Transcription
[Music] The Lord has promised that those who go into his house and make these covenants and put on his name, yeah, will be protected. That nothing will be able to stop them. And what's amazing is when people start to see, when you allow Christ's image to be engraven upon your countenance, it is the greatest missionary tool. The greatest missionary tool that, uh, you have is the way that you live your life. Yeah. And what will happen is more people are like, "I, I want to be like that." And then they go back, then they go into that temple. And that's what you're talking about with like the city of Enoch. It would just grow forever and ever because they were such good examples of, of the gospel and of Christ that it was just drawing so many people in. It's like, um, if someone fulfills the full, complete oath and covenant of the priesthood and they come clean from the blood and sins and all the dimensions that they're called to and they have those experiences, it's kind of like the first that does that is the hardest, and then they have power to bring others. And then, then you have more and more power to bring entire societies. Like, this is where Melchizedek does this for his society. Enoch does this for his society. Um, Christ in 3 Nephi, they do this. And so, um, and Christ, um, and the apostles in Jerusalem. So you look at this and you say, "Okay, what are the elements of this and what is He giving us to be able to, to endow us with that power?" So we have an endowment of priesthood, but where does the power of this factor in, in a way, into it? And, um, you know, if we can go there, let's lay out something about the endowment that I think we can come back around and talk about how that would have this effect on, on the earth. Yeah.
So, um, I want to be really careful how I talk about this because for a couple of different reasons. One, it might be the most sensitive topic in the church, one of the most sensitive topics. Um, and that's the true order of prayer. And so I want to do this in the spirit of, of respecting the temple and the sacredness of it, but also in the spirit that, you know, Elder Bednar has instructed us that anything that we, that doesn't specifically relate to things that we specifically covenant to not reveal, there are eight of them. That's it. After that, we should talk about and we should study. Mhm. And then when we do talk about them and study, we find that there's lots of scriptural patterns and teachings about that. So let's kind of talk about the true order of prayer, um, from this perspective. And the other thing I want to say, the other caveat is because of things in our history, in more recent history, in the last couple of generations, the true order of prayer was definitely something that was used and given to the Saints to expand outside of the temple. Um, it wasn't, it was unusual to have true orders of prayer like in stakes or in councils, like you could do them in stake centers. Um, I think it was in the '70s or the '80s, I don't remember which. I actually have the actual letter from President Kimball asking that we no longer do that. That we do the true order of prayer and we only do it in the temple. In the temple. So what I'm about to say is, I want to be very, very careful. I am, don't confuse this as me saying, "Hey, everybody, run out and start doing the true order of prayer in your backyard." You know, um, but to, but to appeal to the Lord in the way that you can apply the principles of the true order of prayer in whatever dimension that you feel that the Lord is directing you. I am not telling people to go out and start doing the true order outside. Yes, outside the. So I just want to make that clear that that that. So, um, but let's talk about it openly. Okay?
Let me also suggest something else. Now, when I suggest this, I could be dead wrong. And I'm very open to that. But when you think about an endowment, and we've talked a lot about it recently, you and I have. And the endowment is a pattern that's giving us a, a ritual that we go through that teaches us a lot of things. You know, in early church, the endowment was very, very long. You had lectures at the veil. Um, we know, and everybody should know, that throughout time, the endowment has enlarged and shrunk depending upon what we're going to be doing in that endowment because how much pattern are we going to participate in? And sometimes we've lpped off big portions of those patterns and, and we kind of do it in the spirit of like, "Well, that's not the, the crucial part." Yeah. Well, it's all depends on what you think is crucial. Like, if you want to be taught in pattern, the more the better. Yeah. You know, but this isn't a, this isn't a criticism on like who's right and who's wrong and who's doing what and who's not. It's just the way it is. So that's why the endowment is of varying lengths throughout time because what we're doing is we're participating in a pattern that, that displays the order of individuals who are obtaining light and truth and knowledge preparatory to come into the presence of the Lord while in the flesh, like we just read in D&C 88:67-68. So with that preface, one of the questions you can ask is, "What is an endowment really? Like, what's the core part?" Because Lehi's, Nephi, Lehi, Nephi's dreams are endowments, and they have similar parts, but they're not doing the exact same things that maybe we're doing. The brother of Jared at the veil, and what's happening to Moses, and what's happening to, um, Nephi in Helaman and 10, and what's happening to the, to the Saints in, in Bountiful around the temple with Christ in 3 Nephi, what's happening to the Saints in the upper room of the temple in Jerusalem on that last Passover, you know, on that last supper, last supper, and these are all endowments, and these are portions of endowments. And so if we understand that an endowment is the being given the things needful for us to obtain all the knowledge in order to commune with the Lord and to be brought into His presence, those things are most likely going to be way more than we're being given right now. And you have to obtain them through revelation. They might be different because we just have different portions of. But it doesn't invalidate what we do. That's the key here.
So, one of the questions I have is, is okay, we make these covenants in the temple. And it's very, very interesting because we don't make those covenants for the first time in the temple. When you, when you covenant to obey Christ in all of His commandments, you've made those covenants. Like, you're not making the law of chastity covenant the first time you go into the temple. Mhm. Neither consecration. Yeah. Neither the sacrifice, neither to obey. You're not for the first time making a covenant to keep the law of the gospel. Right? So in, in some ways, and this is not to undermine it, but in some ways, I believe what's powerful about the endowment is you've already made these covenants, but what you're doing is you're going in and we're, and we're laying out these covenants in a way to give us certain things that enable us to, to engage in the true order of prayer, which I believe is actually the heartbeat of the endowment, okay? Is the true order of prayer. And we're going to kind of build this out to say, to say why. The first part is the initiator, which is the washing and anointing. And you're going to see that element everywhere in endowment. Yeah. That's, that's, that's a core piece. And then we go through the presentation. We're taught and we're learned. We're given this cosmic, cosmic, uh, perspective, perspective of what's happening. So much is being given to us. And then we're being taught and prepared, and we're being given things through covenant to commune with heaven, the keys of prayer. And Joseph Smith, he didn't always refer to this way, but more often than not, when Joseph Smith referred to the keys of the kingdom, he was referencing the keys of prayer. Now, it wasn't ubiquitous. Like, it's not all the time. Like other times he would talk about keys of the kingdom and some of the traditional ways that we talk about the keys and, and, you know, like the keys of the First Presidency or outlined like in D&C 107. And, and in context of our past conversation, I believe those keys are very much given to certain individuals that they may gain revelation on how to come clean from the blood and sins of this generation. So if you have the key of the, of the High Priest of the Church, you are called to come clean. President Nelson has to come clean. That's his call in that position. Yeah. Yeah. He's given keys on how to engage heaven to know how to come clean and how to give the word of the Lord to the people. Okay. Does this, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Make sense? Okay. So, I'm saying a lot, but I'm trying to set this up. Okay. It's good. So, what is the core part of the endowment? I'm going to suggest that