Each of us should see ourselves in the temple.
Despite the challenges of our day, we live in a sacred, holy time.
The availability of temples is what sets this time apart from any in history.
Please don’t see the temple as some distant and unachievable goal.
Make the temple the symbol of your membership.
We have some sense of the rejoicing that is going on in Quito, Ecuador; Harare, Zimbabwe; Belém, Brazil; and Lima, Peru, both with members and missionaries, based on what happened in Bangkok, Thailand, a year ago when that temple was announced. Sister Shelly Senior, wife of the then-president of the Thailand Bangkok Mission, David Senior, emailed family and friends to say that after she and her husband had listened to President Monson announce that temple, there had been “12 sleepless hours and lots of tears of happiness.” They called their mission assistants at 11:30 p.m. and informed them. The assistants called all the missionaries. The report came back that the “whole mission was awake in the middle of the night jumping on their beds.” Sister Senior humorously admonished family and friends, “Please don’t tell the Missionary Department!”
My challenge this morning is for each of us, wherever we live, to see ourselves in the temple. President Monson has stated: “Until you have entered the house of the Lord and have received all the blessings which await you there, you have not obtained everything the Church has to offer. The all-important and crowning blessings of membership in the Church are those blessings which we receive in the temples of God.”
Despite the lack of righteousness in the world today, we live in a sacred, holy time. Prophets, with loving and longing hearts, have described our day for centuries.
The Lord has prospered our people and provided the resources and prophetic guidance so we can be valiant in attending to our temple responsibilities for both the living and the dead. …
The combination of increased numbers of temples and advanced technology to fulfill our sacred family history responsibilities for our ancestors makes this the most blessed time in all history. I rejoice in the extraordinary faithfulness of our youth in indexing and finding their ancestors and then doing the baptism and confirmation work in the temple. You are literally among the prophesied saviors on Mount Zion.
The work of finding ancestors and doing their temple work is the unique responsibility of saints in this day.
Until 1891 the President of the Church signed each temple recommend to protect the sanctity of the temple. That responsibility was then delegated to bishops and stake presidents.
It is our great desire that members of the Church will live to be worthy of a temple recommend. Please don’t see the temple as some distant and perhaps unachievable goal. Working with their bishop, most members can achieve all righteous requirements in a relatively short period of time if they have a determination to qualify and fully repent of transgressions. This includes being willing to forgive ourselves and not focus on our imperfections or sins as disqualifying us from ever entering a sacred temple.
It is a distant goal only for those who only half-heartedly undertake to qualify.
Brigham Young taught, “There is not one thing that the Lord could do for the salvation of the human family that he has neglected to do; … all that can be accomplished for their salvation, independent of them, has been accomplished in and by the Savior.”
In other words, the only things necessary for our salvation that remain are those things that require our effort. In a way, the Lord has already almost completely saved us by grace before we even started mortality.
President Howard W. Hunter counseled us to “consider the majestic teachings in the great dedicatory prayer of the Kirtland Temple, a prayer the Prophet Joseph Smith said was given to him by revelation. It is a prayer that continues to be answered upon us individually, upon us as families, and upon us as a people because of the priesthood power the Lord has given us to use in His holy temples.” We would do well to study the 109th section of the Doctrine and Covenants and to follow President Hunter’s admonition “to establish the temple of the Lord as the great symbol of [our] membership.”
Considering the unique availability of temples in our day, temples are already the symbol of the gospel in these last days.
The original dedication of the Suva Fiji Temple on June 18, 2000, was also remarkable. As the temple neared completion, members of parliament were taken hostage by a group of rebels. Downtown Suva, Fiji, was looted and burned. The military declared martial law.
As the Area President, I went with the four stake presidents in Fiji and met the military leaders at the Queen Elizabeth barracks. After we explained the proposed dedication, they were supportive but concerned about the safety of President Gordon B. Hinckley. They recommended a small dedication with no events outside the temple, like the cornerstone ceremony. They emphasized that anyone outside the temple could be a potential target for violence.
President Hinckley approved one small dedicatory session with just the new temple presidency and a few local leaders; no others were invited because of the danger. However, he emphatically stated, “If we do dedicate the temple, we will have the cornerstone ceremony because Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone, and this is His Church.”
When we actually went outside for the cornerstone ceremony, there were no nonmembers, children, media, or others present. But a faithful prophet demonstrated his courageous and unwavering commitment to the Savior.
Later President Hinckley, speaking of the Savior, said: “There is none to equal Him. There never has been. There never will be. Thanks be to God for the gift of His Beloved Son, who gave His life that we might live and who is the chief, immovable cornerstone of our faith and His Church.”
When he mentioned that the original dedication was only 16 years ago I thought it odd that there would be a rededication so soon – until I heard how not public the first one was.
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