“Build up the kingdom”: Bruce D. Porter

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    By Emily Smurthwaite

    Bruce D. Porter, a member of the Quorum of the Seventy, spoke about the importance of building the Lord”s kingdom of earth — especially through small and simple means.

    As a graduate student, Elder Porter was asked to teach a primary class, and he said he put off preparing the lesson. As he walked in late to the class, the children were singing “Love One Another.”

    Elder Porter said the Spirit bore witness that he was looking at the most important classes in Cambridge, Mass., that day.

    “The university could not hold the answers to a troubled world,” he said.

    In the Sunday afternoon session of general conference, Elder Porter said the church”s destiny is to fill the whole earth, and the building up of God”s kingdom in the latter days will be done by means as simple as what he witnessed in that Primary class.

    “We may be inclined to see the building of God”s kingdom as something distant and far away,” he said. “We build it in our own hearts as we cultivate the Spirit in our lives.”

    Elder Porter assured people that the church grows by outward expansion and inward refinement. He said from the church”s earliest days, it has been built up by ordinary people.

    And the home is important to building the kingdom of God, he said.

    “It is within the family … that generations unite in building the kingdom of God,” he said. “The rearing of children is a divine work.”

    Elder Porter said that as fathers and mothers teach their children eternal truths, they pass on the torch of truth and the kingdom waxes strong.

    If people truly desire to contribute to the great latter-day work, their eyes will be single to the glory of God, he said. Personal prayer, study and pondering are needed.

    “May we build up the kingdom of God on this earth, that it might meet the kingdom of heaven,” he said.

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