The Mormon Temple

                  Terrestrial Room Salt Lake Temple

In the Mormon Temples members receive their Endowment, the purpose for which is explained by the prophet Brigham Young: Your endowment is, to receive all those ordinances in the House of the Lord, which are necessary for you, after you have departed this life, to enable you to walk back to the presence of the Father, passing the angels who stand as sentinels, being enabled to give them the key words, the signs and tokens, pertaining to the Holy Priesthood, and gain your eternal exaltation in spite of earth and hell. (Journal of Discourses Vol. 2:31) The Mormon Church teaches there are three kingdoms of heaven; the Telestial, the Terrestrial and the Celestial. Within the highest of these three heavens, the Celestial, they believe are three degrees of glory. These kingdoms of heaven are symbolically passed through in the Endowment room or rooms. Before passing through the veil into the Celestial room the Temple patrons must first give the right key words and the right answers to questions from behind the veil as well as signs and tokens. As these patrons enter into the Endowment room they receive a secret key word. This unfortunately is only a symbolic Name, or Word of Divine Power, just as the veil is symbolic of the division between the inner and outer worlds and the Celestial Room symbolizes the Celestial Kingdom of Heaven.


                         G. R. S. Mead

In the Books of the Saviour Jesus teaches His disciples how to avoid having to give any answers or tokens and yet still pass through all these veils of the lower regions to the higher kingdom of heaven where Jesus resides by knowing and using a particular one and only Word: CHAPTER 96 …The mystery of the Ineffable [or Indescribable] is the mystery which is in all these of whom I have spoken unto you… 226. …It is the one and only word of the Ineffable. And that mystery of the have power over the orders which are below him, but he will not have the power to go to the orders which are above him; but he will abide in the region of the Inheritance of the Light 234. of my kingdom, being in a great light immeasurable for the gods… and he will be in great joy and great jubilation. (Pistis Sophia translated by G. S. R. Mead) Joseph Smith, the Founder of the Mormon Church, was apparently a Mason so it is little wonder that there are similarities between the Mormon Temple and the Masonic Temples. The 33rd Degree Mason C. W. Leadbeater teaches: In the Royal Arch [the Holy Royal Arch of Jerusalem, a continuation of the M. M. Degree or 3rd Degree] he passes beyond the substituted secrets and learns the genuine Word. …For the true Word is the Name of God. (p277-278) The Degree of the H.R.A. [Holy Royal Arch] leads the neophyte a step further in his quest. …His vision must be so purified that He can behold His presence with eyes unveiled. This attainment of true spiritual vision is symbolized by the Passing of the Four Veils on the road to the Heavenly City, the Sanctuary of Light and Peace; for the Veils represent those limitations of consciousness which blind his vision of the Truth. (p286-287) (The Hidden Life in Freemasonry by C. W. Leadbeater)