2.61 I Love the Lord's House

In Matthew 5:13, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth, a bold reminder that our lives are meant to carry his flavor, his truth, and his love to the world. Join me each day to explore one verse of scripture and one thought, striving to stay full of savor and truly live as savory salt. Hello, my friends.

Great to have you with me. Today, let's be anxiously engaged in a good cause and bring to pass much righteousness. A message today about the house of the Lord.

We are wrapping up our readings this week of Doctrine and Covenants section 18, as well as 2 Nephi chapters 10 through 14. We're going to start diving on the 2 Nephi side of things into more and more of the Isaiah chapters. And I just want to note that at this stage, we're at the, let's see, what is this?

The 61st episode of this season. Congratulations for going through this. That means we're basically two months into our continued daily study and reading.

So well done on that side of things as well. That is, I hope for you. I know for me, it's become a wonderful habit to dive into the scriptures every day.

I love it. I look forward to it. And today, another thing I look forward to as I share the verse today with you.

I know that we're reading through 2 Nephi 14, but this week I really just got, I guess, stuck is the right word, but I got stuck in 2 Nephi 11 and 12 and really had some great stuff inside of there. So make sure you get through 14, but our verse is going to come from 2 Nephi chapter 12, verse 2. It is very common for those of us that have kind of been around in the Latter-day Saint world for a while, because there are many that take a direct interpretation of this.

That's not the direction I'm going to go today, but let's look at verse 2. It says: "And it shall come to pass in the last days, when the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it." Now, as I mentioned, the direct prophecy correlation that people talk about is how cool it was that Salt Lake hosted the Olympics and how cool they're going to host the Olympics again. The House of the Lord being in the mountains, that must be the Salt Lake Temple, all those types of things.

I get those interpretations. I'm not going to discount them and I'm not going to talk deeper into them. What I think is interesting inside of this one is I already mentioned the excitement that I have over the opening of the Salt Lake Temple and the open house in 2027 from April to October.

And I've already started sharing it with my friends. My friends, two thoughts come out of this one. One, I have learned to love the Lord's house.

I love being there. I love attending the temple, and I love the new habits that are forming for me in terms of my focus on the attendance of the temple. The second one is a thought that comes out of this: as we dive into these Isaiah chapters, I spent more time diving into, what would you say, like the apostolic General Conferences, as I mentioned throughout this week.

And one of them took me to, at the time it was Elder Nelson, now he's our president, Russell M. Nelson, from October of 1999. In it, he has actually a footnote piece here that I wanted to talk directly about from 2 Nephi 12.

He says this: "In the English language edition, more than half (about 233 verses) differ in some detail from their biblical counterpart, while about 200 verses have the same wording as King James Version. One scholar of Isaiah documents that no less than 391 of the verses refer to the attributes, appearance, majesty, and mission of Jesus Christ." Elder Jeffrey R. Holland has classified the teachings of Isaiah as recorded in the Book of Mormon into five topical categories: 1.

Christ's birth and mortal ministry. 2. Christ visits the spirits in prison. 3. Christ shows kindness to and preserves Zion in the last days. 4.

The Millennial Christ. 5. The Crucifixion and Atonement. My friends, I'm excited to dive into the Isaiah chapters again.

A reminder from last season, I don't understand them all the time, but what I can look for are these five different views and testimonies of Jesus Christ. Isaiah truly testifies of Jesus Christ. The Book of Mormon testifies of Jesus Christ.

And today our living apostles and prophets testify of Jesus Christ. I add my own testimony that he lives and loves us and that we can find him as we seek him in all faith. That's all for today, my friends.

Lift up your hearts and rejoice. Cleave unto the covenants you have made, and together we will be savory salt.