Transcription
[Music] All right. Hello everyone and welcome to Rise Zion. My name is Seth and I hope you're all having a terrific Tuesday.
Now, something strange has been happening on the Family Search app, and I don't know if you've noticed, specifically on the Get Involved app for church members. A few days ago, one of our viewers sent me an anonymous, intriguing email that instantly caught my attention. It started out simple enough. She just wanted to do her part in the gathering of Israel by indexing names on the Get Involved app. But no matter what she tried, any state, any city, any record, she kept getting a mysterious error code.
She wrote me, "Hello, Seth. Every time I go in to do name indexing for the United States, any state or even specific states, it gives me the following error. I've been trying for several days and have been unable to. Today, I emailed support and this was their response."
"What an amazing time to be alive," she wrote. Just thought I'd share some proof of the hastening of the work. Have a great evening.
Okay, so that line caught my attention. The phrase proof of the hastening, right? At first, I wasn't sure what she was talking about. Was this just a glitch in the Family Search system? Maybe this was opposition from the adversary of some kind, just a temporary outage even? Or was there something bigger happening? Something even a little bit prophetic.
So, I started digging. I wanted to understand why for days not a single record in the United States could be indexed. And when she reached out to Family Search support, the response that she received from them shocked both of us. But before I show you what they said, we need to zoom out. Because to really understand what's going on here, you have to have the bigger picture.
Something is happening right now in the kingdom of God. The work of salvation and gathering on both sides of the veil is accelerating in ways that our ancestors could never have imagined. Even just a few years ago, people could never have imagined this. Prophets have called this the greatest work taking place on the earth today. President Russell M. Nelson said in his talk, Hope of Israel, "My dear young brothers and sisters, these surely are the latter days, and the Lord is hastening his work to gather Israel. That gathering is the most important thing taking place on earth today. Nothing else compares in magnitude. Nothing else compares importance. Nothing else compares in majesty. And if you choose to, if you want to, you can be a big part of it. You can be a big part of something big, something grand, something majestic."
President Nelson's remarks remind us that in terms of the Lord's priorities, this is the most important thing happening in the world right now and that it just may be one of the last things that needs to happen to prepare the world for the second coming.
Here's the official response the viewer received from Family Search support. They write, "Thank you for contacting us about there being no records from the United States available in the Get Involved app. We see there is nothing to do."
Okay, nothing to do. They write, "It's a popular activity and sometimes there are just not any United States records available. You can try a different country if you'd like." End quote.
All right, fascinating, right? Let that sink in just for a moment. According to Family Search support, there are currently no United States records left to index, at least at the time that this email was sent on October 20th. There could be more records now. It wasn't a bug in the system or something wrong with the Family Search app. There just wasn't any work to do at the moment.
Okay, that's a major sign that the second coming may be a lot sooner than any of us realize. But why would there suddenly be no names to do? The answer is absolutely extraordinary. A part of the reason is that the church has quietly begun using artificial intelligence to accelerate the work of family history faster than ever before. And I'll tell you exactly how fast in just a moment.
Family Search recently announced that it is now using AI handwriting recognition to index historical records across multiple languages, automatically reading billions of documents that used to take decades of human effort and translating them almost instantly. According to the church technology update for 2025, Family Search will use artificial intelligence to read old handwriting in more languages and improve its ability to suggest lineage linked data from records. In addition to this, when the AI makes mistakes, and it obviously will at times, it doesn't do it very often anymore, but humans can go in and make those corrections, and the artificial intelligence learns from those corrections. So in ways when we're doing the family indexing on the app as the user was describing, we're actually also helping the artificial intelligence go faster and faster with its work and be more accurate. We'll see how accurate it is right now. A Church News feature revealed that this AI indexes about 80% of names correctly. 80%. Having the computers go through first and making things findable has replaced decades of volunteer time.
Okay, so notice how powerful that statement is. Decades of time, not hours or minutes. Literally, we are saving decades of time that would have been otherwise spent searching through these sometimes difficult to read documents. And in 2024, another article celebrated how Family Search began using artificial artificial intelligence advancements to help index its billions of newly digitized genealogical documents more quickly.
Okay. So, in other words, AI is now doing what once took sometimes generations of people to do. The work is hastening quite literally. Okay? And this is exactly what the Lord foretold in the Doctrine and Covenants section 88:73 where we read, "Behold I will hasten my work in its time." We are watching that verse unfold in real time through human hands and divine innovation working together.
I find it absolutely fascinating that Elder Bednar back in November of 2024 addressed BYU about the miracle and dangers of artificial intelligence in his very famous talk, "Now Things As They Really Are 2.0." "We are blessed to live in a remarkable season in the final gospel dispensation, even the dispensation of the fullness of times. The holy scriptures and prophetic pronouncements help us to learn about and more fully appreciate the truly distinctive days in which we live. The Prophet Joseph Smith declared, 'The building up of Zion is a cause that has interested the people of Zion in every age. It is a theme upon which prophets, priests, and kings have dwelt with peculiar delight. They have looked forward with joyful anticipation to the day in which we live and fired with heavenly and joyful anticipations. They have sung and written and prophesied of this our day. But they died without the sight. It is left for us to see, participate in, and help to roll forward the latter-day glory.' On another occasion, the prophet revealed that the heavenly priesthood bearers will unite with the earthly to bring about those great purposes. A work that God and angels have contemplated with delight for generations past that fired the souls of the ancient patriarchs and prophets. A work that is destined to bring about the destruction of the powers of darkness, the renovation of the earth, the glory of God, and the salvation of the human family."
Truly, we are beginning to see Elder Bednar's prophetic prediction come to more fruition. The latter-day glory will partially be brought about because of artificial intelligence, as he suggested. There are dangers associated with its use, of course, which he also goes through in his talk. But members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are uniquely qualified and spiritually prepared to use artificial intelligence appropriately and to protect ourselves and others against the possible dangers that may come from it.
Okay. We have certain spiritual insights that allow us to see past deception. We have the spiritual gift of discernment from our constant companionship of the Holy Ghost, which no other people on earth has. One of the major benefits we are just barely beginning to scratch the surface of is temple work and researching names. That's just the beginning. More, much more is coming that has the potential to even renew the earth as Elder Bednar said and bring about the destruction of the powers of darkness. Elder Bednar even seems to be suggesting here that the advancements of technology might even be due to heavenly priesthood bearers uniting with earthly ones coming down from heaven and helping us. There is a spiritual connection and a purpose behind the advancement of these technologies. There can be benefits to technology, but again, there's also very re very real spiritual dangers as well.
And this ties perfectly into a recent stake conference report that we received on this channel. As you know, every Saturday I ask you guys to send me in uh stake conference reports. And this this actually comes from a stake conference report from California attended by Elder Clark of the Seventy. And he shared some absolutely stunning statistics. At the stake conference, he said that right now there are about 7.8 billion people who have had their temple work completed. And for every one of us here on earth, there are 10 more on the other side of the veil whose work is done. Okay, he's talking about members of the church compared to those whose work has been done. Okay, so the blessings are real. The blessings on the other side of the veil um and perhaps even those technological advancements are being done by people are are uniting in other words perhaps with people who are on of on the other side of the veil helping us to come up with these technological advancements. so that the work can be hastened even more. Okay. He also said that 20 billion people are already digitally prepared for ordinances in the temple and with the advent of AI technology hastening the work, those numbers must surely be increasing very exponentially.
Okay, so think about that. 20 billion names ready for the ordinances of salvation. And yet, Elder Clark reminded everyone at this stake conference that the gathering is still accelerating. The promise of direct communication between heaven and earth is being fulfilled. One ordinance, one name, one keystroke at a time, assisted by technology we could have never dreamed of before. And perhaps this technology is being brought about by spiritual beings on the other side.
The doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints centers on the family. Essential to our doctrine on the family is the temple. The ordinances received there enable us to return as eternal families to the presence of our Heavenly Father. As of the April 2025 General Conference, President Russell M. Nelson had announced the construction of 200 new temples. He loved to announce new temples at the conclusion of each general conference, and we all rejoiced with him. However, with the large number of temples now in the very earliest phases of planning and construction, it is appropriate that we slow down the announcement of new temples. Therefore, with the approval of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, we will not announce any new temples at this conference. We will now move forward in providing the ordinances of the temple to members of the church throughout the world, including when and where to announce the construction of new temples.
President Oaks' remarks ended on an unexpectedly mysterious note, one that seems to hint at something larger unfolding behind the scenes when he said that the church would move forward. Move forward indicates moving forward in providing the ordinances of the temple to members of the church throughout the world. Notice how he ended that sentence with a very prolonged and dramatic pause. Even while pausing the announcement of new temples, it almost sounded like a prophetic pivot, a shift from building more temples to unlocking new ways of reaching more of God's children in unique new, in unique and different ways than we've ever imagined before. And it made me wonder, what if the Lord is preparing the church to take the work of salvation in an entirely new dimension? Not just by breaking ground in new nations with temples, but by breaking through the veil itself.
The challenge before us isn't only geographic, it's spiritual. There are billions who have already passed beyond mortality still waiting for their ordinances. And perhaps the new and unique solution that President Oaks may be alluding to includes smaller, less conspicuous temples quietly appearing in restricted nations. But maybe it also involves a far more miraculous development. Maybe even the use of inspired technologies like artificial intelligence as instruments in the hands of God. Just as the printing press once spread scripture all across the world, AI may soon help uncover names and records hidden for centuries, hastening the redemption of both the living and the dead on both sides of the veil.
In addition to indexing names, AI is helping family history work in multitudes of other ways as well. From familysearch.org, we read more about the miraculous work that they've been accomplishing. This year, Family Search announced one of the most breathtaking developments in the history of genealogy, the publication of millions of oral genealogies gathered through in-person interviews with tribal leaders from 25 African nations. And the effort is already expanding to indigenous cultures on other continents. For centuries, these genealogies existed only in living memory, passing down through spoken word from parent to child, elder to elder. But now for the first time they're being preserved, digitized, and made searchable through the Family Search app, right? Through artificial intelligence.
But here's where it becomes truly remarkable. Using advanced artificial intelligence, Family Search is now transcribing these oral records, capturing voices, names, and family lines from around the world, and transforming them into searchable databases. You can already go online and find specific names, stories, and villages that once existed only in the hearts and memories of its ancient tribes. And this isn't limited to Africa. The same process is beginning amongst Native American nations and other indigenous peoples across the earth whose histories were preserved through song, story, and sacred oral tradition.
Think about that for just a moment. Records that have never before been written down. Ancestral lines that have been held in the hearts of families for generations are now beginning to be revealed, gathered, and sealed through the power of modern revelation and inspired innovation. Could these oral genealogies now being recorded and indexed with the aid of artificial intelligence be among the very records foretold in scripture to come forth in the latter days? Now, these records are not necessarily scriptural or doctrinal, but rather reveal names that need their work accomplished. Ideally before the second coming happens. That is certainly a very interesting possibility as we consider that many of the Native American tribes, people who are also of certain tribes of Israel, will have specific roles to play during the resurrection to help us build the kingdom of God on earth and to do the work that needs to be done.
This is an incredible advancement in the work that the Lord is doing on the earth. Even with 20 billion names prepared, as Elder Clark pointed out, scholars estimate that more than 117 billion people have lived on this earth in its entire history. That is certainly a lot of people. And that means the vast majority of temple work will likely continue into the millennium when God reigns with us personally. When, as the prophets have taught, new records, "quote unquote," will be revealed through heavenly sources. And it makes me wonder how close we are to the millennium if we're getting to the point where human indexing is becoming difficult because of the speed at which the work is being completed.
We read from the church's introduction to the family history student manual which says, "There are thousands of them, hundreds of thousands and millions of them in the spirit world who long to receive this gospel and have been waiting hundreds of years for their deliverance. They are waiting on you. They are praying that the Lord will awaken your hearts in their interest. They know where their records are. And I testify to you that the spirit and influence of your dead will guide those who are interested in finding those records. If there is anywhere on earth anything concerning them, you will find it. That is my promise to you. But you must begin the work. You must begin to inquire after you're dead, and the spirit of your heart turning toward them will come upon you, and the way will be opened in a marvelous manner. And if there is a scrap of evidence concerning them upon the earth, you will find it. When we have done all that we can do to ourselves, the Lord will come to our rescue. If we have done our best and have searched and have discovered all that is available, then the day will come when God will open and part the veil and the records will be revealed." This was from Brian S. Hinckley, Sermons and Missionary Services of Melvin Joseph Ballard in 1949, page 230.
The story isn't ending. It's just moving into higher gear. Just to be clear, the date of the Lord's coming is set. He is coming whether we are ready or not. His coming doesn't depend on our doing temple work. But we can improve the Lord's grace and he will bless us with technology to hasten the work that needs to be done before he arrives. Family Search running out of records in the United States isn't a glitch. It's evidence that prophecy is being fulfilled and that we are hastening toward the time when the Savior will reign with us personally to bring about the promised familial blessings for all of God's children who have ever lived.
We are living in a time when the field is white and ready to harvest. The Lord's promises stand sure. "I will hasten my work in its time." The saints of God, empowered by the spirit, guided by revelation, and now even assisted by artificial intelligence are building the bridge between heaven and earth. So, if you've been waiting to get involved in temple or family history work, don't wait. The Lord's timetable is moving faster than ever before. And it's truly remarkable this technology that we're seeing. We are hastening his day. One ordinance, one soul, and one miracle at a time.
Something extraordinary is happening right now in the kingdom of God. And whether you're indexing, attending the temple, or simply striving to live worthily of the spirit, you are part of that miracle. The work is hastening and the heavens are open. And I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
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