“When my father was a young lad on the farm out west of Eugene he followed his father and four older brothers around the wheat field.  Each carried a short steel sickle, and as the wheat fell from the blade, it fell onto the reaper’s left arm; and when a sizable bundle had accumulated, the reaper bound it together with a wisp of the newly cut straw, dropped it in the stubble and swung his blade to start another bundle.  Around and around the field, each reaper cutting right at the heels of the man next before him.

“Grandfather and his boys were harvesting the grain they had planted that the family might be fed.  They knew of no other way of getting the harvest in.  All men harvested just as they were doing.  There was no other way.  Looking back from where we stand today we see that they were practicing the identical method used by the reapers who labored in the field of Boaz where Ruth the Moabitess gleaned.  The picture was the same.  Thirty one hundred years had passed without any change in this most essential and much used process.

“When these bundles of wheat had lain out in the sun a sufficient time to cure and harden, Grandfather and the boys were again in the field, this time with oxen and wagons and hauled the bundles to the barnyard where they were piled in great weather proof stacks.  Then when thrashing day came, the bundles were pitched down on the hard-beaten ground of the yard, and horses and oxen were driven around and around over the ground until the straw was separated from the wheat.  Again we see the picture as no different than that of the Children of Israel thrashing out the grain on the thrashing floors of Pharaoh thirty five hundred years before.

“And Grandfather had told his sons of the trip to America from Scotland just a few years before.  How they had made the crossing in a wind-driven sailing ship.  Just such a ship as had bourn the venturesome Phoenicians on their voyages into the unknown world of two thousand B.C.

“Since those remote days the world had stood still with little change.  Gunpowder, the printing press, yes, and a few of man’s new ideas had come on the scene, but the progress of mankind and of the world was largely unchanged.  It can truly be said that at the time my people came to the Oregon country the forward progress of man was still geared to the slow, measured tread of the oxen.

“Note now the things which have happened in my father’s day and mine.  Things which were unknown to an earlier generation.  The new things which have come about.  The list is limitless.  The harnessing and uses of electricity.  An understanding of the world of bacteriology and its uses in protecting human life.  The telephone, the radio, television, radar.  The use of steam and the railways.  Petroleum and its thousand uses.  The airplane and its world-wide service.  Each one of these innovations and a hundred more has stepped up the pace at which the world is moving from the four miles an hour tread of the ox to a fantastic speed much faster than that of sound.  Why has all this come to pass in our time?  Why was it that God in his infinite wisdom did permit the world to stand still for three thousand years and then in your time and mine pull the plug as it were and permit the world to rush to its full and final destiny?  That is truly the sixty-four dollar question of our day.”

The world is indeed rushing toward its full and final destiny.  That destiny is the Second Coming of our Lord and Savior.  It’s at the doors.  The Lord said it was the 11th hour back in October 1830 when He gave Section 33 of the Doctrine and Covenants.  If the zero hour was the birth of the Savior, and if the 11th hour begins at ten o’clock, you can mathematically calculate when the clock will strike twelve, and the Savior will come.  I did that years ago back when I was in college.  Using those calculations I was able to predict that the Second Coming would be in 1989!

So in that respect the Second Coming is overdue, and we’re living on borrowed time, but it’s surely coming.  It doesn’t require a prophet to be able to look around and see the signs.

I’m proud of the Saints.  I’m proud of what they’re doing in the temple to prepare for the Lord’s coming, but it also brings me a personal worry.  I believe the Meridian Temple was intended to be self-sustaining, meaning that the names of the dead for whom work is being done would be largely supplied by the patrons who come.  You, as a patron, can just come to the temple, and if you don’t bring your own computer-generated cards, the temple will supply you with a name for whom you can do an endowment.  Or they’ll give you a list of 5 or10 names for whom you can do initiatory work.  Or they’ll give a youth four names for whom he or she can be baptized.  It used to be that the youth would be given 10 or more each, but so many youth are coming to the temple to do baptisms and confirmations, that in order to accommodate all comers, that number had to be reduced to just four.—Unless you bring your own family names.  Then the ordinance workers are instructed to try to get as many of those names done as possible.

And herein lies my worry and my problem.  Patrons take precedence over ordinance workers.  I have dozens of temple ordinance cards of names of my relatives whose work needs to be done, and though I’m in the temple every week for six or seven hours, there’s no time for me to do my own names.  If the initiatory or sealing areas of the temple aren’t busy, then I, as an ordinance worker, can become a patron and do my own names.  But so many people are coming to the temple that there’s no room or time for me to do my own work.  It’s wonderful, but it’s distressing, too.  What if the Second Coming happens and I don’t have my work done?  What if the ten tribes come and occupy the temples with their own names, as is prophesied will happen, and I can’t get in to do my own work?

I began serving in the Boise Temple just before the Twin Falls Temple opened and a large part of the Boise Temple district was split off to be serviced by the Twin Falls Temple.  Logically you would think that losing that large chunk of population would have had an adverse effect on the total ordinance work that the Boise Temple would do.  Yet one year after the opening of the Twin Falls Temple, the Boise Temple president reported that the total ordinance work done in the Boise Temple had increased 11%.

Fourteen months ago the 32 stakes that comprised the Boise Temple district were divided in half.  The Boise Temple and the Meridian Temple each got 16.  I have no idea how that has affected the total ordinance work, but lately the Meridian Temple has been filled.  Things often get quiet in the temple on Wednesday afternoons, but lately that hasn’t been the case.  The Saints are coming, and they’re coming with their own names.  At the veil well over 50% of the patrons hand me their own home-generated family cards.  (I recently kept a running tally for several weeks.  It was 86%).

I officiate endowment sessions, but I never get to do an endowment myself.  I have piles of initiatory work to be done, but I have to administer washings and anointings rather than receive them for my ancestors.  I go to sealing sessions, but my sealings get bumped in favor of the sealings brought in by patrons.

It’s truly wonderful, and very exciting.  Once a week we get to go and work in that sacred, holy atmosphere where there are no hard feelings or backbiting or bad language.  There are a hundred workers on our shift, and every one of them is a Saint.  It is a pleasure to work with them.  It requires about 1,400 workers to run the 14 shifts at the Meridian Temple.  Multiply that by all the temples around the world and we’re told that there are some 220,000 temple ordinance workers.

President Joseph F. Smith was in Rotterdam, the Netherlands in 1906 and prophesied that temples would dot the land of Europe.  There were no temples then in Europe.  One month from today Europe’s 14th temple will be dedicated.  It will be in Rome, Italy, of all places.

The Church currently has 201 temples operating, announced, or under construction.  That’s astonishing.  More astonishing is that Brigham Young prophesied that there will be thousands.

More astonishing yet is that you and I get to be part of this work.  We’ve been privileged to live when we could receive these crucial ordinances for ourselves.  Few people in the history of the world have had that privilege.  President Nelson considers that his covenants are his most important accomplishment.  President Eyring says that nothing is more important than temple covenants.  Elder Jeffrey R. Holland notes that temple covenants and ordinances are the heart and soul of our purpose in mortality.  Boyd K. Packer said that the temple ordinances are our credentials for coming back into the presence of God.

Sometimes when I’m officiating in the part of the endowment that comprises the initiatory ordinances I become stunned by the magnitude of what I’m doing.  Under authority, I’m performing the same ordinances that were given to Adam.  They’re binding, and will be recognized by God through all eternity.  The blessings and the power that are therein are truly astonishing.  If you haven’t done any initiatory work lately, ask to do it the next time you go to the temple.

And more astonishing than anything is how this work is received by the people for whom we’re officiating.

1. Russell Ballard is the Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. His grandfather, Melvin J. Ballard, was also an Apostle. Melvin J. Ballard was once acting as witness in the Logan Temple for the baptisms of 1,000 people.  He fell to wondering how those ordinances were received by the people on the other side of the veil for whom the work was being done.  He said that a vision opened to him of a multitude of people dressed in white waiting at a staircase on the other side of the room.  As each name was read, a person would ascend the staircase, watch the baptism, smile, and then move on.  He said that there was a person there for every name!  He went throughout the Church, from that time on, testifying that when work is done for a deceased person in the temple, that person is there to witness what is being done in his or her behalf.  Wilford Woodruff said in general conference in April 1894 that “there will be few if any who will not receive the ordinances of the temple when they are performed for them.”

This past year I completed a goal.  Knowing how much I love my own grandchildren, and feeling great anxieties and desires for them, I’m sure that my own grandparents have the same feelings.  They’re not far away, and according to Joseph Smith, know and understand all of our thoughts, words, and actions, and are often pained therewith.  Perhaps even more so, they might be pained by our inactions.

The goal I set was to find and do temple work for all of the descendants born before 110 years ago of my great, great grandparents.  I did it.  I’ve now extended that goal to all descendants of the 16 sets of my great, great, great grandparents.  Over the past month or six weeks I’ve worked on the descendants of Andrew and Helen, born 1778.  I had Linda Rich come to my home and show me how to do it.  I estimate that I sifted through some 500 people looking for the records of spouses and children that weren’t in the system, and straightening out all the records as I went.

I said that the names weren’t in the system, but the people are there in the Internet ether just waiting to be found and entered.  It’s surprisingly easy.  It’s not like it used to be.  I found every one of Andrew’s and Helen’s descendants down to the year 1910, and generated about 200 names for whom I now have to do temple ordinance work.

I wake up feeling happy and excited every day.  I’m a member of the Lord’s true Church.  I have my own ordinances and covenants.  So do my children and grandchildren.  So do my grandparents back a long, long ways.  Much of that work wasn’t done by me, but I’m a connected, integral link in a long, long chain.

In the not-too-distant future I look forward to meeting these great, great, great grandparents, and I’m expecting them to be very happy to see me.

Life is tremendously exciting.  Life is good when you have the knowledge and opportunities that Church members have.

Let us not be complacent about these blessings.  It’s not possible for us to do all things, but it is possible for each of us to do something.  Make time to go to the temple.  Set aside the extra time that the Brethren have given us on the Sabbath to sit down and organize your families.  Invite one of our ward temple and family history consultants to come to your home and show you how to generate family names that you can take to the temple.  Linda and the Smiths and Erma and Barbara and Millie would like nothing better than to teach you.  You’ll become excited about family history, you’ll become excited about temple attendance, and you and your children and your ancestors will all be blessed.