Chapter 4

 Temples, Altars, and Work for the Dead

Profiting from the dead

This might be a convenient place to point out a common practice of a degenerate church used to extract the largest possible amount of money from its members. From the Pearson book on tithing that appears below in this book:

                If any man claim tithes by my ancestor's gift, may I not ask him, To whom, and for what my ancestors gave them? And it is plain beyond denial, that all those gifts of lands or tithes in England, since Augustin the monk* planted the Roman Catholic faith, and preached up the payment of tithes, were given to priests, for saying prayers for the souls of the givers, and their deceased ancestors, as old consecrations do witness: And therefore in reason, if the consideration and service be  ceased, so ought also the wages; for no man in law or equity, ought to claim wages when he will not do the work for which it was given; and seeing those priests and prayers are laid aside, the gift ought to return to the donor, and may not without his consent be perverted to another use.  See Page 27 of the Pearson book (emphasis added)

*Presumably Augustine of Canterbury (Not to be confused with Augustine of Hippo.). Augustine of Canterbury (born first third of the 6th century – died probably 26 May 604) was a Benedictine monk who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 597. He is considered the "Apostle to the English" and a founder of the English Church. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Canterbury

Here we learn that Augustine initiated in England the practice of paying priests "for saying prayers for the souls of the givers, and their deceased ancestors." Of course, the beginning assumption here is that a professional priesthood has been established, and it has been determined that one of their salaried duties can be praying for the living and the dead (and perhaps providing special facilities for carrying out such prayers). It appears that the LDS church has learned well this administrative lesson from the past, and it seems likely that its largest source of income, and the largest impetus for its members continuing to pay tithing every year, has to do with building extravagant temples and maintaining individual licenses ("recommends") to use those temples to do work for themselves and their dead. We should point out that the early Christians had no need for any kind of temples and therefore no need for any related contributions. The work they did for themselves and for the dead was all completely without charge.

We might notice that many other religions have adopted the same monetizing technique. Buying and burning candles for the dead appears to be a major franchise in the Russian Orthodox Church, for example. At least buying a few candles would certainly be less expensive than paying out a tenth of one's income every year. One of the purposes for the "indulgences" which were a major source of money to the Roman Catholic Church at the time of Martin Luther was supposedly to free souls from purgatory. Never mind that it is unknown just how the Catholic Church signaled the heavens that those individual souls in purgatory should be released. Similarly, it is not perfectly clear that the massive expenditures of time and money on behalf of the dead under LDS administration is effective or even necessary. We have the case of Alvin Smith who was resurrected and exalted before any temples were built or any regular LDS work for the dead could be initiated. There is also a basic fairness question which is unresolved: does it really make sense for the perhaps 70 billion souls, or more, who have lived on this earth to wait hundreds or thousands of years for the relatively tiny LDS church to finally get around to releasing them from spirit prison by finally doing their temple work? After nearly 200 years of effort we have still not finished the work just for those who have lived in the United States, let alone everyone else who has lived in our big world. If all this work must be done by proxy on earth, which seems questionable, then perhaps it can only be done on an industrial scale during the millennium when all these people can come to the earth themselves to do their own work, if that is necessary. I would argue that we ought to do all that we can to move towards a millennial condition where all of these things could be taken care of quickly and properly rather than continuing to move at an extremely expensive and slow snail's pace under current conditions.

Temples and altars

There is a related issue concerning the need for temples. The LDS Bible dictionary presents an entry which perfectly fits the current church's definitions, doctrines, and practices:

Temple

                A temple is literally a house of the Lord, a holy sanctuary in which sacred ceremonies and ordinances of the gospel are performed by and for the living and also in behalf of the dead. A place where the Lord may come, it is the most holy of any place of worship on the earth. Only the home can compare with the temple in sacredness.

                Whenever the Lord has had a people on the earth who will obey His word, they have been commanded to build temples in which the ordinances of the gospel and other spiritual manifestations that pertain to exaltation and eternal life may be administered. In cases of extreme poverty or emergency, these ordinances may sometimes be done on a mountaintop (see D&C 124:37–55). This may be the case with Mount Sinai and the Mount of Transfiguration. The tabernacle erected by Moses was a type of portable temple, since the Israelites were traveling in the wilderness.

                From Adam to the time of Jesus, ordinances were performed in temples for the living only. After Jesus opened the way for the gospel to be preached in the world of spirits, ceremonial work for the dead, as well as for the living, has been done in temples on the earth by faithful members of the Church. Building and properly using a temple is one of the marks of the true Church in any dispensation, and is especially so in the present day.

                The best known temple mentioned in the Bible is that which was built in Jerusalem in the days of Solomon. This was destroyed in 587 B.C. and rebuilt by Zerubbabel about 70 years later. The restored structure was partially burned in 37 B.C. and was partially rebuilt by Herod the Great, although the rebuilding continued until A.D. 64. It was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70. See also Tabernacle.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bd/temple?lang=eng

The basic problem here, as in so many other places, is that the current church indiscriminately mixes Old Testament Law of Moses principles and practices with New Testament Christian principles and practices, as though they were all the same and had the same authority and application today. The critical statement "Whenever the Lord has had a people on the earth who will obey his word, they have been commanded to build temples…" is demonstrably untrue. It would be correct to say that Adam and Noah and Abraham built altars to the Lord, but those altars were just a pile of rocks put together perhaps with a few hours work, hardly something which could be called a temple on the scale of the Temple in Jerusalem or one of the modern day temples. These rocks were required to be whole and untouched by iron and could not be piled high enough to require climbing any steps. (See Topical Guide entry for "altar.")

Exodus 20:25 And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.

26 Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered [revealed -- in footnote] thereon.

Deut. 27:5 And there shalt thou build an altar unto the Lord thy God, an altar of stones: thou shalt not lift up any iron tool upon them.

6 Thou shalt build the altar of the Lord thy God of whole stones: and thou shalt offer burnt offerings thereon unto the Lord thy God:

These alters were much less permanent and stationary than the portable tabernacle constructed under the law of Moses. In fact, those early Christians from Adam to Abraham were forbidden to use any modern construction techniques which might result in a permanent temple, and yet they had access to all the higher ordinances they had need of for themselves. After the life of Christ (if not before his death), the church members were able to do work for the dead on a regular basis, again without the need for any special structures.

Although we are told that Adam built at least one of these unhewn rock altars, apparently it does not explicitly affirm that in the Scriptures. The same thing seems to go for Noah.

Gen 8:20 And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

One bit of church history humor, which may or not may not be true, is that many people that go to Adam-ondi-Ahman in Missouri take away a rock, hoping it was one of the rocks that made up the altar of Adam, so that the church has to keep bringing in trucks full of rocks to replace those carried off by visitors.

More thoughts on the history of temples

If large, permanent, ornate temples were always really so important, surely we would have heard of the great and wondrous Temple of Adam, the Temple of Enoch, the Temple of Noah, the Temple of Abraham, the Temple of Melchizedek, etc. Unless we want to describe the giant ark built by Noah as a "temple," there seems to be no scriptural evidence of any kind of large permanent temple before the children of Israel left Egypt. In fact, one might argue that having a large, permanent, ornate temple is direct evidence of general religious degeneration. The example of the Tower of Babel comes to mind, where the intent was to defy God.

King David gathered the materials for the Jerusalem Temple but was not allowed to construct it. King Solomon, his son, oversaw the building of that Temple, but I don't think that anyone would say that Solomon represented the peak of righteousness. Having that Temple to the one true God was better than having a Temple to some pagan idol, but not by much.

It is the pagans who build the large, permanent, ornate temples and groves at which they worship idols. The pretentious temples of the Israelites are too much like those of the pagans. For example, the Roman government built numerous temples to various gods and for their cult of the Emperor. Building ostentatious public buildings signaled the merger of the corrupted Christian church with the pagan Emperor Constantine and the beginning of the collection of tithes to support such construction. Apparently, avoiding building temples is one way to avoid idolatry. It is actually a little bit difficult to differentiate the law of Moses temple in Jerusalem, and all its sacrificial rules and activities, from the pagan practices of the Romans around them. We might notice that the New Testament has many warnings about the new Christians getting caught up in the old practices of the Roman pagan temples, including food offerings. That seems to indicate that the law of Moses and the pagan practices were really not all that different. Perhaps the only real difference was the specific named god they were supposedly worshiping. This brings to mind Paul's reference to the "unknown god" worshiped by the Greeks, where the religious practices were not all that different, but getting the name right was the important thing. Acts 17:23.

Acts 17:22 Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.

23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.

24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;

25 Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;

26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;

27 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:

28 For in him we alive, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

29 Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.

30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:

31 Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

I think it is significant that the early Saints had just broken off all connections with the temple in Jerusalem, having no need for any temples of stone, and that complete disconnect from any physical temple remained in effect for at least 300 years. That should tell us that a physical temple is simply not part of the New Testament gospel, and all saving ordinances can be conducted in other places, and apparently were so conducted after the life of Christ. This does leave us a small bit of ambiguity to resolve sometime. The Kirtland Temple, Nauvoo Temple, Salt Lake Temple, St. George Temple, etc., seem to be unexplained exceptions to this general rule. The approximately 200 extravagant temples, which have been either built or are planned in our own time, raise a number of questions.

There are even serious questions about the need for ANY work for the dead except perhaps to help the living better understand the plan of salvation. We have the interesting case of Alvin Smith who apparently died, was resurrected, and exalted, before any priesthood was on the Earth to conduct any ordinance work for either the living or the dead.

Section 137

A vision given to Joseph Smith the Prophet, in the temple at Kirtland, Ohio, January 21, 1836. The occasion was the administration of ordinances in preparation for the dedication of the temple.

1–6, The Prophet sees his brother Alvin in the celestial kingdom; 7–9, The doctrine of salvation for the dead is revealed; 10, All children are saved in the celestial kingdom.

1 The heavens were opened upon us, and I beheld the celestial kingdom of God, and the glory thereof, whether in the body or out I cannot tell.

2 I saw the transcendent beauty of the gate through which the heirs of that kingdom will enter, which was like unto circling flames of fire;

3 Also the blazing throne of God, whereon was seated the Father and the Son.

4 I saw the beautiful streets of that kingdom, which had the appearance of being paved with gold.

5 I saw Father Adam and Abraham; and my father and my mother; my brother Alvin, that has long since slept;

6 And marveled how it was that he had obtained an inheritance in that kingdom, seeing that he had departed this life before the Lord had set his hand to gather Israel the second time, and had not been baptized for the remission of sins.

7 Thus came the voice of the Lord unto me, saying: All who have died without a knowledge of this gospel, who would have received it if they had been permitted to tarry, shall be heirs of the celestial kingdom of God;

8 Also all that shall die henceforth without a knowledge of it, who would have received it with all their hearts, shall be heirs of that kingdom;

9 For I, the Lord, will judge all men according to their works, according to the desire of their hearts.

10 And I also beheld that all children who die before they arrive at the years of accountability are saved in the celestial kingdom of heaven.

Since it is obviously impossible to do all the Temple work on earth for the more than 70 billion people who have lived on the Earth, especially since we have individual records for only a tiny fraction of those people, perhaps no more than 5%, with perhaps no more than 0.5% completed so far after 200 years of effort, one might expect that heaven has a far more efficient plan for taking care of these matters. I would argue that our first duty should be to the living, and we should devote only a small part of our effort to work for the dead. We can see exactly what is happening in our help of living people, and all we really have is speculation about whatever help we might be offering those who are dead.

All the marvelous New Testament manifestations of the day of Pentecost occurred without any special buildings being available as a prerequisite. One might wonder why the Kirtland Temple was required for similar manifestations. The Salt Lake City saints functioned without a completed temple for 40 years and seemed to do well enough, making the need for a temple a bit questionable. Perhaps an actual structure is a partial throwback to a law of Moses "schoolmaster" time, hopefully not a permanent need.

As another consideration, building and maintaining a highly visible temple will always require some compromise with the local governments controlling that land, and any such compromise could damage the religious, political, and economic freedom of the Saints who live there, unless the Saints actually control the political government.