Restoration of the temple

  1. Richard O. Cowan. Temples to Dot the Earth (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1989)

  2. “Temples.” –Encyclopedia of Mormonism. Abbreviated EM throughout.

  3. Truman G. Madsen,  “The Temple and the Restoration.” In The Temple in Antiquity, edited by Truman G. Madsen, (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1984): 1-16.

  4. Alex L. Baugh. “‘For This Ordinance Belongeth to My House’: The Practice of Baptism for the Dead Outside the Nauvoo Temple.” Mormon Historical Studies 3, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 47-58. In .pdf format.

  5. Joseph Smith and his contemporaries used multiple terms to refer to the ordinances and those who had received them. They spoke of the “Holy Order,” the “order of the Ancient of Days,” “the Quorum of the Anointed,” etc.

  6. Andrew Ehat. “‘Who Shall Ascend into the House of the Lord?’ Sesquicentennial Reflections of a Sacred Day: 4 May 1842”-  TAW:48-62. Gospelink (subscription required)

    -Discusses the restoration of the Endowment and the first day it was given, May 4, 1842, in the upper room of Joseph Smith’s red brick store.

  7. Richard O. Cowan. “Sacred Temples, Ancient and Modern.”  TTE: 99-120

  8. Alan K. Parrish. “Modern Temple Worship through the Eyes of John A. Widtsoe, a Twentieth-Century Apostle.”  TTE: 143-183.

  9. Richard O. Cowan. “The Unfolding Restoration of Temple Work.” Ensign, December 2001

  10. Donald Q. Cannon, Larry E. Dahl and John W. Welch. “The Restoration of Major Doctrines through Joseph Smith: Priesthood, the Word of God, and the Temple.”   Ensign, February 1989

  11. Milton V. Backman Jr., and Larry C. Porter. “Doctrine and the Temple in Nauvoo.”  BYUS 32:1-2 (1992):41-56

  12. Andrew F. Ehat. Joseph Smith’s Introduction of Temple Ordinances and the 1844 Mormon Succession Question -  Master’s Thesis, BYU, 1982. 307 p.

    • Available in BYU Special Collections. Though slightly flawed due to the inclusion of some of the then-unknown Mark Hoffman Forgeries, this thesis is nevertheless a highly valuable resource. However,  Andrew Ehat has refused to circulate copies of his thesis and objected to the illegitimate copies available.

  13. Lamar C. Berret, “Endowment Houses.”  EM: 456

    • The Endowment house in SLC was used for giving endowments while Temples were being built. Before it was built, LDS were sometimes endowed on Ensign Peak, beginning with missionaries in 1848.

  14. Andrew F. Ehat. “‘That they might have known he was not a fallen prophet.’ The Nauvoo Journal of Joseph Fielding.” BYU Studies 19:2 (Winter 1979): 133-167.

    • Contains first-hand accounts of relevant information on the restoration and early implementation of the temple ordinances.

  15. Edward L. Kimball. “The History of LDS Temple Admission Standards.” Journal of Mormon History Spring (1998): 135-175. .

    • Available electronically from the University of Utah library.
    • This paper details the history of requirements, standards, and questions to receive a temple recommend (if they had them at the time) and enter an LDS temple. The implementation and standards embodied by the temple recommend questions have changed over time, but not extensively. An excellent and important article.

  16. Richard O. Cowan. “Brigham Young: Builder of Temples.” In Lion of the Lord: Essays on the Life and Service of Brigham Young, ed. Susan Easton Black and Larry C. Porter (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1996): 227-43.

  17. Kenneth Godfrey. The Importance of the Temple in Understanding the Latter-day Saint Nauvoo Experience: Then and Now. Vol. 6, The Arrington Lecture Series. (Logan, Utah: Utah State University, 2001.) 41 pages.

  18. Truman G. Madsen. “The Temple and the Restoration.” In The Temple in Antiquity, edited by Truman G. Madsen, (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1984): 1-16.

  19. Richard Bennet, “‘Line upon Line, Precept upon Precept: Reflections on the 1877 Commencement of the Performance of Endowments and Sealings for the Dead” BYU Studies 44:3 (2005).

    • Summary.
    • A copy may be downloaded from BYU Studies for 2.00 from that page.
    • Prior to 1877, few ordinances for the dead were performed, due to the prevailing conceptions of family and sealing at the time (ie. “adoption.” For more on that topic, seeJames B. Allen, “Line upon Line,” Ensign, July 1979 and Gordon Irving, “The Law of Adoption: One Phase of the Development of the Mormon Concept of Salvation, 1830-1900,”  BYU Studies 14:3 )

  20. Elder John A. Widtsoe “Whence Came the Temple Endowments?” In Evidences and Reconciliations (Salt Lake City, UT: Bookcraft, 1960): 111-113.
 
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