Reunions Earthly and Heavenly

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Witnesses of the Book of Mormon — Insights Episode 27: The Hiram Page Revelations

Hiram Page, one of the Eight Witnesses, claimed to have received revelations through a seer stone. What do we know about this event?

This is the twenty-seventh in a series compiled from the many interviews conducted during the course of the Witnesses film project. This series of mini-films is being released each Saturday at 7pm MDT. These additional resources are hosted by Camrey Bagley Fox, who played Emma Smith in Witnesses, as she introduces and visits with a variety of experts. These individuals answer questions or address accusations against the witnesses, also helping viewers understand the context of the times in which the witnesses lived. This week we feature Daniel C. Peterson, President of the Interpreter Foundation and Executive Producer of Witnesses. For more information, go to https://witnessesofthebookofmormon.org/ or watch the documentary movie Undaunted.

Short clips from this episode are also available on TikTok and Instagram.

Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at https://youtube.interpreterfoundation.org/ and our other social media channels on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.

I’ve just received from Jeff Bradshaw this tentative schedule for the upcoming Interpreter Foundation conference on the temple, which will be held in Orem, Utah, on Friday, 4 November 2022, and Saturday, 5 November 2022:

TEMPLE ON MOUNT ZION 2022

The Sixth Interpreter

Matthew B. Brown Memorial Conference

DRAFT: 22 October 2022

Friday, November 4, 2022, and Saturday, November 5, 2022

Saturday in-person session is open to the public, 2168 S 140 W, Orem, Utah (chapel)


For updates, see https://interpreterfoundation.org

Friday Evening Session (live-streaming only)

Chair:   Stephen Ricks

7:00     C. Wilfred Griggs, The Temple and the Sacred in Early Christianity

Discussants: Stephen Ricks and John S. Thompson

Saturday Morning Session (in-person and streaming)

Chair:   Jeff Bradshaw

8:00     Welcome and prayer

8:15     Margaret Barker, The Lead Books Found in Jordan: Areas of Special Interest for Latter-day Saints (remote presentation)

9:30     Discussant and audience questions: Samuel Zinner (remote)

9:45     Break

Chair:   Stephen Ricks

10:00   T.K. Plant, “She Took the Veil and Covered Herself”

10:30   Stephen O. Smoot, Temple Themes in the Book of Abraham

11:00   Samuel Zinner, The Cosmic Temple of Divine Names: Sapiential, Nomistic, and Numerical Properties (remote presentation)

11:45   Discussant and audience questions: David Calabro

12:00   Lunch break 

Saturday Afternoon Session (in-person and streaming)

Chair:   Jasmin Rappleye

1:00     David J. Larsen, Psalm 89 in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran Reflections on the Coming Messiah and the “True Service” of the Temple

1:30     Jeffrey M. Bradshaw and Matthew L. Bowen, Jacob’s Temple Journey to Haran and Back

2:00     Rebecca Stay, Eastward in Genesis 2-4: An Exercise in Visual Discovery

2:30     Matthew L. Bowen and Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, From Jared to Enoch to the Tower to the Temple: The Descensus of Divine Beings in Genesis, the Book of Moses, and the Enochic Tradition (remote presentation)

3:00     Break

Chair:  John Gee

3:15     Stephen D. Ricks, Temples beyond Jerusalem

3:45     David Calabro, Ancient Israelite Temple Ritual through the Telescope of Restoration Scripture

4:15     Spencer Kraus, “That I May Lift Up My Eyes”: Bartimaeus as a Temple Petitioner before the Veil

4:45     John S. Thompson, How Luke’s Gospel Portrays Jesus as the Exodus or Way of the Temple

5:15     Closing

Sponsored by
The Interpreter Foundation, BYU College of Humanities, BYU Religious Education

Much to my disappointment, I won’t be able to attend the conference myself.  I’ll be out of the country in the Middle East, if all goes according to plan.  But I hope that you can attend or, at the least, that you’ll be able to watch it online.

Well, los padres returned to Florida tonight.  And thus, for us, a happy week or so begins to come to an end.  In recent days, it’s involved almost instant defeats in both chess and miniature gold by someone who has absolutely no idea of the rules of the games and who certainly doesn’t play by them, as well as time on the beach and in swimming pools and busy with high-quality reading aloud and with stuffed animals of various kinds and with balloons.  The surprise reunion — we had disingenuously said that, as tired and jet-lagged as they definitely were, the parents probably wouldn’t even come out to Marco Island directly from the Miami Airport — elicited a shriek of surprised delight that, if reported, may yet lead the police to pay us an investigative visit.

Watching such absolutely pure happiness, I wondered what our reunions with our earthly parents and siblings will be like, beyond the veil.  And what it will be like to see our heavenly Parents again.  There’s a Latter-day Saint hymn that I had seldom heard and never liked, with lyrics by Joseph L. Townsend set to music by William Clayson, but that has come to mean much more to me in recent years:

1. Oh, what songs of the heart

   We shall sing all the day,

   When again we assemble at home,

   When we meet ne’er to part

   With the blest o’er the way,

   There no more from our loved ones to roam!

   When we meet ne’er to part,

   Oh, what songs of the heart

   We shall sing in our beautiful home.

2. Tho our rapture and bliss

   There’s no song can express,

   We will shout, we will sing o’er and o’er,

   As we greet with a kiss,

   And with joy we caress

   All our loved ones that passed on before;

   As we greet with a kiss,

   In our rapture and bliss,

   All our loved ones that passed on before.

3. Oh, the visions we’ll see

   In that home of the blest,

   There’s no word, there’s no thought can impart,

   But our rapture will be

   All the soul can attest,

   In the heavenly songs of the heart;

   But our rapture will be

   In the vision we’ll see

   Best expressed in the songs of the heart.

4. Oh, what songs we’ll employ!

   Oh, what welcome we’ll hear!

   While our transports of love are complete,

   As the heart swells with joy

   In embraces most dear

   When our heavenly parents we meet!

   As the heart swells with joy,

   Oh, what songs we’ll employ,

   When our heavenly parents we meet!

As President Henry B. Eyring put it in a General Conference address back in 2007, “Living as we do with a veil over our eyes, we cannot remember what it was like to be with our Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, in the premortal world.”  But I think that, when we see them again, we’ll be stunned with joyful remembrance and a profound sense of having come fully home.

Posted from Marco Island, Florida