Today, church was a bishopric's dream; All meetings canceled on account of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple dedication. So at 7:00 I went to the usual High Council Meeting and then ushered for the 9:00 dedication session that was telecast into the stake center. I have to admit I didn't give the dedication a whole lot of thought. I figured it would be a repeat of the one for the Jordan River Temple that I'd been to years ago. I was prepared for a nice meeting, not a memorable spiritual feast. But as soon as the meeting was called to order by President Monson, I started receiving a spiritual feast that I wasn't expecting. I suppose it was God's way of nicely explaining to me that the dedication of a temple is not something to be taken casually.
For me, the take-away thought came while we were singing the closing hymn; The Spirit of God Like a Fire. In the second verse it says, "...the knowledge and power of God are expanding; the veil o'er the earth is beginning to burst." I can't remember anything I've ever heard swell up in my heart with much more power than that sentence fragment did this morning. I thought of all of the incredible insights that I've been receiving for the past several months and not just from "church sources". Most of them have come while I've been reading popular fiction or essays and memoirs etc. that have become topics of interest out in the world lately. Some of the things I've read from unlikely sources--like "Autobiography of a Yogi" of all books, have shed new lights on our own theology. In some cases I think a look at a topic from a slightly different angle has just added some insight to a truth I already know, and that if I hadn't already been familiar with the concept, I would have missed the insight entirely. But I've been impressed again and again with the thought that much truth all over the world was once had and has been lost or obfuscated and is now being reintroduced from many sources because people are looking for truth and are prepared to receive it. Not every scrap of truth that is revealed or is being rediscovered or illuminated is going to come from an office in Salt Lake City.
I'm impressed with the thought that in the near future missionaries will explain the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ to people who already believe them and have only been waiting for someone to give them context and a system with which to apply them in their lives. I also am convinced that life-long members of the church are going to discover or rediscover sources of additional doctrine that will intensify the power of what is taught commonly in the church right now. (You have only to casually peruse "The Journal of Discourses" to understand that many things have been revealed that aren't included in standard lesson manuals for Sunday classes. This is probably because it's not comfortable for new members of the church to come to Sunday School or Priesthood meeting and be fed through a fire hose.)
Part of the Golden Plates were sealed and Joseph was instructed not to translate them because the sealed portion contained things that weren't to be revealed until later. I think most church members assume that when the time is right the additional truths will be translated from the formerly-sealed plates and sold at Deseret Book. It may be that they will be revealed simply by being allowed to filter out of the sources already existent on the earth under influence of the Spirit that will confirm to those who find them that they are indeed as true as what's in the canon of scriptures we tote to church each week.
At least I know one thing. If God wants to reveal something to the church, it could very well come in the form of a stanza from a song sung at a temple dedication. He may no longer have a need to send an angel with golden plates to get a message to us.
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