ENSIGN PEAK JOURNAL GLUE-IN
“And it shall come to pass
in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in
the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations
shall flow unto it” (Isa. 2:2).
Before leaving Nauvoo in the winter of 1846, President Brigham
Young had a dream in which he saw an angel standing on a cone-shaped hill
somewhere in the West pointing to a valley below. When he entered the Salt Lake
Valley some 18 months later, he saw just above the location where we are now
gathered the same hillside prominence he had seen in vision.
As has often been told from this pulpit, Brother Brigham led a
handful of leaders to the summit of that hill and proclaimed it Ensign Peak, a
name filled with religious meaning for these modern Israelites. Twenty-five
hundred years earlier the prophet Isaiah had declared that in the last days
“the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the
mountains,” and there “he shall set up an ensign for the nations.”
Seeing their moment in history as partial fulfillment of that
prophecy, the Brethren wished to fly a banner of some kind to make the idea of
“an ensign for the nations” literal. Elder Heber C. Kimball produced a yellow
bandana. Brother Brigham tied it to a walking stick carried by Elder Willard
Richards and then planted the makeshift flag, declaring the valley of the Great
Salt Lake and the mountains surrounding it as that prophesied place from which
the word of the Lord would go forth in the latter days. (Jeffrey R. Holland)
I believe and testify that
it is the mission of this Church to stand as an ensign to the nations and a
light to the world. We have had placed upon us a great, all-encompassing
mandate from which we cannot shrink nor turn aside. We accept that mandate and
are determined to fulfill it, and with the help of God we shall do it.
There are forces all around
us that would deter us from that effort. The world is constantly crowding in on
us. From all sides we feel the pressure to soften our stance, to give in here a
little and there a little.
We must never lose sight of
our objective. We must ever keep before us the goal which the Lord has set for
us. (Gordon B. Hinckley)
High on the mountain top
A banner is unfurled.
Ye nations, now look up;
It waves to all the world.
In Deseret's sweet, peaceful land,
On Zion's mount behold it stand!
(Joel H. Johnson)
