...that it might be brought forth at some future day...
As some of you might know, I am both a Latter-day Saint and a Master Mason. I also come from a family where many different religions are represented. Because of this, I like to think of myself as a fairly open-minded guy. I also firmly believe that there is truth to be found in all different worldviews. Brigham Young once said:
“Mormonism,” so-called, embraces every principle pertaining to life and salvation, for time and eternity. No matter who has it. If the infidel has got truth it belongs to “Mormonism.” The truth and sound doctrine possessed by the sectarian world, and they have a great deal, all belong to this Church. As for their morality, many of them are, morally, just as good as we are. All that is good, lovely, and praiseworthy belongs to this Church and Kingdom. “Mormonism” includes all truth. There is no truth but what belongs to the Gospel. It is life, eternal life; it is bliss; it is the fullness of all things in the gods and in the eternities of the gods (DBY, 3).I have to agree with Brigham here, I have always fancied myself as a "Seeker of Truth" above all else. Because of this philosophy of seeking truth wherever I may find it, I have had my eyes opened time and again to the good that exists in the hearts of men everywhere. The other thing I have found is that there is a whole lot of truth out there, and I believe that we have Father Adam to thank for it. In my post The Vision of All I spoke to the concept that everything that was necessary for the happiness of mankind was revealed to Adam. I believe that in addition to the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, other things were revealed to enable Adam and his posterity to live and survive in the world into which they had been driven. The book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price has a single verse that I think encompasses these teachings:
So "all things were confirmed unto Adam", and they were to be preserved until the end of the world. One of the more interesting beliefs in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that there was a great apostasy, but that not all of Christ's teachings were lost; they were instead mistranslated, mixed up with the teachings of the world, or changed. Imagine how much more difficult the preaching of the Gospel would be if there were no knowledge of the Savior to be found in the world today. We, as latter-day saints, owe a great debt of gratitude to the early church fathers for preserving the sacred writings that now make up the Bible, as well as to those men and women that helped preserve these writings throughout the ages. As a Master Mason, I am equally indebted to those enlightened men that preserved, in allegory form, interesting glimpses into the history of the Temple. In the same way that the Spirit of God can help us separate the truths of the Gospel from the interpolations of men in the scriptures, so can the Spirit help us to see the glimpses of the doctrines passed down through the ages in Masonic Lodges. For further reading of these items see Restoring the Ancient Church and Latter-day Saints and the Freemasons at Fairlds.