From the Top of Every Hill

From the Top of Every Hill

From the Top of Every Hill
Mormon History Related

"When the Salt Lake Temple was dedicated, it had been fifty-seven years since the Lord appeared in the Kirtland Temple, keys were bestowed, and Elijah appeared, fulfilling the prophecy of Malachi twenty-two hundred years earlier."There were to have been temples at Independence, at Far West, and on Spring Hill at Adam-ondi-Ahman, but those temples were never built."It had been fifty-two years since the Lord had commanded the Saints to build a temple in Nauvoo and warned that if they did not complete it within the allotted time, 'your baptisms for your dead shall not be acceptable unto me; and if you do not these things at the end of the appointment ye shall be rejected as a church, with your dead, saith the Lord your God' (D&C 124:32)."The Saints built the temple, but they were driven away and it was destroyed by the mobs. "Colonel Thomas L. Kane wrote: 'They succeeded in parrying the last sword-thrust" of the mobs until "as a closing work, they placed on the entablature of the front . . ." 'The House of the Lord:" 'Built by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." 'Holiness to the Lord!" '. . . It was this day,' he wrote, that 'saw the departure of the last elders, and the largest band that moved in one company together. The people of Iowa have told me, that from morning to night they passed westward like an endless procession. They did not seem greatly out of heart, they said; but, at the top of every hill before they disappeared, were to be seen looking back . . . on their abandoned homes, and the far-seen Temple and its glittering spire' (pamphlet, discourse delivered before The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 26 Mar. 1830, Church Archives)."

Boyd K. Packer, "The Temple, the Priesthood," Ensign, May 1993, 18-19

Topics: Temples