The Temple and Worldly Possessions

Hugh Nibley wrote, “Whether in Kirtland, Far West, Nauvoo, or the valleys of the West, the [Saints’] hearts have been set on activities and observances that, in terms of modern-day progress and success, make no sense at all.  The whole temple economy is grotesquely out of place in the present world; there is nothing the least bit practical about it.  It is a school to wean us away from the things of the world” (Abraham in Egypt, p. 250).  One of the great lessons and purposes of the temple is indeed to help us to overcome the things of the world, or to use the words of the Lord to Emma, to help us “lay aside the things of this world, and seek for the things of a better” (D&C 25:10).  In the temple we spend time doing things that indeed make no sense to the world and which do not in any obvious way give us an increase of the kind of physical possessions that the world seek for.  In fact, the temple is one of the few places we can go and get rid of all signs of wealth and poverty that differentiate us. There are no poor or rich in the temple; money plays no role as we all wear simple white clothing and learn the same things together, and surely this is symbolic of the kind of equality the Lord wants His people to have outside the temple.

It seems that this idea that the temple helps to teach us to overcome our desires for the things of the world may have been clearer or at least closer to home for the early Saints of this dispensation.  They often gave so much in order to have a temple.  Their great sacrifice of material goods surely helped them to overcome the pull of Babylon to acquire riches and things.  President Monson said this of the Kirtland Temple: “The first temple to be built in this dispensation was the temple at Kirtland, Ohio. The Saints at the time were impoverished, and yet the Lord had commanded that a temple be built, so build it they did. Wrote Elder Heber C. Kimball of the experience, ‘The Lord only knows the scenes of poverty, tribulation and distress which we passed through to accomplish it.’”  After leaving their temple in Kirtland, starting but being unable to make any significant progress on a temple in Far West, and then going to Nauvoo to start over, the Lord commanded is people again to build a house to His name.  His instructions to the people were these: “And send ye swift messengers, yea, chosen messengers, and say unto them: Come ye, with all your gold, and your silver, and your precious stones, and with all your antiquities; and with all who have knowledge of antiquities, that will come, may come, and bring the box tree, and the fir tree, and the pine tree, together with all the precious trees of the earth; And with iron, with copper, and with brass, and with zinc, and with all your precious things of the earth; and build a house to my name, for the Most High to dwell therein” (D&C 124:26-27).  In essence, the Saints were told to give up their riches to the Lord so His house could be built.  Unlike the people of Haggai who put off building the temple and built their own houses instead, the early Saints were richly blessed for sacrificing their worldly riches for the Lord.  In our day we have the opportunity to give tithing—a prerequisite to the temple—but also the often harder sacrifice of time for the Lord as we go to His house.  There we learn to overcome our own devotion to the things of the world and come to trust in the Savior’s teaching that true riches are found in the things of eternity (see D&C 11:7).