Saving Souls at Christmastime

As a Church, we are engaged in the all-inclusive work of the salvation of souls on both sides of the veil. We send tens of thousands of missionaries throughout the world to teach and baptize the willing in this world. We gather them out, welcome them into our congregations and set their feet on what we have come to call "the covenant path." 

As they progress along that path they are increasingly blessed by making and keeping sacred covenants. Eventually, they enter a temple somewhere in the world (there are now 355 in various stages of completion), and are sealed to an eternal companion of their choosing. These are the ordinances of salvation, and they bind couples and posterity together, linking them to ancestors who have gone before them.

The other night, our family who were nearby gathered in a sealing session at the Mount Timpanogos Temple to perform proxy sealing ordinances for many of our deceased ancestors. Most of those ancestors were in the family of our dear daughter and sister, Kim Goates. She is a native of Brisbane, Australia, who emigrated many years ago to the United States where she met and married our oldest son Jeff. 

The picture shown here is all of us assembling for dinner after the session, and doesn't include Jake and Rich who returned home without eating with us. 

The date December 19th is significant in two ways - it's our original sealing date in 1969, when I married Patsy, and it's also the birthday of son Steve. 

Since her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Kim has been instrumental in her search for all her extended family in Australia. Those names have been compiled and the other night we all participated as a family in procuring those sealing ordinances for each deceased member of her family, a work they could not perform for themselves. We were blessed in that session to be assigned to a sealer whose first mission was in. . . wait for it. . . Brisbane, Australia. Truly, the "divine coincidences" we routinely encounter in this work of salvation cannot be overstated. Someday I hope to learn more about how all those intersections seem to collide in such marvelous ways. 

From the Church's website, we glean this explanation:

What Is the Work of Salvation?

The work of salvation is Heavenly Father’s work “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). This important work includes member missionary work, convert retention, activation of less-active members, temple and family history work, and teaching the gospel. Too often, we think these aspects of the gospel are unrelated. But in The Work of Salvation: Worldwide Leadership Broadcast on June 23, 2013, Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles taught that “the work really is indivisible. These efforts are not separate; they’re all part of the work of salvation.”

The phrase “Hastening the Work of Salvation” - the name of the broadcast’s companion website (hasteningthework.lds.org) - refers to the Lord’s promise: “Behold, I will hasten my work in its time” (D&C 88:73).

Essential priesthood ordinances - baptism, confirmation, ordination to the priesthood for men, and temple ordinances - stand as milestones along our path to return to our Heavenly Father. As we participate in the work of salvation, we follow and inspire others to follow this covenant path.

I couldn't help thinking about the gathering that was surely taking place in the spirit world among Kim's ancestors as those ordinances were being performed. Some, who look in on this "impossible" work of salvation for the dead simply cannot digest the math. There are so many more dead people than living people, they reason, how can you possibly think you will even make a dent in those daunting numbers. I know, it truly does seem impossible. The odds are never in our favor as disciples of Jesus Christ. And it has ever been thus. Christ was only ONE. We are only 17 million against a living population of 8 billion, and multiples more who are dead. What are we thinking?

I wrote about the impossible gospel years ago, and we are undeterred against all the insurmountable odds. Having lived my lifetime of experiences, and with the perspective gained from hindsight, the onward and upward momentum of the work of salvation is something truly breathtaking to behold in these latter days. 

President Russell M. Nelson is leading the armies of Israel in all parts of the world today. His priesthood keys are being shared now in an exponential way I never could have envisioned in my younger days. The Kingdom of God on earth is expanding. The world of spirits is actively "recruiting" among those of us who have seen our loved ones graduate to a higher and holier place. They are engaged in the same way we are. 

In fact, the other night as I performed proxy sealings I was kneeling across the altar in turn from three of my daughters, Dianne, Tina and Allie. I could remember all those times it was Patsy kneeling across from me, and I was invigorated and energized by those memories. It was truly a joyful and wondrous work we were doing. Can we really refer to it as "work" when it is so much fun?

That's what the temple experience is designed to do for us. We bless others and are blessed by them. 

And at Christmastime the work of salvation is just that much more delicious.

How Can One Man Be So Blessed?

Allie, Dianne, Dad, Emily

Yesterday, I was in the Mount Timpanogos Temple with three of my daughters. We are pictured in front of a manger scene on a blustery day after our endowment session. It was the "warm before the storm," a fitting analogy when the sky was blue overhead and the temperature was warmer than normal for a winter day.

Today, in Pine Valley where I live up in the mountains, I awoke to blowing snow. The temperature had plunged to 20 degrees. 

I am always in awe of weather patterns here in Utah. A few years ago for the first time I learned about "atmospheric rivers." That's where the upper level wind patterns set up in a direct path that points directly at us originating somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. In the winter those winds aloft bring prodigious amounts of weather, usually snowstorms, with them. Like the phrase implies, the weather flows like a river with little or nothing to stop it.

Some have asked me if I intended to stay alone in my home this winter since the passing of my wife, Patsy, earlier this summer. I hadn't thought, really, about doing anything else. This is where I built my wooden "palace" in the mountains all those years ago, and it's where I thrive the most. It's familiar. 

I know every nuance of this little shack. I am astounded at its appraised value today. How did that happen? At night I hear the rippling of the flag that flies just outside my bedroom window. I actually had to take it down recently to aid my ability to fall asleep. I hear the coyotes sing their lullabies. 

I hear the propane boiler cycling on and off in the crawl space that heats the water circulating in the baseboard heating system. I love the sound of the crackling firewood in the wood burning stove in the other side of the house where I installed it when all I used it for was to generate heat in cool summer mornings. 

And now I live here year-around and fight off the cold winter blasts that come barreling down upon me when the atmospheric river does its best to discourage me, especially when it sets up directly north in the Polar region.

Once in awhile, I hear my faithful snowplow guy outside my window when he comes early in the morning to clear the road for us. That was a steep learning curve for cousin Steve Smoot and me when we had to learn how to do it all those years ago. We managed through record-breaking 100-year winters like last year, and years when we only plowed four or five times. 

Through it all, here we are, still standing as it were on a rock in the middle of the atmospheric river flowing all around us. 

Now, I have a Starlink satellite internet system to link me to the outside world. It is astoundingly more robust and reliable than anything I could have ever envisioned when I put this plan in place all those years ago to live here. But new revelation was given. What did we ever do before Elon Musk?

When the wind is howling outside late at night and in the early morning hours, I can hear the wooden members that hold the structure together. I hear the wood shifting and creaking slightly. Am I ever worried about it crashing down around my head? Nope. I built it. I know why I hear what I hear, and I am seldom alarmed. I am the creator, and I know my creation. Therefore, I do not wring my hands in anxiety over what will happen to it. 

I find a spiritually analogous meaning in it all. Our Father in Heaven is our Creator. He knows us all - every one of us. He has made ample provision for us. 

He vouched safe our moral agency before the foundations of this Mother Earth were laid. 

He knew exactly the number of His children who would come here to inhabit it. 

He made the provisions for the amount of natural resources we would need to sustain ourselves. 

He anticipated there would be some "bad actors" among us who would reject Him. 

He also knows there are many of His children who would triumph over all their enemies and honor and serve Him. 

He has raised up prophets from the beginning who would give guidance to all His children. 

He gave them inspiration and revelation, and made revelation a possibility for all of us who would obey and value their writings in the scriptures. 

He sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to atone for all our sins.

He promised and delivered the Holy Ghost to guide us in all we do while we live here.

To which I add my humble amen, and amen, and amen.

Be a Maker of Peace

As this Christmas season commences, I have a suggestion. Let's all make a concerted effort to make peace in our world this year. It all starts with each of us as individuals. But you may ask what can one person do to make a difference in such a noisy contentious world? My answer is that you can do more than you imagine.

This year, as in every year, there is chaos everywhere. We end each year, it seems, determined to do better in the coming year. That's what New Year's resolutions are designed to help us focus on. We get to breathe a huge sigh of relief as we recount what happened to us in the year. We pause, we slow down and reflect, and we are often overwhelmed with sorrow and grief over the tragedies that have hit us. Often these setbacks have come upon us uninvited and certainly unwelcomed. And yet, come they do and there seems to be little we can do to stop them.

It's the stuff of which this mortal probation is all about. If life were predictable and everything always worked out exactly the way we drew it up in our planning, there would be no testing, no opposition and no stretching to help us progress to a higher and holier place. Indeed, we would be following blindly like robots programmed for perfection without having paid a price for any of it ourselves. And whose idea was that in the beginning? Oh wait, I remember now:

And the Lord said: Whom shall I send? And one answered like unto the Son of Man: Here am I, send me. And another answered and said: Here am I, send me. And the Lord said: I will send the first.

And the second was angry, and kept not his first estate; and, at that day, many followed after him. (Abraham 3:27-28).

And I, the Lord God, spake unto Moses, saying: That Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine Only Begotten, is the same which was from the beginning, and he came before me, saying — Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor. 

But, behold, my Beloved Son, which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me — thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever. 

Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled against me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him mine own power; by the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down; 

And he became Satan, yea, even the devil, the father of all lies, to deceive and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will, even as many as would not hearken unto my voice. 

And now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which I, the Lord God, had made. 

And Satan put it into the heart of the serpent, (for he had drawn away many after him,) and he sought also to beguile Eve, for he knew not the mind of God, wherefore he sought to destroy the world. (Moses 4:1-6). 

In today's world, we are witnessing the adherents to Satan at war with one another. Some in the Church are still fond of citing the "two plans" that were posited in the beginning. But, there were never two plans, only one plan - the Father's plan. At issue was who would implement THAT ONE PLAN. 

The Father's great plan of happiness included the agency of man "which I, the Lord God, had given him, that I should give unto him mine own power; by the power of mine Only Begotten." 

In opposition to the Father's plan Satan offered to redeem everyone and to have the Father give him all the honor and glory. Because of his rebellion, he was cast down, deprived of the privilege of a mortal body. 

Satan must have been very persuasive, however, because we learn "at that day many followed after him." When we think about all those - dare we call them "evil spirits?" - who followed Satan in the pre-existence, then we do the math on it, let's look at Neal A. Maxwell's analysis: 

64,000,000,000 who have lived in physical bodies on Earth to 1976 

~ 70,000,000,000 to 1984 (Maxwell's estimate) or 2/3 of all the spirits 

35,000,000,000 or 1/3 of all the hosts of heaven who followed Satan 

The current world population is 8,076,994,357 as of Wednesday, December 6, 2023 according to the most recent United Nations estimates elaborated by Worldometer. 

Now think about this: For every one of us Satan has about four of his minions he could assign to us to help him in his avowed mission to "destroy the world." Seems a little overwhelming doesn't it? Here's the good news: God has called only one prophet at a time to send His redeeming love into the world to bless all His children, and that man, that one man, is President Russell M. Nelson. That one man has been a consistent champion and witness to the divinity of the Savior Jesus Christ, who was chosen by the Father to implement that ONE PLAN of redeeming grace.

President Russell M. Nelson

When he dies (he's in his 100th year today!), as surely he will, God will raise up another prophet in his stead to carry forward the work of gathering Israel in these last days until the Savior comes again to rule and reign on Earth. Here's what the prophet has said about peacemakers: 

"At this point you may be thinking that this message [to become peacemakers] would really help someone you know. Perhaps you are hoping that it will help him or her to be nicer to you. I hope it will! But I also hope that you will look deeply into your heart to see if there are shards of pride or jealousy that prevent you from becoming a peacemaker. 

"If you are serious about helping to gather Israel and about building relationships that will last throughout the eternities, now is the time to lay aside bitterness. Now is the time to cease insisting that it is your way or no way. Now is the time to stop doing things that make others walk on eggshells for fear of upsetting you. Now is the time to bury your weapons of war. If your verbal arsenal is filled with insults and accusations, now is the time to put them away. You will arise as a spiritually strong man or woman of Christ. 

"The temple can help us in our quest. There we are endowed with God’s power, giving us the ability to overcome Satan, the instigator of all contention. Cast him out of your relationships! Note that we also rebuke the adversary every time we heal a misunderstanding or refuse to take offense. Instead, we can show the tender mercy that is characteristic of true disciples of Jesus Christ. Peacemakers thwart the adversary. 

"Let us as a people become a true light on the hill — a light that 'cannot be hid.' Let us show that there is a peaceful, respectful way to resolve complex issues and an enlightened way to work out disagreements. As you demonstrate the charity that true followers of Jesus Christ manifest, the Lord will magnify your efforts beyond your loftiest imagination.

"The gospel net is the largest net in the world. God has invited all to come unto Him, 'black and white, bond and free, male and female.' There is room for everyone. However, there is no room for prejudice, condemnation, or contention of any kind. 

"My dear brothers and sisters, the best is yet to come for those who spend their lives building up others. Today I invite you to examine your discipleship within the context of the way you treat others. 

"I bless you to make any adjustments that may be needed so that your behavior is ennobling, respectful, and representative of a true follower of Jesus Christ. 

"God lives! Jesus is the Christ. He stands at the head of this Church. We are His servants. He will help us to become His peacemakers." https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2023/04/47nelson?lang=eng

I had the perfect example of a peacemaker in my own home. Patsy was always a peacemaker who shunned even the slightest hint of contention. She lifted others, blessed them with her grace and her love. She served them constantly, tirelessly and championed them in their adversities. She even worried about them, but even in that one weakness she ultimately overcame her worry with faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. She took her worries to Him in everything, and in time - His time - solutions presented themselves to which she immediately subscribed and put into action. 

We are often talked out of our good intentions by the four evil spirits working on our faith. We too often are convinced that we are just one person, and what can only one weak individual like us do to bring about improvements in a wicked world? 

When you are tempted with those faulty thoughts, think about what one prophet, one mother, one father, one son or daughter, one bishop, one Relief Society President, one ministering saint can do, and then be assured that you are not just one. As our son, Steve, reminded us at Patsy's funeral, "When we show up our gifts show up too." What a priceless insight that is for each of us. You just have to "show up." 

But you might counter, "I don't have any gifts compared to everyone else around me." Again, that thought is worse than faulty. It is Satanic. Your gifts are many and they are powerful, more efficacious in someone else's life than you will ever know. 

When I think about Patsy's gifts and how they have been multiplied many times over into a posterity that now numbers over ninety precious souls in mortal tabernacles who are faithful and serving the best they know how, I have come to believe that none of us should ever discount our capability for good in such dismissive terms as, "I'm just not good enough." Or, "What difference can I make?" Or, "I am only one person." Stop it, already! 

You can be that peacemaker in your marriage, in your ward, in your stake, in your calling in the Church wherever it may take you, and don't be surprised when you get to the spirit world to be surrounded by your kindred spirits for whom you did all those vicarious ordinances in the temples. You are blessing legions whom you have never met in this life!! 

Only you, only one person, only someone as insignificant and weak as you. 

Only someone who learned how to make peace.