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Approaching Holiness: Exploring the History and Teachings of the Old Testament
Approaching Holiness aims to assist in the personal and family study of the history and teachings of the Old Testament. The book gathers some of the clearest writings on the Old Testament that have been published by the Religious Studies Center at Brigham Young University. The Old Testament is not only foundational to our understanding of the birth, life, Atonement, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of the Savior, but it also teaches us about God, our faith history, and the spiritual heritage of the house of Israel.
- GenresReligion
490 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 21, 2022
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April 17, 2022
This is an interesting compilation of religious research about the Old Testament and particularly about holiness and seeking God in our lives. I recently read another BYU Religious Studies Center book about the Old Testament and liked that one a little bit better, but there are some interesting insights here. Here are some of my favorites:
"President M. Russell Ballard described the significance of the Old Testament as 'the first testament of Christ... which predicted and prophesied of the coming of the Savior, His transcendent life, and His liberating Atonement.' The Old Testament is foundation to our understanding of the birth, life, atonement, crucifixion, and resurrection of the Savior... The weight and magnitude of the mission of the Messiah is revealed in the thousands of years of history outlined in the Old Testament (p. IX)."
"'This shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel;... I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people' (Jeremiah 31:33). I wish to discuss with you the covenants of the Lord and the ordinances which are associated with these covenants... the Lord continually strives to write these covenants in our hearts (p. 3)."
"The purpose of the scriptures is to explain the details of the plan of salvation (p. 4)."
"'Ordinances and covenants become our credentials for admission into His presence. To worthily receive them is the quest of a lifetime; to keep them thereafter is the challenge of mortality (Boyd K. Packer, p. 7).'"
"Joseph's life is one of the greatest examples of one having the laws of God written in his heart (p. 10)."
"The holy temple is well suited for a loving Heavenly Father to write his laws upon our hearts (p. 15)."
"If the living waters issuing from the temple can heal the Dead Sea, the living waters can also heal an unhappy marriage, refresh a parched testimony, restore a broken heart, and mend a strained relationship with neighbors or family members. They can give us all a new heart (p. 15)."
"The meaning of the title Messiah or Christ is a key to understanding the role of Jehovah in the plan of salvation (p. 20)."
"Through his atonement, Jesus Christ rent the veil, inviting all who would follow in his name to enter back into the presence of his Father (p. 35)."
"Our first Old Testament event in the New Testament is the triumphal entry, perhaps the New Testament's ultimate example of praise and worship (p. 38)."
"The purpose of the triumphal entry was to proclaim who Jesus was, to identify the man Jesus of Nazareth with the holy Messiah who would come at the end of time. Thus his earthly life and ministry were themselves both prophecies and signs of his millennial reign... In the Palm Sunday event, the connection between the Old Testament and Easter starts to become clear. Jehovah, the God of ancient Israel, would triumph over Israel's foes and reign over all the world as King of Kings. Jesus's messianic triumph over death and sin would show him to be not only Israel's promised Messiah but also Israel's God (p. 40)."
"In the Old Testament's praise and worship, God is associated strongly with light. He is its source and provides its sustaining power (p. 44)."
"The message of Christ is indeed not absent from the Old Testament... Israel's temple worship taught the Christian gospel, because vicarious atonement and subsequent forgiveness are at the very heart of the temple sacrifices (p. 46)."
"Christ himself was to be God's sacrificial lamb... Israel's Messiah was Jehovah himself, something not always clear in the Old Testament (p. 47)."
"The principle of hesed may be one of the most important doctrinal concepts in the Old Testament (p. 49)."
"Hesed is a characteristic common to both the nature of man and his relationship to the nature of God (p. 50)."
"Hesed is assumed in relationship (p. 54)."
"Truth highlights the eternal nature of God's hesed... he also gives us the power to change ourselves as well as delivering us out of situations that we cannot control (p. 58)."
"'I have trusted in thy hesed (mercy)' (Psalm 13:5)... 'I trust in the hesed (mercy) of God for ever and ever' (Pslam 52:8, p. 58)."
"'Blessed be God, which hath not turned away my prayer, nor his hesed (mercy) from me' (Psalm 66:20, p. 59)."
"Hesed is associated with the concept of truth and is thus a reliable, 'real' concept that we can trust. God's reliability is proven by his acts of hesed, which in turn demonstrate his continued, conscious awareness of the individual who receives the act of hesed (p. 61)."
"Delivering man is not just God's work, but also his glory (p. 62)."
"The expression halelu-yah/Hallelujah/Alleluia contains the name of the Lord Jehovah and has functioned as a joyful yet reverent expression of praise for his goodness and mercy for thousands of years (p. 71)."
"The Lord indicates... that Sabbath observance is a sign of his covenant relationship with his people, and that Sabbath observance demonstrates recognition that it is he, Jehovah, who sanctifies his people (p. 73)."
"Moving beyond worldly rest to divine rest on and through yom hassabbat, 'the day of Sabbath,' brings the blessings of heaven in various and powerful ways, as promised by the Lord in Isaiah 58:13-14 and elsewhere (p. 73)."
"Surprisingly, the name Jehovah occurs independently only four times in the King James translation of the Old Testament. When it does, it is printed in capital letters... Jehovah does not appear more often... because the translators were influenced by a Jewish custom... of not pronouncing the divine name yhwh out of respect for its sacred nature. This necessitated substituting a title in its place (p. 77)."
"The prayer gesture of raising the hands may also have been part of a series of 'gestures of approach' performed as one drew near to the presence of deity (p. 100)."
"The main way the Old Testament frames human relationships with God is whether people make and keep a covenant with him (p. 105)."
"Each individual member of the covenant community must personally enter into this covenant. Thus the covenant is continually renewed, though it has always existed. It is both established and simultaneously reestablished again and again as individuals and new groups enter into an agreement with God that also includes a larger, preexisting congregation of past covenant makers (p. 107)."
"Part of the covenant that God established with Israel is that if they would keep the commandments and statutes he was giving them, he would provide them with prosperity, peace, land, and protection from enemies, and he would multiply them and be with them at the tabernacle (or temple) (p. 114)."
"'I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people' (Leviticus 26:12, p. 114)."
"Solomon continually reiterated God's willingness to accept Israel back whenever they returned to him, noting that this unending mercy was because God 'didst separate them from among all the people of the earth, to be thine inheritance, as thou spakest by the hand of Moses' (1 Kings 8:53, p. 115)."
"The loss of God's presence in his house, as seen in vision, was soon followed by the destruction of the temple itself (p. 123)."
"Many of the above examples already highlight how often God refers to bringing covenant makers back into the covenant when they have strayed. God's determination to help covenant breakers return is highlighted when he tells Nephi that when Nephi's seed forsook the covenant, they would no longer be protected from their enemies, but the purpose of their enemies gaining power over them was to remind them to return to God and his covenant (see 1 Nephi 2:24, p. 124)."
"Within almost the same breath that God declared that the covenant was broken, he also showed them that in a future day it would be available again by putting it in future tense (p. 125)."
"The reestablishment of the covenant is not dependent on returning to Jerusalem, rebuilding the temple, or keeping the law; those are all by-products of having hearts fully turned to God (p. 127)."
"At some point Adam and Eve recognize that to fulfill the stipulation to multiply, they must leave the garden (p. 145)."
"Since the Enlightenment, many forms of Christian theology... reject the need for a vicarious or substitutionary sacrifice to atone for human sin. These lines of thinking emphasize the love and mercy of God and argue that God did not need Christ's suffering on our behalf in order to be able to forgive us but that Christ's suffering was merely a way to show God's love... In this model, the idea of God's wrath seems foreign, and it begins to seem unnecessary to have an intermediary. In this alternate vision of the Atonement, the seriousness of sin and the consequences of our sinfulness are subtly downplayed as God's mercy is emphasized (p. 159)."
"In this paper I seek to summarize some of what the Old Testament has to teach us about the Savior's 'great vicarious gift' for all humankind (p. 161)."
"We know the 'meaning' of the reference point and so we stop looking at the referent altogether. If, however, we wish our understanding of Christ's Atonement to be deepened and informed by the law of Moses, we must seek out the significances that these rituals held for the Israelites, which would have been clear even when they did not understand that these rituals were pointing them toward a suffering Messiah (p. 162)."
"'This is the whole meaning of the law, every whit pointing to that great and last sacrifice; and that great and last sacrifice will be the Son of God, yea, infinite and eternal' (Alma 34:14, p. 163)."
"The sacrifices of the law of Moses lay out for us a vivid picture of how we are reconciled to God (p. 170)."
"'Listen to the voice of Jesus Christ, your Redeemer, the Great I Am, whose arm of mercy hath atoned for your sins' (D&C 29:1). His arm of mercy has been revealed in our day and he invites us to accept his invitation to leave behind spiritual death and uncleanness. He invites us into his presence (p. 173)."
"The law of Moses contains many elements currently found in the gospel of Jesus Christ (p. 179)."
"I had come this far, I may as well finish it out (p. 221)."
"Mount Sinai was sacred space, set apart both geographically and spiritually from the rest of the world, because on that mount Moses entered the presence of God (p. 222)."
"'For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God, and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth' (Deuteronomy 14:2, p. 223)."
"There is also a distinction between the Lord's command to Moses to put off his shoes because the ground was holy and his hope that Israel would be a holy people (p. 223)."
"Under the law of Moses, 'the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing' (Hebrews 9:8). Through Christ's atoning sacrifice, we have the opportunity to be qados, or sanctified, and we are not encouraged to have 'boldness to enter into the holiest' (Hebrews 10:19)."
"'The temple is a place of beauty, it is a place of revelation, it is a place of peace. It is the house of the Lord. It is holy unto the Lord. It should be holy unto us' (Howard W. Hunter, p. 230)."
"'When we are worthy, we can not only enter the temple, the temple can enter us' (Elaine S. Dalton, p. 230)."
"Remember that when Moses came down from Mount Sinai, his face was shining. He had a residual effect from his temple experience in the presence of God. It was so visibly manifest that he had to cover his face with a veil. We also can take with us a portion of that holiness as we leave the temple, return to the world, and work to help others become sanctified (p. 231)."
"Going to the temple can confer holiness because we are in a holy place, but the goal of temple worship is that we become holy beings. That is one important reason why the Lord has directed us to seek out our ancestors and do temple work for them (p. 231)."
"'We are to become not only good but holy men and women' (D. Todd Christofferson, p. 233)."
"The Lord does not create borders and guardians in order to merely keep people out--rather, the gatekeepers are there to mediate who may and may not enter into God's presence. In this system, the unauthorized and the unprepared are kept from sacred things, while those who are able to prove their credentials are admitted through the various levels of holy space in order to experience the presence of God (p. 236)."
"'Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?... He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully' (Psalm 24:3-4, p. 246)."
"When God comes to the temple, he is admitted on the strength of his own name, for he is the only one authorized without qualification to enter his own house. All others the gatekeepers admit only at his sufferance (p. 248)."
"'Seeing God' is the preeminent image... for the experience of God in the temple... and this is described as an experience of brilliant light or is expressed metaphorically by comparing God with the sun (p. 256)."
"The Lord expected his people to seek his face in the temple. It was his dwelling place, a place of effectual, fervent prayer, and the place from which God himself would answer his people and in which he would dwell among them (p. 259)."
"As we come nearer to God we see our imperfections and nothingness plainer and plainer (p. 270)."
"The biblical psalms are full of praise for God's goodness, greatness, righteousness, mercy, and loving-kindness (p. 271)."
"Seeking the face of the Lord and seeking to be in the temple were twin thrusts of the same quest... 'When will I go and see the face of God?' (Psalm 42:2, p. 272)"
"Psalms were set to music in order to enhance worship and will also show the various forms psalms have taken that would have functioned to teach lessons through music and to help draw the worshipper into a state in which she or he was prepared to commune with God (p. 278)."
"Psalms of lament or prayer... Psalms of praise... Songs of thanksgiving... Royal psalms... Songs of Zion... Liturgies... Wisdom and Torah psalms (p. 281)."
"The purposes of the psalms and of music is to create a sacred time and space and to bring the soul into communion with God. This can heighten the effectiveness of the hymns in sacrament meeting connecting with the ordinance of the sacrament (p. 293)."
"Earlier in his mortal ministry, the Savior spoke of one of the ways we can come to know him. 'Search the scriptures... for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me' (John 5:39, p. 299)."
"Isaiah understood that the Mortal Messiah would need to come in humble circumstances and endure rejection and suffering in order to accomplish His primary mission of working the infinite Atonement (p. 303)."
"In contrast to the Mortal Messiah's humble and quiet ministry, when the Millennial Messiah appears he will make bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God' (Isaiah 52:10, p. 306)."
"The inhabitants of the world will eventually recognize and worship the Messiah as the 'everlasting light' (Isaiah 60:19-20). 'The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea' (Isaiah 11:9, p. 308)."
"Be anxious to participate in temple worship in order to learn of God's ways and 'walk in his paths' (Isaiah 2:3, p. 310)."
"The yearning for a symbolic return to Eden was, in part, a result of the trauma experienced by those who had been exiled to Babylon (p. 323)."
"Latter-day Saints need not fear using scholarship from those of other religious traditions--or even from those without any particular tradition--to better understand and appreciate our own faith (p. 326)."
"Latter-day Saints should never feel complacent in our understanding of temples or temple worship. It is only through the arduous process of both study and faith that such illuminating insight is available (p. 327)."
"The covenant relationship is personal and will be restored (p. 342)."
"The restoration of Israel will precede this millennial reign of peace when the Lord fulfills the marriage described in Hosea: 'And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the Lord' (Hosea 2:19, p. 343)."
"God also serves as judge, and judgment would certainly be easier without the debate. But easier is not what he chooses (p. 361)."
"'If there is no balance in the divine emotion, if justice gets the upper hand over mercy, then the world is placed in great danger (Yochanan Muffs, p. 362).'"
"Elder Jeffrey R. Holland taught that one of the great purposes of Christ's mortal ministry was to act as the Father's love personified, to teach the people through his actions what the Father's own compassion looks like (p. 362)."
"These ancient Israelite prophets remind us that God will always turn to us as we turn to him (p. 363)."
"President M. Russell Ballard described the significance of the Old Testament as 'the first testament of Christ... which predicted and prophesied of the coming of the Savior, His transcendent life, and His liberating Atonement.' The Old Testament is foundation to our understanding of the birth, life, atonement, crucifixion, and resurrection of the Savior... The weight and magnitude of the mission of the Messiah is revealed in the thousands of years of history outlined in the Old Testament (p. IX)."
"'This shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel;... I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people' (Jeremiah 31:33). I wish to discuss with you the covenants of the Lord and the ordinances which are associated with these covenants... the Lord continually strives to write these covenants in our hearts (p. 3)."
"The purpose of the scriptures is to explain the details of the plan of salvation (p. 4)."
"'Ordinances and covenants become our credentials for admission into His presence. To worthily receive them is the quest of a lifetime; to keep them thereafter is the challenge of mortality (Boyd K. Packer, p. 7).'"
"Joseph's life is one of the greatest examples of one having the laws of God written in his heart (p. 10)."
"The holy temple is well suited for a loving Heavenly Father to write his laws upon our hearts (p. 15)."
"If the living waters issuing from the temple can heal the Dead Sea, the living waters can also heal an unhappy marriage, refresh a parched testimony, restore a broken heart, and mend a strained relationship with neighbors or family members. They can give us all a new heart (p. 15)."
"The meaning of the title Messiah or Christ is a key to understanding the role of Jehovah in the plan of salvation (p. 20)."
"Through his atonement, Jesus Christ rent the veil, inviting all who would follow in his name to enter back into the presence of his Father (p. 35)."
"Our first Old Testament event in the New Testament is the triumphal entry, perhaps the New Testament's ultimate example of praise and worship (p. 38)."
"The purpose of the triumphal entry was to proclaim who Jesus was, to identify the man Jesus of Nazareth with the holy Messiah who would come at the end of time. Thus his earthly life and ministry were themselves both prophecies and signs of his millennial reign... In the Palm Sunday event, the connection between the Old Testament and Easter starts to become clear. Jehovah, the God of ancient Israel, would triumph over Israel's foes and reign over all the world as King of Kings. Jesus's messianic triumph over death and sin would show him to be not only Israel's promised Messiah but also Israel's God (p. 40)."
"In the Old Testament's praise and worship, God is associated strongly with light. He is its source and provides its sustaining power (p. 44)."
"The message of Christ is indeed not absent from the Old Testament... Israel's temple worship taught the Christian gospel, because vicarious atonement and subsequent forgiveness are at the very heart of the temple sacrifices (p. 46)."
"Christ himself was to be God's sacrificial lamb... Israel's Messiah was Jehovah himself, something not always clear in the Old Testament (p. 47)."
"The principle of hesed may be one of the most important doctrinal concepts in the Old Testament (p. 49)."
"Hesed is a characteristic common to both the nature of man and his relationship to the nature of God (p. 50)."
"Hesed is assumed in relationship (p. 54)."
"Truth highlights the eternal nature of God's hesed... he also gives us the power to change ourselves as well as delivering us out of situations that we cannot control (p. 58)."
"'I have trusted in thy hesed (mercy)' (Psalm 13:5)... 'I trust in the hesed (mercy) of God for ever and ever' (Pslam 52:8, p. 58)."
"'Blessed be God, which hath not turned away my prayer, nor his hesed (mercy) from me' (Psalm 66:20, p. 59)."
"Hesed is associated with the concept of truth and is thus a reliable, 'real' concept that we can trust. God's reliability is proven by his acts of hesed, which in turn demonstrate his continued, conscious awareness of the individual who receives the act of hesed (p. 61)."
"Delivering man is not just God's work, but also his glory (p. 62)."
"The expression halelu-yah/Hallelujah/Alleluia contains the name of the Lord Jehovah and has functioned as a joyful yet reverent expression of praise for his goodness and mercy for thousands of years (p. 71)."
"The Lord indicates... that Sabbath observance is a sign of his covenant relationship with his people, and that Sabbath observance demonstrates recognition that it is he, Jehovah, who sanctifies his people (p. 73)."
"Moving beyond worldly rest to divine rest on and through yom hassabbat, 'the day of Sabbath,' brings the blessings of heaven in various and powerful ways, as promised by the Lord in Isaiah 58:13-14 and elsewhere (p. 73)."
"Surprisingly, the name Jehovah occurs independently only four times in the King James translation of the Old Testament. When it does, it is printed in capital letters... Jehovah does not appear more often... because the translators were influenced by a Jewish custom... of not pronouncing the divine name yhwh out of respect for its sacred nature. This necessitated substituting a title in its place (p. 77)."
"The prayer gesture of raising the hands may also have been part of a series of 'gestures of approach' performed as one drew near to the presence of deity (p. 100)."
"The main way the Old Testament frames human relationships with God is whether people make and keep a covenant with him (p. 105)."
"Each individual member of the covenant community must personally enter into this covenant. Thus the covenant is continually renewed, though it has always existed. It is both established and simultaneously reestablished again and again as individuals and new groups enter into an agreement with God that also includes a larger, preexisting congregation of past covenant makers (p. 107)."
"Part of the covenant that God established with Israel is that if they would keep the commandments and statutes he was giving them, he would provide them with prosperity, peace, land, and protection from enemies, and he would multiply them and be with them at the tabernacle (or temple) (p. 114)."
"'I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people' (Leviticus 26:12, p. 114)."
"Solomon continually reiterated God's willingness to accept Israel back whenever they returned to him, noting that this unending mercy was because God 'didst separate them from among all the people of the earth, to be thine inheritance, as thou spakest by the hand of Moses' (1 Kings 8:53, p. 115)."
"The loss of God's presence in his house, as seen in vision, was soon followed by the destruction of the temple itself (p. 123)."
"Many of the above examples already highlight how often God refers to bringing covenant makers back into the covenant when they have strayed. God's determination to help covenant breakers return is highlighted when he tells Nephi that when Nephi's seed forsook the covenant, they would no longer be protected from their enemies, but the purpose of their enemies gaining power over them was to remind them to return to God and his covenant (see 1 Nephi 2:24, p. 124)."
"Within almost the same breath that God declared that the covenant was broken, he also showed them that in a future day it would be available again by putting it in future tense (p. 125)."
"The reestablishment of the covenant is not dependent on returning to Jerusalem, rebuilding the temple, or keeping the law; those are all by-products of having hearts fully turned to God (p. 127)."
"At some point Adam and Eve recognize that to fulfill the stipulation to multiply, they must leave the garden (p. 145)."
"Since the Enlightenment, many forms of Christian theology... reject the need for a vicarious or substitutionary sacrifice to atone for human sin. These lines of thinking emphasize the love and mercy of God and argue that God did not need Christ's suffering on our behalf in order to be able to forgive us but that Christ's suffering was merely a way to show God's love... In this model, the idea of God's wrath seems foreign, and it begins to seem unnecessary to have an intermediary. In this alternate vision of the Atonement, the seriousness of sin and the consequences of our sinfulness are subtly downplayed as God's mercy is emphasized (p. 159)."
"In this paper I seek to summarize some of what the Old Testament has to teach us about the Savior's 'great vicarious gift' for all humankind (p. 161)."
"We know the 'meaning' of the reference point and so we stop looking at the referent altogether. If, however, we wish our understanding of Christ's Atonement to be deepened and informed by the law of Moses, we must seek out the significances that these rituals held for the Israelites, which would have been clear even when they did not understand that these rituals were pointing them toward a suffering Messiah (p. 162)."
"'This is the whole meaning of the law, every whit pointing to that great and last sacrifice; and that great and last sacrifice will be the Son of God, yea, infinite and eternal' (Alma 34:14, p. 163)."
"The sacrifices of the law of Moses lay out for us a vivid picture of how we are reconciled to God (p. 170)."
"'Listen to the voice of Jesus Christ, your Redeemer, the Great I Am, whose arm of mercy hath atoned for your sins' (D&C 29:1). His arm of mercy has been revealed in our day and he invites us to accept his invitation to leave behind spiritual death and uncleanness. He invites us into his presence (p. 173)."
"The law of Moses contains many elements currently found in the gospel of Jesus Christ (p. 179)."
"I had come this far, I may as well finish it out (p. 221)."
"Mount Sinai was sacred space, set apart both geographically and spiritually from the rest of the world, because on that mount Moses entered the presence of God (p. 222)."
"'For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God, and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth' (Deuteronomy 14:2, p. 223)."
"There is also a distinction between the Lord's command to Moses to put off his shoes because the ground was holy and his hope that Israel would be a holy people (p. 223)."
"Under the law of Moses, 'the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing' (Hebrews 9:8). Through Christ's atoning sacrifice, we have the opportunity to be qados, or sanctified, and we are not encouraged to have 'boldness to enter into the holiest' (Hebrews 10:19)."
"'The temple is a place of beauty, it is a place of revelation, it is a place of peace. It is the house of the Lord. It is holy unto the Lord. It should be holy unto us' (Howard W. Hunter, p. 230)."
"'When we are worthy, we can not only enter the temple, the temple can enter us' (Elaine S. Dalton, p. 230)."
"Remember that when Moses came down from Mount Sinai, his face was shining. He had a residual effect from his temple experience in the presence of God. It was so visibly manifest that he had to cover his face with a veil. We also can take with us a portion of that holiness as we leave the temple, return to the world, and work to help others become sanctified (p. 231)."
"Going to the temple can confer holiness because we are in a holy place, but the goal of temple worship is that we become holy beings. That is one important reason why the Lord has directed us to seek out our ancestors and do temple work for them (p. 231)."
"'We are to become not only good but holy men and women' (D. Todd Christofferson, p. 233)."
"The Lord does not create borders and guardians in order to merely keep people out--rather, the gatekeepers are there to mediate who may and may not enter into God's presence. In this system, the unauthorized and the unprepared are kept from sacred things, while those who are able to prove their credentials are admitted through the various levels of holy space in order to experience the presence of God (p. 236)."
"'Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?... He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully' (Psalm 24:3-4, p. 246)."
"When God comes to the temple, he is admitted on the strength of his own name, for he is the only one authorized without qualification to enter his own house. All others the gatekeepers admit only at his sufferance (p. 248)."
"'Seeing God' is the preeminent image... for the experience of God in the temple... and this is described as an experience of brilliant light or is expressed metaphorically by comparing God with the sun (p. 256)."
"The Lord expected his people to seek his face in the temple. It was his dwelling place, a place of effectual, fervent prayer, and the place from which God himself would answer his people and in which he would dwell among them (p. 259)."
"As we come nearer to God we see our imperfections and nothingness plainer and plainer (p. 270)."
"The biblical psalms are full of praise for God's goodness, greatness, righteousness, mercy, and loving-kindness (p. 271)."
"Seeking the face of the Lord and seeking to be in the temple were twin thrusts of the same quest... 'When will I go and see the face of God?' (Psalm 42:2, p. 272)"
"Psalms were set to music in order to enhance worship and will also show the various forms psalms have taken that would have functioned to teach lessons through music and to help draw the worshipper into a state in which she or he was prepared to commune with God (p. 278)."
"Psalms of lament or prayer... Psalms of praise... Songs of thanksgiving... Royal psalms... Songs of Zion... Liturgies... Wisdom and Torah psalms (p. 281)."
"The purposes of the psalms and of music is to create a sacred time and space and to bring the soul into communion with God. This can heighten the effectiveness of the hymns in sacrament meeting connecting with the ordinance of the sacrament (p. 293)."
"Earlier in his mortal ministry, the Savior spoke of one of the ways we can come to know him. 'Search the scriptures... for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me' (John 5:39, p. 299)."
"Isaiah understood that the Mortal Messiah would need to come in humble circumstances and endure rejection and suffering in order to accomplish His primary mission of working the infinite Atonement (p. 303)."
"In contrast to the Mortal Messiah's humble and quiet ministry, when the Millennial Messiah appears he will make bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God' (Isaiah 52:10, p. 306)."
"The inhabitants of the world will eventually recognize and worship the Messiah as the 'everlasting light' (Isaiah 60:19-20). 'The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea' (Isaiah 11:9, p. 308)."
"Be anxious to participate in temple worship in order to learn of God's ways and 'walk in his paths' (Isaiah 2:3, p. 310)."
"The yearning for a symbolic return to Eden was, in part, a result of the trauma experienced by those who had been exiled to Babylon (p. 323)."
"Latter-day Saints need not fear using scholarship from those of other religious traditions--or even from those without any particular tradition--to better understand and appreciate our own faith (p. 326)."
"Latter-day Saints should never feel complacent in our understanding of temples or temple worship. It is only through the arduous process of both study and faith that such illuminating insight is available (p. 327)."
"The covenant relationship is personal and will be restored (p. 342)."
"The restoration of Israel will precede this millennial reign of peace when the Lord fulfills the marriage described in Hosea: 'And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the Lord' (Hosea 2:19, p. 343)."
"God also serves as judge, and judgment would certainly be easier without the debate. But easier is not what he chooses (p. 361)."
"'If there is no balance in the divine emotion, if justice gets the upper hand over mercy, then the world is placed in great danger (Yochanan Muffs, p. 362).'"
"Elder Jeffrey R. Holland taught that one of the great purposes of Christ's mortal ministry was to act as the Father's love personified, to teach the people through his actions what the Father's own compassion looks like (p. 362)."
"These ancient Israelite prophets remind us that God will always turn to us as we turn to him (p. 363)."
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