The 170th Semiannual General Conference will go down in history, if nothing else, as the occasion for the dedication of the immense new Conference Center with its 21,000 seat auditorium and nearly 900-seat adjoining theater.

Unique and expansive as it is, the new facility might be seen as a visual symbol of exciting new vistas that lie before the Church at this dawning of the 21st Century and Third Millennium.

In anticipation of the dedication, which will take place Sunday morning, Oct. 8, 2000, one's thoughts go back 125 years through historical accounts to a comparable occasion. It was the 46th Semiannual General Conference of the Church in October 1875 when the Salt Lake Tabernacle was dedicated.

The Tabernacle had already been in use for eight years before the dedication took place, unlike the Conference Center which was used for the first time just six months ago at April conference. With the addition of a gallery five years before the dedication, seating capacity of the Tabernacle was 10,000, a number that was reduced in later years to about 6,000, a fraction of what the Conference Center can accommodate today.

But the two structures are strikingly similar in this respect: Both are unique in design and highly impressive for the time in which they were built.

The Tabernacle's distinctive domed roof was constructed according to bridge-building techniques, with a lattice work of timbers held together by wooden pegs and rawhide strips.

"We salute President Brigham Young on his boldness in undertaking the construction of this unique and remarkable building [the Tabernacle] at a time when this was still frontier territory," President Gordon B. Hinckley declared at general conference a year ago. "The concept of the design was original. Its builders knew of nothing else quite like it."

As for the Conference Center, it occupies an entire block in downtown Salt Lake City. It is tailor-made for the globally expanding organization that the Church of Jesus Christ in this dispensation has become.

"This is truly a magnificent building," President Hinckley remarked at April conference. "I know of no other comparable structure built primarily as a hall of worship that is so large and that will seat so many."

Like the buildings themselves, the respective times in which they were dedicated are comparable in a way.

As it does today, the Church in 1875 faced exciting, even formidable challenges. Missionaries were going to the states of the Union and the nations of the British Isles and Europe to gather the elect to the Zion established in the tops of the mountains. (See Isaiah 2:2.) At home, there was the task of achieving economic and cultural self sufficiency in isolated frontier communities. And Church leaders' discourses of the period contained urgent admonitions for Latter-day Saints to reform their lives and bring them into conformity with the will of God.

Today, the challenges are similar. The gospel stone cut from the mountain without hands is rolling forth to fill the earth, as prophesied in the second chapter of Daniel. The elect are still being gathered but, these days, they remain to establish or strengthen stakes of Zion where they live.

And President Hinckley, a prophet for our time, has reminded Latter-day Saints that they ought to be the best people on earth, given what they have received and what they understand.

As it did 125 years ago the message of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ, revealed through Latter-day prophets, will continue to emanate from Church headquarters in downtown Salt Lake City. The physical platform may be a bit different these days, but the character of the message will remain as it has always been.

In fact, these words spoken by Brigham Young at the opening session of October Conference in 1875 could well be adapted to apply to the 170th Semiannual General Conference's sessions:

"We purpose at this conference to dedicate this Tabernacle. . .We shall occupy the time throughout this conference in talking to the Latter-day Saints, giving them such instructions and advice as we have for them, trusting that each and every heart may possess a due portion of the Spirit of God, so that the Saints may be strengthened, and that the truth may be taught in simplicity and may commend itself to those who are as yet unacquainted with it."