Reading 1 - Frederick William Hurst was working as a gold
miner in Australia when he first heard Latter-day Saint missionaries preach the
restored gospel. He and his brother Charles were baptized in January 1854. He
tried to help his other family members become converted, but they rejected him
and the truths he taught.
Fred settled in Salt Lake
City four years after joining the Church, and he served faithfully as a
missionary in several different countries. He also worked as a painter in the
Salt Lake Temple. In one of his final journal entries, he wrote: “Along about
the 1st of March, 1893, I found myself alone in the dining room, all had gone
to bed. I was sitting at the table when to my great surprize my elder brother
Alfred walked in and sat down opposite me at the table and smiled. I said to
him (he looked so natural): ‘When did you arrive in Utah?’
“He said: ‘I have just come
from the Spirit World, this is not my body that you see, it is lying in the
tomb. I want to tell you that when you were on your mission you told me many
things about the Gospel, and the hereafter, and about the Spirit World being as
real and tangible as the earth. I could not believe you, but when I died and
went there and saw for myself I realized that you had told the truth. I
attended the Mormon meetings.’ He raised his hand and said with much warmth: ‘I
believe in the Lord Jesus Christ with all my heart. I believe in faith, and
repentance and baptism for the remission of sins, but that is as far as I can
go. I look to you to do the work for me in the temple. … You are watched
closely. … We are all looking to you as our head in this great work. I want to
tell you that there are a great many spirits who weep and mourn because they
have relatives in the Church here who are careless and are doing nothing for
them” (Diary of Frederick William Hurst, comp. Samuel H. and Ida Hurst [1961],
204). (Taken from the Lesson Manual for Lesson 39)
Reading 2 – Joseph Smith History 1:37-39
Reading 3 - President Joseph Fielding Smith taught: “What
was the promise made to the fathers that was to be fulfilled in the latter days
by the turning of the hearts of the children to their fathers? It was the
promise of the Lord made through Enoch, Isaiah, and the prophets, to the
nations of the earth, that the time should come when the dead should be
redeemed” (Doctrines of Salvation, comp. Bruce R. McConkie, 3 vols. [1954–56],
2:154).
Reading 4 – Joseph Smith said: "In the days of Noah,
God destroyed the world by a flood, and he has promised to destroy it by fire
in the last days: but before it should take place Elijah should come first and
turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, etc.
"Now comes
the point. What is this office and work of Elijah? It is one of the greatest
and most important subjects that God has revealed. He should send Elijah to
seal the children to the fathers, and the fathers to the children. . . .
"I wish you to understand this subject, for it is
important; and if you will receive it, this is the spirit of Elijah, that we
redeem our dead, and connect ourselves with our fathers which are in heaven,
and seal up our dead to come forth in the first resurrection; and here we want
the power of Elijah to seal those who dwell on earth to those who dwell in
heaven. This is the power of Elijah and the keys of the kingdom of
Jehovah." (HC, 6:251-252)
Doctrine and Covenants 138:47-48
Reading 5 - Elder Jeffrey R. Holland taught that without the
sealing power, “no family ties would exist in the eternities, and indeed the
family of man would have been left in eternity with ‘neither root [ancestors]
nor branch [descendants].’ Inasmuch as … a sealed, united, celestially saved
family of God is the ultimate purpose of mortality, any failure here would have
been a curse indeed, rendering the entire plan of salvation ‘utterly wasted’ ”
(Christ and the New Covenant, 297–98).
Doctrine and Covenants 110:13-16
Reading 6 - Elder Wilford Woodruff taught: “For the last
eighteen hundred years, the people that have lived and passed away never heard
the voice of an inspired man, never heard a Gospel sermon, until they entered
the spirit-world. Somebody has got to redeem them, by performing such
ordinances for them in the flesh as they cannot attend to themselves in the
spirit, and in order that this work may be done, we must have Temples in which
to do it” (in Journal of Discourses, 19:228–29).
Reading 7 - "I
will here say that two weeks before I left St. George, the spirits of the dead
gathered around me, wanting to know why we did not redeem them. Said they, 'You
have had the use of the Endowment House for a number of years, and yet nothing
has ever been done for us. We laid the foundation of the government you now
enjoy, and we never apostatized from it, but we remained true to it and were
faithful to God.'
"These were
the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and they waited on me for two
days and two nights. I thought it very singular, that notwithstanding so much
work had been done, and yet nothing had been done for them. The thought never
entered my heart, from the fact, I suppose, that heretofore our minds were
reaching after our more immediate friends and relatives.
"I
straightway went into the baptismal font and called upon Brother McAllister to
baptize me for the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and fifty other
eminent men, making one hundred in all, including John Wesley, Columbus, and
others. I then baptized him for every President of the United States, except
three; and when their cause is just, somebody will do the work for them."
(JD 19:229)
Pres. Woodruff said " You have acted up to all the
light and knowledge that you have had; but you have now something more to do
than you have done. We have not fully carried out those principles in
fulfillment of the revelations of God to us, in sealing the hearts of the
fathers to the children and the children to the fathers. . . . When I went
before the Lord to know who I should be adopted to (we were then being adopted
to prophets and apostles), the Spirit of God said to me, 'Have you not a
father, who begot you?' 'Yes, I have.' 'Then why not honor him? Why not be
adopted to him?' 'Yes,' says I, 'that is right.' I was adopted to my father,
and should have had my father sealed to his father, and so on back; and the
duty that I want every man who presides over a Temple to see performed from
this day henceforth and forever, unless the Lord Almighty commands otherwise,
is, let every man be adopted to his father. When a man receives the endowment,
adopt him to his father; not to Wilford Woodruff, nor to any other man outside
the lineage of his fathers. That is the will of God to this people... We want the Latter-day Saints from this time
to trace their genealogies as far as they can, and to be sealed to their
fathers and mothers. Have children sealed to their parents, and run this chain
through as far as you can get it. This is the will of the Lord to his people,
and I think when you come to reflect upon it you will find it to be true."
(Messages of the First Presidency, p255)
This is what Pres. Smith said during his address: “I have
been undergoing a siege of very serious illness for the last five months. … I
have not lived alone these five months. I have dwelt in the spirit of prayer,
of supplication, of faith and of determination; and I have had my communication
with the Spirit of the Lord continuously” (in Conference Report, Oct. 1918, 2).
Reading 8 - Doctrine and Covenants 138:1-4
Doctrine and Covenants 138:11-15
Doctrine and Covenants 138:20-21
Reading 9 – Doctrine and Covenants 138:30-32
"I have a burning desire that a temple be located
within reasonable access to Latter-day Saints throughout the world. We can
proceed only so fast. We try to see that each temple will be in an excellent
location, where there will be good neighbors over a long period of time. Real
estate prices in such areas are usually high. A temple is a much more complex
structure to build than an ordinary meetinghouse or stake center. It is built
to a higher standard of architecture. It takes longer and costs more. The work
is moving about as fast as we can go. It is my constant prayer that somehow it
might be speeded up so that more of our people might have easier access to a
sacred house of the Lord" (Gordon B. Hinckley, C.R., Oct. 1995, p. 77).
Reading 10 - “There are many areas of the Church that are
remote, where the membership is small and not likely to grow very much in the
near future. Are those who live in these places to be denied forever the
blessings of the temple ordinances? While visiting such an area a few months
ago, we prayerfully pondered this question. The answer, we believe, came bright
and clear.
“We will construct small temples in
some of these areas, buildings with all of the facilities to administer all of
the ordinances. They would be built to temple standards, which are much higher
than meetinghouse standards. They would accommodate baptisms for the dead, the
endowment service, sealings, and all other ordinances to be had in the Lord’s
house for both the living and the dead. …
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