The Mormon Temple and Ordinances

Speaker 0    00:00:00    Well, Ross, today we’re gonna talk about the Mormon temple and ordinances. And we’re not just talking about the Salt Lake Temple, which is kind of their main featured temple. We’re talking about the temples that the Mormon church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has all around the world. Let me give you some stats before we jump into this. There are 168 currently operating temples right now, today compared to 50, 30 years ago, and just 1950 years ago. And here’s the kicker, is 132 are under construction or renovation right now. So the Mormons are all going all in on temples. I don’t know if you’re a listener, maybe, maybe you’ve never been to one, or maybe you live near one. They have them all over the world. And in today’s episode, we’re gonna talk all about it, where it comes from, where it started, and what the Bible has to say about it. So Ross, why don’t we just start with this. How, how do Mormons view their temples? Like, what is the deal with temples? Because this is very different from biblical Christianity.  

Speaker 1    00:01:03    Yeah. First, let me make sure that our listeners understand that the temple is different from the meeting house, which is called the chapel, or the ward house, or the Steak center. Those are different ways of talking about the place where they gather on Sundays to do their, their Sunday meetings and their classes and stuff like that. Temple’s different kind of building, different kind of activity. The meeting house is for everybody, all ages. The temple is just for, um, a few, just for a worthy few that meet certain more limited criteria because the LDS people consider the temple to be the house of the Lord, wherever it is. I mean, that your numbers you gave, that adds up to about 300 temples in, in under construction are currently operating in around the world. And that’s where faithful members of the LDS church go to participate in the highest and most central rights rituals, ceremonies, you could say of, of Mormonism. So they view their temples as these really sacred, holy places. So the current president of the Mormon Church, uh, Russell Nelson says every activity, every lesson, all we do in the church point to the Lord and his holy house. So it’s this sacred, seriously holy place in their way of thinking.  

Speaker 0    00:02:24    So if I’m a Mormon, I don’t go to the temple every Sunday. I go to the meeting house, I go to my ward every Sunday for the services, and we’ll, we’ll talk about Sunday morning services in another episode, but that’s not what we’re talking about today. We’re talking about some, a whole different class of religious activity that happens in the temple.  

Speaker 1    00:02:43    Correct. And it’s interesting because the temple requires a level of worthiness to enter into because it’s seen as so holy. The implications of that. First of all, LDS people don’t talk about what happens in the temple, even among themselves. It’s, it’s con considered to be sacred. Now, it seems secret to us as outsiders, but to them it seems sacred. And they’ll say, no, not secret. It’s just sacred. And so because of that, anytime you talk about the temple, there’s a potential for really offending people, offending latter day saints. If we take it lightly, if we mock it or make fun of kind of Kevin’s joke about the temple experience, because they really, really view it as a, as a holy thing. And because of that, then you have to have this interview process that gives you the stamp of approval to go into the temple. And what that does, it creates kind of two, two Mormon churches, a church within a church, you have the general popule, and you have the super active and super motivated people. You have those who have a temple experience, and those who’ve never had a temple experience.  

Speaker 0    00:03:51    So I can’t just go to a temple. I can’t if, if I live near a temple, I can’t just drive up to it and say, Hey, I want to go check it out. I wanna come in. I can’t do that As a non-Mormon, as a non card carrying wor temple, what do they call it? Temple worthy Mormon. I can’t do that.  

Speaker 1    00:04:08    No, you can’t.  

Speaker 0    00:04:09    And it’s not just, and it’s not just me, but even, even a my Mormon neighbor who goes to maybe goes to the meeting house every Sunday, but isn’t temple worthy for whatever reason, even even they can’t go to the temple. Is that true?  

Speaker 1    00:04:22    Right. Absolutely. So here’s a, here’s a couple of things. If, um, if your kids are being married in the temple, we’ll talk about temple marriage in a moment. But if you’re not temple worthy, you can’t go to the wedding because it takes place in the temple. Now, the, the only time you and I could go into the temple is when they’re opening a new one or they’ve done renovations and they’re gonna rededicate it. So before it’s dedicated, then what they like to do is they like to invite the public to come in, and it gives them an opportunity to, to, you know, make their, make their claims about the temple and so forth. So, so I’ve, I’ve been in a couple temples just because somebody invited me to come before it was, before it was ized.  

Speaker 0    00:05:06    Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Okay. Let’s talk about the purpose of temples. Why, what, what do they do there? What’s the, what’s the point? What’s the purpose of an LDS temple?  

Speaker 1    00:05:16    What happens in the temple are the, again, these rituals that are so, uh, basic to the whole Mormon church purpose. The whole, the whole idea of the highest level of heaven that you can achieve can only be achieved by, in being involved in the temple rituals. And so, for example, there’s, so there’s training that goes involved in the temple. It’s, it’s teaching you how to return to Heavenly Father and in some very specific ways. But that training is in the context of ordinances or ritual ceremonies that are performed there that are necessary to return to God. And in the context of those rituals, then you’re trained, trained about how to return to God, and then you make commitments or covenants in the temple that you’re held accountable to. And so the temple adds up to really being totally necessary if you wanna be exalted to the highest level of heaven for eternity. It’s, it’s completely essential.  

Speaker 0    00:06:16    Okay. So if I’m a card carrying Mormon, how often would I go to the temple? Like once a year? Is it once a day? Is it once a month? How often?  

Speaker 1    00:06:26    Well, first you have your initiatory, right? We’ll talk about that. And it’s called the endowment. And that might be the only time you ever go. But what they encourage, they encourage you to go around a regular basis, maybe monthly. So a given ward, um, at least when I was back in the Mormon church ward would have, or a steak would have a monthly temple night. So all the people from that region would go to the temple on that mon on that third Monday of the month, whatever. Um, they, so they encourage you to go on a regular basis to go through the rituals. You’ve already done them for yourself, but if you go through them again, then you can do them on the behalf of other people, which is a, uh, idea that’s hard to get your, your mind around. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But then it reinforces for you the core things that the ordinances is trying to, to teach you. So they would like, they would like people to go on a, on a regular basis many times in the course of a year.  

Speaker 0    00:07:26    Yeah. And if you’re, if you’re an older person, maybe an older faithful Mormon, you might, you might go pretty regularly, right, Ross mm-hmm. <affirmative> if you’re retired. And that’s, I know that there are a lot of, I know by the temple near us, there’s there, there’s, there are condos and town homes that I think are largely populated by older faithful Mormons, who, that’s what they do. And they want to live near the temples so they could do their work at the temple.  

Speaker 1    00:07:52    Yeah. My brother-in-laws is in that con uh, situation. My sister passed away and, you know, he’s retired and lives in a different community in Utah, and he volunteers at the temple quite frequently.  

Speaker 0    00:08:06    Hmm. Okay. So let’s, let’s take a look at the ordinances in the temple. Okay. So they’re, we’re gonna talk about Ross, let’s talk about what they call the endowment ceremony. Let’s talk about what they call temple ceilings, not like ceiling in your house, but s e a l i n g S, temple ceilings. And then let’s talk about proxy ordinances for the dead. So let’s start with the endowment ceremony. The what, what is that exactly? When does that happen for a Mormon and how many Mormons actually go through that?  

Speaker 1    00:08:35    Yeah, that’s a great question. The endowment is seen again as a really important sacred event in a person’s life. And so, you know, backing up for a second, understanding the whole Mormon plan of salvation, the idea that, um, we can go back and live in God’s presence and that we could, you know, become God-like in some way, or deified ourselves. These, these ordinances become really important part of that. Without these, that doesn’t happen. It’s not just about being morally good or keeping all the commandments or so forth. The, the, this whole ritual layer becomes really, really important to achieving this highest level of, of, um, exaltation and being connected to your family for eternity and all of the different things that constitute Mormon salvation. The endowment ceremony is the initiation into all of that. And it’s normally received by people who are going on their l d LDS mission.  

Speaker 1    00:09:34    They go into do the endowment ceremony before they start their mission to prepare them for that. And it’s also preparatory to a, to a temple marriage. Um, if you want a temple marriage, which we’ll talk about in a minute, then the first step is this endowment as the initiation, the ceremony into that. And so I’m not sure how many people in the LDS church are temple worthy. That’s not a, or who have been initiated into the temple. That’s not a statistic that they publish anywhere. It could be a quarter, a third. It might, it might differ from one community to another. It might differ from one state to another. Certainly it differs from different countries where latter day saints are. So it’s really hard to put a, a number on that, to figure out, you know, how many people really have been through the temple.  

Speaker 0    00:10:23    Okay. So let me, let me ask this question. First of all, Rashad, I need to say to people who just heard what you said about being exalted. If you, if you missed that, those are on some of our earlier episodes on the podcast. So check out what we talked about when we discuss what Mormons believe about humanity and about eternity and about God. Because again, this is, we’re drilling down on some of those fundamental beliefs, but that’s what this is really about for them, right? It’s about eternal progression. It’s about checking off those things so they could someday be, become a God, right. Can progress to God to godhood.  

Speaker 1    00:10:56    Yeah. And this is a big, big part of it.  

Speaker 0    00:10:58    This is a huge part of it. And again, we’re going to, again, we’ll talk more about that later in this episode, but I think it’s important for people to know that that’s why Mormons have temples. Now again, we’re not saying that That’s right. We’re not saying that that’s biblical. We’re gonna talk about all of that in a little bit. And we’re also, Russ, we’re not trying to po poke fun at this. We’re not trying to make people feel offended if they’re temple worthy and if they believe in all this stuff. I know that we have Mormon listeners to this podcast who, who might have their hackles up a little bit listening to this. And I guess, I dunno, what I would say to them is just hear us out as we’re trying to process this. We’re trying to be fair about what really is happening there, but we’re also trying to articulate, we’re, we’re trying to put this in the context of a broader biblical perspective.  

Speaker 0    00:11:44    And that might even be helpful for someone who’s currently Mormon who might even have some questions about this. Cuz I have a good friend who grew up Mormon, very, very faithful Mormon and Ross. This, this temple thing was really, really weird to him. He was all in as a Mormon, very faithful. But when he, when he went through this endowment ceremony, he said it was really, really strange, even for someone who grew up in a, in a faithful Mormon church. And so let’s, let’s kind of, I know we’re not gonna get into the details of, of what happens in these ceremonies. Maybe we’ll talk a little bit about it. And I don’t wanna offend people again because they feel like this is such a sacred thing. So I think we should be certainly mindful of that. But, but at least help us with this, Ross it, when, when, when I’m 18 years old. Right? Is that because that’s the minimum age I have to be at least 18.  

Speaker 1    00:12:36    That’s right. Right.  

Speaker 0    00:12:37    So I can’t go through the temple until that, until that time. Is that true?  

Speaker 1    00:12:42    Well, there is an exception to that. Um, okay. That I’ll, we’ll cover later. I can’t get, I can’t go through the endowment ceremony.  

Speaker 0    00:12:50    Okay.  

Speaker 1    00:12:50    At before, as before. I’m an adult, an 18 year  

Speaker 0    00:12:54    Old. That’s right. So, so when I hit 18, and maybe I’m, I’m thinking to myself, I want to go on a mission, which is a big, which is a big deal for Mormons. I want to be a faithful Mormon and serve on a mission. So I need to, I need to go through this endowment ceremony and get my temple recommend, which is like a card that gets me into the temple, allows me to buy the garments like we talked about in the last episode. But in order to do that, I’m gonna have to sit down and have an interview. Right. Talk us through a little bit what that  

Speaker 1    00:13:22    Would look like. They’re gonna ask you a number. These questions are available online. It, it, they’re, uh, they’re not secret questions. Um, so you’re not revealing anything. I don’t have the list in front of me, but it includes things like, um, do you keep the word of wisdom? You know, we talked about that again last week. Do you pay a tie, the full tithe to the church? Um, have you obeyed the law of chastity? In other words, you’ve, you know, you’ve, uh, been pure in your, in your dealings, uh, sexually pure, um, things like, do you uphold or sustain all the leaders of the LDS church, um, you know, things like that. So they, they wanna make sure that you’re not tainted in a, in a variety of different ways, and that you really are faithful and loyal and all bought in, in order to be given the temple. Recommend pass.  

Speaker 0    00:14:11    Okay, so what if 18 year old me is sitting down with my leaders at my ward? And I say, yes, yes, no, yes, yes. The chastity one. I try really hard. I try really hard, but, but I screwed up here and here and here. So what happens? Like, I can’t, I can’t do it. Like what happens next? Yeah, they’ll  

Speaker 1    00:14:32    Probably, depending on the nature of it, if it’s fairly trivial, they might shrug it off. But more, more than likely, they’ll set up a, like a plan to gain discipline in that area of your life and maybe to bring you up to speed and hold you accountable for the plan. And then they interview you again in six months or something like that. See how you’re doing at that point in time. So it’s not a permanent disqualification.  

Speaker 0    00:15:00    Okay. So let’s say that I go back in six months later, I’ve got that checked off. Look, I’ve done better with the chastity thing. Do I get my card? They’re like, yep, here you go. Let’s, let’s get you going. So what happens next? I go in and, and there’s gonna be, the first part is what initiate sort of initiation  

Speaker 1    00:15:17    Ordinance. There’s an, there’s an initiation segment that includes, um, rituals of a, of washing and anointing. So you’re, you’re ritually anointed, um, of different parts of your body for health and vigor and fruitfulness and, and, and, and things like that. And so in this washing and anointing part, then, you know, it’s, um, it’s highly symbolic. And so, but, but it all incorporates this, this whole worldview, this idea of, of eventually becoming exalted. And then in that, in that initiatory part, you also then you make certain covenants with God to there they have, there’s five, there’s like five covenants that you make. And, um, you know, without going into detail on ’em, they’re basically covenants to obey God in different ways to sacrifice for the, for, for his kingdom, which essentially means the church, um, to live the law of chastity and, and things like that. That you make these covenants and then you’re taught certain secret signs or tokens that will allow you to pass through the veil between the mortal and the immortal and the immortal life and allow you to come into the presence of God. And so you have to be able to repeat a certain phrase, or you have to be able to, um, make a certain, um, sign with your body, um, to be able to make it, you know, through the, into heaven, um, someday. That’s the idea.  

Speaker 0    00:16:53    So this is the part, this is the training to make it to heaven part this is the, this is part of what that’s about is you’re, they’re giving you these, these rituals that were, are gonna help you when you’re crossing over from, from this world to the next. Yeah.  

Speaker 1    00:17:08    Essentially. Essentially. Yeah.  

Speaker 0    00:17:09    And this sounds rust to me. We, we don’t have time to get into it, but the sounds is this where a lot of the masonic stuff is starting to come in to play for the temple  

Speaker 1    00:17:17    Rituals? Yeah, definitely. It’s a good observation because there’s a lot of similarity between the, the initiative rituals of free masonry and the, the signs and tokens and the ways that they would teach the secret things that they need to quote advance, um, in the heavenly realms, whatever that are very similar to what the temple, uh, rituals involve. There’s a lot of, lot of parallels because a lot of people believe that Joseph Smith adopted many of these things from directly from masonry and then, um, sort of gave them this sort of new sense of, of meaning in the Mormon worldview.  

Speaker 0    00:17:58    Okay, so then, so these initiatory ordinances are these, am I doing this with a group of people? Am I doing this in one day? Is this, am I done for the day when I’m done with this? Like how does that work? Give us some insight  

Speaker 1    00:18:11    On that. Yeah, it all happens in one visit and in an initiatory part, you’re, you’re kind of walked through individually. Um, there’s, these were people, the, this is where the volunteers who work in the temple come into play. They become like your, your guide, um, through the washings and anointings and, and through the in initiatory lessons you learn and so forth. Uh, mostly that’s mostly that’s individual. Um, or in or in a small group and kind of moving through a series of rooms. And it’s the second part which is more purely instructional. Everybody sits down together and they watch, uh, dramatic portrayal of, it could be a movie. It could, in the past it was more live actors, um, sort of portraying the plan of salvation portraying God’s purposes and his creation of humanity and, and the temptation of Adam and Eve and, and all the rest sort of in a, in a, in a, in a visual story form that helps to fortify that worldview.  

Speaker 0    00:19:17    So that’s the group instruction part of it. Yeah. Okay. So then what happens next? So I, I’ve done the initiative ordinances, I’ve done the group instruction where the plan of salvation is presented and am I done for the day? What happens next?  

Speaker 1    00:19:32    Well, so the, the, the design of the temple is, it’s supposed to walk you through that plan, through that sort of, so that sort of that salvation story. And so different rooms represent different parts of the story. There’s a room that represents the earth. And, and then, and then you, where as you go through the different, um, stages of the ceremonies, you end up in the celestial room, which is, uh, supposed to be a really beautiful, calm, peaceful place. Um, and you’re invited to just linger there and pray and meditate and, and whatever, and enjoy this sense of they’re trying to, you’re trying to capture in the architecture of the room what it might like, what it might be like to be in the presence of God in the, in the eternities. And so you’re invited to, to come into that place and linger and stay. And eventually you’re gonna go. So you’re wearing, you come in, in the beginning, you’re wearing your street clothes, so to speak, and you change into temple clothing. It’s just basically white pair of pants, a shirt, maybe a white tie, whatever you, and so in these white clo clothes representing purity, you go through the whole ritual and then when you’re done, you go back, back to the locker room and you change back into your C’s and then you leave.  

Speaker 0    00:20:53    Okay. So that’s, so that’s called the endowment ceremony, Ross, is that, and you said that’s kind of a one. Is that a one time thing? How does that work? Do I, do I do this just once or do I do this many, many times? This endowment ceremony?  

Speaker 1    00:21:06    Well, you do it once for yourself and you’re encouraged to do it many, many times for other people by proxy, for other people. Well, I’ll just put, leave that as a teaser, cuz we’ll get into that in a minute. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, once you under understand the endowment ceremony, we’ll add that other layer, um, you know, in a few minutes.  

Speaker 0    00:21:25    Okay. So let’s talk now. So that’s the endowment then. So now let’s talk about the temple ceilings. And when we’re, we’re talking about that, we’re talking about marriage essentially.  

Speaker 1    00:21:36    Yeah. This is the temple marriage or what they would call eternal marriage. So the idea in Mormonism is that, um, marriages can be eternal, that families can be forever, but to, for that to happen, they have to be conducted the right way. That it has to be the right, uh, ritual, the ceiling ritual. And it has to be conducted by people who have the priesthood authority or the keys to be able to sanctify or solemnized that, that marriage relationship. And so I was actually married in a, um, in a public meeting hall. And so, and it wasn’t, I was married by my, my stepson and he’s not a priesthood, a priesthood holder in the Mormon church. So my marriage will end when I die. Um, but the Mormons have this hope that their marriage is a eternal, their families can be eternal. So the idea of sealing is that you are sealed, or if you think about sealing, you think you are like connected or glued to your spouse and your children in a way that transcends the end of our mortal life that happens in the temple.  

Speaker 0    00:22:45    Okay. So I’ve got, I’ve got so many questions. So, so this is a, so if I’m, if, if my kids are getting married in the temple, I can pay for the wedding <laugh>, but I can’t attend it if, unless I have a card, unless I’m temple worthy.  

Speaker 1    00:23:04    That’s, that’s correct. Yep, that’s  

Speaker 0    00:23:06    Correct. Okay. So the, the temple portion. So let’s say that I’m, I’m not temple worthy, so I, it’s, it’d be very sad to me. And I know I, I know this is kind of out there, a lot of people are vocal about this. This obviously didn’t happen to me, but I know this happens to people, so mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I, I would still be able to be a part of some of the wedding, just not the temple part of the wedding. Help us to understand everything else, what happens,  

Speaker 1    00:23:30    Everything else, the, the, uh, the um,  

Speaker 0    00:23:34    The after party.  

Speaker 1    00:23:35    Yeah. What do you, the reception, all the rest of that. Yeah, you could be part of that. Um, now more and more the, the church is moving toward, uh, this, um, phenomena. They used to, they used to frown on this, but they’re moving more and more toward this, where you can have a public ceremony on Friday, say, and then on Saturday go to the temple and have your temple, have your marriage sealed.  

Speaker 0    00:24:02    I  

Speaker 1    00:24:02    See They used to frown on that in the past cuz they didn’t want couples to settle for just the civil ceremony or just the earth only ceremony. But now they’re, they realize the tensions that families are, there’s more and more families in Mormonism that are mixed members and so forth. So I think they’re, they’re realizing that that, you know, helps, probably helps families to be able to include people in, in more of the activities.  

Speaker 0    00:24:28    Okay. What if, what if I’m married and sealed to my first wife, she passes away and I get sealed to my second wife. What happens there?  

Speaker 1    00:24:40    Well, the idea we’re both sealed. You’re both sealed. Yeah. The idea is that in eternity you’d be sealed to them both and you’d be a polygamist.  

Speaker 0    00:24:51    Okay, let me, let me flip this, let me flip this around. What happens if I’m married to my faithful Mormon wife and she gets sealed to me and then I die? Can she get sealed to somebody else in this life?  

Speaker 1    00:25:04    No. Polygamy only works one way. Only men can have multiple spouses. Women can’t have multiple spouses.  

Speaker 0    00:25:12    So the, so the Mormon church wouldn’t let her if she marries a faithful Mormon? Or is she allowed to marry another  

Speaker 1    00:25:19    Mormon? Yeah, but not in the temple. But not, she could marry him but not be sealed to him.  

Speaker 0    00:25:23    I gotcha. So they won’t say, they won’t seal her to a second person, right?  

Speaker 1    00:25:28    Correct.  

Speaker 0    00:25:29    So he’s just gonna have to deal with that. Like, it’s only for this life baby. Yeah. That’s all we  

Speaker 1    00:25:33    Got. Yep. Sorry. Okay. So sad, but yeah.  

Speaker 0    00:25:36    Okay. What about kids? Our kids, our kids sealed. You mentioned it’s not just, it’s not just the marriage, it’s the family, right? Fa the family concept is so important in Mormonism. So how does ceiling work with the family?  

Speaker 1    00:25:50    Children? Yeah. If a husband and a wife are sealed in the temple before they have any children, then any offspring, whether natural or adopted, then they’re automatically sealed to their parents. That sealing that initial ceiling has a, has a forward reaching effect.  

Speaker 0    00:26:11    So you don’t have to go back into the temple with your kids and seal each of them individually.  

Speaker 1    00:26:16    Right? They’re all, they’re all considered to be born in the covenant Okay. Is how they phrase it. But let’s say I have three kids. I’m in my mid thirties and I decide that Mormonism is true and I join the church and I bring my family into the LDS church and I realize, oh, I need to be sealed in the temple, then I’ll be, then I need to be sealed to my wife and I need to bring my children in for a ceiling ceremony where then they are specifically sealed. Uh, we’re sealed together as a family at that time because the, the children were not born in the covenant.  

Speaker 0    00:26:54    Okay. So those are the temple ceilings. Okay, so Ross, we’ve talked about the endowment, these two main things, the endowment ceremony and the temple ceilings. And then the, the last thing, and this is where there’s some overlap, and we really need to understand this cuz this to me is where it gets super, super interesting and it’s, we, we call them proxy ordinances for the dead. What do we mean by the word proxy?  

Speaker 1    00:27:18    Yeah, proxy is when you step in for somebody else. So they’re also called vicarious ordinances. So the bigger picture is this, that the latterday saint worldview says that after you die in this world, then you go into, in the next world as, as a spirit. And you’re in this spirit world before the final judgment in the final assignment of everybody to wherever they go. And for eternity, you’re in this intermediate state called the spirit world. Well, the Latterday saints believe that those spirits in the spirit world still have an opportunity to adopt Mormonism, you know, to adopt what they would say to receive the gospel from their point of view. And so, but because they’re disembodied spirits, they might be more than willing to adopt Mormonism. Maybe they never had a chance. Maybe they lived in the third century BC in the middle of some unknown place and they never had a chance to hear about the Mormon gospel.  

Speaker 1    00:28:24    Well then this gives them an opportunity, the to, to hear about it in the spirit world. But because they’re not embodied, they can’t fulfill the requisite requirements, the ordinances that are essential for ultimate exaltation, they can’t be baptized. They can’t what is called be confirmed or receive the Holy Spirit. They can’t go through the endowment ceremony and they can’t be sealed because they’re not here living on this earth. And so, follow my train of thought here, that d LDS church says, we wanna provide a way for those people who have received the gospel in principle to be able to fulfill the necessary ordinances even though they can’t be here. So someone can do it on their behalf, and it’s up to them then to choose to say yes to that or no. But we’re just gonna, the Mormonism has this idea that one of the, one of the four core purposes of the Mormon church is they say redeem the dead. And this is what they mean by that, by providing the ordinances that, that those who have passed away need to be able to, you know, move on themselves to the higher levels of heaven.  

Speaker 0    00:29:41    Okay, so let’s pause for a second because we’ve been talking about temple ordinances and we’ve mentioned the endowment ceremony in temple ceilings, but now you’ve added two more things that are, that are previous to those temple ordinances, baptism, and confirmation. So real quick, let’s touch on that. For the living, for the living Mormons, they don’t get baptized or confirmed in the temple, is  

Speaker 1    00:30:04    That right? That’s correct. So those are just more ordinary. They’re public, they’re not private or sacred secret. Um, baptism, most of their, most of them will baptize their children at age eight. And confirmation occurs immediately afterwards. Confirmation is when priesthood holders lay their hands on the head of the person who’s just been baptized and confer upon them, um, the Holy Ghost and confirm them, they now become officially members of the Mormon church by that ritual. So there’s the two things, and those happen in, typically in your local ward house.  

Speaker 0    00:30:39    Okay. So we have, I wanna just for people keeping score out there, I wanna make sure you understand this. So we have four things. Now we have baptism confirmation that happened at the ward house, and then we have the endowment ceremony in the temple ceilings that happen at the temple. But what we’re talking about here is that proxy ordinances for all four of these ordinances are important for your eternal progression. They’re important for your salvation. But if you miss the chance while you were in this body, in this earthly body, you a a living Mormon can go into the temple and perform one or all four of these ordinances on your behalf. That’s what proxy means. They can do it on your behalf. So basically it frees you up to continue to progress toward salvation and toward exaltation. Did I get that right?  

Speaker 1    00:31:35    Yeah, that, that’s a pretty good way to say it. And you know, this is, um, many of our listeners made it understand that this is what drives the Mormons to be so interested in genealogy. Right? You know, they’re, they’re one of the leading genealogy, you know, engines in the world. And this is because they need to discover the names of those individuals so that they can do the ordinances on their behalf.  

Speaker 0    00:31:59    Okay?  

Speaker 1    00:32:00    They have to have the specific names, um, so they can do the ordinances for those specific people. And so they’re constantly working hard to collect more and more names going farther and farther back in history.  

Speaker 0    00:32:13    Okay, so we’ve laid the groundwork for this question. Now, you said earlier in the podcast that when you were growing up Mormon, your ward would have a monthly, what did you call it? A temple. Temple night. Temple night. So is this what you were doing? So now, now we can maybe understand this question. Is this what you were doing at the temple when you all your whole ward or anyone that was temple worthy went to the ward?  

Speaker 1    00:32:35    Yeah, they would typically be doing endowment and ceiling ceremonies by proxy for, for people, you know, either they had discovered their names and they wanted, they want to do these ordinances for their own ancestors, or someone else has discovered the names and put ’em into the file, into the database. And, and you go in there and whatever name comes up next, you’re next in line to do that ordinance for them. Now you asked me, uh, can you go in the temple before you’re 18? And this is the one exception is that they allow, um, members of their youth groups to go in and do proxy baptisms. And so I’ve been in the temple for that per, I’ve never been endowed, I never went, got to that that far along in my progress as a Mormon, never been in the endowment ceremony. But I have done the proxy baptisms because as young people, we were, were allowed to go in and, and in fact they viewed it as kind of a preparatory event, a faith promoting kind of event that would help you to want to be worthy of the temple in some, in some day in the future.  

Speaker 0    00:33:39    Yeah. So this is a good one to talk about. This is what I’ve understood too. So you’re, so you’re saying that if I’m a, if I’m a 16 year old and I’m trying to be a good Mormon, and probably like any 16 year old, I’ve got, I’m a mixed bag. I’m, I’m, I’ve got some doubts and you know, just like any Christian 16 year old would have as well. But you’re saying that, that one of the things I can do with my youth group, so to speak, is I can go to the, I can go to the nearby temple and, and I would sit there with my other friends and maybe some people from other wards or whatever mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So it’s, it’s kind of like a shut in. It’s like a, it’s like a lockin I’m thinking about this from my youth group days. Right? But instead of just playing basketball or, or video games and eating pizza, I’m actually helping someone with their eternal salvation. Exactly. I’m getting baptized for somebody that isn’t able to get baptized anymore because they’re dead,  

Speaker 1    00:34:34    Right? Yeah. So they wanna, I think they wanna inculcate a sense of awe or the holiness of the moment, or just the normalcy of this whole approach of redeeming the dead, which, you know, a again, biblically, I mean we’ll talk about that in a moment, but that’s certainly not a biblical thing. This is when we, when we talk about this as if it’s a thing, it’s a thing in Mormonism, but we’re not endorsing it, right? So I think they want young people to get a taste that, that maybe helps them to think, oh, this is what I, who I want to be.  

Speaker 0    00:35:04    Okay, so let’s, I I can’t, I can’t handle it anymore, Ross. We ha we’ve spent 35 minutes talking about temple ordinances and Mormonism. I think it’s time to talk about this biblically because this is where, especially when we get to the baptism stuff, this is where I can feel the jealous anger of God Almighty, because Ross help me to understand it. In, in my mind this, one of the things that we teach at church that the Bible teaches is that salvation equals Jesus plus nothing. That it is by faith alone, it’s by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus alone, that we are saved. I can’t work for it. And you, you certainly can’t work for it on my behalf. So when I think about my salvation, Ross, my eternal salvation, I have one person to thank for it and it’s Jesus Christ. But, but for according to this, when these other people, when they think about their salvation, they might have a 16 year old kid in Utah to thank for it. Am I missing something here? Is that, am I oversimplifying this?  

Speaker 1    00:36:14    Well, no, you know, it really does boil down to this, what does it take to be saved? What does it take to be right with God? Does it take as the, as the Bible teaches, you know, faith alone, God’s grace alone, faith alone in Christ alone? Or does it take a whole set of rituals and, and, and challenging commandments and so forth. Um, and so, you know, you could take all of these rituals and throw ’em into one category, the category of unnecessary. And so, uh, really it’s, it’s what what Paul talked about, the Jews, his own people, um, in Romans, uh, chapter nine and 10 where he says, you know, they’re trying to establish a righteousness of their own based on the law, but he says, we, we know this righteousness that comes only from from Christ. And so all of these things add up to, to like monopoly money really for God. They don’t, they don’t count cuz it’s only Jesus and Jesus alone. And that, that covers all of, all of these different things regardless of their differences of their uniquenesses.  

Speaker 0    00:37:18    Yeah. Let me read another passage from scripture that says it so clearly. Ephesians two verses eight and nine. This is the apostle Paul writing to the church in Ephesus. He says, God saved you by his grace when you believed, and you can’t take credit for this, it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done. So none of us can boast about it. And you know, I I think when Ro when when Paul was writing that Ross, he was, he was talking about not taking credit for your own salvation by your own good works. But I would say to a Mormon, to someone who’s listening to this, who does believe in the stuff we’ve been talking about with the temple ordinances, you, this applies not just to you taking credit for your salvation, you’re trying to take credit for someone else’s salvation. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And I ca I can’t even imagine how God feels about this Ross, honestly. Like I want to be respectful of what’s going on for a, for someone who believes that this is really from God. But according to the Bible, this is not from God. Salvation is by grace through faith. And it is all to the glory and praise of Jesus. Not to the glory and praise of you for your good works or, or you for your proxy good works on be, you know, on someone else’s  

Speaker 1    00:38:36    Behalf. Right? And, and really what the proxy ordinances, the vicarious ordinances, I if you think about that for a minute, biblically there is a vicarious ordinance that does lead to salvation. That is that Jesus stood in as a proxy for us.  

Speaker 0    00:38:52    Amen.  

Speaker 1    00:38:53    You know, if you believe that you could stand in as a proxy for another person who died, you know, and you think that’s okay, then why wouldn’t it make sense that Jesus is the ultimate proxy and that he, he took care of everything that I can’t do for myself, everything that I needed before God and, and vicariously. And so that they say that these spirits in the, in these spirits waiting in the spirit world have to say, yes, I accept those ordinances done for me in the temple, or no, I don’t. Well, that’s a great analogy to think about, really, the work of Jesus. Jesus did everything that’s needed for me, what I could not do for me. And I just simply, simply say, I have to say yes to it or no to it. And so there’s a germ where the proxy ordinances of the temple really point to something that is real and that does count. But it’s, you could say that it’s a, a, a great perversion of God’s idea of proxy and God’s idea of vicarious salvation.  

Speaker 0    00:39:49    Yeah. If you wanna learn more about that, I encourage you to check out the pursuit [email protected] slash go. We have 12 topics on there that really lay that out. It talks about sin, it talks about salvation, and it talks about our response of faith to Jesus Christ. That’s what the Bible has to say about it, Ross. It, it’s not just baptism, it’s, it’s the endowment, it’s the temple ceilings. Again, in the Mormon, in the Mormon understanding, all of these things are, are sort of, uh, it’s more than an ordinance, it’s a sacrament to them, right? Yeah. They think that they need to do these things to progress, to have salvation. But again, a biblical answer to that is no, there, there’s only one way to be saved. Now again, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be baptized. We do get baptized. We encourage people once they come to faith to get baptized. But you do that out of obedience to Jesus. You don’t do that somehow to try to earn your salvation or your standing with God.  

Speaker 1    00:40:46    Right? Exactly. And I think underlying this whole conversation is like, there’s also th this huge difference between the temple in the Bible and Mormon temples. You know, I wanna touch on that for a minute before we, before we conclude, is that Mormons portray, so you go to the temple opening and you take the tour before it’s consecrated. So, and they’re gonna say, you’re gonna hear them pointing out that, hey, there was temples in the Bible. They were really important. God established temples in the Bible. We have temples. You know, they want you to connect the dots and say, oh, oh, this must be, you know, true, this must be God.  

Speaker 0    00:41:23    Or this must be more Christian. Right. Exactly. The Mormon, the whole Mormon thing is, it’s a restoration of the original, the original Christian movement from the early centuries. And yet Mormonism isn’t Right.  

Speaker 1    00:41:37    Right. And so, and you, you don’t have to look any farther than the temple to see that because all of the things that happened in the LDS temples, endowments, and all the rest, none of that happened in the Old Testament temple. And all the things that happened in the Old Testament temple where sacrifices were made, animal sacrifices were brought to cover over sin until the coming of the savior animal sacrifices were brought to express a celebration and gratitude toward God, or to express consecration to God, the animal sacrifices being made daily in the Old Testament temple. None of that happens in the Mormon temple. There’s no animal sacrifices there. And so it’s, they use the same word temple, but completely different kinds of buildings. Completely different purpose, completely different function. In fact, even the Old Testament says that there’s gonna be one temple, it’s gonna be one place.  

Speaker 1    00:42:30    The whole idea of having more than one temple is completely contrary to the way that God set the temple up to work. And so, just even understanding that, that the temple is such a different thing than, than what they claim it is. And then, you know, really when you factor in Jesus, in his coming, Jesus rendered that whole Old Testament temple obsolete because he fulfilled everything that was happening there that was pointing forward to him. Whereas now Jesus says, in in a sense, in the, in the New Testament, Jesus becomes the temple. And then in another sense, in the New Testament, Ephesians chapter two talks about how we as God’s people are the temple. One Peter chapter two says that we we’re the living stones being built into this, this temple, this house because the Holy Spirit dwells in us. And so there really biblically there is no need for temples anymore. And any temple that claims to be, um, the the dwelling place of God is, uh, just it’s proven by the New Testament to be a, a false claim.  

Speaker 0    00:43:34    Yeah. So Ross, let’s be clear about this. Did the early, did the early Christians right, the first century Christians, did they worship in the temple? Because again, the Mormon, the whole Joseph Smith whole thing is we’re gonna restore the church. So restore it to those, you know, probably, I don’t know, 70, 80, 80 80, somewhere in there, right before the apo, the great apostacy happened. So just historically bring us back what, give us a picture of the early church in the days of Paul. And shortly after  

Speaker 1    00:44:05    That, in the book of Acts chapter two, it says that the church gathered in the temple courts, but there’s no indication that they were ever there to perform the sacrifices because Jesus provided the sacrifice. And that begin, they began to realize that it dawned on them the significance of the cross. So they gathered in the temple courts in Jerusalem because it was the largest available gathering place. And it, it was familiar to everybody. And, and, and the people who were still Jewish and not Christians would’ve made sense out of that. Um, they also met in homes. But when the go, when the message of Jesus went out in Acts chapter eight and nine and following to other places outside of Jerusalem, there was never anything, any sense that ever said, Hey, you know, you Christians in Greece or in Rome, you need to gather to the Jerusalem temple.  

Speaker 1    00:44:57    Be because you have some temple ordinances to do. There’s never a sense in the New Testament that these Christians living all throughout the Mediterranean world, were expected to come to Jerusalem to attend the temple. And there’s never any evidence that there being other temples. Now all of that is rendered mood in 80 70 when the, uh, temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. And so in, in some sense, the, the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem was like an exclamation point on the fact that the old covenant no longer was functioning. And in some, in another sense, it was actually an act of God’s judgment on, on Israel for rejecting their Messiah and for, um, wa wa you know, turning away from him.  

Speaker 0    00:45:40    Yeah. That’s why maybe we should end this episode with some scripture. Hebrews 10, verses 11 and 12. It says this, under the old covenant, the priest stands in ministers before the alter, day after day, offering the same sacrifices again and again, which can never take away sins. But I love this verse 12, but our high priest talking about Jesus, but our high priest offered himself to God as a single sacrifice for sins, good for all time. And then Jesus sat down in the place of honor at God’s right hand. And I love this because any Jewish person reading that would know exactly what we’re talking about there. See, the priest stands in ministers, the priest had to stand and do this work. But I love what it says there, that Jesus, when he went to the cross, he died on the cross for our sins, once and for all, for good, for all time.  

Speaker 0    00:46:32    Even today. Good for all time. This is such a great verse for a Mormon. And it says that after that he sat down, in other words, and the way that Jesus said that from the cross is it is finished. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, the work is done. You don’t have to try to do any work. It never worked anyway in the old Testa. Right, right, right. But you don’t have to do any work for your salvation, and you surely can’t do any work for someone else’s salvation. That’s what the Bible says about the temple in ordinances, whether it was 2000 years ago, 4,000 years ago, or in the Mormon church today. Now to learn more about this or to talk about this with your family, with your small group of your mentor, you can find these resources and so many more at pursue god.org/mormonism. And we’ll see you next Monday for our next episode.