Temple (Latter Day Saints) - Purposes

Purposes

Temples have held numerous purposes in the Latter Day Saint movement, both historically and their differing expressions today. These purposes include:

  • A House of the Lord — Joseph Smith, Jr. reported a revelation in 1836 explaining that the recently-dedicated Kirtland Temple was built "that the Son of Man might have a place to manifest himself to his people." (Doctrine and Covenants LDS 109:5). All Latter Day Saint denominations with temples still consider temples to be special houses of the Lord.
  • A House of Learning — The Kirtland Temple housed the "School of the Prophets."
  • Center of the City of Zion — Latter Day Saints often view temples as central to the establishment of Zionic communities. Examples include: the Kirtland Temple, the original (unfinished) Independence Temple, the (unfinished) Far West Temple, the (unfinished) Adam-ondi-Ahman Temple, the original Nauvoo Temple, the Salt Lake Temple, the St. George Utah Temple, the Mesa Arizona Temple, the Laie Hawaii Temple, and others.
  • Headquarters of the church — the Kirtland Temple served as the headquarters of the early church from its completion in 1836 through the end of 1837.
  • Sacred spaces for special ordinances — Beginning in Nauvoo, temples were spaces in which to perform special ordinances such as the endowment and baptism for the dead — see Ordinance (Mormonism).

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Famous quotes containing the word purposes:

    “It is not enough that we are truthful; we must cherish and carry out high purposes to be truthful about.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “What happened at Hiroshima was not only that a scientific breakthrough ... had occurred and that a great part of the population of a city had been burned to death, but that the problem of the relation of the triumphs of modern science to the human purposes of man had been explicitly defined.”
    —Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)

    “What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority.”
    —Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)