Meridian Magazine--Come Follow Me Latter-day Saint Podcast

February 2-8

The Prophet Joseph said: “The building up of Zion is a cause that has interested the people of God in every age; it is a theme upon which prophets, priests and kings have dwelt with peculiar delight; they have looked forward with joyful anticipation to the day in which we live; and fired with heavenly and joyful anticipations they have sung and written and prophesied of this our day; but they died without the sight; we are the favored people that God has made choice of to bring about the Latter-day glory; it is left for us to see, participate in and help to roll forward the Latter-day glory.” What can we be doing to help to establish Zion? We’re going to talk about it in this episode.

January 26-February 1

It was a beautiful fall day in 1894. The Manti Temple looked glorious as the morning light almost gave it a heavenly glow. My handsome, six-foot-four-inch, twenty-five-year-old Grandfather, Peter Daniel Jensen was there to meet and marry his beautiful twenty-year-old bride, Sarah Jane Rees. Family was gathered and it was indeed a day of joy and happiness. Grandpa was known to be a consistent journal keeper. How would he describe this glorious day in his sacred journal? I have seen what he wrote for Wednesday, September 26, 1894. It simply read:

“Today I married Sarah Jane Rees.”

Adam and Eve also kept a Book of Remembrance and fortunately, they recorded so much more! Let’s talk about that in this episode.

January 19-25

Creation, fall, redemption. These are the three pillars of eternity, the story that was Adam and Eve’s and ours too. It is one grand picture. We think of a book like the Old Testament as being dusty and very far away from us, but in reality it is our first story. It is our story. We think of the war in heaven that first set Satan on his path to put men and women in bondage and chains as something that was handled and finished eons ago, but in reality, that war in heaven was just the first skirmish of a war that is raging ever hotter by the year.

January 12-18

Today are we going back to the beginning, to cosmic explosions and brilliant flashes of light and creation that is primordial, at the very core of our existence. We have four accounts of it, in Genesis, Moses, Abraham, and in the temple. Those who attend the temple have their minds drawn back to creation continually, and we might wonder as Latter-day Saints why we are shown the creation so often. We’ll talk about why it matters so much today.

January 5-11

Don’t all of us have a secret desire to be on the stage, dressed in amazing costumes, involved in a play with a Director, with our own starring roles, with a character-driven plot and lots of intrigue and excitement in our story? Imagine then that you ARE intimately involved in an award-winning three act play and you are already quite far into Act 2. But here’s the catch, you can only fully understand Act 2 if you have a knowledge of Act 1—and when you finished Act 1, the curtains were dropped and you can not only NOT look back on that part of the play, you can’t even remember it. Do we know anything about Act 1 at all? Yes, we do—quite a bit, actually. And that’s what we’re going to talk about in this episode.

Sometimes we feel overwhelmed as we start this particular year of studies in the Old Testament. Perhaps it is the sheer size of the book. Perhaps it is the archaic language and culture. Perhaps it seems to be so disconnected from us in time. But let us remember how the Old Testament permeates all the other scriptures.

December 22-28

Since I was a child, on Christmas Eve, I yearned to be in that very stable in Bethlehem and see the Christ-child lying in a manger.  I wanted to be close to that glowing presence and feel the heavenly love and hear the angel chorus. It was a yearning that was soul deep, undeniable, breath-taking and heart-felt, and it seemed that somewhere, some how that event was happening again on that magic night, if I could just go to Bethlehem, and defy time and find the right place. That was the magic of it all. I could talk to the baby, the Christ-child and He would look at me with knowing, smiling eyes and heart would be satisfied. It was more compelling to me than what Santa Claus would bring me or all the lights and festivities of Christmas. I am not alone in that yearning.

Have we not had a prophet among us? Part of the gift of a prophet, seer and revelator is to see what’s coming. That’s the see-er part of seer. On September 23, 1995, President Hinckley announced and read The Family—A Proclamation to the World to the women of the church in a General Relief Society meeting. It reaffirmed so many things that are precious to us. God’s eternal plan is about families. The plan of salvation is a family story.  In fact, the pre-mortal world was a place where we were nurtured by Heavenly Parents who were invested with extraordinary love in our growth and progress. It is not surprising that connection and relationships would be our foremost joy in this life. Our eternal souls were raised in a place of connection. It is what we are made for. It is an eternal yearning inside of us. Our heaven is not a place of lonely individuals who play harps alone on clouds, but a place of families and communities united together in love. It is a people who have learned to love, even when loving seems difficult.

December 8-14

We know that the Prophet Joseph Smith wrote the Articles of Faith as part of a larger request from Mr. John Wentworth, editor and proprietor of the Chicago Democrat, a brand-new newspaper in the young, bustling city of Chicago. The Democrat would be published for just seven years, from 1842 to 1849. Mr. Wentworth wanted a concise history of the fledgling Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and he wanted it written by its founder, Joseph Smith. The piece was also to be a part of the history of New Hampshire, being compiled by a Mr. George Barstow, a friend of John Wentworth. Joseph agreed to write the piece with this agreement: “As Mr. Barstow has taken the proper steps to obtain correct information, all that I shall ask at his hands is that he publish the account entire, ungarnished, and without misrepresentation.” Joseph carefully compiled the letter but it was never published in the newspaper or any history of New Hampshire. But this letter has become one of the great treasures of Church History.

Something surprised Joseph in his vision of the celestial kingdom, and we’ll tell you what that is in this episode.