The following is excerpted from the Church Newsroom. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
President Jeffrey R. Holland dedicated the Grand Junction Colorado Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Sunday, October 19, 2025, and encouraged Church members to serve in the house of the Lord.
The President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said that in a time of division, hostility and dishonesty, the temple is a place of instruction, peace, cleanliness and divine covenants — “a world as close to God’s world as we can find in mortality.”
He spoke about the “simple and beautiful dual phrase” “House of the Lord, Holiness to the Lord,” which appears on the exterior of each of the Church’s temples worldwide.
He said he used to think those words “house of the Lord” just meant that the temple had been dedicated. But now he knows that the words mean that the temple is literally God’s house.
“It is one of the ties on earth that He has with His children that are here,” President Holland said. “It is the obvious place to which God could come if He had family business on the earth. And ultimately, all of His business on earth is family business.”
Regarding the phrase “holiness to the Lord,” President Holland said the world is a noisy, raucous and increasingly unclean place. That noise is often internal, he said, and can be distracting, incessant, demanding and destructive to human spirits.
“How wonderful to have ‘holiness’ be the watchword of our day, our Latter-day Saint day, where we make covenants from our service here that counter the distractions and the noise and the destruction of the world out there,” President Holland said.
To read the full article at the Church Newsroom, CLICK HERE.
