Church Expansion - Joseph Smith Jr. - Temples - Missionary Work

In the year 1820, a boy named Joseph Smith Jr. asked the Lord in prayer which church is true. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized in 1830, just ten years later. The “Teachings of Presidents of the Church” manual states, “With the work of translating and publishing the Book of Mormon now completed, Joseph Smith moved forward to organize the Church. In the revelation now found in section 20 of the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord revealed to the Prophet ‘the precise day upon which, according to His will and commandment, we should proceed to organize His Church once more here upon the earth.’”

Since then, the expansion of the Church has been in effect. In 1947, the Church reached its million-member mark, two million in 1963, and is approaching 13 million members today. Starting with its first temple in Kirkland, Ohio in 1836, up to today where currently over 130 temples built or being built around the world.

Missionary work has been the biggest blessing to the expansion of the Church. President Spencer W. Kimball once said, “What a thrilling thing it is, my dear brothers and sisters who are fellow members of the kingdom of God, to be entrusted by the Lord to serve as messengers of His word to our brothers and sisters who are not members of the Church. Let us assume for a moment that the roles were reversed—that you were not a member of the Church but that your present nonmember neighbor was a Latter-day Saint. Would you want him or her to share the gospel with you? Would you then rejoice in the new truths you had learned? Would your love and respect increase for your neighbor who had shared these truths with you? Of course, the answer to all of these questions would be: Yes!

“The day for carrying the gospel to ever more places and people is here and now. We must come to think of our obligation to share the message rather than of our own convenience. Calls from the Lord are seldom convenient. The time is here when sacrifice must become an even more important element in the Church. We must increase our devotion so that we can do the work the Lord has for us to do. … The parting words of the Master to His Apostles just before His Ascension were, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”

Let us all help with the expansion of the church, whether through missionary work, or by paying our tithing, each of us can help bring God’s plan to action.

Lauren Ensign