Introduction

We’ll Ascend Together

Prophets from Adam on down have foreseen our day. They’ve talked about our day, when Israel will be gathered, and the world will be prepared for the Second Coming. But of all people who have ever come to earth, we are the ones who get to play on the team. Everybody else have just been spectators.

Russell M. Nelson, Seminar for new MTC presidents and Visitors’ Center Directors, Jan. 16, 2014

I believe that we have Parents in Heaven, Father and Mother that love us, each one of us, beyond any mortal comprehension of pure love.  They long to give us every blessing, every good gift, and every opportunity to return home to them. They have left – like a trail of proverbial breadcrumbs – symbols of eternal truths once known so well in our premortal existence, as road marks along our earthly path. 

These symbols and signs, including types and shadows found in scripture and modern day revelation from prophets, dreams, and visions are more than just a reminder of eternal parents’ love. They are messages. Important, urgent messages sent to prepare us for the days we now live in, our individual mission on earth, to heal family lines, and lead us home. “Faith cometh not by signs, but signs follow those that believe” (D&C 63:9). Signs remind God’s children of covenants the Lord has made with them and bears witness of divine callings or the Lord’s disapproval (LDS library; Gospel Topics, Signs). 

Though our individual missions and ultimate exaltation are personal, we could never be successful on either matter without the influence, assistance, and love of other sons and daughters of God. And as the Quaker proverb declares, “Thee lift me and I’ll lift thee, and we’ll ascend together.” Each divine relationship, no matter how significant or casual, with any one of God’s children during our sojourn on earth is meant to bring us to God. Our relationships, like types and shadows, teach lessons that have the potential to lead us home and gives us a glimpse of heaven. Though no relationship is as important as the eternal covenant relationship between a husband, wife, and God.

Why are these symbols and interactions so important? I could answer by simply turning to the example of the Savior during his earthly ministry. Christ taught using parables, symbolic stories or comparisons which invites the willing and worthy hearer to ponder, pray, and study the scriptures for further understanding of heavenly messages. Simultaneously, parables allow those ready and willing to receive greater light and truth while protecting those unprepared from condemnation from gaining knowledge that they were neither worthy nor prepared to receive yet. 

Christ was and is the fulfillment of all the ancient prophecies concerning His coming and sacred mission from before the world was. “All ancient prophets typify Christ, just as all modern prophets symbolize Him.” The Lord is able to intersperse deeply woven symbolism and types throughout human history without mortal interference and without distorting historical facts. “Symbols serve as signs of something they represent, without necessarily being similar in any respect, whereas types resemble in one or more ways the things they prefigure….Types point forward in time; whereas symbols may not. A type always precedes historically its antitype, whereas a symbol may precede, exist concurrently with, or come after the thing which it symbolizes”(Alonzo L. Gaskill, The Lost Language of Symbolism, p.6).

Are symbols, types, signs, and parables found in our lives today? Let me answer with another question: have miracles ceased? “And now, my brethren, if this be the case that these things are true which I have spoken unto you, and God will show unto you, with power and great glory at the last day, that they are true, and if they are true has the day of miracles ceased? Or have angels ceased to appear unto the children of men? Or has he withheld the power of the Holy Ghost from them? Or will he, so long as time shall last, or the earth shall stand, or there shall be one man upon the face thereof to be saved? Behold I say unto you, Nay; for it is by faith that miracles are wrought; and it is by faith that angels appear and minister unto men…For no man can be saved, according to the words of Christ, save they shall have faith in his name…” (Moroni 7:35-38).  

There are still miracles today! Right now. 

I believe that our loving Heavenly Father prepared a way that we might cultivate this faith while experiencing testing during earth life, and thus receive our inheritance, even exaltation (D&C 88:107). Premortally we may have been organized into family units, in like manner that Christ organized the 5000 souls he was about to feed as he taught them near the sea of Galilee into companies of 100s and 50s. We too may have been organized into family units in preparation for our mortal journey. “Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences [spirit children of God] that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones” (Abraham 3:22).

When you feel that there is only a thin thread of hope, it is really not a thread but a massive connecting link, like a life preserver to strengthen and lift you.

Richard G. Scott

I believe we are connected, bound together, and interwoven with our Heavenly Parents and their children – a family. Imagine each individual as a single fiber bound tightly among countless others to make a strong rope; secured to “…the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God… which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall” (Helaman 5:12). This familial rope, tied to and anchored in the atoning power of the Lord Jesus Christ, can be lowered down like a lifeline as we use our agency to call upon God and angels for assistance. 

This is a promise. “And whoso receiveth you, there I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up” (D&C 84:88). We are still family, spiritually linked as sons and daughters of divine parentage. Likewise our spirit and body are linked together to form our eternal soul, and we are eternally linked to other souls as well.  

The prophet Elijah came to the temple in Kirkland on April 3, 1836 and fulfilled Malachi’s prophecy that before the great day of the Lord, His second coming, “that he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers”. This became even more evident when in the 2018 April General Conference, President Russell M. Nelson invited “…all of God’s children on both sides of the veil to come unto their Savior, receive the blessings of the holy temple, have enduring joy, and qualify for eternal life.” (Let Us All Press On, Apr. 2018, GC). 

The lifelines are being thrown out to us like never before. Our forefathers, our family, are reaching down for us and we must reach for them. Our part of the reaching is more than an ethereal notion. We reach to them as we find their names and stories and eternally seal families in the holy temples. Their written or oral stories are only one part of this linking chain. We literally hold within us the memories, struggles, and love of our ancestors. From every microscopic bacterium embedded in the lining of the intestines, to the very DNA of each cell in our body. We carry with us those who went before us in mortality. We are far more connected than we realize.

The Lord has revealed to his prophets since the beginning the meanings and importance of understanding these symbols and heavenly messages. If we are paying attention, the Holy Ghost will open our spiritual eyes and reveal to our understanding the same, “that the works of God should be made manifest…”(John 9:3). It is becoming more and more imperative for the manifestations of the works of God to become evident to take place on a personal level as we approach the long awaited and prophesied Second Coming of our Messiah and King. 

As we allow our experiences to open our spiritual eyes and gain this new perspective, precept upon eternal precept, we will add to and strengthen our family lifeline that leads home to God. We will be more securely tied to our Savior, one another, and our heavenly home. It will be necessary, imperative, that we be so, because we live in the latter days – the final hour, the twilight before the morning when the Son of God will return in glory for the second time to reign and dwell with His saints forever. And the Lord has a work for you to do. Indeed, “…we through our faith may begin to inherit the visions and blessings and glories of God” because the “veil o’er the earth is beginning to burst!” (The Spirit of God, Hymn 2)