Temple

Where Heaven and earth meet, both symbolically and literally.¹ The purpose of a temple (meaning an actual temple that is commissioned, ordered, blessed, accepted, and visited with His presence) is to substitute for the temporary ascent of a mortal into God’s presence. A real temple becomes “Holy Ground” and the means for making available to faithful people in every state of belief and hope the opportunity to receive, by authorized means, the same covenant, obligation, association, expectation, and sealing through an authorized and binding arrangement in sacred space. This is the same thing they can receive from God directly if they enter into His presence while still in the flesh. In effect, the temple becomes an extension of heaven. God, angels, and mankind are able to associate there as in Eden. It is a return to Eden, where God walks in the cool of the day (Genesis 2:17). The ordinances or rites of the temple are presented in ritual form. This is required. God’s House is a House of Order because it is reoriented to point away from this world in order to reflect the order of heaven and the actual eternal ascent into His presence. The volume of information conveyed by God would be too vast to set out in non-ritual form. In ritual, it is possible to convey a great body of information with symbolism, metaphor, relationships, and types that work on the mind of man the same way that visionary experiences directly with God convey. The mind is expanded, and the ritual allows something of God’s viewpoint to be transmitted into the mind of man. The temple has only one real purpose: to convey God’s promise to exalt those who experience it, provided they abide the conditions for exaltation. It portrays the real, second Eternal form of ascent in a way that gives the initiate a promise: that if they walk in the path shown them, they will arrive at the Throne of God in the afterlife.² The whole temple message can be summarized in one brief statement: We are to be prepared in all things to receive further light and knowledge by conversing with the Lord through the veil. The ceremony of the temple is not the real thing. It is a symbol of the real thing. The real thing is when a person actually obtains an audience with Jesus Christ, returns to His presence, and gains knowledge by which they are saved.³ The temple is a revelation of the process by which one may pass through the veil to God’s actual presence.⁴ The purpose of a temple is to allow the communication of great knowledge and greater knowledge to restore what has been lost since the time of Adam, in order for people to rise up and receive the Holy Order.⁵ A temple in Zion is to be a place where He can come to dwell and not merely to manifest Himself to some.⁶

Isaiah’s prophecy concerning the last days’ temple clearly identifies it as a house where man will be instructed in God’s path (see Isaiah 1:5). It will be a facility where the God of Jacob will teach His pathway of ascent back to the Throne of God. Mankind will learn the laws governing that pathway.⁷ The purpose of the coming last days’ temple in Zion is to allow the communication of great knowledge and greater knowledge, and to restore what has been lost since the time of Adam.⁸ In the “Answer to Prayer for Covenant” the Lord explained: Whenever I have people who are mine, I command them to build a house, a holy habitation, a sacred place where my presence can dwell or where the Holy Spirit of Promise can minister, because it is in such a place that it has been ordained to recover you, establish by my word and my oath your marriages, and endow my people with knowledge from on high that will unfold to you the mysteries of godliness, instruct you in my ways, that you may walk in my path. And all the outcasts of Israel will I gather to my house (T&C 157:41). The main requirement of temples is to organize the living into a family. The organization cannot happen outside a temple. That is the only place God will allow the restoration, rites, ordinances, and covenant to be ministered. Heaven and earth will reunite and angels will attend to many of the required things when an acceptable temple has been built. “We think a temple can be built following a pattern based on current ordinances. There is no understanding of the ordinances necessary to organize the family of God again. Trying to fit the original full plan of God for mankind into our incomplete and corrupt model, and make it conform to our expectations will not work. There has not been a full restoration as yet.”⁹