Temple Insights

THE MEANING OF THE TEMPLE (By Hugh Nibley, from the Book, Temple & Cosmos, pages 25-38, only a small part is given here).

"In the temple we are taught by symbols and examples; but that is not the fullness of the gospel. One very popular argument today says, 'Look, you say the Book of Mormon contains the fullness of the gospel, but it doesn't contain any of the temple ordinances in it, does it?'

Ordinances are not the fullness of the gospel. Going to the temple is like entering into a laboratory to confirm what you have already learned in the classroom and from the text. The fullness of the gospel is the understanding of what the plan is all about — the knowledge necessary to salvation. You know the whys and wherefores; for the fullness of the gospel you go to Nephi, to Alma, to Moroni. Then you will enter into the lab, but not in total ignorance. The ordinances are mere forms. They do not exalt us; they merely prepare us to be ready in case we ever become eligible…

The ancient temple ordinances, called mysteries, are found in various degrees of preservation. If you ask what Joseph Smith knew about real temples, I reply, everything.

In this connection, there is an interesting sidelight to the word telestial, a word long considered as one of Joseph Smith's more glaring indiscretions. We know now that there are three worlds: the telestial, in which we live; the celestial, to which we aspire; and in between them another world, called the terrestrial. It is of neither the celestial nor the telestial. According to the ancients, this world is represented by the temple, the in-between world where the rites of passage take place... Telos means initiation.

Recall that you leave the creation, and you end up at the celestial; but nothing happens in the celestial. Everything happens in the telestial and terrestrial, but not until after you leave the garden…

In Christianity and Judaism, the temple played a strangely uncertain role; the Judaic ties have been the focus of a number of studies. The Jews like the theme, but they are afraid of it; they don't know what to do about it. They needed to exalt the temple, or else minimize it as a mere building. When the temple stood, it was the source of protection of the nation, and it came to be sort of a fetish — something that we learn from Josephus (the ancient historian). This led to the dangerous concept that as long as the people had the temple and its rites, they could consider themselves righteous and infallible; nothing would happen to them.

The same natural error hangs over the Latter-day Saints, incidentally, who often regard the temple as a kind of fetish.  A woman I know works in the library at BYU, and specializes in genealogy. She tells that when she was a small girl, she and her brothers and sisters stood at the door of their house in Manti, clinging to their mother's skirts during a terrible thunderstorm and looking at the temple, which had just been finished. Her father was up working on it. They said to their mother, "God will not let lightning strike the temple, will he?"

 And just as her mother was assuring them that he would not, bang! — Lightning struck the east tower, which began to burn briskly. The woman's father was in the crew that rushed up and soon put out the fire. When he came home, the children asked him what went wrong. What gives here? He explained to them that the installation of lightning rods had been discussed but not carried out. He said that God had given the means to protect the temple against lightning, and the workers neglected to use those means; they thus had no right to expect miraculous interventions.

God expects us to go on the same as ever… Because the Jews attached their hopes, in the end, to a building, its destruction had the most crushing effect on them.

The Christians were thrilled, but the Jews thought they would never be restored again because the temple had been destroyed and the Jews themselves felt utterly discouraged with the passing of the temple — it was all over with.

We Mormons have gone all out in the past to build temples, making great sacrifices of our means. Yet we have not been attached to the buildings as such. Brigham Young nearly worked himself to death getting the Nauvoo Temple built on time. But he did not "again want to see [a temple] built to go into the hands of the wicked."

After learning of the destruction of the Nauvoo Temple by fire, he said,  'Good, Father, if you want it to be burned up.' I hoped to see it burned before I left, but I did not. I was glad when I heard of its being destroyed by fire, and of the walls having fallen in,' and said, 'You cannot now occupy it.' It was just a building after all.

Why then should he knock himself out? We strive to make our temples beautiful, but if in the eyes of many of us some temples turn out to be something less than breathtaking, that doesn't dampen our enthusiasm for what goes on in them.

My favorite temple is certainly the Provo Temple, though as a building I give it very low marks indeed. We are not attached to the building as such (it is but an endowment house).

If the temple represents the principle of order, in chaos, it also represents the foothold, you might say, of righteousness in a wicked world. Someone once asked me concerning the Egyptian ordinances contained in the Joseph Smith manuscripts.

Is this stuff relevant to the modern world? My answer is no. It is relevant to the eternities. The modern world is as unstable, but the temple has always been the same. The ordinances are those taught by an angel to Adam.

The name of the Church will not let us forget that these are the last days. The last days of what? Of the rule of Satan on this earth. In the temple, we first learn by what means Satan has ruled the world, and how it came about, and how he has ruled over the world these many years. Then we proceed to lay the foundation for that order of existence which God intends his children to have here.

In both lessons, we deal with specifics. We are given a choice between them — to that degree we live up to the principles and laws of the temple. If we don't live up to them, we are in the power of the other kingdom. It is in the temple that God puts the proposition on the line, and he will not be mocked. The temple is there to call us back to our senses, to tell us where our real existence lies, to save us from ourselves. So let us go there often and face the reality, brethren and sisters.

We know that the gospel has been restored, and that the temple is the center of things.  We must repair there often. I have gotten so I am almost an addict. I cannot keep away from the temple.

I revel in it, We can see the ordinances and the endowments. It was built for practical purposes.  No two temples are built alike.

We live in Vanity Fair today, or in a world where the individual seeks, not spiritual salvation, but the rewards of Babylon–success, status, and wealth. The temple represents the one sober spot in the world, where we can really be serious and consider these things.

I have never asked the Lord for anything that he didn't give to me. Well, you say, in that case, you surely didn't ask for much. No, I didn't; I was very careful not to ask for much. We don't want to be spoiled brats, do we?

We ask for what we need, for what we can't get ourselves, and the Lord will give it to us. Don't worry. But he also wants us to get in and dig for the rest. So I pray and hope that the Lord may inspire and help us all to become more engaged — more involved — in the work of these latter-days and visit the temple often and become wiser all the time, because he intends to give us more revelations through that instrumentality."