachelors and masters degree in sociology, and then pursued further studies in Hebrew and New Testament at Pepperdine University. [1] He started teaching seminary in Salt Lake City in 1965, and this was the beginning of a 34-year career with the Church Educational System. In addition to his early years teaching seminary, he taught institute, served as an institute director, worked as a curriculum writer, and fulfilled a number of administrative assignments. [2] He retired after 34 years with CES. In August 2003, in keeping with the then policy of the Seventy serving in area presidencies, Elder Lund was assigned to serve as Second Counselor to Elder Harold G. Hillam in the Europe West Area of the Church. He was released when the area presidencies were dissolved in 2003.
Lund has written many books of popular LDS fiction, including a nine-volume series called The Work and the Glory, a fictionalized account of Mormon history. Three of the books have been made into movies. He also authored a three-part series called The Kingdom and the Crown set in Bible times. The Undaunted was published in 2009 and is about Latter-day Saints who obeyed the request of Brigham Young to settle southern Utah and had to pass through territory that no wagon train should attempt traversing. This included the daunting passage through Hole in the Rock. That volume was followed with sequels Only the Brave and To Soar with Eagles. Four volumes appear in his Fire and Steel series about German Saints during 1896 to 1929. He has a stand alone volume, Fire of the Covenant, a fictionalized volume about the 1856 Willie and Martin handcart companies.
He has penned several general fiction novels, including The Guardian, The Guardian: To Run with the Swift, Freedom Factor, The Alliance, Leverage Point, and One in Thine Hand.
Lund has also written several theological nonfiction works for Latter-day Saints, including, Hearing the Voice of the Lord: Principles and Patterns of Personal Revelation (2008) and The Coming of the Lord (reprint 2005). He has also written poems that his wife set to music. [3] Gerald Lund is among the most-read authors in Church literature. His publications have sold nearly 3,000,000 copies.
