Engaging Gospel Doctrine (Episode 68)
Lesson 39
“The Hearts of the Children Shall Turn to Their Fathers”
Goal / Understanding that those we do temple work for are real people and members of our family should inspire us both to care for the dead and the living, and we should feel empowered to determine the balance of caring for the living and dead in our own lives.
Overview / Plan of the four temple episodes:
- History of Temple work: 045: The Temple; Doctrine & Covenants and Church History 18
- Theology of Temple work: 059: Redeeming the Dead; D&C and Church History Lesson 30
- Temple work from a personal perspective: this lesson
- Family History: next lesson
- Discuss assigned reading
- Personal reflections on the temple: (during the discussion)
- Thought exercise: What would it take to do temple work for ALL the dead?
- Pondering some numbers.
Some fun thought exercises: Temple work in the millennium. Bear with me.
The Church has 15 million members on the books. Let’s say 1/3 of that number are adults (an average of two children for every adult is conservative!). 1/3 of those number are active, and 75% of those active members have temple recommends (the real figure is closer to 50% but I am being as generous as possible). From 15 million that gives us about 1.25 million. There are over 7 billion people on the earth so temple recommend holders make up 0.02% of the world’s population. Experts estimate that the earth’s total historic population is about 100 billion. If doing all the work for the dead takes 2 hours a person (a short estimate with baptism, initiatory, endowment and sealing), it would take 4000 forty hour work weeks of every single temple recommend holder. That is 77 years. Doable, right? (at 50% TR that would be 115 years)
That isn’t even factoring in the availability of records, which is of course low or non-existent for the vast majority of people who have lived. The takeaway is that the vast majority of temple work for the dead will need to be done during the millennium (which is totally doable; 100 million mortals and angels could wrap that up right quick, in about 50 forty hour work weeks). And if that is the case, it is worth asking, why the urgency now? I am not saying there isn’t a good answer, just that the question is worth considering, especially when there are literally billions living in desperate need.
Refer to the other temple episodes!! Then say for this lesson we are going to approach the temple experience from the perspective of the temple-going member.
LESSON: Talk about what we gain from ritual, what the temple rituals do for us, dig into anthropology
*Kind of a correction, bring up Matthew 25 (good perspective of living vs the dead)
*Review the theological justification for temple work
*What do we gain from receiving temple ordinances?
*What do we gain from doing work for the dead?
*Talk about scope of work for the dead (There are seven billion people alive now and max 15 million Mormons including children, so that is 0.2%, and then experts estimate the population of the world at around 100 billion, so lots of work to do)
*Why not wait until the Millennium?
*How do we balance meeting the needs of the living (as we discussed last lesson) and meeting the needs of the dead?
*How do we find this balance in our own lives?
(bring up the Wilford Woodruff story?)
A few decades later the world groaned under the burden of the Great Depression. It was during that time, on April 6, 1936, that President Heber J. Grant and his counselors, J. Reuben Clark and David O. McKay, announced what would later become known as the welfare program of the Church. Interestingly, two weeks later Elder Melvin J. Ballard was appointed as its first chairman and Harold B. Lee its first managing director.
This was no ordinary endeavor. Although the Lord had raised up remarkable souls to administer it, President J. Reuben Clark made it clear that “the setting up of the [welfare] machinery is the result of a revelation by the Holy Ghost to President Grant, that it has been carried on since that time by equivalent revelations which have come to the brethren who have had it in charge.”2
The commitment of Church leaders to relieve human suffering was as certain as it was irrevocable. President Grant wanted “a system that would … reach out and take care of the people no matter what the cost.” He said he would even go so far as to “close the seminaries, shut down missionary work for a period of time, or even close the temples, but they would not let the people go hungry.”3
A few numbers to ponder:
Price of the Philadelphia temple (under construction): 70 million.
Price of the San Diego temple: estimated 24 million (1993, so about 38 million now)
Price of the Washington DC temple $15 million (built in 1974, so about $60 million today)
The world's 100 richest people earned a stunning total of $240 billion in 2012 – enough money to end extreme poverty worldwide four times over, Oxfam has revealed, adding that the global economic crisis is further enriching the super-rich.
“The richest 1 percent has increased its income by 60 percent in the last 20 years with the financial crisis accelerating rather than slowing the process,” while the income of the top 0.01 percent has seen even greater growth, a new Oxfam report said.
For example, the luxury goods market has seen double-digit growth every year since the crisis hit, the report stated. And while the world's 100 richest people earned $240 billion last year, people in "extreme poverty" lived on less than $1.25 a day.
World Health Organization Millennium Goals:
Jeffrey Sachs, Chairman of the Commission on Macroeconomics and health
I usually say to my fellow Americans, “For every $100, you can keep $99.90, let the
poor keep the other 10 cents. That will save millions of lives every year while making the world much safer.” I remind them that if they do not do it that way, thenthose troops, which don’t seem to accomplish very much, are really expensive! That’s $87 billion, just in one year and justfrom the United States! So we have to think about investing in people, in poverty alleviation, insocial stability, and in progress, rather than be waiting for the explosions that are too expensive or anybody to bear. The money is amply there, we’re talking about pennies on $100!
This is amazing and sobering:
Gospel Essentials Millennium lesson
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