Scott Woodward:
What Latter-day Saints today call the temple endowment was first given by the Prophet Joseph Smith in 1842, two years prior to his death, to a small group of nine of his trusted associates in Nauvoo, Illinois. It was a key piece of the larger, vibrant temple liturgy then developing in Nauvoo. But where did this temple endowment come from? What was its relationship to the Prophet’s previous revelations? And what, if anything, was its relationship to Masonry, which Joseph Smith had joined only two months before administering that first endowment to his nine friends (who, by the way, were all s as well)? In today’s episode of Church History Matters, Casey and I dig into the details of what we know, or think we know, about the origins of the temple endowment ritual. We’ll discuss several of what we believe are primary source materials the Prophet Joseph drew from as he formulated this important ordinance under inspiration. And we’ll offer a Nauvoo angle to the meaning of the word restoration. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today Casey and I dive into our fourth episode in this series about the development of Latter-day Saint temple worship. Now let’s get into it.

Casey Griffiths:
Hello, Scott.

Scott Woodward:
Hey, Casey. How are you, my friend?

Casey Griffiths:
Good. Just, I have a mountain of material, like, so much stuff that I want to talk about today, and so . . .

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. So buckle up, everybody. We plan on going deep today, particularly on the Nauvoo endowment.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
How are we going to cover all this in one episode? I don’t know, but we’re going to give it our darndest.

Casey Griffiths:
This happens every time. Church history is very rich, and so we’re trying to streamline for you guys, but there’s a lot of stuff that we want to talk about that might not make it in, but we’re going to do the best we can to at least give you the outline or point you towards some sources that can allow you to do a deeper dive, but I think this is a pretty deep dive.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
Okay, so let’s talk about what happened last time, Scott. Do you want to give us a little recap?

Scott Woodward:
Yes. We mentioned how in the Kirtland Temple, as the capstone of the Kirtland endowment, Joseph Smith was given keys from Moses, Elias, and Elijah, but no instruction manual as to how to use those keys, exactly. So we likened it to being given the puzzle pieces that he needed to assemble a later temple theology that we will come to know, that will start to develop richly in Nauvoo and then kind of finalize in Utah. The horrific persecution experienced by the church in Missouri and then the trials of settling Nauvoo is going to lead Joseph Smith to search deeply about how the keys he was given in Kirtland could be used to help both the living and the dead. And so at the funeral of Seymour Brunson, one of Joseph’s friends, bodyguard, Joseph announced that it was possible to carry out baptisms on behalf of the dead, and the first baptisms are going to commence shortly thereafter with a bunch of enthusiasm, not much structure, down in the Mississippi River. It was in January of 1841 that Joseph receives the official revelation, Doctrine and Covenants 124, that commands the saints to build a Nauvoo temple, and he even says in verse 34, he says, “For therein are the keys of the holy priesthood ordained, that you may [have] honor and glory.” In other words, those keys that you receive, Joseph, they are ordained to function completely and in their fullness inside the temple, right? So that’s what is going to be sort of figured out over the next several years. But one of the first things the Lord says is your river baptisms are only going to be accepted for a time, in your poverty, but as soon as you’ve had sufficient time to build up the Nauvoo temple, I will no longer accept river baptisms for the dead. That is to be done in the temple. Joseph is later going to write two letters while he’s in hiding, in exile, in September 1842, instructing the saints to keep a record of the baptisms they perform, to present to the Lord as part of their labors for the dead, to put together a book, he says, that will become, like, an offering to offer unto the Lord in righteousness. In the midst of that, as this continues to unfold, Joseph is going to add, on top of baptisms for the dead, the next pieces of washing and anointing and endowment, and then temple sealing is going to happen with husbands and wives. So that’s kind of where we’re planning on going with all of this. There was something that Joseph started to understand early on, or at least started to articulate early on in Nauvoo, kind of the theological wrapper that Joseph put around all of the work of the temple that I think is really important for us to always keep in mind as we talk temple, as we participate in the temple, as we think about the temple. It’s what Joseph called, “the restoration of the priesthood.” You remember in D&C 124 the Lord said that the purpose for building the Nauvoo temple was so that the fullness of the priesthood could be restored. I think that’s worth chewing on. We tried a little bit last time, chewing on what that meant, but the way that Joseph refers to it, the way that he talks about the restoration of the priesthood in the Nauvoo era, is this idea of connecting or sealing together the living and the dead from every dispensation into the eternal priesthood order of God, AKA the Church of the Firstborn, AKA the Celestial Kingdom. And what that does is makes them heirs of God’s kingdom and prepares them to rule and reign with him as kings and priests and queens and priestesses. I mean, this is where the temple theology is going, right? It’s about preparing humans to rise up to the full measure of their creation from Genesis 1, right? The very first time mankind is mentioned, God says that he creates men and women in His image to rule this world. And then if you jump to the end of the Bible, in the Book of Revelation the final scene that John the Revelator sees when the earth becomes sanctified and God the Father comes here is humans are doing what? Ruling and reigning with God. Sitting on thrones ruling and reigning. So how do you get humans prepared to rule and reign with God, to be heirs of His kingdom, and to fulfill the measure of their creation? The answer in Nauvoo theology is temple. You get them into the eternal priesthood order. You help them become heirs of all of that. And this is what the temple is all about. That’s where all of this is going today. So anyway, rich stuff, really interesting stuff.

Casey Griffiths:
Good stuff. Nauvoo is where the dead become part of the temple story. We’re going to create the temple as a bridge between the worlds of the living and the dead.

Scott Woodward:
Yes.

Casey Griffiths:
But one thing that sometimes gets neglected as part of the story of Nauvoo is that there’s more for the living as well that’s revealed here, also pieces that were put together. So the endowment which was given in Kirtland, which we talked about those component pieces, is expanded and enlarged in Nauvoo, and this is mostly done for the living. We don’t actually do endowments for the dead until we get to Utah, the St. George Temple, and so this is Joseph Smith showing his focus on improving the quality of life and the closeness of the men and women in his orbit to God.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
And so he’s doing work for the living and the dead, but it’s all going to eventually come together as things that we do for both the living and the dead.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Well said. We might assume that it was all given to Joseph all at once, it was set up just the way that we have it today, and it was for the living and the dead all at once, but that’s not the story. That’s not how it actually unfolded, right? It was line upon line. It was one piece at a time. It was baptisms for the dead, washings and anointings for the living, endowments for the living, marriage sealings for the living, and then we circle back around to do all of those other things for the dead as well, and that’s later. That’s, like you said, after Nauvoo. And so that’s pretty interesting.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So today we want to go into that next piece. So there’s the development of washings and anointings and the endowment, which oftentimes those are just put together, aren’t they, Casey? Just washing and anointing is kind of part one of the endowment, and then kind of the ritual of the endowment as we call it today is kind of part two of the endowment. They’re basically two parts of the same whole, wouldn’t you say?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And sometimes the mistake we make in the modern church is seeing them as two separate things. Like, I’m going to go in, and I’m going to do initiatories in the temple, which is the washing and anointings, or I’m going to go and I’m going to do an endowment. That’s common nomenclature, when in Nauvoo they were both presented as part one and part two of the same thing, essentially. And that’s an important thing to keep in mind, too, that what happened in Kirtland wasn’t lost: it was just expanded. It was updated. It was brought to include and encompass the entire church, male and female.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. The washing and anointing in Kirtland seemed to be primarily about being clean from the sins of that generation, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
It was about kind of presenting yourselves clean before God, that you’ve done your part or are doing your part to not be accountable for the sins of those who might reject the message of the gospel, right? Something like that. And in Nauvoo, another layer is added to the anointing piece where the anointing becomes more associated with that bigger sort of theological picture of preparation to rule and reign with God. President David O. McKay, he once put it like this: this is in an address on the temple ceremony back in 1941. Super helpful quote. He said, “In the anointing we are anointed to become a king and priest of the most high, a queen and priestess in the realms of God. I don’t know how long it will take to achieve that, but we are anointed that we may become such.” So that anointing piece seems to be really clarified in Nauvoo, added upon to the Kirtland piece, where it’s being directly connected again to mankind’s destiny to rule this world with Christ in its sanctified state. And so, again, you see the theological picture sort of coming together. Part one of the endowment, you’re washed, anointed in preparation to rule and reign with God. Part two.

Casey Griffiths:
The next piece.

Scott Woodward:
Well, anything you want to say before we go on there? Are we doing okay, by the way, according to Elder Bednar’s guidelines? I know in our first episode, Casey, we laid down Elder Bednar’s guidelines about talking about the temple and what goes on there. Are we doing okay?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. We probably ought to review them because we’re going to get into some detailed stuff about the endowment today.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
We mentioned these in our first episode, but back in 2019 Elder Bednar gave a talk in General Conference where he actually said, you know, temple preparation should happen at home, but he mentioned some people are really concerned about what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate to talk about when it comes to the temple if you’re not in the temple. So he gives two guidelines. Let me review them really fast. He says guideline one, because we love the Lord, we should always speak about his holy house with reverence. We should not disclose or describe the special symbols associated with the covenants we receive in sacred temple ceremonies, neither should we discuss the holy information that we specifically promise in the temple not to reveal. So that’s what’s off-limits, the special symbols, and also the stuff in the temple that we specifically promise not to reveal. Guideline two: The temple is the house of the Lord. Everything in the temple points us to our Savior, Jesus Christ. We may discuss the basic purposes of the doctrine and principles associated with temple ordinances and covenants. So the basic purposes and the doctrine and principles associated with temple ordinances and covenants, he says, we can and we should be discussing here, and so we’re going to keep it to that. We’ll try and err on the side of caution here. So if we’re not getting into very specific symbols, it’s partially because Elder Bednar has cautioned us not to talk about those things outside the temple. So we’re just laying down some ground rules before we get into this today.

Scott Woodward:
And so we’ve done that today already a little bit, right? The purpose—how does he say it? The basic purposes of and the doctrine and principles associated with the temple ordinances and covenants. So the basic purpose of the washing and anointing is to prepare us to rule and reign with Jesus as kings and queens, priests and priestesses. That’s the basic purpose, right, that helps us to fulfill our created purpose to rule with God.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Alright, so that’s piece one of the endowment. Let’s talk about part two of the endowment and what we know about how it came about, all right? We have nothing like it in Kirtland. We do have something like washing and anointing in Kirtland, and like we just said, that was built upon in Nauvoo, but we have nothing like the endowment in Kirtland. Like, a lot of people wonder, like, where did it come from? Did it just come as one big revelation to Joseph Smith, and then he rolled it out? Or was it something that came line upon line, here a little and there a little? So maybe let’s start by asking a question about the first option. Is there any record of that, Casey, where Joseph received a revelation, boom, that was the endowment? Anything in the historical record? Any eyewitnesses saying that the endowment came as one big revelation, and it was done?

Casey Griffiths:
No. And I want to be clear: that doesn’t rule that out as a possibility. I mean, not all revelations are in the Doctrine and Covenants.

Scott Woodward:
That’s true.

Casey Griffiths:
But, Joseph Smith never on any occasion says, “I got a revelation, and this is where the endowment came from.”

Scott Woodward:
Right. And that was the point I was driving at. So then what can we decipher from the historical record about its origins?

Casey Griffiths:
The endowment is something that draws from several sources. So what we’re going to try and do is sort of say, okay, where did it come from? Did Joseph Smith assemble it? And sometimes that’s not precluding a revelation either. Like, sometimes a revelation is just that everything clicks and you see the connections between certain things.

Scott Woodward:
Right. Just because we can’t pinpoint one singular revelation as the source of the endowment doesn’t mean there wasn’t revelation involved in the way the endowment comes together, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And we think this is important to point out because it seems from the historical record that Joseph is drawing from multiple sources, inspired sources, from his previous revelations and other sources to sort of synthesize together kind of an inspired fusion of various elements, the end result of which is what we call today the endowment ceremony, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. This ceremony is clearly drawn from a couple different sources, and we can point that out.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. So let’s dive in and discuss what we think those sources were. And we’re saying this with a degree of tentativeness, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
What we’re saying is that here’s a few places that likely influenced the prophet as he shaped the endowment ceremony.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Let me start off with the first one, which is the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. That seems the most obvious source for the instruction we receive in the endowment, which was particularly Moses 2-5, where it covers the creation of the earth, the instructions given to Adam and Eve, and then Moses 4 introduces a council in heaven, which we see in the endowment; the rebellion and fall of Lucifer; the intervention of Satan in the Garden of Eden, right; and a significant portion of the endowment also deals with what happens to Adam and Eve immediately after they leave the garden. And much of that material goes beyond what the Bible teaches, including this idea that Satan tempted Adam and Eve directly—the Bible just mentions that it was a serpent—and that angels minister to Adam and Eve after they leave the garden, right? And so we should also not underestimate the importance of the Bible as a source for the endowment because the Bible was the source for the JST, and so we’re layering here a little bit.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And so there might be, again, various elements from scripture, but primarily it seems like the narrative of the endowment follows the narrative in Moses 2-5. There are also things in the endowment that are not in Moses 2-5, and so we also need to look at other sources as well, but I think that is safe to say that forms the narrative backbone for the endowment.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And some of this is received really early on.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
Moses 1-5, which is the closest you can get to actually, you know, seeing the text of the endowment outside the temple, is revealed from June to December of 1830, so we’re talking mere months after the church is organized.

Scott Woodward:
1830.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, and if you look at a side-by-side comparison with the book of Genesis, which is what he’s translating here, there’s some major additions. Like, Moses 4 adds in this huge prologue that describes the council in heaven, the fall of Lucifer, that ties the tempting in the garden to Lucifer, and then Moses 5 adds in this episode after Adam and Eve leave the garden, where an angel appears to them and explains the atonement. So creation, fall, and atonement are all taught there clearly, and a lot of this is taught in the temple as well. The primary narrative of the second part of the endowment is to show and depict the creation of the earth, the fall of Adam and Eve, and then how they came to know about and receive the endowment. I mean, for those of you that haven’t been through the temple yet, there’s a film that shows and depicts all these events and even ties into the council in heaven and everything like that. All of this stuff comes from the Joseph Smith translation, and then a lot of the other symbols just come from the Bible, straight up. Like, the clothing that you wear in the temple closely parallels the clothing explained in the book of Exodus and associated with the tabernacle. Much of the symbolism is the same. We don’t have a system of animal sacrifice like they did in Moses’s time, but a lot of the things that we see in the temple, if we want to understand better, read the book of Moses and then read the second half of Exodus, and you’ll have a listing of a lot of the symbolism that’s used in the temple.

Scott Woodward:
I love that. And so I think you’re highlighting something really important, too, that this is something that has existed in the church since 1830, but it’s in the 1840s that that becomes fused as a part of the temple endowment, and so that’s what, about a dozen years from the translation of Moses before it really plays a big part in the endowment.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
It’s interesting to watch how the pieces of the restoration start to come together in Nauvoo as kind of the capstone, all the forces rushing together before Joseph’s death to get the prototype here, the prototype that, again, crescendos in the temple, and then that becomes the thing that Joseph Smith’s successors are going to scale throughout the world to take temples everywhere to get the fullness of the gospel into the hearts and minds of men and women everywhere and to help men and women everywhere be connected with each other and with their dead to become part of this eternal family that will rule and reign with God.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Moses 2-5 seems to be huge, and the book of Exodus. Okay. Where else would you go after that? Any other sources?

Casey Griffiths:
Okay. Second place, and I know you might disagree with me a little bit on this one, but I think the Book of Mormon is a big source for the endowment.

Scott Woodward:
Okay. Okay. Make your case.

Casey Griffiths:
Not the story per se, but in the Book of Mormon, there is this pattern that’s presented over and over again that the most important teachings, that where you should start when you’re teaching a person, is with the creation of the earth, the fall of Adam and Eve, and the atonement of Jesus Christ: the three pillars of eternity, as they’ve been called in the church. And so, to wit, 1 Nephi 5, verse 10, they talk about the brass plates. This is right after they’ve retrieved the brass plates, which is the Old Testament plus, I guess you’d say. There’s a bunch of stuff in the brass plates that isn’t anywhere else. Nephi talks about the brass plates by verse 11, saying they did contain the five books of Moses. What’s the most important thing in the five books of Moses? According to Nephi, “which gave an account of the creation of the world and also of Adam and Eve, who were our first parents.” And then if you jump forward to 2 Nephi 2, Lehi starts talking about the fall in relation to opposition, in relation to the reason why bad things happen down here on earth, and he teaches a whole bunch of stuff that is extrabiblical, that goes beyond what the Bible teaches, like the fact that one of the major purposes of the fall was so that we could have children. “Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy.” That the fall wasn’t wholly negative, that it was necessary, that it was a fortunate fall, we would say, that actually allowed Adam and Eve to know good and evil, so that they could have choice, that they could make decisions. Lehi connects creation, fall, and atonement all together and starts to set up some of the ideas that are taught in the temple.

Scott Woodward:
So you’re saying that Joseph is taking the motif of creation, fall, atonement, maybe, taking it from the Book of Mormon and synthesizing that into the endowment story.

Casey Griffiths:
I wouldn’t underestimate that. Now, in his public statements, the weird thing about Joseph Smith is even though he translates the Book of Mormon, he quotes a lot more from the Bible.

Scott Woodward:
That’s true.

Casey Griffiths:
But when we’re founding the foundational doctrines of the church, for instance, section 20, which is spoken of as the constitution of the church, once it deals with the history of the church, which is about the first 16 verses, about verse 17 it pivots into the teachings of the church. And the very first things taught there are God created the earth, Adam and Eve fell, and there’s an atonement that rescues us, and then it deals with atonement theology. And so, I mean, I think that we shouldn’t underestimate that the Book of Mormon—the Book of Mormon isn’t the first place these doctrines are revealed, but the Book of Mormon does kind of take a highlighter and say, hey, in the scriptures, creation, fall, and atonement are the most important ideas a person can be familiar with.

Scott Woodward:
And those are there again in Moses, right? Moses 2.

Casey Griffiths:
Yep.

Scott Woodward:
We have creation. Moses 3 we have fall. I guess 3 and 4 is the fall.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, 4 is the fall.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, what’s 3? 3 is creation as well, yeah. And then 5 is the story of redemption, right? It’s where Adam and Eve first learned the story of redemption.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
They’re given the laws of obedience and sacrifice. They start sacrificing animals. Angel comes and says, what are you doing? And Adam says, I have no idea. God commanded me to do this. That’s why I’m doing it. And then that’s when he teaches, this is a symbol of the sacrifice of the only begotten son of God and starts to unfold the plan of redemption. So there you have it in Moses as well: creation, fall, atonement. And if Joseph is also drawing from the Book of Mormon on this, like, I have no problem with that at all, so . . .

Casey Griffiths:
And I’m just saying the translation of the Book of Mormon wasn’t just a translation process: it was a teaching process.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Good point.

Casey Griffiths:
This is before the book of Moses is translated, right? The Lord is using the Book of Mormon to basically say, here’s the most important parts of the story. The whole story is a big deal, but the crucial instruction a person receives is in the creation of the earth, why it’s here, the fall of Adam and Eve, why we experience adversity, and the atonement of Christ, which is how we overcome adversity. And then you’re back into the presence of God. So I wouldn’t underestimate the Book of Mormon as a doctrinal source here, because it seems like it’s just a motif in the Book of Mormon that these are the most important ideas. And there’s a lot of ideas, like a fortunate fall, purposeful creation, and that the atonement was known well before Jesus came to the earth, that all show up first in the Book of Mormon. So I’m going to make my plug for the Book of Mormon as a major source for the endowment, too.

Scott Woodward:
Okay. Excellent. And everything we’re doing here is speculative, so you’re on safe speculative ground.

Casey Griffiths:
We’re spitballing here.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
We’re in the brainstorming phase. There’s no bad ideas. I just think this is a really good one.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Okay, let me throw out a third likely source from which the prophet Joseph drew in his inspired piecing together of the endowment ceremony, and that is the book of Abraham. Let’s think about the timeline of the book of Abraham here. So Joseph is translating much of the book of Abraham in 1835, but in Nauvoo he goes back to work on the book a little more. We’re not sure exactly how the percentages work out in terms of Kirtland versus Nauvoo, but they do get published there in Nauvoo. He publishes the three facsimiles that are found in the current book of Abraham, and some of them make explicit reference to the temple, right? So, for instance, Joseph’s interpretation of facsimile two, that’s the circle hypocephalus, has several explicit connections to the temple. So you go down to figure three, and then you look down in the footnote, and it says this: Figure 3 “Is made to represent God, sitting upon his throne, clothed with power and authority; with a crown of eternal light upon His head.” And then it says this: “Representing also the grand Key-words of the Holy Priesthood, as revealed to Adam in the Garden of Eden.” Okay. Figure 7 says, “Represents God sitting upon His throne, revealing through the heavens the grand Key-words of the Priesthood.” And then figure eight says, “Contains writings that cannot be revealed unto the world; but is to be had in the Holy Temple of God.” So here in the book of Abraham, you have explicit mention of what’s being called “the grand Key-words of the priesthood,” which in public records Joseph Smith and Brigham Young tie directly to the temple endowment. For instance, in Joseph’s history of giving the first endowment to nine men, he says that he instructed them “in the principles and order of the priesthood and the communication of keys,” there’s that word, “pertaining to the Aaronic priesthood, and so on to the highest order of the Melchizedek priesthood, setting forth all those principles by which anyone is enabled to secure the fullness of those blessings which have been prepared for the Church of the Firstborn, and come up and abide in the presence of the Elohim in the eternal worlds.” And here’s a few statements from President Brigham Young years later on this point of key words of the priesthood that make an even tighter connection with the endowment. First quote: he said, “Your endowment is to receive all those ordinances in the house of the Lord which are necessary for you, after you’ve departed this life, to enable you to walk back to the presence of the Father, passing the angels who stand as sentinels,” and then this part, “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.” Next quote, he said, “Go on and build the temples of the Lord, that you may receive the endowments in store for you and possess the keys of the eternal priesthood, that you may receive every word, sign, and token, and be made acquainted with the laws of angels and the kingdom of our Father and our God, and know how to pass from one degree to another and enter fully into the joy of your Lord.” And here’s one more: President Young said, “Those counted worthy to dwell with the Father and the Son have been fully acquainted with every password, token, and sign which has enabled them to pass by the porters through the door to the Celestial Kingdom.” So from those quotes we see a very tight connection between the endowment ceremony on the one hand and what facsimile two of the book of Abraham, published in Nauvoo, is here calling “the grand Key-words of the priesthood.”

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And by the way, timeline-wise, doesn’t this fit perfectly with when the endowment is about to be rolled out? Doesn’t this come out in, like, April of 1842? Is that when this facsimile is published?

Casey Griffiths:
That was a major surprise to me when we were prepping this outline, is the first endowments are given in early May 1842, and the manuscripts published in Nauvoo Joseph Smith was working on in February and March of 1842.

Scott Woodward:
Of the book of Abraham, you’re saying?

Casey Griffiths:
Of the book of Abraham.

Scott Woodward:
Okay, the manuscripts of the book of Abraham are being prepped in February and March of 1842. Okay.

Casey Griffiths:
Then the endowment is given for the first time in May 1842. So if you’re just trying to say, hey, what was Joseph Smith working on during this time? It’s hard to deny that there is a temporal connection, that around the time the endowment is first administered in Nauvoo he’s working on the book of Abraham manuscripts, and the facsimiles, especially facsimile two in the book of Abraham, tie closely and just outright mention things that will be revealed in the temple, priesthood and key words and things like that. So there’s definitely a connection that’s there. Can’t deny it.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. And then the book of Abraham, when it does come out, it explains the premortal council and the creation of the earth. It talks about the creation of the earth occurring through a council of gods, right? Something that’s implied, but not directly mentioned in Genesis. And so you see these elements that are, again, not in the book of Moses, but are in the endowment and the book of Abraham. So it seems like there is a synthesis happening of these different elements, the book of Moses, book of Abraham, you’re putting in a plug for the Book of Mormon, that are bringing these together into sources for the endowment part two in Nauvoo, what we call the endowment ceremony, right? And so I think, whoo.

Casey Griffiths:
I think we’ve got a case here, right?

Scott Woodward:
I think this is really interesting. I think it’s pretty compelling.

Casey Griffiths:
There is one more source, but it’s sort of controversial.

Scott Woodward:
Oh, yeah? And what’s that?

Casey Griffiths:
The Masonic ceremonies that are introduced in Nauvoo.

Scott Woodward:
Wait, you’re suggesting that the Masonic ceremony could be a possible source for the endowment?

Casey Griffiths:
Oh, yeah. I mean, I think it was, but I’ll give you a couple reasons why I think that.

Scott Woodward:
Yes, please.

Casey Griffiths:
And before we do that, we’ve got to also explain a couple things, because most people don’t know a ton about Masons or Masonry.

Scott Woodward:
No.

Casey Griffiths:
What they do know comes from the excellent Nicolas Cage movie National Treasure—

Scott Woodward:
Yes.

Casey Griffiths:
—which at least doesn’t depict the Masons as, like, sinister bad guys or anything, but outside of that, people are largely ignorant about Masons and what they do and how they fit into the story.

Scott Woodward:
So we probably need to back up and lay some contextual groundwork here, yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
Back up, lay context, or go on a completely different tangent, which we’re probably going to do all three here, so . . .

Scott Woodward:
Okay, let’s do it.

Casey Griffiths:
Masonry is a primarily fraternal organization. They do have organizations for women now, but back then, only with a few exceptions did they include women. It’s this group that meets together, and they are founded on the concept of a supreme being, on brotherly love, and they also kind of help each other out. And Masons have buildings themselves that they call temples. For instance, in Salt Lake City right now, there is a Masonic temple that’s on South Temple Drive, just about a few blocks away from the Salt Lake Temple. I got to go up and tour through. Scripture Central is putting out a video where we tour through the Masonic Salt Lake Temple, and they perform these ceremonies where Masons kind of make promises to each other designed to create this brotherhood, this fraternity.

Scott Woodward:
And the Masons are a service organization in a sense as well, aren’t they? It’s a fraternity, and part of it is to serve the community. Is that correct?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. They serve the community, they raise funds for charities, they hold pancake breakfasts and stuff like that.

Scott Woodward:
To me, like, the mystery was all blown away when the connection was made between Masons and Boy Scouts. You know, I think I mentioned this in a previous series we talked about, but Masonry is basically Man Scouts, right? This is where it’s a fraternity, it’s men who are committed to God and their country and to serving their fellow man. In fact, Boy Scouts actually grows out of Masonic influence, Lord Baden Powell.

Casey Griffiths:
Lord Baden Powell is a Mason, yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And so it’s basically, like, the junior version of Masonry is what Boy Scouts is, right? And so think about the hand signs, like putting their left hand up and, you know, three fingers up or Boy Scout handshake. They have certain handshakes, certain uniforms, right? Kerchiefs. And then there’s different levels and degrees within Boy Scouts, you know? You’re a wolf and then—oh, shoot—and then a Life.

Casey Griffiths:
Like levels, right?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, you want to get up to Eagle and beyond. And in Masonry, they have that too, don’t they? You start out as—I don’t know what the lowest one is, but, like, an apprentice type of a level, and you go up through degrees of Masonry, become Master Mason, and then you can be Third Degree Masons. Like, there’s degrees of being Master Mason, right? To me, that was very helpful to say, this is a lot like Boy Scouts, but it’s Man Scouts. It’s the next level.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. The folks at the Salt Lake Masonic Temple were actually good enough to let us, a Scripture Central team, witness a Masonic ceremony.

Scott Woodward:
Oh, really?

Casey Griffiths:
It was just them placing in the new head of a lodge, but I was struck at how formal and ceremonial and uniform it was, like they have ceremonial clothing that they wear. Now, because by and large these ceremonies are not open to the public, Masons are often viewed with suspicion. And the fact that Masons are in Nauvoo only kind of feeds that whole conspiratorial mindset of, ooh, what are the Masons and the Latter-day Saints up to? Let me emphasize a couple things. There’s four things Latter-day Saints do in their temples: baptism for the dead, the initiatory ceremony, which is part of the endowment, the endowment ceremony, and then sealings, which are husband to wife or parents to children. Three of those four have no equivalent in Masonry. There’s no such thing as baptism for the dead or the initiatory ordinances or sealings. In fact, at this time the Masons that Joseph Smith associated with wouldn’t permit women to take part in the ceremonies. But that set aside, there are similarities between the second part of the endowment, the ceremonial part, and the Masonic ceremonies that would have taken place in Nauvoo.

Scott Woodward:
So why would there be similarities between those two? You know, that’s what people wonder.

Casey Griffiths:
That’s what we’re going to tackle. And in order to tackle that, let’s just back up and say, why were there Masons in Nauvoo?

Scott Woodward:
Oh, okay.

Casey Griffiths:
Because one of the things you’ll find when you go to Nauvoo is right on Main Street, one of the biggest and most impressive buildings is called the Cultural Hall. It was not called the Cultural Hall in Joseph Smith’s day. It would have been called the Masonic Hall. And building it was an important civic duty. One of the things that you’ll notice is if you go from Nauvoo down to Warsaw, where the people that killed Joseph Smith came from, on Main Street in Warsaw there’s an abandoned Masonic Hall as well. If you go to Palmyra in New York, upstate New York, there’s a Masonic Hall there. The Masons were ubiquitous and spread throughout the early American Republic in a lot of ways. And in Nauvoo, we never talk about this for some reason, but the Lord had commanded the church to actually reach out to people, to make friends. Again, the context of Nauvoo is that when they get there, they’ve just been through some horrible things in Missouri, and there’s some internal examinations of the church, saying, are we too insular? And the Lord actually commands them to be more outgoing, to be more inclusive. In section 124, for instance, which section 124 is the revelation that commands them to build the Nauvoo temple, before the Lord commands them to build the Nauvoo temple, the house of the Lord, he commands them to build a different house. This is in verse 23 of Doctrine and Covenants 124. The Lord describes it as “a house for boarding, a house that strangers may come from afar to lodge therein; therefore let it be a good house, worthy of all acceptation, that the weary traveler may find health and safety while he shall contemplate the word of the Lord; and the cornerstone I have appointed for Zion.” So they’re commanded to build the temple, which is for Latter-day Saints, right? But they’re also commanded to build this house, the Nauvoo House, which is for anybody, and it’s kind of the Lord’s way of saying, hey, you guys will get into less trouble if you’ll open up a little bit and stop sort of just catering to the needs of your own and start taking care of the needs of others. So in Nauvoo there is this desire to reach out to other groups. They reach out to the Illinois State Legislature and get the Nauvoo Charter, which is incredibly generous, and one of the groups that it just made logical sense to reach out to were the Masons for a number of reasons. First, they need allies. They’re trying to stop what happened in Missouri from happening again, and Masons are influential. There’s a number of key church leaders—this includes Joseph Smith’s own father, who was a Mason; and Hyrum Smith, who was a Mason; and Heber C. Kimball; Joseph Smith’s uncle John Smith; Newel K. Whitney—I’ve seen Newel K. Whitney’s Masonic Certificate. Collector in Provo has it—George Miller, who’s another bishop in the church, were all Masons before they joined the church, and all of them were able to say, basically, hey, Masons are good people. They reach out to others, and they have each other’s backs. And so it might not be a bad idea if we form connections with them, and with that in mind, a Masonic Lodge is sought and then set up in Nauvoo.

Scott Woodward:
Joining Masonry or encouraging Masonry to flourish in Nauvoo would likely have created a network of allies that could hopefully, you know, protect the Saints against Missouri-like persecution and maybe also help them get some political influence, right? Because Masons are pretty well-connected.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. It’s like, we need friends. Let’s figure out a way to reach out to these people. And just so you know, I mean, Masonry was an embedded part of American life. It’s difficult to see now because Masonry has shrunk to a large degree, but in the 19th century there were tons of Masonic lodges all over the country. A couple years ago I went to Philadelphia, and in downtown Philadelphia there is a huge Masonic temple, probably the biggest one in the Western Hemisphere.

Scott Woodward:
It’s so cool. Yeah, I went there two years ago. It’s amazing.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. You walk up and pay $15, and they’re like, “Go on in.” They’ll give you a tour. You can walk around. You can take pictures. In the main hall in Philadelphia there’s a stained glass window that shows George Washington wearing his Masonic clothing. Right next to him is Andrew Jackson. Right next to Andrew Jackson is Teddy Roosevelt, and right next to Teddy Roosevelt is Harry Truman, all Mason.

Scott Woodward:
And then a huge, massive, like, 15-foot statue of Ben Franklin, right, with his Masonic apron on.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. You can go into their little museum, and George Washington’s Masonic apron is there. And all in all, I mean, about fourteen presidents of the United States have been Masons.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
I think the last one was Gerald Ford. I don’t think anybody since him has been a Mason. But in the early American Republic Masonry was a way to be well connected, to have a brotherhood that would watch your back. Now, I should mention, though, that Masonry’s influence was kind of on an ebb when the Saints go to Nauvoo, so the peak of Masonry is in the 1820s when a lot of adult men in the United States are Masons, but there’s a scandal linked to a guy named William Morgan. He’s this guy who threatens to publish Masonic secrets and then publishes some of the ceremonies, and then he kind of mysteriously disappears. And the circumstances of his death are mysterious. Like, this is a whole other podcast episode, if you want to get into it. But basically the Morgan scandal, the fact that this guy disappears, causes many people to sort of disaffiliate with Masonry. For instance, in New York, in 1825, so this is right when the Smith family’s in the middle of First Vision, coming forth of the Book of Mormon, there were 480 Masonic lodges with 20,000 members. By 1835, this is ten years later, there were seventy-five lodges with 3,000 active members. And a lot of people during the time were anti-masonry. When the Book of Mormon was published, some people actually thought that the secret combinations, the Gadianton robbers in the Book of Mormon, were a reference to the Masons. And so some people in the American Republic saw them as, like, secret combinations, and other people, including a prominent number of members of the Church, were Masons.

Scott Woodward:
So they would think of them as Gadianton robber type because they had rituals that they wouldn’t tell anybody about or they wouldn’t explain what they do exactly. You have to become a member of the fight club to know what happens in the fight club kind of a thing, right? Like, you have to join Masonry to know what’s going on within Masonry, and so that veil of, like, nondisclosure created serious suspicion. And so when William Morgan goes out and tries to expose what they’re doing, tries to give away their secrets, and then he goes missing, that seemed like there was a conspiracy that Masons had killed him, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So basically to be connected with the Masons is to be politically connected in some circles, but to be connected with the Masons in other circles was to be connected with a organization that is now carrying some conspiratorial baggage because of the disappearance of William Morgan.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, and so by the time the Saints try to connect with the Masons, they’re kind of at the lower end of their influence, but they’re still influential. And the past connections with Masonry makes it more likely that they’ll connect. Now, Masons, for, just for a public service announcement, are not a religion, though it is required that you believe in a higher power or supreme being.

Scott Woodward:
Kind of like Boy Scouts.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. This is coming from a guy I talked to in the Masonic Temple in Philadelphia, and a guy I talked to in the Salt Lake Masonic Temple. Just, you have to believe in a higher power. Like, a common Masonic symbol is you’ll see the word G surrounded by some kind of seal. A Mason would tell you the G stands for God, or it stands for geometry, meaning the order of the universe is a sign of a higher power to Masons. Masonic rituals, in fact the title of Mason, comes from the fact that some of their ceremonies depict the creation of Solomon’s Temple and the building of Solomon’s Temple and the Masons that worked on it. Now, that’s just one of several ceremonies that exist. If you talk to a Mason, some of them believe that Masonic rites go all the way back to Solomon’s Temple, which would obviously interest the Saints. Some of them don’t believe that. The earliest records we have of Masonry is that it starts about A. D. 1400.

Scott Woodward:
Okay, that’s a far cry from Solomon’s Temple time period.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So that’s a problem.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. So how far back does it go? We don’t know. Some Masons believe it goes all the way back to Solomon. Some believe it goes back to Adam. I would say, just from the random sample of Masons I’ve talked to, most of them believe that it doesn’t go back that far, but that there are righteous principles contained in it that are scriptural.

Scott Woodward:
But it’s not a religion.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
It’s a God-based fraternity.

Casey Griffiths:
It’s not a religion. So these people in Nauvoo would say, we can be Masons, and we don’t have to sacrifice being Latter-day Saints. We don’t have to sacrifice our religious identity that we’ve suffered for.

Scott Woodward:
But it would give us the advantage of being socially more connected.

Casey Griffiths:
That’s correct. Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Giving us a network of allies to be protected and politically tied in.

Casey Griffiths:
Which is smart, right? They’re—they’ve just come through some horrific stuff.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Makes sense.

Casey Griffiths:
So here’s where the timing comes in: it’s in June of 1841. Several church members who were also Freemasons submitted a request for a lodge in Nauvoo, and shortly after the establishment of the lodge, Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and forty other Latter-day Saints petitioned for membership in this lodge. The Nauvoo Lodge begins holding regular meetings in January 1842. Remember, the temple endowment is going to be first administered in May 1842. While the Book of Abraham stuff is happening, even the Relief Society is organized during this time. The winter of 1842 was busy.

Scott Woodward:
Things are poppin’.

Casey Griffiths:
So in March of the same year, this is in March, the leader of the Freemasons in Illinois, who is a man named Abraham Jonas, who is Jewish, by the way, sent a letter giving instructions that should the ballot be unanimous in favor of said Smith and Rigdon at a full meeting of said Nauvoo Lodge, then, and in that case, the said lodge is authorized to confer the three degrees of ancient York Masonry on the said Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon as speedily as the nature of the case will permit. And this is a whole other discussion for another day, but there’s two types of Masonry: There’s the Scottish Rite and the York Rite. They were part of the York Rite. Sometimes you hear rumors like Joseph Smith became a high-level-degree Mason in one day. He did, but it’s because they were allowed to choose their own leaders, and it would make sense that they would choose Joseph Smith. In fact, Joseph Smith was the chaplain for the Masonic Lodge in Nauvoo. Hyrum Smith was the Grandmaster. But Joseph and Sidney are both brought in, and Joseph Smith is inducted into the Masonic fraternity and goes through the Masonic rites on March 15, 1842.

Scott Woodward:
Boom. Okay. March 15 he becomes officially a Mason.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. So the timing here lines up pretty close with the first temple endowment that’s going to be administered. And so he administers the first temple endowment to nine men, they’re all Masons, in the Nauvoo Red Brick Store on May 3, 1842, okay? And Joseph Smith’s journal just mentions that he was instructing the priesthood in the orders of Melchizedek and Aaronic. Later on, when the history of the church is written, some of these men go back and augment that entry to say the following. So here’s what the history of the church says: “Joseph Smith explained his plan, instructing them in the principles and order of the priesthood, attending to washings, anointings, endowments, and the communication of keys pertaining to the Aaronic Priesthood, and so on to the highest order of the Melchizedek Priesthood, setting forth the order pertaining to the Ancient of Days, and all those plans and principles by which anyone is enabled to secure the fullness of those blessings which have been prepared for the Church of the Firstborn to come up and abide in the presence of Elohim in the eternal worlds.” So these nine men are given the endowment. They’re all Masons.

Scott Woodward:
And he says that he was instructing them in things pertaining to Aaronic priesthood and Melchizedek priesthood, which at the time were also understood to be fraternal orders, right? The order of Aaron and the holy order of Melchizedek. And so certainly there’s parallels that are being drawn there as well.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And, I mean, it’s clear—we’re not going to go into it because one of the things Elder Bednar said to handle with care were the symbols in the endowment, but some of the symbols in the Masonic ceremonies and used in the endowment overlap with each other.

Scott Woodward:
Like hand clasps and the way that you would raise your arms, those kinds of things.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And so because of these similarities—we’re not denying that they exist—it’s possible that Joseph Smith may have been inspired by or adapted certain parts of the Masonic ceremonies to meet his needs. One theory is that Joseph Smith just adapts their pedagogy. Like, the Masons present their ceremony as a kind of play, where they act out certain things that happen. The ones Joseph Smith would have gone to linked back to Solomon’s temple and some of the things that happened there. Joseph Smith takes this framework from the Joseph Smith Translation and the Book of Mormon and the Bible of creation, fall, and atonement, and he may have just said, hey, they present a play. Maybe a play would be a more innovative way of introducing these principles to every single person. And then he adopts some of the symbols.

Scott Woodward:
So theory one is Joseph pulled the ritualistic teaching style, the kind of outward form, symbolic gestures, and maybe even some clothing, as a teaching form.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
This would be a fantastic vehicle to deliver the more inspired goods, something like that, like the Moses 5, the Abraham stuff, in addition to being more explicit about certain covenants, right, that you make.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So theory one is he’s pulling in the forms of Masonry to deliver the content that is not Masonic at all, actually.

Casey Griffiths:
It’s a good delivery system.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
To make an analogy, in the 20th century, when we were building the temple in Switzerland, they were going to have to administer the endowment in something like twenty different languages. A man who was working for the church named Gordon B. Hinckley said it would be a lot easier if we did this with a film. We could record a film. We could dub it into different languages. We could use film as the medium of instruction. And today, that’s—I mean, as of today the Salt Lake and the Manti temples are both being renovated so that they use film. That became the predominant way of delivering it. Joseph Smith may have seen the Masonic system and said, a play is a great way to depict this, and adopted that, and then adopted a lot of their symbols. And so that’s theory one. And again, it seems like it’s just obvious, the similarities show and the timing lines up, that he borrowed, that he adapted from them.

Scott Woodward:
I feel like theory one needs a name. What should be the name of theory one?

Casey Griffiths:
Theory one is the pedagogy theory. So he just adapts their methodology, their way of teaching. Theory number two is the—what’s a good word for this?

Scott Woodward:
Restoration?

Casey Griffiths:
Restoration. And this seems to have been believed by a lot of people in Nauvoo, that was that the Masonic ceremonies were originally from God, but that they had been corrupted. For instance, Benjamin Johnson, who is a close friend of Joseph Smith, said, “Joseph told me Freemasonry, as at present, was the apostate endowments, as sectarian religion was to the apostate religion.” Heber C. Kimball says a similar thing in a letter he writes to Parley P. Pratt. He says, “There is a similarity of priesthood and Masonry. Brother Joseph says Masonry was taken from the priesthood but has become degenerated, but many things are perfect.”

Scott Woodward:
So there’s some secondhand accounts suggesting that Joseph’s theory is Masonry is ancient and has become degenerated, dilapidated, and it needs to have the life kind of breathed back into it, essentially.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And so this is the restoration hypothesis, where Joseph Smith is taking something that was inspired, but had kind of drifted from where it was, and restoring it back to what it was meant to be. Steve Harper writes a lot about this. We love friend of the show Steve Harper, who’s been our guest before.

Scott Woodward:
We love Steve.

Casey Griffiths:
This is what Steve wrote, and this is an excellent essay he wrote on Masonry. He said, “What if the divine restoration was not wholly new, but like the restoration of an old house, where the restorer keeps all that’s useful and charming, and replaces or refurbishes all that’s broken, weak, or no longer useful? It requires a logical leap to bridge the evidentiary gap between the similarity, which was obvious to those who knew both Masonry and the endowment, and the dependence which is assumed but not known.” So Steve is pointing out that the first nine men to receive the endowment are all Masons.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
And none of them accused Joseph Smith of plagiarizing the Masonic ceremony.

Scott Woodward:
No. Yeah. A hundred percent.

Casey Griffiths:
They’re familiar with both. They don’t see them as a theft in any way. Some of them describe it as a restoration. Some of them don’t say anything, but all of them are okay with it as a delivery system. And these nine men, eventually women, are given the endowment as well, and then before they leave Nauvoo they try and endow and seal everybody that they can possibly get through the temple. Most of these men are Masons. They don’t cry foul. They don’t say that anything’s wrong. They accept the endowment either as an adaptation of the teaching methodology and symbols of the Masons or as a restoration of an apostate temple ceremony. Theory two.

Scott Woodward:
Theory two. Okay, so theory two is essentially that Masonry was, like, the vestige of some bygone inspired ritual from God that had basically fallen into disrepair and needed to be restored, air quotes, the way that we would, like, restore an old building, restore some old house like Steve Harper is saying. Like, restoration doesn’t just mean bringing things back from heaven that are lost from the earth. It can also mean repairing things that are still here but just need to be recontextualized and they need to have the life breathed back into them. Right? Something like that. Is that a fair characterization?

Casey Griffiths:
Fair characterization. And this openness where they’re not trying to cover anything up is totally evident in Nauvoo. For instance, the angel that’s on the top of the Nauvoo temple is wearing, like, robes and clothing similar to what you would wear in the endowment, and some of the symbols used in the endowment are present on that angelic weathervane as well. And so doesn’t seem like they’re trying to cover things up.

Scott Woodward:
And, like, the all-seeing eye of God is on the temple, and it’s also a Masonic thing that’s on our money, for instance. So they’re borrowing these symbols as well.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
The saints were okay with, and maybe it would help us if we got more okay with this, it would just at least help our understanding if we understood that Joseph Smith’s restoration project isn’t wholly about bringing things from heaven to earth, but also about bringing things that are already on earth into the circumference of the divine, right? He’s reworking. He’s salvaging things that already are here. He’s assimilating preexisting things on earth into the circumference of the church, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
It reminds me of that verse in D&C 27 where the Lord says, “I will gather together in one all things both which are in heaven and which are on earth,” and I think we often think of the restoration as that heaven piece. This is where God’s bringing things from heaven to earth. But there’s that second piece, he says, gathering together all things in one, both in heaven and, and, things that are already on earth.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
I think it’s helpful and useful to think of Masonry that way. Either theory one or theory two allows for that, that there’s something that already existed on earth called Masonry, which is an effective teaching style, which may also be a dilapidated true ritual of some kind from the ancient past, and what Joseph the prophet does is assimilates it, gathers it, as Jesus said in D&C 27, gathers it together in one in Christ into this broader circumference of the restoration. And so I think that’s really helpful. I think the saints in Nauvoo understood the restoration that way, and I think sometimes we’ve lost that to some degree. If we just think of the restoration as things from heaven coming back to earth, we’re going to struggle with Joseph bringing things that already exist on earth into the church. But if we have that Nauvoo paradigm, that’s not a problem.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. We’ve been talking about similarities, and we’re not denying that there are similarities.

Scott Woodward:
That’s not really negotiable here.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. But this is where we’ve got to talk about the dissimilarities, too. This is how they’re different.

Scott Woodward:
There are some differences. Okay. What are the differences?

Casey Griffiths:
A major thing, Freemasonry was intended to be kind of this exclusive fraternity.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Griffiths:
It consists only of a small group of select members. Joseph Smith made it pretty clear the endowment was intended to be given to all of the saints that were ready to receive it. For instance, his history from the day the first nine men received the endowment, and again, this is probably a later addition by people that participated, says there was nothing made known to these men but what will be made known to the saints of the last days so soon as they are prepared to receive, and a proper place is prepared to communicate to them, even to the weakest of saints. So it’s never intended to be wholly exclusive. Anybody that joins the church and qualifies can receive the endowment. The big message here is women. Other than a few obscure groups that existed in France during this time, Freemasons didn’t involve any women. Now, there are several organizations linked to Freemasonry today that involve women, but Joseph Smith intends for all men and women to receive the endowment. First women received the endowment in September of 1843.

Scott Woodward:
And that makes sense, right? That Masonry by definition is a fraternity, and fraternity is by definition a male group. It’s not a sorority.

Casey Griffiths:
It’s not a sorority.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So it was a fraternity. But Joseph is saying the temple endowment’s for everybody, men and women. This is not a fraternity.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Okay. Got it. That is a big difference.

Casey Griffiths:
The other thing, too, is when we say there’s similarities, we’re talking about similarities in procedure and symbolism, the way they do things and some of the symbols that they use. The story told by the Masons in their ceremony was totally different than what’s told in the temple endowment. So, for instance, the temple endowment centers on Jesus Christ and redemption through Jesus Christ. The Masonic ceremonies, and I’m speaking very generally here because I want to be respectful. I have friends that are Masons. The Masonic ceremonies talk about Hiram of Tyre and Solomon’s Temple. Totally different things.

Scott Woodward:
Hiram of Tyre was the architect of Solomon’s Temple?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. He’s the person who sends the materials and acts as architect in Masonic lore for Solomon’s Temple.

Scott Woodward:
Right. Okay.

Casey Griffiths:
The endowment, as we’ve talked about earlier, focuses on Adam and Eve as representatives of all men and women in a cosmological journey through God’s plan of salvation, and the content is more closely tied to those first sources we were talking about: the JST—

Scott Woodward:
Moses and Abraham.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. So in substance, it’s telling a very different story but adapting some of the methodology and symbolism that’s used in Masonry.

Scott Woodward:
So the Masonic story does not talk about Adam and Eve. Doesn’t talk about the fall of Adam.

Casey Griffiths:
No.

Scott Woodward:
Doesn’t talk about their journey back into God’s presence, anything like that.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And the covenants that a person makes in the temple, which—the church has been very open in publishing the covenants of the endowment, which are . . .

Scott Woodward:
Obedience and sacrifice.

Casey Griffiths:
Law of obedience and sacrifice, law of the gospel, law of chastity and the law of consecration.

Scott Woodward:
Yes.

Casey Griffiths:
Now, those are the five—are not in the Masonic ceremonies. And we would say that’s the primary substance of what’s going on is these covenants that people make.

Scott Woodward:
So Masons don’t do anything like that. They don’t make any sort of covenants like that.

Casey Griffiths:
Well, they make covenants to be good men and to help each other, but they don’t do anything that talks about Jesus Christ. Like I said, Masons just have to believe in a Supreme Being. They don’t have to be Christian. They don’t have to accept the Bible. In fact, Masonic ceremonies do require them to use a sacred text, but from the Masons I’ve talked to, a Mason could use the Quran or use the Bible or use the Torah. They could even use the Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita, if they wanted to.

Scott Woodward:
So you could be a Hindu Mason, a Jewish Mason, a Muslim Mason . . .

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Doesn’t matter, as long as you believe in God.

Casey Griffiths:
As long as you believe in a higher power, yeah. So that’s different, whereas ours is very specific to Latter-day Saint teachings and doctrines and ideas. The way we look at creation, fall, and atonement is a little bit different. We believe a council created the earth. We believe the fall was fortunate, that it was good. We believe that the atonement has been taught since the time of Adam and Eve and wasn’t introduced in the New Testament, that it’s an ancient teaching, not a New Testament teaching, I guess you’d say.

Scott Woodward:
So again, back to theory one, if Joseph is seeing this as a marvelous way to ritually walk people through a story, A, and then B, help them make promises—so in Masonry they’re making promises to be better men, but Joseph, again, in this case, as an inspired prophet, can recontextualize the situation and say, let’s tell the story of Adam and Eve. And then in the midst of that, let’s make these sacred covenants with God that will help us prepare ultimately to achieve our eternal destiny.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. So it definitely influenced the endowment, but one scholar’s broken it down by sources, and his estimate is that about 15 percent of the endowment—well, no, actually, I’m looking at the chart here. He says about 10 percent of the endowment is linked to Masonry. And I don’t know how he came up with these metrics.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Griffiths:
Was that about 87 percent comes from the Bible and ancient sources. So the stories told are stuff that can all be found biblically, and then about 3 percent we’re not totally sure where it comes from.

Scott Woodward:
Okay, wait. So according to that scholar only 10 percent of the endowment as we have it today has any analog with Masonry. Is that right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And the rest of it comes from Biblical, Book of Moses, Book of Abraham, Bible sources.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Wait. 87 percent plus 10 percent doesn’t equal 100. What’s the other 3 percent?

Casey Griffiths:
3 percent he just lists as a toss up, that we don’t know. We don’t know where it came from specifically. It seems to be unique. And that leaves open the possibility that there was revelation linked to the endowment.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. A hundred percent.

Casey Griffiths:
I would say revelation a lot of times is taking existing things and just allowing God to kind of connect them together for you, to connect the dots.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. And that’s how I would characterize all of this. This is a fusion of biblical elements, Masonic elements, restoration scripture elements with the book of Moses, book of Abraham. I mean, this is an inspired fusion. It’s a recontextualizing, it’s an assimilation, bringing together of different pieces in an inspired way that I think is actually incredibly helpful, as one who’s been endowed. I mean, the endowment teaches so clearly what men and women need to do to qualify to re-enter into God’s presence. And we even ritualized that as we make our way into the celestial room, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And so having participated in it and having benefited from it—like, I’ve felt the inspiration of the endowment. Like it’s—it feels inspired, Casey.

Casey Griffiths:
It does. It does. Again, inspiration sometimes comes from connecting things together that we’ve already known about. Like, the first time I went to the temple, I felt like somebody had just taken a highlighter and highlighted all these passages in the scriptures as to, “I know that you thought this was important, but this is really important. Pay close attention to this.

Scott Woodward:
I like that. So why don’t we do Masonry anymore in the church? We were such big fans of it in Nauvoo. What happened?

Casey Griffiths:
So you can still do Masonry in the church. The guy that toured us through the Salt Lake Masonic Temple, he is an active Latter-day Saint and was a former Grandmaster of Utah, and he told us that outside of Utah, it’s not a big deal. Like, if you’re a Latter-day Saint and you want to be a Mason, nobody cares. But inside Utah, because of these accusations that Joseph Smith stole the Masonic ceremony, there can be some intense feelings linked to it. In fact, this goes back to Nauvoo, where Masonry is maybe accepted too well. So let me break down some numbers: So by October of 1842 the lodge in Nauvoo consists of 253 members. So this is less than a year after it’s introduced. Now compare that to the total number of all Freemasons in Illinois, which was 227.

Scott Woodward:
Oh, boy.

Casey Griffiths:
So within a year there’s more Masons in Nauvoo than there is in the rest of the state. And Masons operate democratically. Like, if you have the numbers, you can take over and run the place. And so in Nauvoo in 1843, two additional lodges open, and the growth of the Masonic lodge begins to sort of freak out the other Masons in Illinois. And then Latter-day Saints start opening lodges in Iowa, on the other side of the Mississippi River, and even though the lodges in Nauvoo try to, you know, reach out, connect with these other Masonic lodges, tensions just continue to rise because, A, the Saints are growing in numbers faster than everybody else, and B, there started to be accusations that the Saints are mixing religion with Freemasonry, which they kind of are. The temple endowment’s an example of that.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Interesting.

Casey Griffiths:
So other people were ticked off that Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon became Master Masons so quickly and felt like it was growing too fast in Nauvoo. One Masonic history from the time recorded that Illinois Masons began to develop, “A well-founded fear that within a short time, the Mormon lodges, if allowed to continue, would become more numerous than all others in the jurisdiction, and thus be able to control the Grand Lodge. So it’s a question of power as well here.

Scott Woodward:
Political influence.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. If all the Masons are Latter-day Saints, or if they even have a majority, then they’ll be able to take over the whole Masonic fraternity in the state of Illinois. And so eventually relations start to sour. The other Masons revoke the charters of the Lodges in and around Nauvoo and suspend their activities, and when Joseph and Hyrum Smith are killed in Carthage Jail, Masons are actually used of being complicit in the killing. And that’s probably true as well. Some of the people that killed Joseph Smith were Masons from Warsaw or Carthage, where there were both Masonic lodges at the time. In fact, no less a source than the church newspaper, the Times and Seasons, after Joseph Smith was killed, said Joseph and Hyrum were, “shot to death, while with uplifted hands they gave such signs of distress as would have commanded the interposition and benevolence of savages or pagans.” They were both Masons in good standing. Joseph’s last exclamation was, “O Lord, my God!” Many church members at the time thought that Joseph Smith’s last plea was actually a Masonic cry for help. And so Joseph Smith did say, “O Lord, my God.” At the time, Masons, if they were in trouble, were supposed to say, “O Lord, my God, is there no help for the widow’s son?”

Scott Woodward:
And then if you were a Mason, you were sort of obligated to jump in and help that person.

Casey Griffiths:
You were obligated to help, yeah. But they didn’t help, and this really, really ticked off the Latter-day Saints who were Masons. But today things have chilled out a little bit between Latter-day Saints and Masons. Like I mentioned, a Latter-day Saint can be a Mason. It doesn’t seem to be that controversial anywhere except kind of in the Intermountain West, according to the Masons I’ve talked to.

Scott Woodward:
Okay, so if I understand what you’re saying, then, to back up to that question about why we don’t emphasize Masonry at all in the Church anymore is because there was something of a break that happened at the death of Joseph Smith. We felt betrayed by our Masonic friends. They felt like we were getting too much power. We felt like they should have helped at Carthage. Is that right? Am I understanding correctly? Like, that’s the moment of rift in the connection between Masonry and church members?

Casey Griffiths:
Yes. Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Okay, so that’s helpful. So then by the time we get out to Utah, we’re not really doing much with Masonry anymore. Is that correct?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, and when Masonry arrives in Utah, it comes from people that aren’t Latter-day Saints.

Scott Woodward:
Interesting.

Casey Griffiths:
And so the Masons that set things up in Utah are acting in the assumption that Joseph Smith stole, that he co-opted their ceremonies. Latter-day Saints are acting under the opinion that Masons were complicit in the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

Scott Woodward:
That creates some bad blood between us.

Casey Griffiths:
There’s a long history of animosity. I think the first Grand Master of Utah who’s a Latter-day Saint is elected in 2007.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Griffiths:
So it goes right up to the first, and some of the Masons I’ve talked to have said that, like, when—they’re Latter-day Saints. They became Masons—that there was still, I mean, in the 21st century, at least in Utah lodges, a little bit of animosity. Like, hey, who do these guys think they are? And why do they think they can come in and become part of this when they’re part of this religion that has a bad history with Masonry? But since then there’s been several grandmasters who were Latter-day Saints. The guy who toured us through the temple, look for that video, was an active Latter-day Saint, and it seems like some of the animosity has died down a little bit.

Scott Woodward:
That’s good news. Meanwhile, we no longer promote Boy Scouts.

Casey Griffiths:
Right.

Scott Woodward:
So there’s—

Casey Griffiths:
There’s that.

Scott Woodward:
So there’s that. Not connected at all with any of the animosity.

Casey Griffiths:
You just had to twist the knife, right? Because—are you an Eagle Scout? Are you an Eagle Scout?

Scott Woodward:
Are you going to judge me based on my answer?

Casey Griffiths:
Yes.

Scott Woodward:
People always do. It’s so weird.

Casey Griffiths:
You haven’t given an answer yet. Are you going to?

Scott Woodward:
I’m going to let you wonder about that. Do I strike you as the kind of person who is an Eagle Scout?

Casey Griffiths:
Yes, you do. But the fact that you’re not answering I think is the answer. I was an Eagle Scout at age 12. I love Scouts. I was really sad when it ended, but I understood why they did what they did. So . . .

Scott Woodward:
It wasn’t because of animosity between the two groups, and it was just time to part ways, that’s all. Anyways, back to Masonry. They sound like great people, and I’m just glad we’re on friendly terms again.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, all the Masons I’ve met have been delightful, wonderful people, and I’ve read a couple books on Masonry since I went through the Masonic Temple, and just find them to be endlessly fascinating.

Scott Woodward:
Mm-hmm. That’s super intriguing stuff. Thanks for digging up all that history for us, man.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So, okay. As we wrap up today’s discussion, do you want to summarize all this for us, then, Casey? The origins of the endowment ceremony, and then maybe talk to us about where we want to go next time.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. Ultimately what happens is we take these four sources, okay? So let’s review really quickly: possible sources for the endowment, and maybe in order of importance, the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible okay? It’s just clear if you go through the endowment, creation, fall, and atonement. The Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon talks about creation, fall, and atonement, emphasizes all these things. The Book of Abraham. There’s just a temporal connection there. Joseph Smith is working on the Book of Abraham when he administers the first endowment. And with the Masons it’s the same thing. There’s some stuff in the endowment, not in the other ceremonies of the temple, but in the endowment, that just directly parallel some of the procedure and symbols in the Masonic ceremonies, and there’s a temporal connection, too. Joseph Smith is inducted as a Mason in March. In May he administers the endowment. There’s also big differences, too. By September 1843 Joseph Smith has brought women into the endowment. The endowment was intended for all people, and Joseph Smith intended for everyone to receive the endowment. So the next part of the story is that Joseph Smith starts to administer the endowment to this group of men and women that are informally known as the Quorum of the Anointed, or the Holy Order, and best way to think of them is that they’re the temple workers. Like, their job, once the Nauvoo Temple is completed, because all this is being done while the Nauvoo Temple is still under construction, most of them are brought into the Nauvoo Red Brick Store, which by the way, Scott and I did a video on temple ordinances in Nauvoo, and the good people at Scripture Central actually created a computer model of what the Red Brick Store would have looked like when they were administering the endowment, how they partitioned it off. It’s really cool. Go and take a look at it. We’re really proud of that video.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
But these groups, they’re primarily the twelve apostles and their wives, and then their job is to administer the endowment to everybody once the temple is finished, which they do prior to the exodus. So, that’s our detective work on, you know, where the endowment comes from, what the major sources are, and then how it’s administered in Nauvoo. So we’ve got an endowment, but we’ve still got one temple ordinance we’ve got to put into the docket here, right? And that’s sealing.

Scott Woodward:
Yes. So next up we need to talk about the development of temple sealing.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And this really reaches to the very heights of Latter-day Saint theology. I mean, this is the capstone of where everything has been going from the beginning.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
We are excited to talk about that in our next episode, and we will look forward to seeing y’all there.

Casey Griffiths:
See you there. Scout’s honor. We’ll all be there.

Scott Woodward:
Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. Next week Casey and I bring you a special bonus episode of an interview we did with our friend Lon Tibbetts, who has served both as an LDS ward bishop and as a master of his Masonic Lodge in Utah. That’s right: Lon is currently both a practicing Latter-day Saint and a practicing Mason. And so Casey and I are excited to share our interview of Lon with you as something of an addendum to today’s episode. You won’t want to miss it. Then the following week we will be back to discuss the history of marriage sealings in Nauvoo. If you’re enjoying Church History Matters, we’d appreciate it if you could take a moment to subscribe, rate, review, and comment on the podcast. That makes us easier to find. Also, we’d love to hear your suggestions for future series on this podcast. If there’s a church history topic you think would be worth exploring for multiple episodes, send us your idea to podcasts@scripturecentral.org. We promise to consider all suggestions. Today’s episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Nick Galieti and Scott Woodward, with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a nonprofit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter-day Saint scripture and church history accessible, comprehensible, and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org, where everything is available for free because of the generous donations of people like you. And while we try very hard to be historically and doctrinally accurate in what we say on this podcast, please remember that all views expressed in this and every episode are our views alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scripture Central or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.