Lessons from the Doctrine and Covenants 2021
Lesson No. Thirty-One

The Plan of Ordinances and the Power of God - D&C 84:19-22

The revelation on the priesthood contained in D&C 84 was an important step in the restoration of temple worship – A few months after the Book of Mormon was published and the Church of Jesus Christ was organized the Prophet Joseph Smith received a revelation relating to the temple.  He was commanded to “go to the Ohio; and there I will give unto you my law; and there you shall be endowed with power from on high” (D&C 38:32).  The revelation on the priesthood found in D&C 84 came in Kirtland Ohio on September 22, 1832, the Fall equinox and nine years to the day after Moroni’s first visit.  From here on the restoration of temple worship was the primary focus of Joseph’s life.

The plan of ordinances as administered in the temple is an essential part of the plan of salvation – The plan of salvation is the way that we must follow to become like our Heavenly Parents.  The atonement is central to the plan of salvation.  All gospel ordinances pertain to and remind us of the atonement.  This is especially true in the temple.  “Whenever the Lord has had a people on the earth who will obey his word, they have been commanded to build temples in which the ordinances of the gospel…that pertain to exaltation and eternal life may be administered” (LDS Bible Dictionary, Temple, p. 781).  In Nauvoo while restoring temple worship Joseph Smith spoke of "the plan of ordinances for the salvation of [Adam's] posterity unto the end" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 167).  The plan of ordinances as administered in the temple is an essential part of the plan of salvation.

The ordinances of the temple unlock the full power of the redemption and resurrection  – “And this greater priesthood administereth the gospel and holdeth the key of the mysteries of the kingdom, even the key of the knowledge of God.  Therefore, in the ordinances thereof, the power of godliness is manifest.  And without the ordinances thereof, and the authority of the priesthood, the power of godliness is not manifest unto men in the flesh; For without this no man can see the face of God, even the Father, and live” (D&C 84:19-22).  By receiving temple ordinances and living temple covenants men and women receive the full redemptive power of the atonement and the power of the resurrection.  In this way they can enter into the presence of our Heavenly Father and see His face.

“Power is knowledge made useful and active” This universal truth as taught by John A. Widtsoe, a longtime member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, certainly applies to the temple.  In the temple we learn more about the plan of salvation than anywhere else.  It is in the temple that we receive “the key of the mysteries of the kingdom, even the key of the knowledge of God” (D&C 84:19).  This knowledge is made useful and active, and the “power of godliness is manifest” (D&C 84:20) because both men and women receive power in the priesthood receiving temple ordinances and keeping temple covenants.

The ordinances of the temple are eternal – The Prophet Joseph Smith taught that "the ordinances of the gospel...were laid out before the foundations of the world" and "are not to be altered or changed.  All must be saved on the same principles....If a man gets the fulness of the priesthood of God, he has to get it in the same way that Jesus Christ obtained it, and that was by keeping all the commandments and obeying all the ordinances of the House of the Lord" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 367, 308). There are ordinances performed in temples in the spirit world which make effective the vicarious work we do in our temples.  (See The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, P. 252-53)  The priesthood and priesthood ordinances are eternal and essential.  Ordinances are performed by the priesthood in the pre-earth life, in mortality, in the spirit world, and in eternity after the resurrection.

The ordinances of the temple unlock the full power of the redemption and of the resurrection – In the spirit world the Lord taught the righteous spirits, and I believe it was through an ordinance that He "gave them power  to come forth, after his resurrection from the dead, to enter into his Father's kingdom, there to be crowned with immortality and eternal life"  (D&C 138:51).  In the marriage ordinance of the temple, conditioned on faithfulness, we receive this same power and blessing, which “is the greatest of all the gifts of God” (1 Nephi 15:36).