President D. Todd Christofferson, second counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, testified while at the San Diego California Temple rededication that the temple is “a testimony.”
“The building, the whole, all that occurs here is a tangible testimony to our witness of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” he said in an interview. “Because if He was not resurrected, none of this makes sense — there’s no purpose in it. But if He is resurrected, this is a very critical and essential work.”
President Christofferson rededicated the San Diego California Temple on Sunday, Aug. 23, after three years of extensive renovations.
In a Church News video, titled “Witness of the Resurrection,” President Christofferson said the temple is a connection between heaven and earth.
“We really step out of the world when we enter the temple,” he said. “In a way, when we enter the temple, we lay our problems and challenges at the door, and when we leave, the problems and challenges are still there — we have to pick them up again and take them with us. They haven’t changed, but we have changed in that interval.”
Acknowledging how lovely and beautiful the temple can be, President Christofferson added that the physical building “can never be as important or as beautiful in an eternal sense as the ordinances themselves that take place here.”
“But it is a perfect box for that beautiful pearl,” he said. “The Spirit of the Lord is here — it emanates from here. It is a symbol to people of the eternal and what truly matters.”
‘The temple is for us’
Those who attended the dedication echoed President Christofferson’s words.
J. Clifford Wallace, who lives in the area and served previously as the San Diego California Temple president, attended Sunday’s rededication. He said the temple helps each person who enters to change and become more like the Savior, Jesus Christ.
“The temple is for us, the living — to provide a way of focusing upon the sacred symbols of the temple and to receive revelation to guide our lives so that we can return to our Savior,” he said.
Jenée Wallace said she and her husband enter the temple with a plan to discuss what they learn each time in the celestial room.
“The temple is a personal thing,” she said. “It’s your personal connection with God. You get personal revelation for you.”
Kary Ann Hoopes attended the dedication after she found the Church through the original open house and dedication in 1993.
She recalls touring the temple as a teenager and feeling something special inside. At the door of the temple, she looked back and read the inscription “Holiness to the Lord, the House of the Lord.”
“I remember specifically turning around and just the sadness that I felt that I would never get to go in there again, feeling that hopelessness of, there was something there that I knew I was missing that I needed in my life,” she said.
Hoopes joined the Church a few months after that experience and was later sealed in the San Diego temple.
“This is the beginning of the foundation for me of understanding who Jesus Christ is and what His sacrifices were for me,” she said.
The mission leaders for the California San Diego Mission, President Art Rascon and Sister Patti T. Rascon, told the Church News that the open house before the rededication also created opportunities for more people like Hoopes to discover the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.
“Because it’s all about Jesus Christ. It’s all focused on Christ — Him as the center,” President Rascon said.
Added Sister Rascon: “We tell our missionaries often that the goal is not baptism. The goal is the temple and being sealed in the temple. And everything that we teach them — and as they begin their journey on the covenant path at baptism — it all leads them here to the temple.”
President Rascon said everyone who enters the house of God comes out a better person.
“With that strength and resilience to resist the world,” he said. “Every person who walks out of this temple should feel less despair, less hopelessness, and more hope and more joy. Because their focus becomes toward the Savior.”
