This week’s lessons are a delightful mix of doctrines and possibilities. Let’s look at callings, fulfilling prophecies, and the concept of planting in Temple work.
Pairing our responsibilities with Joseph Smith’s calling
I have always thought of Joseph Smith as being on one plane of existence, while I am on something very different. The manual made this statement – “And the work Joseph was called to do is connected to what God asks of us.” I read that and went on. Paused. Went back and read it again. And again. How can I possibly be connected to what Joseph was called to do?
In my mind this is where things start to get interesting. I have always said that this dispensation of time is vastly different from any other dispensation. In each of the other dispensations God was fostering His people, preparing for a future day. Preparing what? He has spent each of the dispensations preparing for ours. In each of the other dispensations after the flood the priesthood covenants were guarded, protected, and only shared with those already in the covenant. Spreading the gospel message of salvation wasn’t a priority, it was kept mostly in house among those born into the covenant. Even then they only had part of the gospel of Christ available to them. The promise was that one day Christ would come and give them more.
Christ did come. He did give the people more. They briefly accepted it, as he gave it, but then wicked men perverted his doctrines and the church plunged into apostasy. This is where we come in. The purpose of this dispensation is to prepare the world for the second coming of Christ where he will personally reign as King of Kings for a thousand years. In that time the gospel of our Father will be given in full to every child of God so they can make their final choice as to who they want to follow for eternity.
Joseph Smith was called and anointed in the premortal life to open this dispensation. We were reserved for this time with the responsibilities of carrying out what Joseph restored. The opening paragraph of the lessons states it this way. (I have changed the formatting, but the words are identical to the manual.)
Joseph would bring forth the Book of Mormon; we are invited to share its message.
Joseph would receive priesthood keys to turn the hearts of the children to their fathers; we can now receive ordinances for our ancestors in temples.
Joseph was told of prophecies that would soon be fulfilled; we are called to help fulfill these prophecies.
For the first time in my life I feel intimately connected with Joseph Smith’s calling as the restorer of this dispensation. He began what we (collectively) are continuing and fulfilling. He only initiated what we have been reserved to come and fulfill. (I am not demeaning what he did. I am only saying that his was not the end all and be all of the Restoration. He was the one tasked with opening or beginning the process of preparing for Christ’s coming. We, as a people, are tasked with carrying on what he started and making it grow until it fills the earth.) We have an immensely important responsibility in the plan of salvation as we prepare the world, and ourselves, for Christ’s coming. Our family members are depending on us.
You know how the scriptures are always talking about how those who are first shall be last and those who are last shall be first? Well our forefathers who were first prepared the way for us. We are beginning where we are as the last to come to earth and working our way backwards through time offering the ordinances of salvation to each successive generation. We are the literal fulfillment of that first/last last/first prophetic statement.
We are constantly being told that the restoration of the gospel is ongoing. It didn’t begin and end with Joseph Smith. He only started it. We are the continuation of the restoration. Bit by bit the Savior is grooming us to become the people we need to be to be ready for his return. This is why administratively more and more is being required of us as church members. Our parents and grandparents could hardly have imagined a day when church would be possible in our own homes, where the bulk of gospel learning was actually done by the individual members in their inner family circles, instead of at church during dedicated Sunday School lessons. Just 50 years ago the church members weren’t ready for such changes. But look at us now!
Just 50 years ago there were literally only a dozen or so temples in all the world. Now we are soaring past 300 of them. We have made them smaller, more modular, and quicker to build. They aren’t the soaring edifices of our great grandparent’s day, but they are doing to the same work and enabling the Church to build them in more countries faster than ever. There is a spiritual renewal and awakening where temples are built, and they are a great blessing to those who attend them and perform ordinances for their ancestors and others in the service of their God. Temples make their users a more holy people. Temple goers become more repentant and more sanctified over time. This is the blessing of being a temple attending people. This is what is needed to survive the wickedness of this generation. And this is what we are offering to our neighbors and loved ones as we share the gospel message.
The covenants of Christ’s gospel aren’t just niceties or conveniences, they are our protection from the ravages of sin and corruption abounding in this generation throughout the world. For the first time since the flood the Lord is sending all of His children, not just the prophets, to gather anyone who will listen to His message of hope and salvation. We are literally a generation of His high priests. We are covenant makers and covenant keepers. Joseph Smith received these wonderous things, and we are enlarging their influence to bless the whole world, offering a safe haven in a world being ravaged by Satan and his ilk. I think we and Joseph Smith make a great pairing, don’t you?
Our specific callings
Here is a rhetorical question: Am I the only one who wonders what I could possibly do to personally further the work of the Lord in strengthening His people and spreading the gospel message around the world?
Most, if not all of us, have asked something akin to that question at some point in our life. I have always wondered what my responsibilities were when it comes to furthering God’s work on earth. I am nothing. What could I offer? I’m certainly no Joseph Smith. I was surprised when I read and began to consider the list of four things printed in the manual. As of this writing the explanations of this list are not yet on the Church site. Hopefully by the time you go looking for them they will have posted something. Here is the list.
Living the gospel of Jesus Christ
Caring for those in need
Inviting all to receive the gospel
Uniting families for eternity
Living the gospel
Now I’ll explain where I wanted to go with this list. We are all told that we have callings to fulfill in this life. The prophets’ callings are obvious, but what about ours? Not so obvious. I am one of the lucky ones in that my patriarchal blessing comes right out and tells me what I am expected to do while in this life. I realize that is not all that common. Even then I have sought the better part of my life trying to figure out how to fulfill my calling. Imagine my surprise when I read that all of us have four main responsibilities to accomplish as participants in this dispensation. In past dispensations they didn’t have that much to do, but this dispensation isn’t like any other.
Just “living the gospel of Jesus Christ” may seem like a minor or insignificant role to play. Consider it this way. Living the gospel of Christ does what to us? It changes us into a Christlike individual. That means that Christ’s example of charity, kindness, patience, forgiveness, hard work, and honesty are being replicated by millions of people. This personality is now being influential throughout the world and not just in the land around Galilee by one person.
Caring for those in need
What set Christ apart during his mortal ministry was his care and concern for all those who were suffering because of this life’s trials and conditions. We have been tasked, as his disciples, to care for those in need. As we live our daily life do we consider that part of that life is supposed to be spent in the care and nurturing of others? Read Mormon’s letters to Moroni again. He describes how much the children and women suffered because of the wickedness of their men folk. What he doesn’t mention is how much the children suffered because of the wickedness of the women. The people, all of the people, except for those still faithful in the church had turned wicked. It wasn’t just a problem with the men. So the children suffered doubly, because both their parents were wicked.
As we seek to bless the lives of others, we also need to set good examples of honesty and integrity, charity and compassion for the children. As the children see what is good and seek to follow it they can influence their parents for good also. Caring for those in need is not just offering a handout. Caring comes with ten thousand masks, and it will take all of who we are, not just a check from our bank account to make a significant difference in someone’s life. Christ is telling us that we need to step in and fulfill our baptismal covenant to represent him in all places and at all times. That is no mean task.
Inviting all
The prophet has repeatedly told us that sharing the gospel is not a matter of salesmanship. We can share the gospel in natural ways that are comfortable and non-threatening. When we talk about our weekend activities to our business associate are we timid and fearful of offense if we tell them we found joy in our church service? Do we avoid mentioning that we attended Stake, ward, or general conference? Are we shy about sharing our experiences with the youth at youth conferences or during the week? We know we don’t have anything to be ashamed of. All of our activities are clean, wholesome, and appropriate. How can that be offensive to anyone with a rational brain?
Notice I did not hint or intimate that we should shove anything down anyone’s throat. All I am saying that we need to make sure we are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ we have embraced and made covenants to share with others. We all respect the privacy of those we meet. But we can all be more open about the joy we receive in the gospel of Christ. Shouldn’t we be just as comfortable talking about what brings us lasting joy as are sharing about the latest movie we saw? There is nothing here that brings or causes shame, only comfort, acceptance, and joy. The peace of Christ is something we should genuinely want to share with our friends and acquaintances. So invite others to come and join in a Family Home Evening or family activity. Invite people to read the book that has changed your life, the Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Christ. Invite someone to come to ward activities. Eventually the Spirit will whisper that we should also invite them to learn more. But for now, just invite others to share in what brings you happiness.
Uniting families
Every married couple you know who isn’t a member of God’s kingdom will lose their spouse forever upon either of their deaths. That is a real source of sorrow. Each of them, married or not, will lose their children in the hereafter. Why? Because they haven’t experienced the sealing power of priesthood covenants. The temple is the source for erasing much of the sorrows that have plagued the world since the beginning. Covenants unite us, bind us, and bring us endless opportunities for joy in this life and in the next.
It doesn’t matter how you reach out to unite families. You can do it by working with those you know to bring them to Christ’s gospel. You can do it by helping index or by finding family members and submitting names to the temples to keep the temples busy. It is even possible to just attend the temple and participate in the sealing of one generation to another and to bind husbands and wives together. Anything related to the temple and its work is fulfilling the will of the Father by uniting His children as family units for eternity.
Christ cannot hand over his work to our Father and declare it done until every man, woman, and child has been given the opportunity to accept or reject a covenant relationship. Temples form those relationships. Even those who reject them will have had the work done for them. No one will be able to say at the last day that they were deprived or cheated of that opportunity. No matter their personal choice, it is our calling by being in this dispensation to do their work and provide them with the opportunity to accept Christ’s gospel and find lasting happiness.
Even though we may not think we are capable or important, we have been given a grand responsibility to assist Christ in the pruning, digging, and dunging (feeding) of his vineyard. Read Jacob 5 again. At the end of the allegory the Master calls servants to aid them in saving the Master’s crop (which is our souls). We are those servants. What a special responsibility. What a noble calling. We may not think of ourselves as uniquely special, but evidently the Master feels otherwise.
How are we fulfilling ancient prophecies?
This is one of those dispensation issues again. All other dispensations centered around building up and maintaining a foundation of God’s teachings and dealings with His covenant people. That certainly helped those of the covenant in their day. But it was also to act as a help and teaching tool for us in this last of all dispensations. This is the last dispensation of time. That means that when Christ comes again we will leave time behind and enter eternity. Time will no longer be a considering factor of our lives. We will be living with eternal beings during the Millennium. We will be transitioning ourselves from mortal life into immortality during this time. So our dispensation is the end, the goal of much of what transpired in other dispensations. It is in this dispensation that God’s gospel message will begin to go beyond the veil into the spirit world to gather His children into His covenants. This is now happening simultaneously on both sides of the veil. Think back on some of the talks given in just the last few years by President Russell M. Nelson. He has said this very thing plainly and pointedly. The gathering is happening both here and there at the same time. The temples are the nexus between here and there. We do the work here and it provides our ancestors with the covenants they need to progress on their side of the veil.
All the prophecies of the ancients that weren’t specifically about their own day and time to keep them safe or to give them current directions from the Lord, pointed them to our day and time when the Lord would begin to complete His work by fulfilling all His promises made to every generation of time. The Book of Mormon is full of these prophecies of what would happen in the end time, our time. Our day was supposed to give them hope and something to look forward to even though they would be in the spirit world when it happened.
All four of our last days responsibilities listed above help to fulfill all the ancient prophecies given about the last days. It is because of this list of four things that all their prophecies can be fulfilled. We have important responsibilities as members of Christ’s covenant people in these the latter days.
How are we being personally prepared by the Lord?
The manual uses Joseph Smith as their example of how the Lord prepares us. We are reminded that he was 17 when Joseph first saw the gold plates, but the Lord spent the next four years (waiting for him to be a legal adult I am guessing) for him to finally be given the plates. In this time Joseph was left to learn and figure out how he was supposed to live his life as the Lord wanted him to. He only received instructions once a year. The rest of the time he had to figure things out on his own.
That describes us in many ways. We have occasional periods of instruction, but much of the time we are left to find our own way. Our advantage is that the Lord has given us the gift of the Holy Ghost, something Joseph at 17 didn’t have. We are all taught that we have talents, but what are we doing to figure out how to use them? We are tempted to think that talents are just singing and dancing, or sculpting and painting. Talents include compassion, tenderness, instinct, loving others, and so many other godly traits. We each have something that we are able to do reasonably well naturally, but are we deliberately trying to learn to do it better? All godly or good traits can be improved, and this is what God wants us to do.
God also provides us with occasions where we are presented with the opportunity to learn to do something new to us. Are we seeking to learn new things and improve on those what are useful to others? It is in the benefit we are able to be in the lives of others that God blesses His children more universally. This is what it means to enlarge our talents. Don’t just look at one thing you are currently good at, but look for additional ways to be a blessing to others. As we seek to enlarge our capacity to bless others the Lord will grant those righteous desires. Maybe He won’t grant them in the way we thought He would, but He just needs us to desire greater goodness to bless us with what we can be really good at. Be prepared to be surprised.
A word on planting
Consider the differences in these verses in Malachi 4. Here is verse 5 as we have it in the King James Version of the Bible.
5 ¶ Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord:
Now here is what Moroni quoted to Joseph Smith.
38 And again, he quoted the fifth verse thus: Behold, I will reveal unto you the , by the hand of the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the .
The original verse 5 doesn’t say anything about why sending Elijah means anything. Obviously the ancients knew what it meant to have Elijah be sent, for the Jews to this day still leave a chair for Elijah in their celebration hoping for his return, even if they no longer remember why it was so important for him to come. So what is it about the priesthood being brought at the hand of Elijah that is so important that it was recorded and relayed to Joseph Smith by the angel? Here is the next verse as quoted by Moroni.
39 He also quoted the next verse differently: And he shall plant in the hearts of the the made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers. If it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming.
There is something about what Elijah was to plant in the hearts of the children that makes the difference between the earth (and us) fulfilling the measure of its creation or all of this being a total waste of time. Whatever it was that Elijah did through the priesthood keys he held, it causes those in mortality to begin to yearn for their ancestors. We begin to be more interested in them than ever before. This is what spurs on Temple work. It is our worship in the temples of our God that we seek out and feel a sense of wholeness with our ancestors. Temples help us feel connected to those who came before us. This is because we are serving them in a way they cannot serve themselves. Service creates love. When our hearts are in the right place we cannot be apathetic towards or hate those we serve. The more we serve them the greater our desire to be united with them. This is what is happening in our temples.
Planting
Let’s look at the concept of planting. I find it intriguing that Joseph Smith wrote the expression “he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers.” When I plant a seed does a seed come out of the ground? No. Does the seed represent in any way the fully grown plant and fruit of that plant? No, it does not. The seed is only the starting point. I have been trying to think about why Moroni used the term to plant.
Think about the development of genealogy over the last 200 plus years. It was soooo difficult to find names when the temples first opened up. You had to either go to the country of origin and go through the records of the government or church yourself or you had to hire someone else to do it for you. It took months of letter writing to correspond with some person you didn’t know, hoping they would help you look up information on someone you hope was there. Then you waited months for return letters and hopefully photos of the actual grave or records. It was a time consuming and tedious process. So intimidating was it that most people shied away from doing anything with genealogy. There were a few, generally only one or two in each extended family that did the work for everyone.
Enter developments in the computer and in photography. Now the Church started sending photographers out to all corners of the globe to photograph records and turn them into microfilms that could be viewed from centers that were near temples. This made information on family members much easier to find, but was still very time consuming, cumbersome, and often expensive, because you had to drive to where you could find these films. Eventually conditions improved and more and more information was available locally, making it even easier to do work for our dead ancestors. But so many people remembered how hard it had been their whole lives that they were reluctant to even try.
Later the technology changed such that the Internet began to connect us in ways no one ever even imagined we could be connected. Computers became sophisticated enough that they could look at the universal family trees people had built online and find names for us. Now you just have to sign up and log on to the programs and the computer prompts you with names you need to take to the temple. Just last year my wife was able, from her chair at home, to connect more than 80,000 source documents to people’s family trees to help them find their ancestors. All they have to do it look online. She found thousands of people, mostly children that had not been recorded or additional spouses and their children that slipped through the cracks. With the help of today’s technology more and more people are able to do miraculous things with finding our ancestors and helping others feel connected to their own. Even people of other faiths are caught up in the desire to learn more about their ancestors. Genealogy has become one of the most popular hobbies in the world.
What was planted by Elijah’s return and his giving Joseph Smith the priesthood keys to unite families has turned into something no one could have imagined in Joseph’s day. The Restoration is ongoing. Who knows where this planting will go in future years. Because of the revelations of God to people all over the earth the blessings that allow us to move God’s work forward are multiplying in amazing ways. Keep your eyes open, because this planting of desire hasn’t matured yet, and we are only now beginning to see the first fruits of what God has in mind for uniting His family for eternity.
Personal note: Thank you for reading this lesson. Writing this has helped me put my thoughts into something concrete I can refer back to later. This lesson, though befuddling at first was able to become far more clear to me only because I took the time to write it down. And I wouldn’t have written it if I didn’t live with the hope that someone like you would read it and hopefully find a benefit from it. Thank you.
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Thank you for all the time and effort you put into clarifying your thoughts and writing them down and sharing them. It is a great blessing to me and I hope you know it is greatly appreciated.
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