Church History Gems - 31 July 2009

Beautiful Memorial

"Many of you participated in the dedication of the Nauvoo temple last June. It was a great and marvelous occasion, one to be long remembered. We not only dedicated a magnificent building, a house of the Lord, but we also dedicated a beautiful memorial to the Prophet Joseph Smith.

"In 1841, two years after he came to Nauvoo, he broke ground for a house of the Lord that should stand as a crowning jewel to the work of God.

"It is difficult to believe that in those conditions and under those circumstances a structure of such magnificence was designed to stand on what was then the frontier of America.

"I doubt, I seriously doubt, that there was another structure of such design and magnificence in all the state of Illinois.

"It was to be dedicated to the work of the Almighty, to accomplish His eternal purposes."

Gordon B. Hinckley, "O That I Were an Angel, and Could Have the Wish of Mine Heart, Ensign," Nov. 2002, 4–5

Topics: Temples

Church History Gems - 15 July 2009

No Sacrifice Too Great

"No effort was spared [in the building of the original Nauvoo Temple]. No sacrifice was too great. Through . . . five years men chiseled stone and laid footings and foundation, walls and ornamentation. Hundreds went to the north, there to live for a time to cut lumber, vast quantities of it, and then bind it together to form rafts which were floated down the river to Nauvoo. Beautiful moldings were cut from that lumber. Pennies were gathered to buy nails. Unimaginable sacrifice was made to procure glass. They were building a temple to God, and it had to be the very best of which they were capable.

"In the midst of all of this activity, the Prophet and his brother Hyrum were killed in Carthage on the 27th of June 1844. . . .

"But Brigham Young, President of the Quorum of the Twelve, picked up the reins. Joseph had placed his authority upon the shoulders of the Apostles. Brigham determined to finish the temple, and the work went on. By day and by night they pursued their objective, notwithstanding all of the threats hurled against them by lawless mobs. In 1845 they knew they could not stay in the city they had built from the swamplands of the river. They knew they must leave. It became a time of feverish activity: first, to complete the temple, and secondly, to build wagons and gather supplies to move into the wilderness of the West."

Gordon B. Hinckley, "O That I Were an Angel, and Could Have the Wish of Mine Heart, Ensign," Nov. 2002, 4

Topics: Temples

Church History Gems - 3 June 2009

Beautiful Memorial

"Many of you participated in the dedication of the Nauvoo temple last June. It was a great and marvelous occasion, one to be long remembered. We not only dedicated a magnificent building, a house of the Lord, but we also dedicated a beautiful memorial to the Prophet Joseph Smith.

"In 1841, two years after he came to Nauvoo, he broke ground for a house of the Lord that should stand as a crowning jewel to the work of God.

"It is difficult to believe that in those conditions and under those circumstances a structure of such magnificence was designed to stand on what was then the frontier of America.

"I doubt, I seriously doubt, that there was another structure of such design and magnificence in all the state of Illinois.

"It was to be dedicated to the work of the Almighty, to accomplish His eternal purposes."

Gordon B. Hinckley, O That I Were an Angel, and Could Have the Wish of Mine Heart, Ensign, Nov. 2002, 4–5

Topics: Temples

Daily Gems - 12 March 2009

SPECIAL MESSAGE: Church Statement on "Big Love"

Visit the Newsroom to read the Church’s official statement on an upcoming episode of HBO’s Big Love that is said to depict temple ceremonies. If you would like to learn more, watch a video that explains why we build temples. To share this video, go to the YouTube page, click “Share” below the video, and then select how you would like to share it.

Topics: Temples, Temple, Temple Work

Church History Gems - 23 February 2009

He Drove the Stake

"That prayer of consecration [dedicating the Salt Lake Temple] is filled with thanksgiving for the blessings of the Lord upon His people. The occasion was the greatest and most significant event in the history of the Latter-day Saints in the Salt Lake Valley.

"It is a thing of note that Wilford Woodruff had been the one to drive the stake marking the site of the temple four days after the 1847 arrival of the pioneers. On that occasion President Brigham Young had declared, 'Here we will build a temple to our God.'

"Brother Woodruff saw with his own eyes the forty-year pageant of the construction of this magnificent house of the Lord. At the time of the temple dedication he was eighty-six years of age. He had been sustained President of the Church four years earlier. He had known all of the latter-day temples that had been built before this—Kirtland, Nauvoo, St. George, Logan, and Manti. He had presided in the St. George Temple from the time of its dedication in 1877 until 1884.

"Few, if any, had a better understanding of the purposes for which these structures are built. He grasped with eagerness and taught with clarity the importance of the ordinances in the house of the Lord and, particularly, of the validity of work for the dead and the manner in which families should be linked together in a great patriarchal chain.

"Beautiful is the prayer that he offered in the dedicatory service of what was then the newest temple in the Church and which has remained the largest."

Gordon B. Hinckley, "The Salt Lake Temple," Ensign, Mar. 1993, 2-3

Topics: Temples

Church History Gems - 7 January 2009

Dedicate Ourselves Anew

"May we each dedicate ourselves anew to the service of the Lord.

"Say the word temple. Say it quietly and reverently. Say it over and over again. Temple. Temple. Temple. Add the word holy. Holy Temple. Say it as though it were capitalized, no matter where it appears in the sentence.

"Temple. One other word is equal in importance to a Latter-day Saint. Home. Put the words holy temple and home together, and you have described the house of the Lord!

"May God grant that we may be worthy to enter there and receive the fulness of the blessings of His priesthood."

Boyd K. Packer, "The Temple, the Priesthood," Ensign, May 1993, 20-21

Topics: Temples

Church History Gems - 2 January 2009

Clear Memory

"As the [Salt Lake] temple neared completion, James F. Woods was sent to England to gather genealogies, and it was the beginning of a sacred family history work beyond anything that man had ever imagined.

"John Fairbanks and others were sent to France to learn to paint and to sculpt 'so that the Lord's name may be glorified through . . . the arts' (John Fairbanks Diary, BYU Library).

"He left seven children for his wife to look after. He could not bear to part with her in public, so two of the children walked with him to the station for a tearful parting.

"Women contributed no less than the men to the building of the temple. Perhaps only another woman can know the sacrifice a woman makes to see that something that must be done, that she cannot do herself, is done. And only a good man knows in his heart of hearts the depth of his dependency upon his wife—how she alone makes what must be done worth doing.

"In the throng on the day of dedication was a seven-year-old boy from Tooele who would carry a clear memory of that event and a clear memory of President Wilford Woodruff for another ninety years. LeGrand Richards would one day serve in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as his father before him had done.

"When he was twelve, LeGrand heard President Woodruff give his last public address. Even after he was ninety years old, Elder Richards bore clear testimony to us of those sacred events."

Boyd K. Packer, "The Temple, the Priesthood," Ensign, May 1993, 19-20

Topics: Temples

Church History Gems - 26 December 2008

May the Lord Help Me

"When the Saints trickled into the Salt Lake Valley, all they owned, or could hope to get, was carried in a wagon, or they must make it themselves.

"They marked off the temple site before even the rudest log home was built.

"There was an architect in that first company, William Weeks, who had designed the Nauvoo temple. But the hopeless desolation was too much for him. When President Young went east in 1848, Brother Weeks left, saying, 'They will never build the temple without me' (see Thomas Bullock Journals, 1844-1850, 8 July 1848, Church Archives).

"Truman O. Angell, a carpenter, was appointed to replace him. He said: 'If the President and my brethren feel to sustain a poor worm of the dust like me to be Architect of the Church, let me . . . serve them and not disgrace myself. . . . May the Lord help me so to do' (Truman O. Angell Journal, 1857-8 Apr. 1868, 28 May 1867, Church Archives)."

Boyd K. Packer, "The Temple, the Priesthood," Ensign, May 1993, 19

Topics: Temples

Church History Gems - 24 December 2008

From the Top of Every Hill

"When the Salt Lake Temple was dedicated, it had been fifty-seven years since the Lord appeared in the Kirtland Temple, keys were bestowed, and Elijah appeared, fulfilling the prophecy of Malachi twenty-two hundred years earlier.

"There were to have been temples at Independence, at Far West, and on Spring Hill at Adam-ondi-Ahman, but those temples were never built.

"It had been fifty-two years since the Lord had commanded the Saints to build a temple in Nauvoo and warned that if they did not complete it within the allotted time, 'your baptisms for your dead shall not be acceptable unto me; and if you do not these things at the end of the appointment ye shall be rejected as a church, with your dead, saith the Lord your God' (D&C 124:32).

"The Saints built the temple, but they were driven away and it was destroyed by the mobs.

"Colonel Thomas L. Kane wrote: 'They succeeded in parrying the last sword-thrust" of the mobs until "as a closing work, they placed on the entablature of the front . . .

" 'The House of the Lord:

" 'Built by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

" 'Holiness to the Lord!

" '. . . It was this day,' he wrote, that 'saw the departure of the last elders, and the largest band that moved in one company together. The people of Iowa have told me, that from morning to night they passed westward like an endless procession. They did not seem greatly out of heart, they said; but, at the top of every hill before they disappeared, were to be seen looking back . . . on their abandoned homes, and the far-seen Temple and its glittering spire' (pamphlet, discourse delivered before The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 26 Mar. 1830, Church Archives)."

Boyd K. Packer, "The Temple, the Priesthood," Ensign, May 1993, 18-19

Topics: Temples