Question: How are temple covenants “manifestations of the Davidic Covenant” as you have taught in your presentations?
Answer: Without needing to name covenants Latter-day Saints make in the temple, we know that they set persons on a course of purification and sanctification designed to enable them to enter into the presence of the Lord. So did patriarchs, prophets, priests, kings, and saints of old—all who purified and sanctified their souls sufficient to see the Lord. As they progressively kept higher laws of God, the Lord manifested himself to them until they knew him face to face.
Whether under the terms of kingship—as formulated in the Davidic Covenant—or under the Melchizedek Priesthood, the pattern is the same. True kingship comprehends priesthood and true priesthood comprehends kingship. King David’s “priesthood,” for example, was ultimately reserved for God’s end-time servant David (TPJS, 339); while Moses, who held the keys of the Melchizedek Priesthood, was also a king (Deuteronomy 33:5; Doctrine & Covenants 84:25).
The act of “receiving” a priesthood, in effect, resembles “receiving” the Holy Ghost. Instead of being an entitlement centered in oneself, it means accepting an obligation to live a higher law of God. Under the Law of Moses, for example, priests “made atonement” for sinners by offering a sacrificial victim. Under the Priesthood after the Holy Order of God, that offering becomes a person’s taking upon himself others’ transgressions in order to merit their divine protection.
So did priests after the Holy Order of God before Jesus atoned for humanity’s transgressions. Alma coined this “a preparatory redemption”—ministered in such a way “that thereby the people might know in what manner to look forward to his Son for redemption” (Alma 13:1–3). That is, those priests’ taking their people’s transgressions on themselves in order to merit their temporal salvation foreshadowed Christ’s spiritual salvation from which all temporal salvation flows:
“These ordinances were given after this manner, that thereby the people might look forward on the Son of God, it being a type of his order, or it being his order, and this that they might look forward to him for a remission of their sins, that they might enter into the rest of the Lord” (Alma 13:16). By exemplifying this priesthood, Melchizedek merited the title “prince of peace” (Alma 13:18), as did Abraham (Abraham 1:2), and as will God’s end-time servant David (Isaiah 9:6).
The priesthood conferred on Abraham “from the fathers,” therefore—which “came down from the fathers, from the beginning of time, yea, even from the beginning, or before the foundation of the earth”—was not from those “fathers” of Abraham who had “turned from their righteousness” to “worshiping of the gods of the heathen” (Abraham 1:3, 5). Rather, it was from proxy saviors of their peoples, which the word “fathers” implies under the terms of God’s higher covenants.
Persons who enter into temple covenants, in other words, are called to this same priesthood after the Holy Order of God. That is signified by “the oath and covenant” of the priesthood which the Father makes after a person has kept the laws of God pertaining to his temple covenants (see Doctrine & Covenants 84:33–41)—not simply at his ordination to the priesthood. At that point, his covenant turns from being conditional to unconditional and continues down the generations.
While keeping the terms of the Davidic Covenant on behalf of one’s immediate family, kindreds, friends, or associates forms the first step in becoming a proxy savior to others, the terms of the Abrahamic Covenant may take one all the way to a translated state. So did Jesus’ three Nephite disciples, who inherited the Father’s kingdom. So shall the 144,000 end-time servants of God whose ministry is to gather the house of Israel out of every nation, kindred, tongue and people.
Depending on how far Latter-day Saints want to take on their ministering role, temple covenants that are integral to the restored gospel of Jesus Christ map out the path to this very outcome. If they are willing to pay the price as denoted by the tokens of Jesus’ suffering for others’ sake, they may follow in his footsteps and be endowed in his own due time with power to fulfill their end-time missions. If their sights are set lower due to complacency or fear, they are the losers.
