Sacrifice and the Temple

To my daughter, 

Today I want to encourage you to find a way to start preparing to receive this great blessing of going to the temple. The more you prepare and strive to keep yourself worthy of the Holy Ghost, the more meaningful your experience there will be. The first temple built in this dispensation was in Kirtland, and it required an enormous sacrifice for the early Saints who had very little by way of material possessions. Some have estimated that it cost more than any other temple we have ever built in terms of the sacrifice it required (and not just the money it cost). But with that great sacrifice came incredible blessings: “The Kirtland Temple was an unprecedented sacrifice, and it was met with an unprecedented divine outpouring.” The people who attended the dedication saw angels and the Savior came to the house personally, along with other ancient prophets, to accept His temple just one week after the dedication. The Lord had invited the Saints to be “willing to observe their covenants by sacrifice—yea, every sacrifice which I, the Lord, shall command” and that the temple was a “sacrifice which I, the Lord, require at their hands, that there may be a house built unto me for the salvation of Zion.” With that He gave this great promise: “Yea, and my presence shall be there, for I will come into it, and all the pure in heart that shall come into it shall see God” (Doctrine and Covenants 109:8,12,16). The temple literally becomes the House of the Lord. As we make sacrifices and seek to become the pure in heart, we will be prepared to feel His presence there. Though today we don’t have to actually work on the construction of temples, we too can offer sacrifices in our own way. For example, you might make donations of your money to the temple fund that helps pay for their construction and maintenance. Or, you might spend time participating in indexing or other family history work to help prepare names to be taken to the temple. You might also spend time reading the temple interview questions and ponder on how you can improve your life to be worthy to enter the Lord’s house.

               One final way that you might prepare to go to the temple is to continue focusing on reading the Book of Mormon. There is a story about Martin Harris that relates the Book of Mormon with temples that I find very interesting. Martin Harris was one who helped with the translation of the Book of Mormon and helped to pay for its publication. He was also one of the Three Witnesses to the book and heard the voice of God declaring that it is true. For a time he left the Church, though, and he was separated from the Saints for many years. Later he finally returned and came out to Salt Lake City in 1870, many years after the Saints had established their settlement there. One account records what he expressed about the Salt Lake Temple, not yet complete but well on its way at that point: “As the carriage was passing over a hill, the curtains were pulled back to give a view of the city below with the tabernacle and temple in view. Harris, according to Stevenson, seemed enraptured in the view and exclaimed: ‘Who would have thought that the Book of Mormon would have done all this?’” In other words, in marveling at the grandeur of the Salt Lake Temple and the enormous labor being spent by so many to erect it, he realized that a great driving force to make that happen was the Book of Mormon. Ultimately it is the testimony of the Book of Mormon, with its witness of Jesus Christ and the Restoration of the gospel, that drove the early Saints to make so many sacrifices like laboring 40 years to build such a magnificent temple. And just as the Book of Mormon ultimately led them to the temple, so too it is for us as we read and study and take to heart the words and messages of the Book of Mormon, it will lead us to the safety and peace of the house of God. I encourage you to keep striving to read each day in the Book of Mormon and to do so with your goal of going to the temple in mind.