3 Comments

  1. Don’t forget that it was President Hinckley who lead the committee who developed the current presentation of the endowment as well. It was live everywhere before that. His committee came up with the video format we have today that allows the same endowment to be given in any language in any temple.

  2. He also was the leader who developed the smaller format for the temples, to make them easier to operate and cheaper (relatively speaking) to build!

  3. You’re right. In an article about President Hinckley building temples in the Deseret News he explains how he was commissioned to change the format of the presentation of the endowment:

    Regarding the temple ceremony, President Hinckley, in a 1995 video biography, told of being called into President McKay’s office in fall 1953 and learning that the church was going to build a temple in Switzerland, just north of Bern — a temple of a different kind.

    “It would need to accommodate the languages of Europe and, at the same time, require fewer personnel to operate,” President Hinckley said.

    “I want you to find a way to present the temple ceremony to accommodate this need,” President McKay told President Hinckley.

    “Having received that charge, I went to work and gathered a group about me of trusted, able, competent people to see what could be done. … For the next year and a half, we worked on it. And that was the pioneering effort of what has now become the general method of presenting the temple ceremony,” President Hinckley said.

    “We produced the first films, and I carried those to Switzerland in September of 1955 to initiate the work in the Swiss Temple.”

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