Knowing God through the Pearl of Great Price   The Pearl of Great Price Lecture 02 by Hyrum Andrus
Channel: Light and Truth
Date: 2016-07-16

Hyrum L. Andrus
All rights reserved January 25-27, 1996
LECTURE - 2 KNOWING GOD THROUGH THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE
It is a thrill to be with you again this morning and feel the spirit that you bring here. I’m going to follow the pattern the Nephite prophets followed in the Book of Mormon. Jacob, just as a case in point, gives us two beautiful chapters on Isaiah and they deal with the prophetic picture of the latter days, 2 Nephi, chapters 7 and 8. Then he opens up in chapter 9 in one of the most beautiful discourses on Christ, with the indication that Christ is the center of it all. The whole thing centers in him. The Gospel certainly is centered in him and named after him, though it is the Father’s plan.
The temple is the Temple of the Lord. Every symbol in the temple is symbolic of Christ and the whole thing is symbolic of that divine order that centers in him. The sacred historical portrayals recount the great vision of Christ. His Kingdom, of Mount Zion, and the temple robes are symbolic. Every feature of them is symbolic, and if you knew the symbolism of the temple ordinance, the temple robe, you would know more by far than I would dare to teach. It is just beautiful and that is why it is so important and necessary to see things with the central focus on Christ and his Atonement.
So, having said something last night about the Holy Order through the ages, and the emphasis of The Pearl of Great Price on it---the whole antediluvian period was founded on that sacred eternal program. Abraham’s life was founded on it and the Prophet Joseph’s great vision and effort was to get us fully grounded and established in the program in this dispensation so that there can truly be a restitution of all things. Having said a few things in that sense last night, I’d like to turn to the subject of knowing God through The Pearl of Great Price.
To begin with let me say that The Pearl of Great Price contains accounts of God’s revelations to man through most of the major dispensations of the Gospel. To Adam, to Enoch, to Noah, to Abraham, to Moses, to Jesus, and to Joseph Smith. In this sense it is an interesting volume of scripture, which gives us a panoramic view
of many things.
We have the account of the First Vision, and this was momentous, not only in the sense of opening the greatest of all God’s dispensations on this earth, but if I may add, all the dispensations on all of his earths. It was momentous in that sense. This is the great redemptive earth and the dispensation of the fulness of times. It is the redemptive dispensation--we are a part of it and the order of things in relation to God’s work is that the last should be first, as he says in Section 29.
He says, “...the first shall be last, and the last shall be first in all things whatsoever I have created by the word of my power,...” And so in the great councils of heaven God ordained Joseph to be first, next to Christ. Then he ordained that the dispensation would become last because of its consummation and its character. Then he ordained that if we do the work of this dispensation and fulfill the program of this dispensation, in the final analysis things will come back. The last will be first again. Now that is the order of things. That is on the occasion when Peter, speaking for the apostles, asked Jesus: “Behold, we have forsaken all and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?
Then the Savior explains. He says, “Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Now, that is why the three chief apostles play a predominate roll in the Holy Endowment. This is in Matthew 19, beginning with verse 27.
Then he tells the basis of judgment, the basis of rewards, if I can put it that way. He says: “And every one that have forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my names sake shall receive an hundred fold and shall inherit everlasting life.” [Matthew 19: 29] Now he didn’t say every faithful person is going to be exalted to be an apostle or president of the stake or a high council in eternity. He is not talking about that because the eternal order is the family order and there is more to it than the nuclear family. Seriously. Abraham teaches us that. He is the father of the faithful. He is that father of all who are born again. As Joseph used to say to the brethren in this dispensation: “Am I your father?” And the answer was: “Yes, you are our father.”

There is a program that embraces and sanctifies and builds upon the nuclear family. The individual family, but it extends in Christ beyond that. So he says: “And everyone that has forsaken f… Get the full transcription from www.hyrumandrus.com!