KIRTLAND, Ohio — The multimillion-dollar restoration of buildings that played a major role in the early days of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints entails much more than re-creating a historic village, church President Gordon B. Hinckley said Saturday in Kirtland.
"Here in this place there has been brought to life something of the spirit of God at work in the hearts of faithful people," President Hinckley said.
He opened his remarks praising the generosity of several church members, including Bob Gay of Bain Capital in Boston, who gave $25,000 — and then also donated a "blank check, except for the signatures." Other familiar donors included Steve Young and Alan and Karen Ashton. He said their financial contributions, in combination with church funds, made the restoration of what is being called "Historic Kirtland" a reality.
President Hinckley will dedicate the restored village today at 2 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.
Speaking in a broadcast from the Kirtland Stake Center to groups of Latter-day Saints gathered in chapels across Ohio, President Hinckley said many will view the church's re-creation of Historic Kirtland "as a restoration of historic Americana.
"But this is more than Americana," he said, noting those gathered had returned to Kirtland "in love and peace."
Thousands of early church members were persecuted and several church leaders apostatized following the collapse of the Kirtland Safety Society, a short-lived bank established by church founder Joseph Smith in 1837 that was felled by a national financial panic. The tumult resulted in heavy financial losses for members who either left their property outright or sold it for mere cents on the dollar as they followed Joseph Smith from Kirtland to new settlements in Missouri.
The financial carnage was an evil counter to the spiritual outpourings church leaders and members experienced in Kirtland, President Hinckley said, as land speculation and greed turned residents against their neighbors.
Still, the church was nurtured beyond infancy here. The faith's first temple was built, its priesthood quorums organized and the missionary effort for which it is known today had its genesis in Kirtland, the church's headquarters from 1831 to 1838.
He said those years represented "the elementary education" phase of a faith that has now matured into a worldwide church. Basic doctrines and church organization were established during that time, President Hinckley said, through revelations and personal appearances of New Testament figures including Jesus Christ, Moses, Elias and Elijah that restored Christ's original gospel to Earth.
Elder Neal A. Maxwell of the Council of the Twelve said heavenly revelations and manifestations were so prevalent in Kirtland during the early days of the church that he thinks of them as the "Kirtland cascade."
"These revelations came in such abundance that we really haven't had the time to fully inventory the revelations of the restoration," he said. "Another thing we have yet to do fully is develop ways to see their interconnectedness."
LDS truths revealed in Kirtland include the answers to "life's most wrenching questions," Elder Maxwell said. They include the literal brotherhood of man as children of one eternal Father, enabling "a changed view of God and our own identity."
|
Dedication set for 'Historic Kirtland'
Reconstruction has been nearly free from public protest
Also revealed in Kirtland was an expansion on the Christian doctrine of life after death, he said, giving Latter-day Saints a "gospel grammar" that sees death not as "an exclamation point or even a period. It's merely a comma" in the scheme of eternal life.
President Hinckley called local resident Karl Andersen to the podium, thanking him for his decades of persistence in seeing the project through to completion. Andersen, a former LDS stake president in the area, said Ezra Taft Benson, later an LDS Church president, had come to Kirtland years ago as an LDS apostle and declared that the "curse" pronounced by one early church leader on the city had been lifted. He quoted Joseph Smith as saying, upon leaving the city, that "Kirtland will yet see great and glorious days."
Andersen believes those days have finally arrived.
E-mail: carrie@desnews.com