Pioneer Day

Pioneer Day is a good day to feel filial piety.  Our ancestors were great.  They may not have thought so.  Greatness, from the inside, is a lot like humans from the inside: hot, messy, bloody, gross.  From the outside, they were great.

In a superficial way, the popular understanding is the Old Testament is about the national salvation of Israel and the New Testament is more about individual salvation.  The restoration synthesized that–they built Zion because they wanted their kids to grow up in Zion.

More precisely, the Old Testament is about individual and group salvation in the form of the nation, and the New Testament is about individual and group salvation in the form of a new thing called a church.  Because the pioneers were a church, they built a nation.  And because they built a nation, we still have a church.