The Last Church History Temple

I read in the Church News about the dedication of the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania temple this month.  What an incredible milestone for the Church this is.  As we think about the important places in Church history, this seems to me to be the last state that didn’t have a temple which played a key role in the early history of the Church.  Palmyra has a temple, Ohio has the Kirtland temple (though of course not in operation) and now has the Columbus temple, Missouri has the St. Louis and now the Kansas City Temple, Nauvoo has the Nauvoo Temple, Winter Quarters has a temple, and of course Salt Lake has its temple.  But until now there was no temple in Pennsylvania where the restoration of the Priesthood took place, where the Book of Mormon was translated, and where seven revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants were given.  In fact, if you look at the different states in which the revelations of the Doctrine and Covenants were given, Pennsylvania was the only one without an operating temple until the dedication this month.  Of course, Philadelphia is about 180 miles from the location of Harmony in northern Pennsylvania where the major events of early Church history took place, but if we consider the founding of the Constitution which was established by “the hands of wise men” that the Lord raised up as part of the precursor to the Restoration, then Philadelphia is indeed at the heart of it all (D&C 101:80). 

                The temple itself seems to stand as a witness in our belief of the divine origins of America and the freedoms it espouses.  In the dedicatory prayer President Eyring said, “We are profoundly grateful for the Constitution of the United States and for the Bill of Rights. These are the guarantors of our independence and our liberty.”  Our faith in the heavenly origin of this country and the Constitution comes from revelation, and the ability for Joseph Smith to put his faith in that document while the rights it prescribed for his people were being completely trampled on was incredible.  He declared the founding document as a “glorious standard” and a “heavenly banner” even if in his day it was not “broad enough to cover the whole ground” (see here and here).  But our belief in the principles behind the Constitution are not a belief in exclusivity relating to the United States; as the revelation states, “And that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before me” (D&C 98:5).  We believe in the Constitution because we believe that all peoples of the earth deserve the same freedom and protection under the law to be able to exercise their agency that God has given them.  What a blessing it is for us now to have a temple in the “City of Brotherly Love” where so much was done to bless not only the United States but also all the world in immortalizing the kinds of freedoms and rights that God wants us to have.