Ephraim's Third Great Opportunity

REVIEW: In my blog entitled Ephraim's Great Blessings and Opportunities for Service posted January 14,  I quoted Erastus Snow in the Journal of Discourses saying, “Such (noble spirits in the pre-existence) were called and chosen and elected of God to perform a certain work at a certain time of the world’s history and in due time he fitted them for that work… and so he elected the seed of Ephraim to be that peculiar people…that holy nation, a kingdom of Priests, a people to receive the covenants and oracles, and to be witnesses to certain nations of the God of Israel.”

MY QUESTION FOR YOU: Are we that holy nation, that kingdom of Priests? 

ISAIAH 41: 4 GIVES US SOME CLUES ABOUT US TODAY

While studying Isaiah 41:4, I found several translations:

 “Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the Lord, the first and with the last; I am he.” –Isaiah 41:4 Authorized King James Version of the Bible

“Who has done this and carried it through, calling forth the generations from the beginning? I, the Lord—with the first of them and with the last—I am he.” –Isaiah 41:4 New International Version of the Bible

“Who is at work accomplishing this, foreordaining dynasties? I, the Lord, first and last, am he.” –Isaiah 41:4 The Literary Message of Isaiah, Avraham Gileadi, Hebraeus Press, 1964, NY p351

This last translation caught my attention. So, I looked up the meaning of foreordaining and dynasties:

foreordain: to ordain beforehand

ordain: to ordain (as a priest) 1. orig., to put in order; arrange; prepare; 2. a) to decree; order; establish; enact  b) to predetermine; predestine  3. to invest with the functions or office of a minister, priest, or rabbi.

dynasty: 1. a succession of rulers who are members of the same family  2. the period of their reign

The  Priesthood Today - A Kingdom of Priests

            This little study opened my eyes to the role of the Priesthood today. We live a life that allows us to go to the temple and receive the endowments that the Lord has in store for his people. There we are sealed to our spouses and children; then sealed to our parents; and then back generation by generation each family is linked. Yes, a dynasty, our family; yes, each man in each family receiving his ordination to the Priesthood, thus making us a Kingdom of Priests. As priests and  priestesses we officiate in the holy ordinances in the temple. We set in order our genealogies.

            And the Lord placed us specifically in the family that we were born into for this very purpose. Why? Because every family must be linked back through the generations, ordered or arranged as predetermined,  lest the Lord at his coming will smite the world with a curse. (Malachi 4:6) and we without our dead may not be perfected (D & C 128:16-18). Why would the Lord smite us with a curse? Because we agreed to make sure that every person who ever lived upon the earth had the opportunity to accept or reject the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is why we seek our the dead, identify them and then provide vicariously for them what they cannot do for themselves because they no longer have a physical body...baptism and other temple ordinances. The curse would be that this opportunity was cut off because of our disobedience. We couldn't progress and neither would our deceased ancestors who accepted the gospel in the spirit world.

Moroni's First Visit

            Moroni in his first visit to the Prophet Joseph Smith quoted prophecies of the Old Testament. First he quoted part of the third chapter of Malachi and also the fourth or last chapter of the same prophecy, with only a little variation in it: “Behold I will reveal unto you the Priesthood, by the hand of Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

            “And he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises (as found in your patriarchal blessing) made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers. If it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming.”

Elijah did appear to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in the Kirtland, Ohio temple during a Sabbath day meeting after passing and receiving the sacrament to the Twelve. The Priesthood was then restored to the earth on that glorious day of  April 3rd 1836.

QUOTE: “It would indeed be a great calamity if we should fail to do the part assigned to us in the accomplishment of the divine purpose as children of Abraham and descendants of Joseph and Ephraim, namely, performing the work for and in behalf of our ancestors who died without a knowledge of the Gospel, the work which they are no longer able to do for themselves, namely baptisms and other ordinances in order that they too may become sons and daughters of God, both in spirit and body.”

–Rulon S. Wells, Conference Report April 1932, p71