I want to tell you how the temple has blessed my life.

As a convert to the Church it has been my privilege to seek out my ancestors and to see that their temple work is done.  I was taught that in the pre-earth life I made covenants with them.  Coming to earth was a big deal.  We’d been in the Spirit World for ever so long awaiting our turns to be born and to get bodies.  It was surely a time of great anticipation.  We were each going to take an extended trip that would be fraught with peril.

We were in the presence of the Father and the Son, and life was perfect, except that we didn’t have bodies like our Father and Mother had.  We couldn’t do the things that they did, and we couldn’t become what they were, and we couldn’t have posterity until we got bodies of our own and became exalted as they were.

The announcement was made that the Father was directing His Son to create an earth for us, and that we would each be given a time to go, and to get a body, and to have experiences, and to then ultimately return to the Father on conditions of our repentance from the sins that we’d commit.  The Savior would make it all possible.  But we would have to truly repent, and to covenant to follow Him in every particular.

We were so happy about the prospects that Job says we shouted for joy.

One-third of our brothers and sisters lacked faith.  They didn’t think they could do it.  They looked around for another plan, and ultimately decided not to go.

The rest of us were eager, but probably more than a little nervous.  The journey would be dangerous.  We were told that we would sin, and that those sins would cause us to be banished from the Father’s presence.  We also knew that the one-third who had decided to follow another plan would be actively opposing us through jealousy.

And besides that, most of us would have to go when the gospel and the opportunity to repent and to make covenants wouldn’t even be on the earth.  Everybody couldn’t go when all the conditions would be just right.  Some would have to go when times were hard to prepare the way for the others.  Some would have to go when the knowledge of our Savior and of His ordinances and covenants would be all muddied and misunderstood.  Most would have to go when living conditions were hard, and when there wouldn’t be electricity and refrigeration, and readily-available food and technology and computers and quick transportation and immediate means of communication.

We were told that in the latter times all of these things would be commonplace; and that best of all, there would be temples available where the ordinances and covenants could be administered which are crucial for our exaltation and our return to the Father.  It was explained that those who went later would be given the opportunity to not only make these essential covenants and to receive these crucial ordinances for themselves, but that they would be privileged to go to the temples and vicariously receive them for their ancestors, those who would sacrifice by going early and preparing the way.  We were told that though living conditions would be easier in the latter days, the temptations would be greater.  The opportunities to become disoriented and derailed would be all around.  We might easily become lost if we didn’t keep the Spirit as our daily guide.

Who would come when?  That was the question.

My group was a large one.  Some wondered if they’d have the strength to resist the latter-day temptations.  There was great comfort in knowing that despite having to endure hardships and privations in life, a guarantee would be put in place that ordinances and covenants and opportunities for repentance would be made available.

You and I thought that we’d be strong enough to resist the adversary and the temptations that he’d put in our way.  We thought that our faith was such that we’d be sure to seek and find the Savior and His gospel.

So we made a covenant with those friends who would become our forebears.  If they’d go when times were hard and when essential ordinances and covenants wouldn’t be available, we would go later when the adversary would be raging in the hearts of men, but when temples and the fulness of the gospel would be on the earth.  We promised that we would see to it that the crucial temple ordinances would be performed for them.

So it was that Malachi was directed to end the Old Testament with this dramatic statement and prophecy:

“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 made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers.  It if were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming.”  (D&C 2:1-3).

In other words, the whole purpose of the earth and of mortality would be utterly wasted and for naught if the promises we made to our forebears weren’t kept.

Down through the ages the Jews have taken special notice of Malachi’s prophecy.  They fully expect Elijah to come.  At every Passover meal they set an extra place for him in case he should come.  They hang a chair on the walls of their synagogues so that they can take it down and give him a place to sit when he comes.  They expect that he will come during Passover.

On the third of April, 1836, the Jewish Passover and Christian Easter were occurring on the same day.  I don’t think it was coincidence.  It was also not coincidental that just one week earlier the first temple built in this dispensation had just been dedicated.  It was the Sabbath.  The Restored Church was six years old.  Doctrines and ordinances and knowledge were being restored incrementally, and the time had arrived for Elijah to make his appearance.  Malachi had said that the Priesthood would be revealed by Elijah’s hand.  The Priesthood had already been restored, but not its full powers.  Elijah came to the temple.  He brought the sealing powers, and conferred them upon Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery.  He turned the key which opened our minds to thoughts of our ancestors.  All over the world genealogical societies sprang up.  A burning desire to know about our forebears worked in many people.

Noteworthy inventions were made to facilitate the work that would be unfolding.  Some years ago my father-in-law found an article about a study commissioned by the Union Pacific Railroad.  The researchers who wrote the article pinpointed the year 1830 as the year that the world took off.  That was the beginning point of all the marvelous inventions that currently make our lives what they are today.—Another coincidence?—Not on your life.  There is not such a thing as a coincidence where the gospel plan is concerned.

Do you know why electricity was harnessed and the computer was invented?  It was so that we could do our family history and temple work.  The adversary always steps in and usurps good things for his own evil purposes; but make no mistake about it, the computer is here to facilitate temple work.

Let me read to you what my own non-member grandfather wrote back in the 1940s or 50s.  He asked a question that he couldn’t answer, but which you and I can.