Don't all of us have a secret desire to be on the stage, dressed in amazing costumes,

involved in a play with a director, with our own starring roles, with a character-driven plot,

and lots of intrigue and excitement in our story? Imagine then that you are intimately involved in an award-winning three-act play,

and you are already quite far into Act 2.

But here's the catch.

You can only fully understand Act 2 if you have a knowledge of act one. And when you finished

act one, the curtains were dropped, and you can not only not look back on that part of the play,

you can't even remember it. Do we know anything about act one at all? Yes, we do. Quite a bit, actually. And that's

what we're going to talk about today. Welcome to Meridian Magazine's Come and See podcast. We are Scott

and Maureen Proctor, and this week we'll be studying Moses chapter 1 and Abraham

Chapter 3 in the Pearl of Great Price. To look back on Act 1, that infinite stretch of our lives

before time and before our memory was so utterly lost is to long for more. I yearn for something. I can't quite

put my finger on, like a song whose words I have forgotten. It's a longing, it's a sense of lost

knowledge. It's a hint that the real me is hidden somewhere lost to amnesia, and I think we all feel that way.

And the Old Testament starts with, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,

and questions immediately emerge. Who knew this and how did he know? Who wrote it? Isn't there more? And why did the

Lord impose order upon chaos and invite us to a fallen world? The why is missing in the Old

Testament story. We don't understand God's intent nor anything about ourselves. It took the

prophet Joseph Smith to restore this essential knowledge for us, for without him, this origin

story would be intriguing, but not personal. God would be a moving force, but not a father. Without the restoration,

we would be in the dark about our own identity. As our friend Patrick Dane said, quoting C.S. Lewis,

Joseph Smith invited us to go further up and further in. We don't have to

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