“The latter-day glory begins to come forth;” (William W. Phelps, “The Spirit Of God”). The life of the average person two hundred and fifty years ago was likely not hugely different from the lives of ordinary people five hundred or a thousand years ago. Books might have been more available. War, famine, and disease were likely slightly less common. But in any of those eras, the fastest way to travel was on the back of a horse, the most reliable way to see after nightfall was with a lamp, and if you wanted water, you had to haul it up to the house with a bucket. But the lives we lead today would be utterly unrecognizable to someone plucked from any other time in history. We can be on the other side of the world in less than a day. We can jump in a car and travel a hundred miles away to a place we've never been guided by a talking map that's being updated constantly by machines traveling through space. We can talk face to face with family members that are thousands of miles away. Many of us have never had to hunt or gather or even get off the couch to get our food. We have immediate access to all human knowledge, and if that's not enough, we can ask Artificial Intelligence to generate even more insight and understanding. We can record and share all of the important moments of our lives not only with our friends and family but with millions of interested strangers. There are a lot of challenges and dark and terrible things that we must face daily in these latter days, but there is so much that is beautiful and wonderful and glorious. This applies just as much to spiritual things as it does to secular things. Two hundred and fifty years ago and entire family was well off if they had a single Bible to share. Now we have access to thousands of pages of scriptures and discourses and magazine articles and manuals, to say nothing of the countless hours of videos and podcasts, all of which are instantly accessible and completely free. If we cannot see the glory of God in these latter days then it is only because we are holding the darkness up to our eyes. I hope that we will not allow the algorithms and other more nefarious forces the power to deceive us that everything is just getting worse and worse and there is no more room for hope or light or glory. I have no doubt that the Lord has only just begun to reveal His glory and that He has many more wonderful and amazing things to show us before He comes to Earth again.
