17 October 2008

The Mountain of the Lord's House - An LDS Perspective on Temples, part 2

The prophet Isaiah saw in vision latter-day temples and the church members who attend them: "And it shall come to pass in the last days, when the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths" (2 Ne. 12: 2-3).

In the last days - in our day - comes the clarion call to the temple. It is a call to learn the ways of God and to walk in the paths the Lord has marked. It is a call to one and all to visit the house of God as individuals and as families in order to receive the blessings of time and eternity. Why is the temple so important? A temple is the House of the Lord. It is the place where ordinances necessary for exaltation are performed. Temple ordinances weld generation to generation; husband to wife, mother to daughter, and sister to brother. A temple is a place of covenant - it is a house of holiness.

To be holy means to be dedicated, set-apart, or consecrated. When we are holy we consecrate all our lives and everything we have to the work of the Lord. The prophet Zechariah spoke about consecration: "In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, HOLINESS UNTO THE LORD...Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the Lord of hosts" (Zechariah 14: 20-21). Zechariah envisioned the day when even the horses and dishes would be consecrated for the work of the Lord. Many of us do this in our lives - we drive our children and the children of others to church activities or we drive to our visiting or home teaching appointments; we also use our dishes to take food to those who are ill or in need. Those may seem like small matters, but that is the essence of consecration - it is using our means to serve and support others and further the work of the Lord.

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