King Solomon

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King Solomon

• Khinckley1_at_yahoo.com

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Today will be a spiritual feast
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(No Transcript)
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Meet Solomon, son of David

• JST 1 Kings 33-8.
• 3 And because the Lord blessed Solomon as he was
  walking in the statutes of David, his father,
  Solomon began to love the Lord, and he
  sacrificed and burnt incense in high places, and
  he called on the name of the Lord.
• 5 And the Lord God hearkened unto Solomon, and
  appeared unto him in a dream by night, and said,
  Ask what I shall give thee.
• 7 And now, O Lord my God, thou hast made thy
  servant king, instead of David, my father, over
  thy people.
• 8 And I know not how to lead them, to go out, or
  come in before them, and I, thy servant, am as a
  little child, in the midst of thy people whom
  thou hast chosen, a great people that cannot be
  numbered, nor counted for multitude.

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Elder Oaks

• Jesus taught his apostles about
  conversion, which is far more than
  testimony. When the disciples asked who was the
  greatest in the kingdom of heaven, Jesus called
  a little child unto him, and set him in the midst
  of them,
• And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be
  converted, and become as little children, ye
  shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Question What is the difference between acting
like a child and becoming a child?
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The Request of a Child

• Solomons Request
• 9 Give therefore, thy servant an understanding
  heart that I may discern between good and bad.
• The Lords Answer
• 12 Behold, I have done according to thy words
  lo, I have given thee a wise and an understanding
  heart so that there was none like thee before
  thee, neither after thee shall any arise like
  unto thee. 
• 13 And I have also given thee that which thou
  hast not asked, both riches, and honour so that
  there shall not be any among the kings like unto
  thee all thy days. 
• 14 And if thou wilt walk in my ways, to keep my
  statutes and my commandments, as thy father David
  did walk, then I will lengthen thy days.

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Temple of Solomon

• Took 7 years to build
• Kept pure for only 34 years
• Solomon succumbed to the desires of foreign wives
  to place idols on the temple mount

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First Sign of Problems

• The Temple
• And the house which king Solomon built for the
  LORD, the length thereof was threescore cubits,
  and the breadth thereof twenty cubits , and the
  height thereof thirty cubits (2 Kings 62)

• His Palace
• He built also his palace the length thereof
  was an hundred cubits, and the breadth thereof
  fifty cubits, and the height thereof thirty
  cubits, upon four rows of cedar pillars, with
  cedar beams upon the pillars (1 Kings 72).

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Wilford Woodruff
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From the dedicatory prayer

• 30 And hearken thou to the supplication of thy
  servant, and of thy people Israel, when they
  shall pray toward this place and hear thou in
  heaven thy dwelling place and when thou hearest,
  forgive.
• 38 What prayer and supplication soever be made by
  any man, or by all thy people Israel, which shall
  know every man the plague of his own heart, and
  spread forth his hands toward this house
• Which sounds a lot like
• Ether 12
• And if men come unto me I will show unto them
  their weakness.
• I give unto men weakness that they may be humble

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Question

• If the Temple is to be a place of teaching
• What method does the Lord use, in the Temple, to
  teach us?

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David B. Haight

• When you return to the temple, come
  with an open, seeking, contrite heart, and
  allow the Spirit to teach you by revelation what
  the symbols can mean to you.
• Question does that mean that temple symbols can
  mean different things to different people?

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C.S Lewis comment

• Symbolism goes beyond the expression of things
  we have already felt. It arouses in us sensations
  we have never had before, never anticipated
  having, as though we had broken out of our normal
  mode of consciousness and 'possessed joys not
  promised to our birth.'
• It gets under our skin, hits us at a level deeper
  than our thoughts or even our passions, troubles
  oldest certainties till all questions are
  re-opened, and in general shocks us more fully
  awake than we are for most of our lives."

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Michael Wilcox

• The wilderness of Judaea is a dead,
  sun-baked land where almost nothing grows,
  but Ezekiel saw that wherever the future
  river flowed, life came to the barren desert.
  "At the bank of the river," Ezekiel said,
  "were very many trees on the one side and on
  the other." (V. 7.) The trees were "for meat,
  whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the
  fruit thereof be consumed it shall bring forth
  new fruit . . . because their waters . . . issued
  out of the sanctuary and the fruit thereof shall
  be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine."
• Ezekiel describes the river's impact on all it
  touches with these words "And it shall come to
  pass, that every thing that liveth, which moveth,
  whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live .
  . . because these waters shall come thither for
  they shall be healed and every thing shall live
  whither the river cometh." (V. 9 emphasis
  added.)
• As we read these words, the Spirit seems to
  whisper, "What will literally be true, one day,
  of the Lord's temple in Jerusalem, is true now,
  spiritually, of all the Lord's temples. From the
  doors of each one a healing, life-giving river
  flows."