Friday, December 18, 2009

{inside lds temples}


washington dc temple at christmas time
san diego california temple. one of my favorites.
pian paasen vihdoinkin itse nakemaan sen! tuskin jaksan odottaa.
what the ancient solomon's temple looked like
the jerusalem temple
a baptism font in a lds temple.
latter-day saints perform baptisms for their ancestors in their temples. we believe that everyone needs to be baptized in order to go to the highest of God's kingdoms - the celestial kingdom. many people died without having a chance to be baptized, for example. we perform baptisms for them by proxy. they get to choose whether they accept the baptism or not. no one is forced.
1 Corinthians 15: 29 "else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?"
other christians don't seem to know what this scripture is about. we do.
the twelve oxen represent the 12 tribes of Isreal. i'm a benjamite, by the way, but i have some manasse in me too. but that's another totally different discussion. ;)
ps. apostle paul was of the tribe of benjamin too.
a celestial room. a wonderful place to go to. no outside noise. you forget earthly troubles and stresses. you get a break from every day life. our edmonton temple is right next to a busy highway, yet no noises are heard in the temple. you go here to pray, to ponder, to meditate, to seek for God's guidance in your life. you feel renewed when you leave.
Y



more celestial rooms
a sealing room. this is where lds couples go to get married. they are sealed for "time and all eternity". we believe that families are supposed to last forever. children born to those parents who have been married in the temple, automatically are sealed to them. we took sienna to be sealed to us when the adoption was finally legal. she was 13 months old. a very special experience.
Y
i think this is a sealing room in the salt lake temple.
if anyone has been to a lds chapel, our church building, you know that they are very simple, plain structures. our temples are built to highest standards. everything has to be done perfectly. the temples are cleaned thoroughly daily by volunteer church members. everything is cleaned, even when it already looks clean.
everything in the temple is symbolic of something in the gospel. it's a beautiful way to learn the gospel deeper.
i have never been anywhere in the world where i have felt more at peace and closer to heaven. it feels like home.
Y
this is what the lds bible dictionary says about temples:
A temple is literally a house of the Lord, a holy sanctuary in which sacred ceremonies and ordinances of the gospel are performed by and for the living and also in behalf of the dead. A place where the Lord may come, it is the most holy of any place of worship on the earth. Only the home can compare with the temple in sacredness.
Whenever the Lord has had a people on the earth who will obey his word, they have been commanded to build temples in which the ordinances of the gospel and other spiritual manifestations that pertain to exaltation and eternal life may be administered. In cases of extreme poverty or emergency, these ordinances may sometimes be done on a mountaintop. This may be the case with Mount Sinai and the Mount of Transfiguration. The tabernacle erected by Moses was a type of portable temple, since the Isrealites were traveling in the wilderness.
From Adam to the time of Jesus, ordinances were performed in temples for the living only. After Jesus opened the way for the gospel to be preached in the world of spirits, ceremonial work for the dead, as well as for the living, has been done in temples on the earth by faithful members of the Church. Building and properly using a temple is one of the marks of the true Church in any dispensation, and is especially so in the present day.
The best known temple mentioned in the Bible is that which was built in Jerusalem in the days of Solomon.

5 comments:

  1. do you know which temples all those sealing rooms are from? sorry if you wrote it, but i was mostly just looking at the pictures!

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  2. not sure. the last one was salt lake one.

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  3. I know you didn't ask about the Celestial Rooms, but just in case; the one that's all gold in coloring with pinky colored circular backed chairs and circles at the top of the door ways, that's Salt Lake's. I loved doing a session there, I can't wait to go again.
    Sansku (someday you'll have to tell me what that means), thank you so much for sharing all of this. Wow, I have been reminded of how peaceful the temple is and the Spirit I feel there. Now I want to go a.s.a.p. I'll have to look into the Cardston Temple's hours for the Christmas holidays.

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  4. amy: sansku is my nickname from finland. that's what my friends called me. still do. enjoy going to the temple. i'm glad i inspired you to go. merry christmas amy!

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  5. That ornate sealing room is actually from the Manti Temple.

    Thanks for these great photos. I used to download them all from newsroom.lds.org whenever they released photos from a new temple, but then my hard drive crashed and I lost them all! If you have any more, please post them.

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Thank you for taking the time to comment! :)