Question: In this day, what does it look like to be a proxy savior when we don’t have “vassal kings” such as King Benjamin or King Hezekiah? Or is that referring to yet a future time? Is the temple endowment enough to enter into the fulness of the Davidic Covenant or is there more to be revealed in a future day? And how can we discern if our temple ordinances are still fully efficacious when so much has changed over the years?
Answer: According to the scriptures, those who are called to be end-time proxy saviors are the spiritual kings and queens of the Gentiles, not political ones. In other words, temple-endowed Latter-day Saints are the ones whom the Lord will call to literally function as kings and queens like King Benjamin and King Hezekiah, who indeed were political kings but whose role as proxy saviors of their peoples was purely spiritual.
The temple covenants and ordinances that were instituted as an integral part of the restoration of the gospel and priesthood through the prophet Joseph Smith, when properly understood, are seen as manifestations of the Davidic Covenant in which a proxy savior follows the model of our Savior Jesus Christ to serve God in one’s fullest capacity to build up his kingdom on the earth. Two scriptures from Isaiah throw light on gospel ordinances in our day:
“The path of the righteous is straight; you pave an undeviating course for the upright. In the very passage of your ordinances we anticipate you, O Jehovah; the soul’s desire is to contemplate your name. My soul yearns for you in the night; at daybreak my spirit within me seeks after you. For when your ordinances are on the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness” (Isaiah 26:7–9); “The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants: they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinances, set at naught the everlasting covenant. The curse devours the earth, for those who dwell on it have incurred guilt” (Isaiah 24:5–6).
