Foundations
Do you realize that the very first building ever constructed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was a temple? It wasn’t a chapel, but a temple. It was built in Kirtland, Ohio by command from the Lord, which included instructions for the design.
The Salt Lake Temple was the sixth temple to be dedicated. Do you remember that the Saints had only been in the valley for four days when Brigham Young selected a ten-acre plot of ground for the temple? Someone said to President Young, “We never begin to build a temple without the bells of hell beginning to ring.” Brigham Young said, “Yes, and I want to hear them ring again.”
The Saints feared that as soon as the cornerstone was laid all hell would break loose and they would be driven from the Valley. President Young knew that even though there is always opposition when a temple is built, an increase in the power to overcome that evil would be forthcoming as well. And, really, the main reason for coming to the Salt Lake Valley was so that the Saints could build a temple and receive the saving ordinances performed therein.
Brigham Young prophesied that the Salt Lake Temple would last not only throughout this dispensation but through the millennium! In other words, one thousand years – plus!
Work on the temple began in 1853. The foundation was 16 feet thick and made of stones hewn out of the canyons 20 miles away.
In 1857, President James Buchanan sent an army of 2500 men to Salt Lake City. The Saints didn’t know what to expect but they were worried the Army would take over, force them out and they would lose all they had worked to build again. So Brigham Young told them to empty their homes and to fill them with hay and leaves so their homes could be burned. They were also told to carry provisions to the mountains so they could hide out there if they needed to.
All work stopped on the temple. The foundation was buried so it would look like a farmer’s freshly plowed field to prevent unwanted attention from the federal troops.
Johnston’s Army stayed for four years!
When they finally left, the temple foundation was uncovered. Brigham Young sat on the walls of the foundation and looked around. The stones were fine but the mortar between them had cracked under the weight of the dirt camouflage. He realized the temple wouldn’t endure the millennium if the foundation couldn’t even last four years.
So, they started over.
Some of the rocks were used again, but all the mortar was taken out and the rocks were chiseled and grooved to fit perfectly together this time. Not even a knife can fit between the stones. A “rock-solid” foundation now existed!
It wasn’t until 1867 that the temple walls finally rose above the ground for the first time.
No wonder it took forty years to build the Salt Lake Temple!
Over the doors of each temple, cast in stone, are the words: “Holiness to the Lord—the House of the Lord.” What an awesome thing it is to have here on earth a place where God can and does come. It’s remarkable that the Temple isn’t just a place where the prophet can go, or the general authorities or only bishops and stake presidents. The temple is for all of us. The blessings are for all of us. If the time comes when you can’t attend anymore, you are still blessed because they are in our midst.
Brigham Young said, “Men grow mighty under the results of temple service, women grow strong under it. The community increases in power until the devil has less influence than he ever had before. The opposition to truth is relatively smaller if the people are engaged actively in the ordinances of the temple.”
Give thanks this week for the vision and dedication of people who began building a temple before they even had their own lives in order or their own homes built!
By the way…..how is your foundation?
Helaman 5:12 “And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.”
~ Sister Pat Barton
