Feel free to share with us your thoughts in the comments below.

Temple Video Series: Part 2a – Three Degrees of Glory (Bronze Laver)

David Tayman from the blog Visions of the Kingdom, and David Larsen from Heavenly Ascents, have teamed up to produce a series of short YouTube videos on the ancient temple.  The focus of the presentations will be to explore the nature, function, doctrine and ritual of the ancient temple.  This is done with the purpose of providing a richer experience and understanding to our modern temple worship.  They are very well done, with great sound, video, and narration.  I will feature them here as they are produced.

Thanks to the Davids for providing these fantastic videos! Did you gain any new insights from the video above? Feel free to share with us your thoughts in the comments below.

Temple Video Series: Part 1 – Sacred Space

In an interview the store owner said that when the robber was leaving he started cussing at them, “as if Satan was walking out the door.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2YEO-_-Yhw

Store Owner Commands Robber to Leave in the Name of Jesus

LDS Humanitarian Services

I received a comment this evening from YouTube user JAMaddict on my video Inside the LDS (Mormon) Twin Falls Temple.  This is what she said:

It makes me physically ill to think about the “hand selected” granite flooring. What a waste, when so many millions of people need various types of aid.

Before you start going on and on about LDS’s humanitarian efforts, don’t bother! Since LDS refuses to release their financial records, no one knows for sure, but the best guess is that they give 2% of their total income to aid. That’s sickening.

This was my reply message back to her:

The LDS Church has given over $1.1158 billion dollars in humanitarian aid in 167 countries worldwide since 1985. You can see the breakdown per year here:
http://www.providentliving.org/content/display/0,11666,4606-1-2329-1,00.html

If you want to get more specific, you can see the 2008 Welfare Services Fact Sheet here:
http://www.providentliving.org/welfare/pdf/WelfareFactSheet.pdf

$282.2 million in cash donations
$833.6 million in material assistance

That includes:

• 61,308 tons of Food
• 12,829 tons of Medical supplies
• 84,681 tons of Clothing
• 5,965 tons of Educational supplies
• 8.6 million of Hygiene, newborn, and school kits
• 1,100,059 days of labor donated to welfare facilities

What is sick about that?

I might have also mentioned that anciently only the very finest materials were used to construct the House of the Lord, including gold, silver, iron, copper, timber, and stone (see this description of Solomon’s temple), and the Lord has revealed that they are to be built to the same standards today.  It is God’s House, not ours, and He will have it built the way He reveals to His prophets.

If we had spent the humanitarian aid money we have since 1985 instead on temple construction, we could easily have over 100-200+ more temples throughout the world than we have now, essentially doubling the number we have taken 179 years to build, and providing the blessings of temple worship to many more of our members.  But our goal is not to just build temples, but to do what the Lord has commanded, “to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to provide for the widow, to dry up the tear of the orphan, to comfort the afflicted, whether in this church, or in any other, or in no church at all”.

Temple Construction Costs vs. Humanitarian Aid?

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I’ve updated the ways that you can read posts and subscribe to TempleStudy.com.  So you now have multiple methods of reading posts here:

• TempleStudy.com – this website, of course
  
• Full Post RSS Feed – full articles in your RSS reader
  
• Summary RSS Feed – introductory snippets of articles in your RSS reader (with a link to the full post)
• Comments RSS Feed – allows you to read the comments on all posts sitewide
• Subscribe by email – receive TempleStudy in your inbox

I’ve also added support for Odiogo, which converts TempleStudy.com posts into audio podcasts.  It’s a computerized voice, and isn’t always pretty (because it reads every footnote and related post text), but could be useful for those who don’t have time to read, but could listen to the articles while exercising or commuting to and from work.  It could also be a way for those who are visually impaired, or have other disabilities, to access TempleStudy.com:

• Odiogo Podcast of TempleStudy.com (viewable in most RSS readers)
• Other ways to subscribe to the podcast include iTunes, Juice, Zune, MP3 playlist, etc.

TempleStudy.com is also now multi-lingual!  If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you will see a widget in the sidebar titled “Translate This Website.”  You can now choose from any of 40 different languages from the dropdown box, and this entire website will instantly be translated into that language.  Translation is provided by Google Translate, so it won’t be perfect, but it works.

I’ve also made a change to the homepage.  As I noted a few days ago, I changed the homepage to be a full-page embedded video of “Between Heaven and Earth.”  It is a great introduction to LDS temples and what our temple worship means to us.  I’ve changed that slightly now.  Now the video will only be displayed to new visitors to the website.  Returning visitors will not see the video.  (Thanks Naomi!)

Thanks again for everyone’s support of TempleStudy.com.  You’ve greatly blessed my life, and the lives of many others.  Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Note: If you don’t know what an RSS feed is, please see this great intro YouTube video called “RSS Feeds in Plain English.”

New Ways to Read or Listen to TempleStudy.com

I don’t know how long I’ll keep it like this, or if I’ll make it permanent.  Let me know what you think.

TempleStudy.com Homepage changed to Temple Video

1. When you are trying to understand another religion, you should ask the adherents of that religion and not its enemies.
2. Don’t compare your “best” to their “worst.”
3. Leave room for “holy envy.”  In other words, recognize those aspects of other religious traditions that you admire and wish could be reflected in your own.

I think there is great truth embedded in these principles, and we have the opportunity to exercise them every day.  In fact, we use them often here on TempleStudy.com to compare the similarities and differences of Mormon temples with other religious traditions and sacred worship practices.

Below is a short new video which succinctly explains what Mormon temples mean to the Latter-day Saints, from the Latter-day Saint perspective.  Hopefully those that are inquisitive about the Church will be able to learn, from us, what the temple means when investigating and evaluating LDS temple worship.

A more comprehensive video of 44 minutes, of which this is only a snippet, is also available to watch, entitled “Between Heaven and Earth,” which includes commentary and interviews from a number of scholars and theologians, both LDS and from other faiths.

Mormon Temples’ Endowment from Mormon Perspective Video

The time is coming when those who do not obey the Lord will be separated from those who do. Our safest insurance is to continue to be worthy of admission to His holy house. How blessed we are to have temples available. The greatest gift you could give to the Lord at this or any other time of year is to keep yourself unspotted from the world, worthy to attend His holy house. His gift to you will be the peace and security of knowing that you are worthy to meet Him, whenever that time shall come.

“Wherefore, stand ye in holy places, and be not moved, until the day of the Lord come; for behold, it cometh quickly, saith the Lord. Amen” (D&C 87:8).

See this video:

Stand Ye in Holy Places

There is a very well done 44-minute professional video about LDS temples, and why the LDS Church builds temples, entitled “Between Heaven and Earth.”  Above is a preview of this video.  It is an excellent overview and introduction of the Mormon temples.

Also, yesterday lds9999 posted on LDS.net an awesome collection of 125 videos that he has been putting together of all the temples around the world. The amount of work he must have put into this project is staggering to think about.

I have made a new permanent page, Videos, to begin collecting all of these great videos in one place. I have placed a link to this Videos page on the top navigation bar. On this new page I will continue to gather links to all temple videos as I come across them.

Mike Batie has also contributed fantastic videos of temples (including interiors) on YouTube, and I have included those also. In particular, I have added his video of the Nuku’alofa Tonga temple, and another video of Various temples, that I haven’t featured here before.

Thanks to all who are sharing their testimonies of the gospel and of the temple online in so many different ways.

New LDS Temple Videos Page

An interesting anecdote of the placement of the angel Moroni during construction comes from LDSChurchTemples.com:

On January 13, 2005, a statue of the angel Moroni crowned the temple. During placement, a remarkable solar halo was visible, which surrounded the sun. Once Moroni was in place, the phenomenon dissipated.

The excellent music is entitled “The Power of Heaven,” with words and music by Steven Kapp Perry, arranged by Greg Hansen, and from the 1999 album “As Temples Fill the Earth.” The vocalist is Tammy Simister Robinson. You can buy the album at the BYU Bookstore or at Deseret Book.

To see the other videos I’ve posted on Temple Study, see the video tag.

Newport Beach California Temple Interiors Video