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I came across a talk from President Brigham Young that was deeply insightful, and I want to share a portion. It is from an address he gave on August 24, 1872 in Farmington, [...]
Note: This is a comment I made on my last post, but I thought it was pertinent enough to make it into a post of itself.
The concept of “keys” is not absent from the Book of Mormon. Whenever God has chosen to give authority to man to perform ordinances in His name, it has been [...]
It seems to me that there is an undercurrent among the more liberal “new order” Mormon bloggers in the Bloggernacle lately that try to refute or dilute the concept that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the “one true church.” While I do believe that there is much truth that is found [...]
I think many times our culture produces preconceptions or stereotypes about words, images, cultures, forms, meanings, etc., that may not actually be true. I have found this to be the case with the word mysticism. Oft times I think we associate this word with gypsies, palm readers, fortune tellers, monks, or other so-called strange or [...]
A member of another faith asked me the following question:
In the [LDS] service that I attended, the speaker said that service to the Temple is the most important service that we can provide. Is this opinion common across members of the LDS church? Why is service to the Temple held in higher regard than, say, [...]
As I was researching for the posts on the ankh, I came across some information which was interesting, describing the Egyptian concept of “time” and “eternity.” These concepts almost seem repetitive and redundant to our modern way of thinking, but to the Egyptians each of these terms represented something concrete and distinct, and both were [...]
The other article that impressed me from the latest Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, 16/2 (2007), was Donald W. Parry’s “Service and Temple in King Benjamin’s Speech.” Why did it impress me? Because it related subjects in the Book of Mormon to the temple, something that we haven’t seen a lot of [...]
The television station KREX Channel 5 from Grand Junction, Colorado, aired a news piece yesterday about the “Sacred Secrets of the LDS Church.” You can see the video above.
I think that the news anchors, save being as objective and unaffected as anchors could possibly be, did a decent job of trying to understand what [...]
A reader has asked, “Do you have any insight into what happened to the washing of feet? Could the washing of feet have been preparatory to the full ordinance of washing as we now have it in the initiatories?”
The ordinance of washing of feet is still performed in the temple, for it is a restored [...]
I hadn’t made this connection before, but it seems to jump out at me now like red ink. I knew that the School of the Prophets was a select group of brethren who participated in an effort to prepare themselves for the missionary work, but it also had a much more spiritual side with [...]
I used to ask myself that question, and I believe that many others probably still do. We believe that our current temple ordinances as revealed by the prophet Joseph Smith are as old as the human race, and were first revealed to Adam, the Ancient of Days. So why don’t we read more [...]
I was first introduced to Cyril’s Catechetical Lectures by Hugh Nibley in his phenomenal work The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri. Cyril of Jerusalem is a prominent early Christian theologian, and is considered a saint by many. His most famous writings are set of twenty-three catechetical lectures which he delivered around 347 [...]
The sacred ceremonies in which new monarchs are crowned kings and queens in the United Kingdom have significant parallels to the LDS Mormon endowment. These traditions stem from ancient times in English history, and have remained relatively unchanged in form throughout ages. The most recent coronation ceremony was on June 2, 1953, when [...]
One of the criticisms leveled at the LDS (Mormon) practice of temple worship is the seemingly dissimilar forms of the ordinances when compared with those found practiced by ancient Israelites in the Bible. It is true that the forms of the ordinances and sacrifices are different, but their meaning and symbolism remain the same. [...]
The temples on earth are reflections of the temple in heaven. They mirror each other both in form and content. Consider the following points that I pull from Matthew Brown’s exceptional and classic book on the temple, The Gate of Heaven:
John saw “the temple which is in heaven” (Rev. 14:15, 17; Rev. 15:5-8).
Other [...]
No, it isn’t being sealed to your spouse on wedding day, although that is a prerequisite (preparatory and required) to receive this highest and most sacred sealing ordinance. The priesthood sealing powers of Elijah, as restored in this last dispensation (D&C 110:13-16) and vested in the presiding high priest of the Church (D&C 132:7), [...]
On this bright Easter morning I thought we might reflect on the glorious resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and particularly how this miraculous gift and triumph over death by the Savior has a very central theme and part of our temple. I don’t think we recognize just how inseparably tied are the realities [...]
This last week I finally swung by Seagull Book and picked up Dr. Andrew Skinner’s new book Temple Worship. I had heard about it before from ads, and from an excellent interview that Carol Mikita had with Dr. Skinner.
I’ve been impressed with the depth that Dr. Skinner approaches the temple subject, and the new [...]
The Prophet Joseph gave a sermon just a few months before his martyrdom in which he said:
The Bible says, “I will send you Elijah the Prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord; and he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the [...]
Today a commenter on the site mentioned how I should include more parallels with the practices of the Masons, since that is plainly where the temple ordinances came from. And I would respond, did they? Did they really, so easily, come from the Masons? Can we dismiss Joseph as a prophet, seer, [...]
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