5 Comments

  1. I love your blog! Thanks for your insightful comments. I think I’m going to write a blog about your blog for others to see because you share very insightful things on the temple.

    Here’s what I found in 2 Nephi 4 in addition to your comments:

    v20 “…he (God) hath led me through mine afflictions in the wilderness…”

    v 24 “…I waxed bold in mighty prayer…and angels came down and ministered unto me.”

    These verses made me think of the video that we watch in the temple.

    http://www.graceforgrace.com

  2. Thanks Aaron! I love the temple. I love learning about the temple, and sharing my findings with others. There is a scripture in D&C which says:

    Behold, I sent you out to testify and warn the people, and it becometh every man who hath been warned to warn his neighbor. (D&C 88:81)

    There is a lot of material out there about the temple, from the General Authorities and scholars of the Church, which help give us a much better understanding of our temple ordinances and practices, and how they fit within the world of ritual worship. What we do in the temple is not weird, or out of standard liturgical practice, but it can appear so for those that do not understand history.

    I hope this site can be a type of “educative apologetics”, a term Kevin Barney borrows from Roger Keller:

    I personally have never had much interest in chicken fighting directly with anti-Mormons. Uggh. [FAIR doesn’t do that, BTW, which is why I’m involved with that group.] But I am very passionate about what Roger Keller describes as educative apologetics, which is really more inward directed–trying to protect our own people from the adverse effects of negative criticism of the Church. And the way to protect them is through education. (comment on By Common Consent)

    Here I hope to help educate Church members about our own temple practices, and ritual practices throughout history, and in this way help protect them against the material that the anti-Mormon community produces.

    Those are good additional insights about the Psalm of Nephi. Ministering angels certainly invokes temple imagery.

  3. Not only does Nephi’s Psalm contain temple imagery, the entire thing takes you step by step through the stations of the Old Temple. There are many more examples of this literary format in the Book of Mormon, as well as all the standard works. Below is a link an article about it in my blog:

    http://23rdpsalm-jnc.blogspot.com/2011/07/allegorical-temple-imagery-in-book-of.html

    For an in-depth treatment of New Testament examples of this literary form, visit this link:

    http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/books/?bookid=113

    Jack Welch explores the Temple imagery of the Sermon on the Mount (daily bread, candle, arrayed as Solomon, a group prayer, ask/seek/knock, etc.)

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