The Temple is the Peak and Obedience is the Climb

If you are familiar with the articles here at oneClimbs, you’ll probably see a “climbing” analogy from time to time. I’ve been rappelling a few times and played around on some rock walls in the past but other than that, I have no mountain climbing experience. I grew up in South Texas and never really saw a mountain until my mission to Idaho.

I’ve lived around mountains since then and try to spend time in them as often as possible hiking with my family. Even in casual hiking on trails, the journey can be somewhat difficult so I can’t imagine what it must be like to tackle a treacherous rock face!

To meet God at the top of the mountain, you have to climb; there are no spiritual helicopters. You must do it alone, hand over hand, rock by rock all the way up.

Think of the temple as the peak of the mountain and the requirements that must be lived to enter as the climb. Every now and then I’ll see a discussion of the temple online or on a T.V. interview where some individual laments the fact that the temple has such ridged requirements for entry. Some might ask “Why can’t the temple be open to anyone so that all of us can know about these teaching and receive these blessings?”

The irony is that anyone can enter the temple and receive the blessings but only if you have ‘climbed’ God’s mountain. Climbing takes effort and sacrifice, the temple symbolically teaches that there is no shortcut into God’s kingdom; there is but one way and the path is clearly marked. There is only one way up.

But it goes deeper than that…

This is something that anyone can do, the requirements are not secret, they are open to the public and all one needs to do is climb.