Nauvoo Temple

He says, "We have an organization you haven't seen." And he also says that, "We're gonna share the blessings we have with you.

We are gonna s- we are gonna complete the Nauvoo Temple, um, and if our enemies force us out, we will preside over the endowment in the wilderness." And so essentially, if you want the blessings of exaltation, if you want the blessings of the celestial kingdom, the Twelve can, uh, facilitate you getting them.

And that argument, and probably the fact that Rigdon's been a bit on the outs, that is persuasive.

Um, the Saints in Nauvoo, with near unanimity, vote to support the Twelve as the church's leaders.

It's a very fractious movement.

Uh, Strang is not successful at consolidating all of them into a church.

The fact that Brigham ultimately is able to get his followers, uh, through the Nauvoo Temple and then to what becomes, uh, Utah, those undercut, those accomplishments undercut some of Strang's appeal.

So by, by 1847, Strang's star Is losing some of its luster.

Yeah, so a clean way to kind of think of it is that the Kirtland Temple was in a sense a preparatory temple that was needed to receive the gift of those temple keys restored by Moses, Elias, and Elijah.

And then once Joseph had those keys, he had what was needed to build the full-fledged kind of temples that we have today, the Nauvoo Temple being the first of its kind, and then to perform all of the ordinances therein.

So an analogy that we've used in the past is that in Kirtland, Joseph received kind of all the Lego pieces that they needed to construct the temple theology and practices that we have today.

But they weren't necessarily given an instruction book on how all the pieces fit together.

So from this perspective, being sealed either through marriage or adoption to a worthy man who held the Melchizedek priesthood was considered essential to a person's eternal place in the kingdom of God.

Yeah.

So during Joseph Smith's lifetime, the only people sealed into these priesthood lineages were women, right? Men did not begin being adopted into the priesthood lines of other men until after the Nauvoo Temple was completed.

So it makes sense then that some women wanted to be sealed to men who held high priesthood offices since they hoped that a man's position reflected his faithfulness.

I, uh, I think we don't understand like what a big deal Hotel Utah was.

Hotel Utah was the eq- we, you know, Section 124, we got the Nauvoo Temple-

Yeah

... and we got the Nauvoo House.

So, um, I wanna go in that temple, and I don't care if I'm part of the Mormon faith or anything like that.

I'm part of the church of Christ, and I can provide great insight into that Nauvoo temple.

So if there's any LDS members out there that might hear this or whatever, talk to your president or whatever, and say, "Hey, let this guy in.

He's, he's one of us.

But besides the money, they also spent time to help build the building.

And that's just like the early church too, right? Where one day in 10, they'd work on the Kirtland Temple or the Nauvoo Temple until they built it together.

In Hong Kong, for example, the first mission home was torn down to put in the chapel and then torn down to put in the temple, the China Hong Kong temple.

In Taiwan, the first chapel and mission home there, same thing, that lot of land is in a prime location, right? And now they've torn down that first chapel and mission home.

Um, uh, y- we need to show people that, uh, the free exercise of religion leads to flourishing of, of all peoples, of all peoples.

Um, and then, and then he spoke, he was speaking specifically to Latter-day Saints and drawing upon Latter-day Saint, uh, authorities, uh, and scripture, um, and, and pointing out that in Latter-day Saint history, when the Nauvoo Temple was built-

Yeah

... and that's iconic for us, that at the same time, and the, the, the revelations that, that the Lord was giving to build the Nauvoo Temple, he was also telling them to build this grand hotel that welcomed people from all over the world, and his point was that that's the spirit of this thing.

Mm-hmm.

The, the, the, the, the spirit of religious liberty is not to retreat, uh, into your own tribe, shut the doors, and go off and, you know, live off in the world.

Brigham conceded later in life that the strictness of his father's mandate against these evils simply made him want to dance and hear fiddles all the more.

Thus, in the last days of Nauvoo, only weeks after the apostles' sermons against attending local balls, Young began to permit and even encourage dancing, including mixed dancing of all places, the newly completed Nauvoo Temple.

In the winter of 1845, 1846, Young initiated all day ritual sessions in the temple at the close of which instruments were taken from their cases to accompany square dances in the building's upper story.

In diaries and accounts of the saints' journey westward, one finds countless references to dancing.

I can't imagine them doing a temple dedication midweek, but you know, Who knows? I have no idea.

But anyway, I also suspect that the Salt Lake Temple dedication will be like when they did the Nauvoo Temple dedication.

And they made all of the chapels an extension of the temple so everybody could participate.

I would be shocked if they did not do the same thing for Salt Lake City Temple dedication.

And a study of Cutlerite plural marriage dates their sealing to August 9th, 1845, only about six weeks after the divorce.

That sealing was subsequently repealed in the Nauvoo Temple on January 14th, 1846.

So even if the story about Mrs. Amos Davies is true, she was never a plural wife.

And according to most of the stories, she eventually returns to her husband.

We should also mention that Porter received his endowments in the Nauvoo Temple on January 5th, 1846, just a few days before his wife was sealed to Alpheus Cutler.

So that seems to suggest that despite the accusations of extramarital shenanigans, he was still considered worthy to attend the temple, right?

Yeah.