After the Fall our first parents, Adam and Eve, made an eternal covenant with God for their salvation. As Adam’s children multiplied, two groups emerged.
One group, led by Enoch, kept the covenant so well that they could no longer be retained on the earth. So the Lord gathered them unto Himself.
The second group was overcome in wickedness so great that they suffered the judgments of God. The Flood swallowed them up, leaving only the family of Noah, a righteous descendant of Enoch.
God put Noah under covenant … As Noah’s family multiplied once more, many were taken up in wickedness. Driven by pride, they built the Tower of Babel. God allowed the judgments of heaven to fall upon them. Their language was confounded, and they were scattered abroad. Only a few who were obedient were preserved.
Another preserved man of great faith was Abraham, a descendant of Noah, who was led to Canaan. God put Abraham under covenant, with additional promises that his posterity would increase as the stars in the heavens and that in his seed “shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” The nations in the promise were descendants of Noah scattered from the Tower of Babel, known as Gentiles in a general sense.
God renewed the covenant with Abraham’s son Isaac and grandson Jacob, who became Israel.
Because the descendants of Israel could not endure the conditions of the covenant, it was changed during the dispensation of Moses. A lesser covenant was introduced and continued among the children of Israel until Christ restored the fulness of the gospel during His mortal ministry.
A new celestial culture is developing in homes, nurtured by the ready hearkening to the counsel of the living prophet to have daily prayer and scripture study and to meet once a week as a family in home evening.
The practice of requiring a dowry to get married has driven many young men and women to live together without any legal commitment to each other but the opportunity for a temple marriage in the three temples now established in Accra, Ghana; Aba, Nigeria; and Johannesburg, South Africa, is helping to instill a fresh hope in the sanctity of marriage.
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