Announcement of the Church's 100th temple worldwide is a milestone of doctrinal as well as historic magnitude.
It amounts to dramatic evidence of the fulfillment of Joseph Smith's 1842 prophecy that the truth of God would go forth until it had "penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country and sounded in every ear." (See History of the Church 4:540.)
More particularly, it gives verity to Malachi's prophecy that Elijah would return to the earth before the second coming of the Savior and "turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers," lest the Lord smite the earth with a curse. (See Mal. 4:5-6.)
In a Jan. 24, 1844, sermon, Joseph Smith taught that the word turn in this passage should be translated as bind or seal.
He added: "The keys are to be delivered, the spirit of Elijah is to come, the Gospel to be established, the Saints of God gathered, Zion built up, and the Saints to come up as saviors on Mount Zion.
"But how are they to become saviors on Mount Zion? By building their temples, erecting their baptismal fonts, and going forth and receiving all the ordinances, baptisms, confirmations, washings, anointings, ordinations and sealing powers upon their heads, in behalf of all their progenitors who are dead, and redeem them that they may come forth in the first resurrection and be exalted to thrones of glory with them; and herein is the chain that binds the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers, which fulfills the mission of Elijah." (History of the Church 6:184.)
Later, President Brigham Young declared in a discourse given in Salt Lake City on Oct. 6, 1863, that the Salt Lake Temple would not be the only temple the Saints would build. "There will be hundreds of them built and dedicated to the Lord," he said. "This temple will be known as the first temple built in the mountains by the Latter-day Saints. And when the Millennium is over, and all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, down to the last of their posterity, who come within the reach of the clemency of the Gospel, have been redeemed in hundreds of temples through the administration of their children and proxies for them, I want that [Salt Lake] Temple to stand as a proud monument of the faith, perseverance and industry of the Saints of God in the mountains, in the nineteenth century. (Discourses of Brigham Young, p. 395.)
Though the millennium is still to come, President Young's desire that the Salt Lake Temple stand as a monument has already been fulfilled. The temple's distinctive, six-spired image has long been the most recognizable symbol of the Church that Christ restored in the latter days. More particularly it symbolizes the great effort to redeem through the ordinances of salvation both the living and those who have died without the opportunity to receive those ordinances.
That great effort has its spiritual roots in former dispensations of the gospel. In a revelation to the Prophet Joseph Smith, Jesus Christ Himself identified a link between ancient and modern temple worship, saying, "For, for this cause [performance of washings and other ordinances] I commanded Moses that he should build a tabernacle, that they should bear it with them in the wilderness, and to build a house in the land of promise, that those ordinances might be revealed which had been hid from before the world was." (D&C 124:36-38.)
In this dispensation, the restoration of temple work began with construction of the Kirtland Temple in Ohio. It was marked by a rich outpouring of spiritual manifestations and blessings. (See, for example, D&C 110, the account of the Savior's appearance to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in the temple.)
But only a partial endowment was given in the Kirtland Temple, which served more as a multi-purpose facility than a temple in the present-day sense. Later, in Missouri, attempts to build temples — one at Independence and another at Far West — were thwarted by enemies of the Church. (See D&C 84:2-5; 115:7-16; 124:51.)
In Nauvoo, Ill., Joseph Smith taught the array of revelations that comprise the temple doctrines known today. These included baptism for the dead, the endowment, celestial marriage and sealing together of family members and ancestral lineages for eternity. The Saints in Nauvoo constructed a beautiful temple wherein to perform these ordinances, although the Prophet did not live to see the temple completed.
It was finished under the direction of President Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve. Because of the need for spiritual strength derived from the ordinances and covenants of the temple for their coming removal to the West, the Saints hastened to finish the edifice, even though they knew they would shortly abandon it.
Construction of the Salt Lake Temple was commenced in 1853, but it took 40 years to complete. Meanwhile, temples were built in St. George (1877); Logan (1884) and Manti, Utah (1888).
But the ordinances did not await the completion of those early Utah temples. As the tabernacle of Moses temporarily had served the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, the Endowment House was dedicated in 1855 as a provisional facility to serve modern Israel in the mountain deserts of Utah Territory. Within its adobe and red-sandstone walls, thousands of endowments and eternal marriages were performed over three decades. Vicarious work for the dead, which had been interrupted for the Nauvoo exodus, resumed in the mid-1860s.
Dedication of the Salt Lake Temple in 1893 set the stage for a new century of temple building.
In October 1997 general conference, President Gordon B. Hinckley caused a sensation by announcing that small temples would be constructed in remote areas of the Church where the membership is small and not likely to grow very much in the future.
Initiation of the small temples made it possible for President Hinckley, in April 1998 general conference, to announce an additional 30 of the smaller edifices that would bring the total number of operating temples in the Church to 100 by the year 2000.
With the announcement of the Palmyra New York Temple, that goal is being reached. The prophecy of Brigham Young that there one day would be hundreds of temples no longer seems remote. And the prediction of Church leaders in this dispensation that temples will "dot the earth" has become reality.
Much of the historical information for this article was drawn from by Richard O. Cowan.
