As I approach the topic given me to address, I would like to speak to you plainly. I am given the opportunity to present my very personal feelings on a most sacred topic of the restored gospel. President Hinckley said, about temples, that “these unique and wonderful buildings, and the ordinances administered therein, represent the ultimate in our worship. These ordinances become the most profound expressions of our theology.” (“Of Missions, Temples, and Stewardship,” Ensign.) Even given the profound sanctity of temple worship, I hope that I have prepared things valuable for all to hear, regardless of anyone’s age or experience in the gospel.
I have recently been blessed with receiving my personal temple endowment. There were specific things that prepared me for this ordinance. Some were preparatory tasks I had chosen to accomplish on my own, while others were lasting impressions made on me by righteous people. First and foremost, personal worthiness is essential before enjoying the blessings of the temple is possible. It was imperative that I arrived at a point in my life where all sins and misdeeds were properly repented of and that my heart was contrite. This allows me to be literally filled with the Holy Ghost as I enter sacred rooms and make the sacred covenants of temple worship.
After this qualification was met I visited the temple, was washed and anointed, and participated in my endowment session. President Brigham Young defined “Your endowment is, to receive all those ordinances in the house of the Lord, which are necessary for you, after you have departed this life, to enable you to walk back to the presence of the father, passing the angels who stand as sentinels, being enabled to give them the key words, the signs and tokens, pertaining to the holy Priesthood, and gain your eternal exaltation in spite of earth and hell.” (Brigham Young, Discourses of Brigham Young.)
I am coming to realize the eternal impact this ordinance makes on my life. The temple provokes a simple analogy in my mind, allow me to explain. As I look out at you, I ask you to continue sitting there silent if it is safe for me to assume that you like money. You enjoy the safety and comfort it provides. If you provide financially for a family it is likely that you have a bank account where you keep your money. It is also likely that you regularly receive a paycheck for your hard work. Similar to our bank accounts on Earth, each of us has a bank account in Heaven. However, instead of a paycheck, every time we do something that makes Heavenly Father happy, he makes a nice deposit for us. Every time we read our scriptures, say a genuine prayer, bear our testimony, or share some of Jesus Christ’s love through service. Heavenly Father writes us a check and puts it in our bank account. As we grow older and receive more responsibility and capability in the Church, we are able to do, for our Heavenly Father, things that are a little more valuable to Him. But, when we are ready and we go through the temple, Heavenly Father then writes us our endowment check, this time the check is blank.
Our endowments are given us by our Heavenly Father as a covenant. We “promise to observe the law of strict virtue and chastity, to be charitable, benevolent, tolerant and pure; to devote both talent and material means to the spread of truth and the uplifting of [all God’s children]; to maintain devotion to the cause of truth; and to seek in every way to contribute to the great preparation that the earth may be made ready to receive her king,—the Lord Jesus Christ. With the taking of [this] covenant and the assuming of each obligation a promised blessing is pronounced, contingent upon [our] faithful observance of [these] conditions.” (James E. Talmage, The House of the Lord.) For this promise we make to Him, He is willing to then give us all the eternal power, knowledge, and honors of a King or Queen in Heaven.
Having seen the plan of salvation presented in the temple, I know what is required of me to receive this coronation from my almighty God. It has refreshed and expanded my eternal awareness of my soul. A large blessing I gained since receiving my endowment is an enlarged eternal perspective. I now more fully understand that every action I make does have an eternal consequence. Whether great or small, how I choose to live my life actually affects my eternal standing in Heaven. I made a valiant decision in the premortal existence to follow Jesus Christ into mortality. And, now that I am here, this life is the time for me to prepare to meet God again. This is the day for me to perform my labors. I cannot procrastinate the day of my repentance until the end, for if I do I will become subjected to the spirit of the devil and the Spirit of the Lord will withdraw from me, and have no place in me. (Alma 34:32, 35.)
I hope to take my precious temple covenants and have the courage like our Prophet Joseph Smith did. He said “And as for the perils which I am called to pass through, they seem but a small thing to me… Let all the saints rejoice, therefore, and be exceedingly glad; for Israel's God is their God, and he will mete out a just recompense of reward upon the heads of all their oppressors. And again, verily thus saith the Lord: Let the work of my temple, and all the works which I have appointed unto you, be continued on and not cease; and let your diligence, and your perseverance, and patience, and your works be redoubled, and you shall in nowise lose your reward, saith the Lord of Hosts. And if they persecute you, so persecuted they the prophets and righteous men that were before you. For all this there is a reward in heaven.” (D&C 127:2-4.)
To prepare to enter the temple, whether for the first time or the thousandth, I can only say to live the simple life of a Latter-day Saint. Educate yourself; affect those around you for good as an agent of our savior and brother Jesus Christ. Be valiant in attending to the counsel of our church leaders. But always remember that this, our life, extends before and after into the eternities. Take the example of recorded prophets. In writing to the Hebrew people, the apostle Paul asks them to remember Abel, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham. Of them he says “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.” (Hebrews 11:13-16.) How lucky we are to have temples on the Earth today and be able to make sacred covenants, stepping into that city, to catch a glimpse of the eternities and experience Heaven on Earth.
Elder Jason Mark Cottrell
