President Gordon B. Hinckley
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With 114 temples now in operation around the world, Latter-day Saints should increase their temple service. "These temples have been constructed to be used. We honor our Father as we make use of them . . . I urge you, my brethren and sisters, to utilize the temples of God."
Technology has made it possible for the message of the church to be carried virtually to "every nation, and kindred, and tongue and people . . . We are as one great family, representatives of the human family in this vast and beautiful earth."
Dedication of the Nauvoo Temple in June of this year was a "beautiful memorial to the Prophet Joseph Smith," who had initiated construction of an earlier temple at the site in 1841. "Two years after he came to Nauvoo, he broke ground for a House of the Lord that should stand as a crowning jewel to the work of God. It is difficult to believe that in those conditions and under those circumstances a structure of such magnificence was designed to stand on what was then the frontier of America. . .
"No effort was spared. No sacrifice was too great. Through the next five years men chiseled stone and laid footings and foundation, walls and ornamentation."
The martyrdom of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum on June 27, 1844, did not halt the work on the temple, though the church was severely distressed. But the building was abandoned as the Saints moved West and eventually was destroyed. Its replacement is a "magnificent house of God," Joseph's temple facing "Brigham's temple" in Salt Lake City as a permanent reminder of the sacrifices of those early Saints.
