REXBURG, IDAHO
The Rexburg Idaho Temple, adjacent to the BYU-Idaho campus, will have a unifying effect in this southeastern Idaho town, said Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve, addressing the media during the first day of the temple's open house, Wednesday Dec. 26.
"The temple, as the house of the Lord, draws people — it draws them into the temple, but it also draws them together," said Elder Bednar, who served as president of BYU-Idaho (formerly Ricks College) from 1997-2004. "We will now find students and members of the community in the temple worshipping and being instructed together. It can do nothing but provide a greater degree of unity than has ever existed before."
Elder Bednar, accompanied by his wife, Sister Susan R. Bednar, hosted a media preview of the new sacred edifice. Also at the tour was Elder William R. Walker of the Seventy, and his wife, Sister Vicki Walker. Elder Bednar led media representatives in the first tour of the new temple, which is 57,504 square feet and will serve some 47,000 members in the surrounding area, including BYU-Idaho students.
Prior to the press preview, held on a bitter cold, snowy day, Elder Bednar addressed media representatives in the married student stake center adjacent the new temple, which sits on a hill overlooking Rexburg. Out of one side of the temple, one can see campus buildings, while through the front entrance, one can see rolling, snow-covered fields so familiar to this farming valley settled in the early 1880s by Mormon pioneers.
Some 180,000 people are expected to tour the newly completed temple during the next several weeks until it's Feb. 3 dedication.
With the general public tours beginning Saturday, Dec. 29, members and others from throughout the area will visit the Church's 125th operating temple and Idaho's third, with temples also in Idaho Falls and Boise. A fourth, in Twin Falls, is nearing completion.
In speaking to the media, Elder Bednar posed "five specific questions that you may have about temples. My hope is that the answers to these questions will help you understand what you will see and more importantly what you will feel as we walk together through this sacred building."
• "What is a temple?" The apostle noted that the Church has 22,000 meetinghouses in 166 countries in which congregations gather for weekly worship services and youth gatherings, and which are open to the public. However, a temple, he explained, is a building constructed for and exclusively devoted to sacred rites and ceremonies. "In the vocabulary of our Church, we refer to these sacred sacraments, these rites and these ceremonies, as ordinances.
"For Latter-day Saints, temples are places of holiness. The word temple derives from the Latin root, templum, and is defined as the abode of diety or simply the house of the Lord."
• "Why do we have temples in our Church today?" Elder Bednar explained, "Temples today serve the same purposes as temples did anciently."
He said that prior to a dedication, the public is invited to tour the sacred edifice, but that after the dedication, "it becomes the house of the Lord, vested with a character so sacred that only members of the Church in good standing are permitted to enter.
"It is not a matter of secrecy, it is a matter of sanctity."
• "What happens in a temple after it is dedicated?" The apostle spoke of questions concerning the purpose of life. Temples, he added, are places of learning where these questions and other eternal questions are answered. "For the most part, temple work is concerned with the family."
• "Why do we perform vicarious ordinances for the dead?" Through living proxies, Elder Bednar said, the ordinances of the gospel are available to those who passed from mortality without the knowledge of the gospel. There is no compulsion, he emphasized, "but there must be opportunity."
• "What is the significance of having a temple in Rexburg?" Elder Bednar referred to what has been called the "Wagon Box Prophecy" of President Wilford Woodruff, then president of the Quorum of the Twelve and later president of the Church. During a visit to the settlers in 1884, he climbed aboard a wagon box and said that the climate would be moderated for their good, that schools and colleges would be built, and that one day temples would dot the land.
Today, farms produce vast quantities of potatoes and other crops; a Church-owned college was built and later became BYU-Idaho; there are some 120 meetinghouses in a 55-mile area; and within that same area, there are now two temples.
Tickets are required to attend the open house of the new Rexburg Idaho Temple. The free tickets are available online at www.lds.org/reservations.
Overwhelming beauty
"The people are absolutely overwhelmed by the beauty of the facility," said temple President Val Rigby Christensen. "It is something we can't put a finger on, but it is apparent. They pray about it, they talk about it, they sing about it, they drive up and down the road.... In the fall before it was cold, the students sat around the temple to study. It has become a magnet. You can see it for many miles in every direction. At night it has a radiant beauty. But beyond the beauty, the spirituality is apparent when you walk in and know this is the house of the Lord."
E-mail: julied@desnews.com
