Nauvoo Temple: Development of Temple Ordinances

April 6, 1841, the eleventh anniversary of the organization of the Church, was a day of excitement, celebration, and thanksgiving in Nauvoo and the surrounding area. The day began with a parade of Latter-day Saint militiamen from settlements on both sides of the Mississippi River. They marched in coordinated movements to the temple grounds, where they joined an estimated 10,000 Saints and friends who had gathered to witness the laying of the cornerstone of the temple. The meeting began with prayer and singing, before Sidney Rigdon delivered a rousing sermon.¹ They had gathered, Rigdon said, “to obey the will and mandate of the Lord of glory” to build a temple according to the plan given by revelation. After the sermon, the four cornerstones were laid and Joseph Smith pronounced a blessing that they might “remain until the whole fabric [of the temple] is complete . . . that the Saints may have a place to worship God, and the Son of Man have where to lay his head.”²

The construction of a temple in Nauvoo followed the pattern established in communities that the Saints had previously built in Ohio and Missouri. When the Lord commanded the Saints to gather to Ohio in 1831, He promised that they would be given His law and that they would be “endowed with power from on high” ( Doctrine and Covenants 38:32). As the early Saints gathered in Kirtland, Ohio, the Lord instructed them to “establish a house . . . of God” where they could be taught the gospel, where the law could be given, and where ordinances could be performed (see Doctrine and Covenants 88; compare Doctrine and Covenants 109). Between 1833 and 1836, the Saints worked tirelessly to build the house of the Lord in Kirtland, a task that they had neither the expertise nor the financial means to accomplish. Despite their poverty, they built a magnificent structure that was accepted by the Lord and where they received additional priesthood keys which would enable the performance of the promised ordinances (see Doctrine and Covenants 110). These ordinances, which would all be revealed and first performed in Nauvoo, included baptisms for the dead, the complete endowment, and the sealing ordinance.

In January 1836, as the Kirtland Temple neared completion, Joseph Smith introduced new ordinances called “washings and anointings” to a group of Church leaders on the third floor of the temple. During this first meeting, Joseph Smith received a revelation showing him that those who had died without opportunities to accept the ordinances of the gospel would be given the opportunity to do so in the next life. “All who have died without a knowledge of this gospel,” the Lord explained, “who would have received it if they had been permitted to tarry, shall be heirs of the celestial kingdom of God” ( Doctrine and Covenants 137:7). How this would happen and what ordinances would make it possible, however, remained unclear at the time of this revelation.

On August 15, 1840, Joseph Smith was asked to speak at the funeral of Seymour Brunson. During his sermon, Joseph saw Jane Neyman, a sister whose son Cyrus had recently died without being baptized. Knowing that Jane was worried about Cyrus, Joseph read from 1 Corinthians 15:29 and taught that living men and women could participate in ordinances on behalf of their deceased family and friends. Shortly after the sermon ended, Jane went to the Mississippi River where she was baptized on Cyrus’s behalf.³

When Joseph Smith received the revelation directing that a temple should be built in Nauvoo, it included instructions that the ordinance of baptisms for the dead “belongeth to my house” and commanded the Saints to build a font in the temple for this purpose (see Doctrine and Covenants 124:29–36). Additional revelations, received in 1842, further explained how the ordinance should be performed and recorded (See Doctrine and Covenants 127 and Doctrine and Covenants 128).

Throughout the earliest years of the Church, the Saints diligently sought for the fulfilment of the promise of an endowment of power from on high. Even as conflict with their neighbors escalated into tragic violence, the Saints clung to the hope that salvation could be extended to all through the ordinances of the temple. Sites for temples were dedicated in Independence, Adam-ondi-Ahman, and Far West, Missouri, with the hopes that the promised additional ordinances and the means for offering salvation to all would be revealed.

The washings and anointings that had been revealed to the Saints in Kirtland were the beginning of the endowment of power; however, Joseph Smith and the Saints knew that it was incomplete. After arriving in Nauvoo, they hoped to build another temple to participate in these ordinances and to receive the portion that was still unrevealed. In January 1842, shortly after Joseph Smith opened his general store, he instructed the members of the Quorum of the Twelve to prepare themselves to receive the endowment.⁴ On May 4, 1842, Joseph Smith led a select group of Church leaders to the upper room of his store. There, in a special meeting, he presented the completed temple endowment, which had recently been revealed to him. The ceremony began with washings and anointings like those performed in Kirtland and continued with a new ordinance which, drawing on scripture, taught about the order of heaven and called on participants to enter into sacred covenants to live righteously and serve in the kingdom of God.⁵

This ordinance was eventually expanded to include all members of the Church—male and female—who were willing to enter sacred covenants. A version of this ordinance is performed today in temples all over the world on behalf of both the living and the dead.

On April 3, 1836, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery retired to the pulpits of the Kirtland Temple where they bowed themselves in “solemn and silent prayer.” After arising from their prayer, a vision opened of the Savior Jesus Christ who accepted the temple as His house. Christ was then followed by three other angelic visitors, each of whom gave priesthood keys to Joseph and Oliver. The third of these visitors, the Old Testament prophet Elijah, bestowed a key which Joseph Smith later taught had the power to place “the seals of the Melchizedek priesthood upon the house of Israel.”⁶

Beginning in 1843, Joseph Smith taught that, using this key, marriage relationship could be made eternal. Once “sealed,” the families of men and women who had been married in this way would have the promise that they could be together forever. The earliest sealing ceremonies, like the endowment, were performed in the upper story of Joseph Smith’s store. Today, however, these marriages are performed only in temples on behalf of the living and the dead.