The Saints' Devotion to the Temple
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What was the purpose of the Nauvoo Temple?
Joseph Smith explained that the purpose of the temple was to provide those ordinances necessary for a person to "come up and abide in the presence" of God in the eternal worlds. Among those ordinances were baptism, endowments, and sealings of families "for time and all eternity." These same ordinances were performed by proxy on behalf of relatives and friends who had passed on, in the belief that they lived on in a world of spirits and were capable of accepting or rejecting the gospel of Jesus Christ (History of the Church, 5:1–2).
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