LDS Church Releases New Temple Movie For Endowment Ceremony, But You Must Be A Templeworthy Mormon To See It

Update August 13th: Have added some additional and important reaction to the temple movie published since this post first appeared; scroll down to paragraph 3.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has released a new movie to be shown during the endowment ceremony held at their temples, but you won't see this movie posted on Mormon Messages. That's because it's not intended to be shown outside the temple, and one must be a templeworthy Mormon to access an operational temple. For those readers unfamiliar with the endowment ceremony, an overview is provided on LDS Endowment, which is neither a pro-Mormon nor an anti-Mormon website.

Fear not, because the Deseret News published a brief story, while several other sources, namely Wheat & Tares and Jana Riess's truthfully-named Flunking Sainthood blog, provide additional background and perspective. The film is also discussed on the LDS Freedom Forum and on LDS.net.

Update August 13th: Since this post, there has been some additional important reaction published. Zomarah published a complete review of the movie without violating any covenants. Zomarah agrees that the new movie is an improvement, but thinks the casting still leaves much to be desired. On Adventures in Mormonism, Bruce F. Webster was sufficiently impressed that he teared up for the first time ever when watching a temple movie. Webster also rebuts Jana Riess' anti-racist propaganda about the film being "too white", stating that half of the eight actors (including Adam and especially Eve) look as though they come from Latin America, not Northern Europe. On Mormanity, Jeff Lindsay liked the acting, and noted that Eve was portrayed as much more of a real woman, a thinker, and a leader than in the past. And finally, on The Exponent, which is the more moderate and rational feminist Mormon blog, they conducted a poll and over two-thirds of respondents believe Eve was portrayed better than in the past.

For the most part, the Deseret News merely published the following official LDS Church statement from Ruth Todd, which triggered considerable commentary:

"The new temple film is the first update in more than 20 years. There have been no changes to the script. English-language copies of the new film are being sent to temples over the next few weeks and will subsequently be translated into other languages".

Wheat & Tares adds a few more details. The new movie adds about 15 minutes to the endowment ceremony, lengthening it from 30 minutes to 45 minutes. LDS officials found that as the Church introduced more temples to Africa, some African languages require more words to get explain the temple ceremony. So the Church modified the entire ceremony, allowing more pauses to accommodate the African Saints. This is all in keeping with the LDS Church's commitment to enable members to hear the Gospel in their own native languages whenever possible.

On Flunking Sainthood, Jana Riess does praise the LDS Church for striving to make the temple ceremony more accommodating to African Saints, since even though Mormonism is growing rapidly in Africa, retention of converts is reportedly low. However, Riess then offsets this by playing the race card and complaining about the fact that every single person in the movie is still White. Riess is one of those hard-left progressives who believe that equal outcome is necessary to validate equal opportunity, unmindful of the fact that the two can be mutually exclusive. As long as anti-racists like Jana Riess continually pick at the scabs, healing will never occur and progress towards a more Christ-like post-racial society will be inevitably delayed.

Some individual comments (after the jump):

Anti-Mormon Posts YouTube Video Of Secret Mormon Temple Rituals On Reddit

While visiting the Reddit site on October 21st, 2012, I noticed that someone posted a link to a video entitled "Behind The Veil: Never-Before-Seen Footage of Secret Mormon Temple Rituals". The intent is to denigrate the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; the video was filmed surreptitiously by someone who went through the Salt Lake Temple recently, and the commentary embedded within the video indicates the person is anti-Mormon. Even though the temple rituals are not disclosed to non-Mormons and Mormons who are not temple-worthy, I decided to embed the video here because this story is too important to be owned by anti-Mormons. At least the videographer had the dignity to obscure the faces of the worshippers.

What you'll see on the video, in order, is a group of worshippers in temple garments initially giving the prayer "Oh God, hear the words of my mouth" during the orientation preceding the endowment ceremony. You will then see a young teenage girl performing proxy baptism on behalf of a deceased person. Then you will see the endowment ceremony itself, first the mass briefing along with a clip of the film shown, then an individual passing through the opening, reciting the tokens or key-words while offering the ceremonial handshakes, and then the individual concludes the ceremony and goes into the Celestial Room to contemplate and reflect for a few moments before departing the temple:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6udew9axmdM



Other evidences of anti-Mormon distortion embedded within the video:

-- References to an "Oath of Vengeance" that has long since been abandoned. FAIR Mormon addresses this issue in more detail.
-- Repeated derogatory highlighting of Mitt Romney to perpetrate the false notion that he would take orders from President Thomas S. Monson should he be elected President.
-- References to a government of Zion which make it appear that the LDS Church is planning to take over the government and establish a "worldwide theocracy" at some time in the future (after the Second Coming, there will be a worldwide government -- headed by Jesus Christ).
-- Misrepresentation of LDS doctrine regarding the creation. We believe that God created the earth, but we define "create" as "to organize", and we believe the Father delegated that authority to Jehovah and the archangel Michael.
-- Repeated references to the Freemasons. Similarity between Mormon and Masonic ceremonies is coincidental; there is no overt connection between Mormons and Masons.

The video was uploaded to YouTube by someone identified as Newnamenoah, and it's an abridged version of a much longer video of 1 hour and 18 minutes. Despite reassurances to the contrary by the LDS Church, Newnamenoah seems convinced that the oath taken by Mitt Romney in the temple will conflict with his Presidential Oath of Office. But Newnamenoah offers no objective evidence supporting this conclusion, but merely paranoid conjecture. If A, then B. Classical simplistic slippery-slope logic.

However, Newnamenoah's anti-Mormon bigotry will backfire. We will take the lemon with which he has presented us, and transform it into lemonade. For this offers us another "every-member-a-missionary" opportunity to spread knowledge of the fulness of the restored Gospel, particularly for LDS members who have YouTube and Reddit accounts and can post comments. We might want to act fast, because there's the possibility that the LDS Church may ask YouTube to take the video down, or even to take down Newnamenoah's channel, simply because the temple ceremonies are sacred. There certainly is not sinister about anything presented on the video. The LDS Church Temples website presents a more detailed explanation of the endowment ceremony.

Institute For Religious Research Publishes Transcript Of Typical LDS Temple Endowment Ceremony

One of the more unique aspects of the style of worship employed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the endowment ceremony held within its temples. LDS men generally undergo the endowment before embarking on a full-time mission at the age of 19. LDS women usually receive their endowment before marriage, or if and when they leave on an 18-month mission at the age of 21. LDS members in general will then subsequently receive the endowment again, not just for themselves, but also on behalf of deceased individuals, enabling those in the spirit world to accept or reject the ordinances and covenants according to their own free will.

The Endowment ceremony includes four basic aspects:

-- A preparatory ordinance of ceremonial washing and anointing, and dressing in sacred temple garments, plus temple robes, always white as a symbol of purity and equality between everyone in attendance.
-- A course of instruction that features the creation of the world, some of the experiences of Adam and Eve, and the plan of salvation or redemption available to every human thanks to the sacrifice of Christ.
-- Making covenants constitute yet another aspect of the Endowment; LDS members solemnly promise the Lord to be obedient, giving of self, chaste, and loyal to the restored Church of Christ and its cause. In return, God will fulfill promised blessings of joy, protection, progress, and eventual return to His glorious presence.
-- Discernment. Most temple visitors can actually feel a degree of divine presence even now, for LDS temples are specially dedicated as places of holiness, of light, of peace and revelation and understanding. The Lord's hand can be felt in the LDS Church's practice of temple building, and it can be felt in the hearts and lives of those who worthily and reverently enter the temple.

Because the symbols used in the Endowment and the meanings of those symbols are sacred to Mormons, the Church customarily does not divulge specific details of what goes on in the temple. Because much of the Endowment ceremony differs significantly from other Christian ceremonies, individual Church members attend a Temple Preparation Seminar prior to undergoing the Endowment. Despite this, a small number of people find the Endowment difficult or even offensive; some eventually leave the Church because of it.

To better reassure people that the Endowment is strictly benign, I have linked to a transcript of a typical Endowment ceremony first identified in a May 17th Tucson Citizen article. The transcript is provided by the Institute for Religious Research, which, although they do not regard the LDS temple ceremonies as sacred and do not agree with the idea of keeping sacred things secret, expressly state that it is not their intention to mock Mormons or their practices, but merely to make information available to those who are looking for it. They provide the transcript without any editorial commentary; it is too lengthy to be re-published here.

The transcript of the Endowment ceremony does a great job of bringing out fundamental Gospel principles. It symbolically shows the complexity of setting up man's sojourn on Earth and the interaction that occurred between Elohim, Jehovah, Satan, Adam, Peter, James, and John. It shows that some of those whose mortal missions would occur much later, to include Peter, James, and John, played important pre-mortal roles in launching man's sojourn on Earth. This is revolutionary stuff not promoted by any other Christian denomination. It shows the limitless possibilities offered by Mormonism.

The Endowment ceremony is nothing to be scared of. It is something to be anticipated, but only once one is truly prepared. And to those people who wonder if they'll remember such things as the Sign of the Nail and the First Token of the Aaronic Priesthood, etc. etc., have no fear; when the time comes that you need to use it, you will remember all of these signs and tokens. We are told that at judgment, we will have a bright recollection of everything we ever heard, said, or did. As Spencer W. Kimball once said, faith precedes the miracle.