As recently as two years ago, the Church was testing out a pilot program in Chile that shortened the block schedule to two hours and fifteen minutes. I went to church there a few times while this was going on… it was fantastic! Sacrament meeting was pretty much the same length, but Sunday School and RS / Priesthood were streamlined to half their standard duration.

Not only did this make the last two meetings fly by – minimal announcements, just cutting to the chase, but sacrament meeting was so much easier to sit through without falling asleep when you knew that you’d be more than halfway through when the meeting ended.

I knew some people that lived there at the time, and they really liked it… they would facetiously complain about how long church was when they had to attend a ward in the states. They have since moved, so I don’t know if this is still going on, but I did talk to the area president when I was down there and asked him if there was any chance of expanding the program northward.

His response? He didn’t think that the brethren were enthusiastic enough about it to expect a 1980-type change anytime soon. He thought this was a pity, as do I. Unfortunately, it appears that the church at large is not ready to live this higher law.

How do I know that two-hour church is a higher law?  Simple numerology.  Three is the number of the bronze medal, third place, the Telestial Kingdom. Scaling church down to two hours is definitely moving up the ladder to the Terrestrial. One of the signs of the Millennium is the one-hour block.  (And please, the Celestial Kingdom being the “third” degree?  Mere semantics.  We all know it’s first place.)

Speaking of ladders, if we were to build a tower so high that it could reach heaven, the length of the block schedule would decrease proportionately with increased proximity to its destination.  You see, anyone that’s ever seen a picture of the Tower of Babel knows that each successive floor has less square footage than the previous one.  Having people sit around at church longer on the lower floors helps relieve the inevitable bottleneck at the top.

Also, the mosaic law was filled with a seemingly infinite number of rules; the Church is currently filled with an infinite number of hours spent in meetings.  The higher law could be more concisely, and more effectively, expressed in just two commandments; church could be more concisely and effectively carried out in only two hours.

Finally, the Godhead is composed of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.  This, my brothers and sisters, is no coincidence.  Can you deny the symbolism of Christ always coming second in this sequence? Obviously “two” is the number on the back of his jersey for Team Trinity.  Therefore, his true (rhymes with two… spooky) church would only have a two-hour block.

Let us all prepare ourselves and our households for that glorious day when the heavens will be opened and that third hour, that tare among the wheat, will be burned as chaff.