Do We Need a Temple?, by Sandra Tanner

okay tonight we're talking about do we need a temple and in way of preface to this I want to say ahead of time this is not meant as a session of mocking or denigrating the Mormon temple ritual but since they hold it as an absolute requirement for eternal life I feel it is open to discussion and for Christians to examine it and there might be a couple of areas that someone of a temple holding recommend holding person might object to but I'm sorry but when you say it's about eternal life then I think we have the right to discuss it but in that regard when we get to question and answer time I would just ask you to be careful on what you ask that it is not done in a way to make fun of them but in seeking information that's fine but not in a way of ridicule okay tonight in looking at the topics of temples we want to compare what it says in the Bible about temples with the LDS teachings do we have a slide okay starting off I want to read a statement that's on the Mormon webpage Mormon org and it says since the time of Solomon temples have had the same purpose notice that word they've had the same purposes including bringing people closer to God holy temples are as necessary today as they were anciently when they served sa sacred locations to make covenants perform holy ordinances and to be taught by God today in over 140 temples worldwide Mormons do those same things through the power of the priesthood members are married for time and eternity and perform proxy baptisms for their ancestors who died without enjoying the blessings these saving ordinances and notice that it says that at the start there since the time of Solomon temples have had the same purposes including bringing people closer to God well of course they were to bring you closer to God but are they the same rituals and that's what we want to discuss so we look at the Bible the forerunner to the temple in Israel was the tabernacle which was first instituted during the forty years Israel wandered in the wilderness at the time of Moses the book of Exodus chapters 26 through 30 records instructions on the furnishings and the building of the tent and the rituals hundreds of years later Solomon built he's his permanent temple following the pattern of the tabernacle and for that if you want to read about it further look at first King seven and second chronicles four the whole point of the Old Testament sacrificial system was to show that man's sins had separated him from God and that he could only approach God through bringing his offerings to the temple for the priests to present it at the altar and then once a year on the Day of Atonement the high priest would enter the holy of holies to present an offering for both himself and all Israel all of this served as a forerunner to the ultimate offering for sin when Jesus himself as our great high priest would enter the true Holy of Holies on our behalf and offer himself as the lamb slain for the sins of the world when we look at the biblical temple and compare it to the LDS temple we see no common purpose the sole function of the biblical temple was to teach the need for atonement of sins as a precondition for authentic worship of the true and living God Solomon expressed this purpose of the temple in 2nd chronicles - 6 Who am I that I should build him a house save only to burn sacrifice before him by contrast Mormon temples exist as places to perform rituals such as baptism for the dead and eternal marriage however these Mormon temple rituals are not supported by the Bible ancient Jewish literature or early Christian history and as a side note neither are they supported by the Book of Mormon and so on the screen we have an illustration of the temple and how it was laid out and as you look at that you see at the front of it the place where they burn the offering to the side of it is the basin lavery whatever a sea whatever you want to word you use or several words used in the Old Testament and this was on the back of twelve oxen representing twelve tribes of Israel but this is where the priest washed himself then they a priest would go inside and inside you had the showbread and the candelabra and the incense of things and then there was a curtain and then you get to the back and you get to the Holy of Holies that only the high priest could enter none of which is the layout of the LDS temple inside each Mormon temple there is an impressive baptismal font and this is the Salt Lake Temple I believe showing it with the oxen supporting the baptismal font which is for baptism for the dead this font is modeled after a description in the Bible of the large basin also called lever or sea that was located just outside the door of Solomon's Temple and you can read about that in second chronicles 4:2 and then also verse 15 however the basin at the biblical temple was not used for baptisms as the Mormon Church teaches rather the scriptures plainly state that it was used by the priests to wash themselves after offering animal sacrifices in preparation for ministry in the sanctuary and you can read about that further in Exodus chapter 30 verses 8 through 20 and second chronicles 4 2 through 6 the mormon practice of baptism for the dead is neither a Jewish nor Christian practice but rather a ritual introduced by Joseph Smith when trying to establish the need for baptism for the dead Mormons use 1st Corinthians 15 verse 29 else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead if the dead rise not at all why are they then baptized for the dead this is the only verse in the Bible that mentions baptism for the dead notice that Paul is not advocating it's practice he merely makes a passing reference to some group that had such a practice his emphasis throughout that chapter is on the resurrection had baptism for the dead been a primary function of the early church surely there would have been more teaching on it than this offhand reference it is also of interest that the Book of Mormon is silent about such a practice according to the Book of Mormon there would not be any group of people that would benefit from such a rite in Mosiah 2 verses 37 through 39 and Alma 34 verses 32 through 35 it is clearly taught that if a person puts off repentance till death he is sealed to the devil and there is no remedy then in Moroni 8 22 through 23 and 2nd Nephi 9 25 through 26 and Mosiah 15 24 through 27 we read that those who have died without ever hearing the gospel are saved just like little children thus according to the Book of Mormon if you had a chance to accept the gospel and rejected it you are condemned and if you died never hearing the gospel you will be saved this leaves no group of people that need baptism for the dead Mormons will often say to me that the New Testament was changed and the teaching about temples and baptism for the dead and eternal marriage were taken out they just assert that there is no manuscript evidence to show those things were taken out but what is the answer for the Book of Mormon no one would have tampered with that to take it out there wasn't any Catholic Church in America that was wickedly changing Nephi's record and yet the Book of Mormon is silent on all these kind of rituals as well and yet at the front of the Book of Mormon in the introduction it says that the angel told Joseph Smith that the Book of Mormon contained the fullness of the everlasting gospel it doesn't say foundation it says fullness and so the Book of Mormon itself is silent on these major doctrines of Mormonism and surely if we all need temple work done for us to have eternal life exaltation why wouldn't it be mentioned in the Book of Mormon well from an unbeliever outside position I would say that it's because Joseph Smith hadn't thought of it yet when he started his church it reflected his Protestant upbringing and as the years went by he moved further and further away from his biblical studies as a teenager reading the Bible and went off in his own direction to come up with new doctrines which is one of the problems with the Book of Mormon is that it undercuts the authority of the Bible and Mormons will leave Mormonism and not even think to go back to look at the Bible again because they're so trained in this idea that the Bible's corrupt and you can't trust it and yet they don't even trust the Book of Mormon because when I point out to them it doesn't teach their doctrine they say oh well that was just the foundation and I have to point out it didn't say foundation the angel said that it was the fullness and if I got a full glass of water you aren't putting more water in it then the book of Mormons the fullness you aren't putting more teachings in it and that was an issue for Gerald and I when we were struggling with Mormonism that we could see the Book of Mormon didn't teach temple ritual or work for the dead or their ironic Melchizedek Priesthood concepts or many other things like three levels of heaven worked for the dead pre-existence none of those things we're in the Book of Mormon confused us took us a while to work through all that anyways next we want to think about celestial marriage likewise the Mormon temple ride of eternal marriage was never practiced in the biblical temple such a ritual is nowhere to be found in ancient Jewish literature or early Christian history to the contrary in Romans 72 the Apostle Paul clearly teaches that marriage is only for mortal life quote by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive but if her husband dies she is released from the law that binds her to him now you would have thought if Paul believed in celestial marriage that he this would have been a good time to put something in here to explain well you can remarry again but you're still sealed to the first guy and some way to get to heaven you'll have the first toss but even if you marry someone else along the line but he doesn't put any instruction in for this or if a man out lifts his wife there's nothing here about that well you're still sealed to that first wife but you can go ahead and marry more women in the temple and have more wives in evidence see what Paul had the opportunity here to instruct people on these points if they were part of the church and yet the record is silent likewise Jesus taught us that in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are as the angels of God in heaven Matthew 22:30 again if Jesus believed in the importance of being sealed as an eternal couple why would he leave us with this thought and not explain further now when I bring this up to Mormons they will often say to me well those Sadducees hadn't had a temple marriage so of course the woman won't belong to any of those men that have been proposed to him because they they didn't have a temple ritual I said well yeah but he didn't say that he didn't explain this if these were really doctrines why wouldn't they have been in the record again this ritual of eternal marriage is not biblical as we look at the different points of Mormon rituals and the Bible we see that many rules of the Bible have been violated in the way they put together their rituals and concepts and I want to give you four examples number one God appointed only one temple to reflect the fact that there is only one true God Deuteronomy 12 five through six one temple one God Deuteronomy 12 5 through six says but you are to seek the place the Lord your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his name there for his dwelling to that place you must go there bring your burnt offerings and sacrifice notice the start of that you are to seek the place the Lord your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his name there for his dwelling God was going to show them where the temple went and there was to be one temple in contrast the Mormon Church operates scores of temples in violation of the one temple we see in the Old Testament number two all activities in the biblical temple were public knowledge they were spelled out in detail in Scripture four examples the exodus chapters 26 through 30 and in the Book of Leviticus one of the problems I find with Mormons and talking about the temple ritual is its they always say tell me it's too sacred to talk about and I said well it wasn't too sacred to talk about in the Old Testament all the Israelites knew what happened in the temple there was no big secret it was restricted on the priesthood access to the building but there was no secret about what happened in there and there was no restriction on people talking about what happened in there number three the Bible warns that Christians warns them against participating in secret activities now I know the Mormons want to say it's not secret it's sacred but if you cannot talk to me about it or anyone else for that matter its secret our communion service I consider to be a sacred experience but there's nothing in it I couldn't discuss with anyone it's something you could be we would be thrilled to have you come and sit through our communion service we just ask that only those that haven't come to faith in Christ restrain themselves from partaking because it's a covenant between us and God so that you could watch it we can discuss it it is not secret yet it is sacred it so I don't understand the idea that the Mormon ritual is so sacred that they can't discuss it if it wasn't that sacred in the Old Testament and all the people there could discuss it and know what happens Jesus affirmed in John 18 2008 openly to the world in secret I have said nothing and in Ephesians 5:11 through 13 Paul admonishes and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather expose them for it is shameful to even speak of those things which are done by them in secret but all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light for whatever makes manifest is light now someone might object to say that things done in the Mormon temple are not shameful I would say there are things in there that have been done in the past that aren't shameful they have sense made changes in it to where you don't have as much of that as it used to be there but the very fact that it denigrates the atonement of Christ by saying that his atonement is not sufficient is denigrating Christ and I find that to be shameful in sharp contrast the Mormon Church insists on keeping temple rituals secret and you swear an oath to not reveal anything that goes on in the temple that to me makes it secret number 4 the Bible sets forth strict lineage requirements for the Aaronic priesthood it teaches very explicitly that only men from the tribe of Levi and the family line of Aaron were qualified to serve as priests in the temple sanctuary and you can read about that in numbers 3:10 Exodus 29 9 and numbers 18 1 through 7 I want to talk a minute about the clothing for the high priest and the priest the clothing for the high priest and the other priests was laid out in Exodus 39 this is very different from the LDS temple clothing with their green apron representing Adam and Eve's effort to cover their sin of disobedience and when you read about it in the Old Testament you see that he has on a white tunic over which comes this blue robe and then this frontal piece in front and back that has the spur thing on the front with all the jewels and the twelve tribes of Israel on it the priests had that served under the high priest had a white tunic thing that they wore with a sash and I guess Mormons could kind of stretch it and say well the regular priests kind of look like the temple guys in a Mormon temple as far as that goes dressed in white but they don't leave it there they put more on them than just the white tunic now on the LDS web page they have now put up an illustration a photo of the temple clothing that goes over the white outfit that they wear and since they have now put up photos of the hat the robe the green apron although it's kind of hid in the background and the sash I assume that it's fair game to talk about it so here is a friend of mine in England dressed in the Mormon temple clothing and myself I didn't intend to have a picture of me taken in this but I was at a church speaking and they asked me to show them the temple clothing and somebody took a photo and put it on the Internet and so okay so since it's after already of it go ahead and show you it was I did not set out to do that but that's where it ends up okay so that's the clothing that the Mormon is going to wear now remember that's exactly what they're showing in the picture there the green apron the long sheet the hat and the sash it's just it's hard to tell how it would look on you when it's all just laid out flat so you have on a white shirt and pants or a white dress and then you have this robe that goes over it and this green apron and a little veil for the woman and the Baker's hat for a man this is very different from the LDS temple clothe the high priests temple clothing is very different than the LDS temple clothing Mormon Church also claims to have restored the Irani priesthood but only priests from the line of Aaron were allowed to enter the typical temple worshippers even the king of Israel could not enter to the temple and present at the altar the burnt offering since non priests are allowed to enter and participate in Mormon temple activities this is another point at which the Mormon temple practices violates the biblical revelation besides these points we find that the Old Testament temple has been made obsolete by the atonement of Christ at the end of his earthly ministry Jesus predicted that the jerusalem temple was about to be destroyed in matthew 24:2 he told his disciples verily I say to you there shall not be left one stone upon another and this was fulfilled in AD 70 when their Romans demolished the temple and it has never been rebuilt elsewhere jesus said that temple worship was about to be replaced by a new form of worship without a temple building when talking to the Samaritan woman at the well jesus said this is John 4 21 through 24 believe me a time is coming when you will worship the father neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the father in the spirit and in truth for they are the kind of worshipers the father seeks God is spirit and his worshipers must worship in spirit and truth so here Jesus is telling us that things are going to shift they're going to go from us going to a temple to a building to a point where in spirit we come and meet with God and we go on to be the temple of God we'll talk about that in a minute another problem is the veil a dramatic event happened at the time of Christ's death on the cross sing : the end of temple worship the Gospels record that at the very moment Jesus died quote the veil of the temple was rent in twain from top to bottom and that's recorded in all three gospels you can see that in matthew 27:51 before Jesus death the thick temple veil had served as a barrier to prevent the priests from entering the Holy of Holies this inner sanctum represented the place of God's holy and glorious presence only the high priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies once a year on the day of atonement in the book of Hebrews 9 chapter 9 verses 6 through 12 we read that when the high priest went into the holy place once a year to make an offering for the people that this was a type of Christ who would be our great high priest who by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place having obtained internal redemption for us this restriction signified that the access unto God's presence was not truly provided by the Old Covenant in the words of the New Testament book of Hebrews nine verses seven through eight but only the high priest entered the inner room and that only once a year and never without blood which he offered for himself and for the sins of the people the people I committed in ignorance the Holy Spirit was showing by this that the way into the most holy place had not yet been disclosed as long as the first Tabernacle was still functioning now through faith in Christ believers are granted free access into the very presence of God in the words of the New Testament book of Hebrews seeing then that we have a great high priest that passed into the heavens Jesus the Son of God let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and keep and find grace to help in time of need that's hebrews 4 14 through 16 the rending of the veil signified the end of temple worship that system is now obsolete and we no longer need a human priest or temple under the new covenant established by Jesus Christ he is the believers high priest in the very sanctuary of Heaven itself thus a Christian temple such as the Mormon Church proposes it is a contradiction in terms Paul writes in 2nd Corinthians 6:16 that we are the Temple of the Living God and in Ephesians 2 19 and 20 through 22 Paul writes that we are the household of God and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets Jesus Christ Himself being the chief Cornerstone we are built together as God's holy temple now I'd like to shift and talk a little about the actual Mormon rituals and how they came to be there are four different rituals performed in a Mormon temple the first one we've already talked about baptism for the dead that's done in the font in the basement of the temple well the fonts in the basement you stand on the first floor to look at it then they have the endowment ceremony and this is when a missionary goes on its mission or a couple are getting married they go through what they term the endowment and this is when they start wearing the special mormon undergarments so all the missionaries you see going out door-to-door they've all been through what they termed the endowment and the word endowment is to be endowed with knowledge and power so you go to the temple to be endowed with all that you need to know to get back to Heavenly Father and the endowment ceremony starts off with the washing and anointing ceremony this has changed drastically through the years when Joseph Smith started the temple ritual this was a full bath and anointing with oil women with women in with men over the years this has been modified so that by 1900 in the Salt Lake Temple they had a bath tub that you stood in but you were just ceremony only poured over water and then with oil put on you but it wasn't a full bath tub immersion and now they have continued to modify this so that today when a person goes into the temple it's very different than what you would have seen even 20 years ago or even 15 years ago they it used to be that you took off all your clothes and put them in a locker room and you had a sheet over you and then you went into the washing an anointing room and two people at the same sex issue with ceremonially anoint your body by touching their fingers in water and touching the sides of your body and then they would do it with oil and touch the sides of your body you would you'd had this sheet on that was open at the sides kind of like getting an x-ray or something and they would reach under there and touch to the side of your body as they said prayer blessings over you that evidently became offensive to a lot of people and they closed it up and they tried a little more modified version and until finally a few years ago they scrapped the whole idea of the outer garment at the this shield they called it to have on now they just start you right off with putting your Mormon garments on in your locker room putting on your white outfit and then going into the room for the washing and anointing so it's no longer really washing and annoying I mean but there was a reason it you should be called washing and anointing and that's been reduced now to simply a dab of water on your forehead and a dab of oil on your forehead as they say the prayer blessings over you at that point you go back to your locker room and you have a little enveloped with clothing you're going to put on later as you go in for the rest of the endowment ceremony and this is where you will see a movie depicting the creation story and during this they will instruct you on certain handshakes and passwords with I'm not going to go into all those things that you have to learn in order to pass the final test at the end of the ceremony where you have to get back to the attendant the things you learned that day on the handshakes and passwords and when you get up to this part of the ceremony you're in a auditorium looking room and this is what I saw on Thursday and they had they explained that the women said on one side they meant on the other and I was surprised that our guide was fairly forthcoming and a lot of the things he described about this and he even pulled back the curtain at the front of the room to show us that behind this was the veil that you would have to pass through to go through the door into the celestial kingdom now he didn't show us the whole Vail he just pulled the curtain back to show us that's where the veil was and told us where the door was into the celestial kingdom this is all symbolic of what a person has to do to get back to God in the time of coming up to the veil they have a person standing on the other side that represents God and you will God will reach through his hand and you will have to give to this man the handshakes and passwords you learned that day in order for you to pass symbolically pass into celestial kingdom into the other room at this point if you were going to make up a ceremony to help young Christians understand what Christ did for you on the cross - is secure for you eternal life and you were to make up a story about man's journey from the Garden of Eden to the Judgment Day what would you have the person say when they stood before God I would think you would say something about John 3:16 for God so loved the world something where you would appeal to Christ's atonement for your sin that you are not worthy but you claim Christ's righteousness to enter in something along those lines but what the Mormon says is a little phrase and I won't say it here on the film that everybody to shook but it has nothing to do with Christ the statement is all about God giving me power in my own life to go through eternal procreation it's all me centered it is not centered on the atonement of Christ then when you get into the celestial room at that point if you were a missionary that would be the end of your day you don't do the last ceremony they do well not the last but the next ceremony the eternal marriage covenant you don't do till later when you come home from your mission and you get married you don't have to go back and go through this first part the Washington jointing and endowment ceremony unless you want to you can just skip those and just meet your bride or bridegroom at temple for the actual marriage ceremony and that is done in a little side room and they showed us their different little rooms where they do the temple ritual for the endowments theorem for the marriage ceremony in these rooms are depending on the size of the room a number of chairs for whatever a number of your family or friends can number one qualified to come in to see you get married because they have to have a temple ritual recommend and they have to be at least 18 unless it's a family being sealed for all eternity generally it's going to be people 18 or older and at this point the bride and groom will be dressed in their temple clothing so when you see a picture of a Mormon wedding picture on a mantle that is not what the couple looked like at the moment they were married they looked like that picture okay that's what they looked like they were dressed in a white outfit with a green apron and this funny hat now the girl could have on her wedding dress but it would be covered by this sheet that goes over the front and back and ties at the side and this green apron with the sash and a little veil that's a temple veil you cannot wear the veil your folks bought you for your reception it's a temple veil you have to wear and your groom will be dressed all in white and will have an outfit on just like this man in the picture now when they get through with their marriage they go out they go back to their locker room and change into the clothes they're going to wear to the reception and then they come out and have their picture taken in front of the temple and it all looks like this beautiful wonderful celebration and you think that's what they look like when they got married no they look like the pictures here so the ladies and men that you see on missions have not had the eternal marriage yet - they've just had the endowment part later hopefully according to the Mormons they will go and do the eternal marriage but there is another ritual that they don't talk about very often and that's called the second annoying and this is a private ceremony between a man and a woman and you have to be invited to this by someone in the First Presidency this is something that you do not apply for the leaders of the church have to invite you to come and have your second anointing most Mormons will not know about this ceremony but it's written in a number of books it was in journals back before the turn of the century all historians on Mormon temple ritual or on early Mormonism are aware of second anointing it's just the populace that aren't because the church doesn't talk about it in the second anointing ritual they will be dressed in their temple clothing again David the man and wife will have a foot washing ceremony and then they will be a part of the ceremony that the man and wife will complete once they get home but the officiator conducting this is sealing on their head absolute eternal life they have now have a guarantee of exaltation short of murder at that point it won't matter what sin you ever commit short of murder and you are guaranteed to have godhood this used to be done quite a bit in the old days but in today's world the Mormons have got a little more selective on who they give this to it's usually something that's given to you after years of service maybe after you're middle-aged and have proved yourself through some extensive service like mission president or something that way that shows that you're going to stay Mormon no matter what happens and then they might invite you to a second anointing ceremony they also hold other kind of meetings in the temple the apostles meet there once a week in a special room to conduct business they sometimes have a special assembly meeting there well they'll have certain leaders come in for special instruction or sermons but the four elements of ceremonies are a baptism for the dead in the endowment ceremony eternal marriage and second anointing okay now today I want to give you a little rundown on how this all came to be because it didn't all happen just overnight it wasn't there at the beginning of Mormonism the Mormon temple ritual has a lot of elements in it that are taken from masonry and in fact if you looked at the Mormon temple underwear which they also have a picture of that on the internet on the Mormon website but it's not a close-up so you can't really tell all the details on it but on the both the men in the women's breast area of the temple garment is a little look like a little L and a V embroidery stitch and that stands for the compass and square of masonry in the early years before Joseph even started there was an anti Masonic fervor because in 1826 a guy by the name of William Morgan did an expose of the Masonic ritual and was murdered and I think we see reflected in the Book of Mormon a discussed of the Masonic secret rituals the Book of Mormon talks against secret groups oath and the Gaddy Antin robbers if you have familiarity with the Book of Mormon are the bad guys that swear on an oath to protect one another right or wrong and those are elements at the very beginning of Mormonism so it looks like at the start they were opposed to Masonic things but as a years ago by things change you know Joseph's father and brother were Masons at the time he started Mormonism and I think that there had been enough influence of masonry in the home that he already had some thoughts about it but they were negative thoughts at that point in the early 1830s Joseph Smith started working on the book of Moses and in it in chapter 5 you'll find references to Cain as being master Mahan and I think this is a throwback to masonry talking about secret combinations anyways I'm moving up to 1836 when supposedly Joseph Smith has this ordinance of sealing for eternal life when they have the dedication of the Kirtland temple they do foot washing and anointing of one another and at this time he's having these ceremonies of sealing people to eternal life this is not a marriage contract this is men in the priesthood meetings who go through these ceremonies of Washington and anointing for sealing up to eternal life Mormons go back and read their old history they encounter the word sealing for eternal life and they assume that there was knowledge there on the temple ritual that was not there the sealing in 38 had nothing to do with marriage then in 1840 you get the revelation on baptism for the dead Joseph's brother Alvin had died without baptism years before Mormonism started and the family was all worried about what happened to Alvin and I think this prompted Joseph Smith to come up with the idea baptism for the dead so that Alvin could have salvation so it gets introduced in the early 1840s but it's not part of a temple ritual yet it's just a thing on its own then this goes on in 41 when he starts talking about the need for a specific font for doing these ceremonies and he starts to develop the idea of a temple ritual then we know that Joseph Smith starts taking plural wives well now the question is whether he took some in the 1830s but at least by 1841 everyone's agreed he was at least by then taking plural wives and he is sealed to these different women but these ceilings are not temple rituals these are just ceilings for the marriage like Louisa Beaman the first plural wife in Nauvoo he meets her out at the river and they have some guy a secret ceremony where they're sealed together but again this isn't part of a temple ritual he hasn't put all this together these are pieces of things that come together later on Joseph goes on to get some of his friends to come into polygamy but he's not sealed to Emma in an eternal marriage a ceiling until 1843 by which time he already had probably a couple of dozen wives but again this wasn't part of a temple ritual in 1842 Joseph Smith joins the Masons and he goes Rises up the three degrees to become a master mason and that's when he sees all of these handshakes rituals symbolism that we seek to become incorporated into the Mormon temple ritual and it's only a short while after he becomes a Mason that he comes up with his temple ritual now many of the Mormons in Nauvoo had joined masonry so when he comes up with his temple ritual and they go through it of course they recognized that a lot of the elements came from the masonry they had just gone through a few months before so how do you explain the similarities and the Mormon answer was that the Masons had gone into an apostasy just like the Christian Church and that God was restoring true masonry and Joseph temple ritual so what they had experienced as Masons was just a forerunner of the true just like Christian baptism was a forerunner to true baptism interesting though on the start of the endowment ceremony which he starts in 1842 it was for men it had anything to do with marriage the first endowment ceremonies were just for men they were again being washed and anointed as potential kings and priests but this is not with women there's no women in these meetings you don't get the marriage sealing reputation I do until 1843 and you'll see the pulling together of the temple ritual being a marriage ritual and this comes together in section 132 in 1843 when he lays out his whole argument for polygamy so that temple ritual I see was really the way for Joseph to set up a community that was bound on secret oaths to never tell anything against another brother that he could then introduce these men into his polygamy circles because they had all taken oaths in these earlier men-only meetings where they had sworn an oath to one another so they could be trusted now and then he comes up with his temple ritual and the temple marriage sealing to where the women are brought in to the rituals as well in July Joseph's brother Hyrum finally becomes converted to the idea polygamy but Emma Joseph's wife will not accept it and Hyrum says well if you'll write it down I'll take it to him and I can convince her of this and Joseph is recorded as saying you don't know Emma as well as I do and that proved true cuz even according to Mormon historians when he went and read it to her and I would have nothing to do with it and then in August of 43 section 132 is read to the novel High Council and originally the temple endowment ceremony include was really a polygamous marriage situation these were all men taking plural wives that they are being sealed to eternally in September he comes up with his idea of second anointings which at that time everyone in it was getting second anointed to be kings and priests and queens and priestesses and this was for the couple's to become gods and the second anointing ceremony where they do the foot washing and the woman washes her husband's feet is taken from the idea of Mary Magdalene washing Jesus feet because in early Mormonism she was a plural wife of Joe and so her washing his feet was a wife act to her husband and so the foot washing and the second anointing of the woman washing her husband's feet is part of polygamy polygamy is still a part of Mormonism today it was interesting when we went through the temple on Thursday I asked the guide I said whoa I understand your new prophet who's Nelson and he's 93 but he's outlived his first wife and marry the second wife and I said I understand I saw in the Deseret News where it announced he was the new prophet that it said told about his wife and that she was his second wife so does this mean that he will be a polygamist in heaven and the guide said oh of course we aren't ashamed to polygamy yes for those that have had more than one ceiling yes they will have their mates in the hereafter isn't it wonderful like that well you don't say that on the radio because I talk to a lot of Mormons that are sure polygamy is dead and gone but then you have a lot of Mormon women who are very concerned about polygamy consequently there's a book out right now I think it's titled ghosts of polygamy passed I think that's the way the title goes and it's all about women's current fears of being stuck in a polygamous marriage if they die first and their husband marries another woman in the temple so it's a very current doctrine it's something they intend to live in the hereafter changes that have come in through the years in recent years through my lifetime in the Mormon temple ritual have been the gradual changing on the way the Washington joined it was done changes in the Mormon temple undergarment went from one piece long and baggy to a shorter version to the knees and to the elbows and then it kept getting shorter and then finally it went to two-piece and now they keep coming out with new kinds of material so that is they're trying to make it more comfortable and easy to we're but if God gave the temple garment to Joseph Smith why can they change it when when we look at how insistent they are on a sacrament prayer being done WordPerfect and I've sat in several meetings where a young kid has a 16 year old boy has had to say the sacrament prayer six times to get it WordPerfect in a baptismal service if the girl's hair is not top of the head is not totally wet they will do it over again they are so exacting on these things and yet when it comes to things in the temple ritual they can keep changing it and I don't understand how they can change temple rituals but they can't change these other things okay so they have reduced the garment made it more comfortable they've changed things in the actual wording of the temple that and up until 1978 blacks could not go to the temple it wasn't just a matter of not giving priesthood to blacks it's that a black woman couldn't go to a temple either I mean they had no temple rituals so a Mormon will point to Elijah Abel a black man who held the priesthood and Joseph Smith and Brigham Young's day but he didn't get to go to the temple and they don't mention that part he still was excluded from there and that didn't change until 1978 changes they made in 1990 there used to be in the play that they did with Adam and Eve in the fall the devil would send out a minister in clerical garb to try to convince Adam and Eve to follow the Christian idea of God without body parts or passion everywhere present but yes he could dwell in your heart and they ridiculed this the devil would pay the minister for teaching these false doctrine well they've now taken the minister out he's not there anymore they used to embrace on the five points of fellowship which was very clearly a Masonic it situation and if you look up on the internet just type in five points of fellowship it'll pull up an illustration from the Freemasons on this it might pull up one on the Mormons I don't know but I know how to pull up on the Masons and five points of fellowship where the inside of the foot the inside of the knee as you stand with someone facing someone you put the right foot inside between their two legs did where your knee is against their knee hand to back mouth to ear and you're going to shake hands with that person to give them the handshakes you learned in the temple that day this was done at the veil before you entered into the celestial kingdom it was the highlight of the ceremony it was the final test this is when you said into God's ear the magic phrase that gets you through the door people were uncomfortable with this embrace and so it was dropped in 1990 and they just went up to the veil and said the phrase into God's ear but there was no embrace the handshake but no embrace there used to be penalties in the temple ritual that have been removed and it used to be taken from the Masons where you do your thumb across your throat symbolic of the way in which life to be taken and that was the temple oath of having your throats led if you reveal the ceremony but this is a Masonic symbol and the pulling the thumb across the heart and across the bowels that's all Masonic well they took those out in 1990 then in 2005 they changed the Washington a-19 to where the garment was already worn under the shield and it was closing aside you weren't just naked then around 2000 14 or 15 I remember those that year they changed it where you were fully clothed for the washing and oiling where they just touched your forehead again if you have to do everything perfectly why can the temple ritual and the temple clothing be continually changed okay I want a quote from Brigham Young Brigham Young on the occasion of the laying of the cornerstone of the Salt Lake Temple describe the importance of the endowment as the key to entrance into the highest degree of heaven this is from the Journal of discourses volume 2 page 315 your endowment is to receive all those ordinances in the house of the Lord which are necessary for you after you have departed this life to enable you to walk back to the presence of the Father passing the angels who stand a Sentinels being enabled to give them the key words the signs and tokens pertaining to the holy priesthood and gain your eternal exaltation in spite of Earth and hell so it's the temple ritual that gets you back into the presence of God you've got to be able to give all these handshakes and passwords however for the Christian we looked at Hebrews 12:2 where the Christians hope is found in looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross despising the shame and has sat down on the right hand of the throne of God when Christ died on the cross he said it is finished and the joy of the Christian is knowing that it is not up to me it is not whether I can remember some special words or whether I can remember some special signals or handshakes all I have to do is plead the blood of Jesus that is my entrance in to eternal life into the presence of God thank you [Applause] sit down I can't get on these stools I am not good at bar stools I haven't had enough practice ya know I'm up here now oh the fullness of gospel I think it's on the sheets over there on the table is one on contradictions and LDS scriptures and if you go to our website at UT LM org and just type in contradictions LDS scriptures it'll pull up a whole list and and those will be listed there as well well that they were why every time they go in the temple everyone's dressed in white so they the temple workers are all in white now the ones walking around in the hallway when you go through the temple ritual won't have on the green apron usually they're just in the white outfit so it's just their standard temple apparel one of the things they do at a temple dedication that I went to I went to the dedication of the Los Angeles temple and of course I was a teenager and I knew nothing about the temple ritual but I was told to bring a clean hanky and I didn't know what that was about and so they have all this conference kind of sound and stuff where all the prophets are talking and we're sitting in one of the rooms in the temple and it's all coming over the microphone because I I wasn't VIP so I wasn't in the room was the prophet doesn't side room and at a certain point we all stood up we were going to do the Hosanna shout and we all stood up and as I recall we were facing east and so you where's where's my hankie here so you have this ritual where you the whole set a shout is Hosanna Hosanna Hosanna and there's some other phrase too to God Almighty or whatever it is that anyways they got this three thing with the hankie hills and a shout and I'm like what the heck is this you know I don't think I would have been a good candidate for the temple ritual because that in itself freaked me out and so the next Sunday at the ward house I happen to see the bishop in between sacraments service in Sunday school and I grabbed him and I said hey Bishop let's deal with the wave of the hankie thing was the whole Sanna shout oh my word you thought I was swearing he was just appalled and he said well we never talk about those things outside of the template everything that said in the temple is sacred and we do not talk about it ever mention that again you know I'm I'm like okay you're always just thank you but yeah so anyways [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] that has nothing to do with baptism for the dead and if we're going to say that it does it would only be applying to the people at Simon Noah because there's no instruction there for anyone to do this any other time or that it was done for any other people but I see it as through the same spirit that God warned at the time of Noah that same spirit speaks to us today and warns us as well I don't see that as having any reference to work for the dead that doesn't do it Aaron did your hmm if did you want to follow up on them right when you are going to be a charismatic leader of a new movement you have to keep upping the ante to keep people excited about the movement and so we see it's Mormonism cuz along he's always promising something new some new deal some new revelation I just bought some papyri and lo and behold if Abraham is you know right here and so it's a WOW factor you always have to have another wild factor so the temple ritual comes along at the Kirtland temple comes along at a time when you got the failure the Kirtland bank lot of this faction in Kirtland we're gonna have the endowment at the temple for the new Kirtland temple got to get this built so we can have this endowment and he uses the word endowment but it's not endowment in the sense of issues later Mormons read a meaning back into that the endowment at that time was going to be the infilling of the Holy Spirit and this was going to be a Pentecostal experience and they would have looked just like Pentecostal churches of today well I don't know how many Pentecostal church have that exciting a meetings anymore but but that's this is the the enthusiasm that's going to be expected for this meeting you tell everyone to fast for a whole day before you come to the temple and then you tell everyone you're going to have communion world Sacrament in those days they used real wine and so you fasted all day and now you're going to have communion and you can drink all the wine you want because it has been sanctified and so it'll do you no harm and so I see the public getting drunk and they stand up and start prophesying speaking in tongues there was a lot of speaking in tongues and early Mormonism and they all get up and speak in tongues Brigham Young spoke in tongues I think Joseph Smith dead but all the main leaders spoke in tongues so this was the endowment this outpouring of the holy spirit and then they were also told that this sealed them up to eternal life but I had nothing to do with the way the words were later used in Mormonism it had it was its own ceremony and so but you have all the problems in Kirtland you got to come up with something else and so when he gets to Nabu he's in trouble over polygamy and all these different things and so we kind of fuller endowment now we got a bigger ceremony for you goes through and so he just keeps the building and historians looking at the evolution of Mormon ritual all agree that this is a building process of adding more ideas to the formula until it gets to the complication we get at the end when Joseph Smith dies the ceremony has not been written down and they get out here to Utah and Brigham Young and the different leaders that went through the ritual in Nabu are now trying to figure out the ceremony so they can do it out here and they get together and try to reconstruct the temple rituals so the question is do we have everything right who knows but it's the way Brigham and the brother and put it all back together it's part of what Brigham did he added in an oath of vengeance which was against those that killed the Prophet Joseph and Hyrum the oath of vengeance was in until 1904 somewhere around that time period that they tore an oath of that if they ever came across anyone they helped to kill the Prophet so that they would kill them and this is what led up to the mountain metal Massacre because apostle Pratt had been killed in Arkansas and now the Mormons felt there was another prophet to be avenged in the oath they took and when the wagon train from Arkansas came through here they saw them as guilty as Pratt's murder and that was one of their justifications for attacking the wagon train so this oath has ramifications that are horrible as it comes along but in the read Smoot hearings after the turn of the century when read Smoot was senator from Utah Mormon apostle and there was a contention over whether a Mormon should be seated because they didn't keep the laws obviously with polygamy and all that and in the hearings it was brought up about the oath of vengeance and at that time the Mormon Church of course they didn't hide it but that's what they took it out as though there was another change that happened in the whole temple ritual it's gone through change after change so 1836 endowment wasn't 1844 endowment which wasn't it or isn't our endowment as of the Mormon would go through today it's kept evolving Oh at the green apron in the temple ritual at the very beginning they well in most temples you watch a movie in the Salt Lake Temple it's I think it's still life where you have people play the part of Eve and Adam you have three men that play the part of Elohim Heavenly Father Jehovah Jesus and Michael who will become Adam and they reenact the creation of the world and the fall and they have this man playing the part of the devil who comes out to tempt Adam and Eve and in the old version they he also had with him a minister that he promised to pay well if he'd teach false doctrine but now it's just the minute the devil that comes out to try to convince Adam and Eve did not follow God and when Eve takes of the fruit and falls she puts on she in out and put on the green apron which comes out of Genesis Adam and Eve made their own covering when they realized they were naked this is not a positive thing in Genesis that when Adam and Eve make the fig leaf apron this is a covering for their sin which God rejects and gives them animal skin covering symbolic of the atonement for their sin is going to be through blood forerunner to the atonement of Christ a picture of that the odd thing about the apron is that I've talked to Mormons after they've left Mormonism and they have not necessarily made the connection that the green apron would have been bad and that it represents Adam and Eve's disobedience to God and the curious thing that a Mormon where's the green apron when they're married and they had the green apron on when they're buried to come forth in the day of the Resurrection wearing that green apron man's effort to cover his own sin and I would say symbolically this covers the whole problem of Mormon doctrine that it is man's effort to cover his own sin instead of availing themselves of the covering that God supplied through the death of Christ so yeah damn Oh okay women Joseph Smith store yeah down by the river in hid on the second level of his mercantile store he had an office and then there was an upper room there well they did temple rituals originally some of them were done in the Masonic Lodge their town but also they were done in the upper room of his mercantile store and the little office room is infamous for where sometimes Joseph or Brigham would meet with women to try to convince them of going into plural marriage and one of the expose aids that came out during Joseph Smith's lifetime was of a young girl Martha Brotherton who a single girl and she was invited up to the special meeting room to receive further instruction in which he gets their broom Young's trying to get her to agree to be his plural wife and she won't agree and so they bring in Joseph to help try to convince her this is of God and Martha figures out real fast she better find some way to get out of the room and so she says well this is a big decision I got to really pray about this I have to go home I pray about it and give you an answer later and then she leaves town and and this becomes written up and published in newspapers about Martha's experience in this room and the little office room it's reported to have had a little site above it something to the effect of positively no admittance and because that's where they would meet with these young girls the whole polygamy thing was done behind closed doors Joseph lied publicly about polygamy he never once publicly admitted to it in fact just the within the month before he died he gave a sermon where he said what a thing it is for a man to be accused of having seven wives when I can only find one I'm the same innocent man I was when I got married and he says these men are all liars well we now know and the church admits on their website that he had 30 to 40 plural wives during the time that he publicly was saying he didn't we know that 12 to 14 according to the church website were already married and we know that at least nine of them were teenage girls one of the problems this makes is section 132 in the doctrine covenants on polygamy says if a man has ten virgins he's not committed adultery well I don't know how you explained 12 to 14 married women these are not women that needed someone to support them or take care of them because they were widowed or something these were married women with husbands who already were supporting them this has become a real problem for many Mormons on faith crisis because they realize he lied he lied to Emma he lied to the church he lied to the world it was against the law in Illinois and yet the church admits that he was marrying these married women and there's no justification for even by Mormon standards in section 132 it says if you have virgins it doesn't say if you marry married women and that's become a major problem for many people today as they do research well that was far afield what anyways [Music] well I've heard that in Mormonism before the turn of the century but not for the woman but for Satan that he crawled on this belly in the play but I've never heard of a woman doing it well I think somebody has confused the part of the devil crawling out on his belly when he's cursed outside of my scope of research I'm not sure yeah yeah okay Aaron had a question oh I see that question [Music] yes which was because they had sin that they realized they were naked yes the sin was disobedience and to cover their disobedience that they knew that that they now realize they were naked they made the covering but God gave them a covering after that rejected the apron when he gave him animal skin covering no I think on pre-existence you're looking at verses that talk about the foreknowledge of God on the predestination of God knowing ahead of time who we are what we'll do but I don't see that as meaning that we earned something in a prior life that made us be born the way we were born I don't see that kind of a concept I don't see an existence of humans before birth I see the Bible talks about that he formed the spirit within the womb and I see nothing that speaks to man existing before that in God's foreknowledge he could give prophecy because he knew the future and so he could see ahead of time who was going to be his rulers his Saints his followers his preachers whatever he knew that ahead of time I don't think we had to be there for him to figure that out

Channel: Aaron Shafovaloff

Views: 23,420

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Id: 7Zc2wkfPqrs

Length: 75min 42sec (4542 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 27 2018