Scott Woodward:
The Prophet Joseph Smith’s final years in Nauvoo, Illinois constituted a season of rich theological and ritual convergence. It was a time when various threads of biblical and revealed theology gave birth to the Latter day Temple rituals that would enable us to enact that very theology. It was in Nauvoo that the picture became clear. Every revealed ordinance builds with deep meaning to the next, until finally reaching the pinnacle ordinance of sealing wife and husband together for eternity. All theological and ritual threads come together at this point. In today’s episode of Church History Matters we dig into when and where the ritual of marriage sealings first began in the church and explore the tight weave between this ordinance and the theological threads of God’s true nature, the existence of Heavenly Mother, and mankind’s created purpose and destiny. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today Casey and I dive into our fifth episode in this series about the development of Latter-day Saint temple worship. Now let’s get into it. Casey Griffiths. How we doing, sir?

Casey Griffiths:
Good. How are you doing, Scott?

Scott Woodward:
Lovely.

Casey Griffiths:
Boy, we may have bitten off more than we can chew this time. And it was funny because after, like, speeding to get through all the Masonic stuff last time, I was thinking, “Oh, this will be a breeze. We’ve already sort of covered this when we talked about plural marriage,” but boy was there a lot happening in Nauvoo roundabout the spring of 1842 into the fall of 1843. There’s just a lot going on.

Scott Woodward:
It is theologically and ritualistically dense.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
It’s a very dense time period, and a lot of really important things are coming together. Really it’s the convergence of, like, everything.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
It’s all converging, right? Like, there’s some cool stories about Joseph’s life being spared because he said his work was not yet done, and then in 1844 he’ll say that he’s now as liable to die as any man because his work is finished.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And so you think about that in terms of what’s happening 1843 and into the beginning of 1844, like, this is the culmination of Joseph Smith’s work. And we’ve talked about how the temple, in its completed state, with all the rituals and the theology embedded in it, really is the prototype of the Restoration. Like, this is the thing that we want to now take to the whole world. We want to get temples everywhere to get men and women into the temples so they can receive all the blessings that are promised there, and it’s all embedded in this incredibly rich theology that’s unfolding in Nauvoo at the same time the rituals are being finalized and developed. I mean, it’s . . .

Casey Griffiths:
That’s a lot.

Scott Woodward:
What a ride. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
I think of that Truman Madsen statement where he said Joseph lived his life “in crescendo.” If these last few months of his life are really where the whole picture starts to come into focus, there’s so much happening. And sometimes it is helpful to kind of put it all in relative time to each other. Like, last time we realized he becomes a Mason. He goes back to working on the book of Abraham, starts the Relief Society and gives the first endowments all within about three months of each other, and so all those things, at least in a timeline kind of way, overlap with each other, and when you start looking at that, you can see how they influence each other, too.

Scott Woodward:
Definitely some cross-pollinating happening here.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
It’s all related. These are all interconnected threads.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. So I’m anxious to get to this, but we want to make sure that you’re with us, too, so let’s recap what we’ve talked about—

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
—before. So this series on temples, which I think we’re up to, like, 10 episodes.

Scott Woodward:
In our head, at least.

Casey Griffiths:
In our head.

Scott Woodward:
What’s today? Today’s number five?

Casey Griffiths:
Today’s number five, but we were sitting there going, “Oh, we need an episode to do this and an episode to do this,” but in our previous episodes we talked about how temples kind of grow out of the Book of Mormon. It starts with this idea of the Book of Mormon prophesies that there’s going to be a new Jerusalem. And what do you build if you’re going to create a Jerusalem? What makes Jerusalem special? The temples there. Now, a lot of people would ask, kind of, why do we even need a temple? Like, a lot of Protestant people would say, hey, Jesus sacrifices himself. The Book of Mormon itself says animal sacrifice is no longer needed. The Savior says your sacrifice is going to be a broken heart and a contrite spirit. So why temples at all? Didn’t Jesus’s atonement take away the need for a temple, a need for a house? How does that change things? And how would you answer that question, Scott?

Scott Woodward:
Oh, that’s a fantastic question. I think our Protestant friends are sometimes confused by Latter-day Saint temple building, right? Because, yeah, Jesus once-for-all sacrifice ended the need for temples, and didn’t he send his Holy Spirit to indwell within us, and didn’t Paul say that we, collectively as a church, are now the temple of God? And I think those are all good points. And we accept all of that as true, actually, to a point, right? It’s true that Old Testament-style temples are not needful because Christ was the great and last sacrifice. It’s also true that we as a body of believers are, in one sense at least, the collective temple of God in whom God’s spirit can dwell, right? We’re totally okay with that. But the Book of Mormon adds more to that story, right? During his resurrected ministry in the Americas, that’s where we’re going to have some things that the Bible doesn’t have. Jesus gives some clear prophecies that are not found anywhere in the Bible. He tells Lehi’s descendants, for instance, this is what you’re just mentioning about the New Jerusalem. He says to them that in the future he’s going to establish their descendants in this land of the Americas, which he said will be, “a New Jerusalem.” he then says that converted Gentiles will one day join with the house of Israel, “That they may build a city which shall be called the New Jerusalem. And then shall they assist my people that they may be gathered in who are scattered in unto the new Jerusalem, and then shall the power of heaven come down among them, and I also will be in their midst.” That’s what’s motivating early church members. This does not grow out of the Bible or an understanding of the Bible. This grows out of the Book of Mormon and Jesus’s additional prophecies there about the coming of the New Jerusalem, so—

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
—that’s why only six months after the church is organized, Oliver Cowdery sets out to identify the location of this New Jerusalem, right? To raise up a pillar, as he said, as a witness “where the temple of God shall be built in the glorious New Jerusalem.” You know, we talked about how by July of 1831, the Lord himself confirms that Independence, Missouri is the center place for the city of Zion, and he points out the exact spot for the temple. That’s D&C 57. A little over a year later, September 1832, he says that the city of the New Jerusalem will be built by the gathering of the saints beginning at this place, even the place of the temple, which temple shall be reared in this generation. That’s D&C 84. So there you go. We can see that, right? That the growth is coming out of the Book of Mormon, not from any sort of Biblical prophecies. And so I have compassion for any of my Protestant friends who don’t understand this, but I would say as a way to try to understand this line of thinking and reasoning and practice to see it as growing out of the Book of Mormon, and hopefully that helps make sense of why we do what we do.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. That’s been a big surprise for me in this series, is I think I tended to think that the Book of Mormon was sort of like primer, like, here’s the basics, and then the Doctrine and Covenants is sort of the AP-level course, but most of these ideas originate with the Book of Mormon. Even the temple liturgy, in a lot of ways, is tied back to the central ideas taught in the Book of Mormon.

Scott Woodward:
And then the Doctrine and Covenants kind of fleshes it out, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, the Doctrine and Covenants is like the nitty gritty, here’s what we’re gonna do. So, the Book of Mormon will say, let’s build the New Jerusalem, and the Doctrine and Covenants, here’s the location of the New Jerusalem, and documents that go beyond the Doctrine and Covenants but are treated as revelations by the saints, twenty-four temples at the heart of the New Jerusalem. They call them temples. In the revelations the Lord refers to it as a temple, and they launch that project to build this enormous temple complex in the heart of the city of Zion, which is planned to be where Independence, Missouri is, and then the Lord also gives them the command in 1832 to build a temple in Kirtland as well, and that is the famous Kirtland Temple that everybody’s been talking about so much recently. Because of persecution in Independence they’re forced to leave before they can even really do anything to build even one of the twenty-four temples there. So their efforts go into building the Kirtland Temple, and Kirtland does become the first temple dedicated in this dispensation. Now, we’ve talked in previous episodes about the events linked to the Kirtland Temple dedication. It’s this huge Pentecostal experience that climaxes with Jesus Christ appearing along with Moses, Elijah, and Elias, and all the events surrounding the Kirtland Temple and its dedication are sort of an endowment. Endowment is a word we use today that’s synonymous with the ordinance of endowment, but endowment back then meant gift, something that God was going to bless you with. In the Kirtland Temple they’re blessed to have the appearance of heavenly beings. They are blessed to have this sort of early ceremony where people are washed and anointed and pronounced clean, and of course the other endowment is they receive these priesthood keys from these ancient prophets that appear along Jesus Christ. And this is all the endowment, right? I think that’s what we’re going with is that the endowment is everything that happens in Kirtland.

Scott Woodward:
These are incredible gifts of power. We leave Kirtland, Ohio way more empowered than when we first showed up there, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Now we’ve got a institutional memory of the spiritual outpourings. We’ve got additional scripture that came during that time period. We highlighted D&C 137 as a cool example, and now we’ve got the keys restored by Moses, Elias, and Elijah. We’ve talked about it as the puzzle pieces, right? All the puzzle pieces are now given to Joseph Smith, and then he moves from Kirtland over to northern Missouri and then into Nauvoo to try to figure out how to use the keys and the theological pieces that he’s been receiving, how to put that all together in a way that can maximize God’s purposes with the human family. How can we bring about Zion? How can we bring about, you know, the fulfillment of the potential of mankind? And so all of these questions are weighing on Joseph. He’s got the keys to do it, but they didn’t come with an instruction manual.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. I think the analogy we’ve been using is that Joseph Smith is given all the puzzle pieces in Kirtland—

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
—but it still takes him time to put them together.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
And unfortunately that doesn’t happen in Kirtland. One of the greatest spiritual seasons in the history of the church is followed by some intense financial difficulties that in turn leads to one of the greatest seasons of apostasy in the history of the church. Unfortunately, they’re forced to abandon the Kirtland Temple. Joseph moves to Missouri where they try to build two more temples, one at Far West, one at Adam-ondi-Ahman, but leaving Kirtland for Missouri was kind of an “out of the frying pan, into the fire” situation.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
At Adam-ondi-Ahman, all they do is dedicate the site. At Far West all they’re able to do is lay the cornerstones, and they are evicted from Missouri under threat of an extermination.

Scott Woodward:
That’ll do it, wouldn’t it?

Casey Griffiths:
That’ll do it.

Scott Woodward:
That would put a kibosh on any temple plans.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
When a governor puts a target on your back.

Casey Griffiths:
I hate it when my wife and I are getting ready to go to the temple and all of a sudden there’s an extermination order. You know, it just ruins everything.

Scott Woodward:
It’s the worst.

Casey Griffiths:
It’s not great.

Scott Woodward:
It’s the worst.

Casey Griffiths:
So where do all the pieces come together? Nauvoo.

Scott Woodward:
So they regroup in Nauvoo.

Casey Griffiths:
They regroup in Nauvoo. I mean, in Nauvoo, in a lot of ways, they’re able to build from scratch. There’s barely a town there called Commerce, Illinois, and, I mean, physically and spiritually they kind of reconstruct the church from the wreckage left over after Kirtland and Missouri, and a big part of it is to piece together the theology surrounding the work for the dead, so it starts with proxy baptisms for the dead, which Joseph Smith first explains in August of 1840. That’s later on moved to be something that happens inside the temple, and then Joseph Smith starts to reconstruct the endowment with the tools that he has now.

Scott Woodward:
What do you mean by reconstruct?

Casey Griffiths:
Well, I mean, there was a ceremony called the endowment of power that was given in Kirtland, but what Joseph Smith is going to sort of put together in Nauvoo is that plus so much more.

Scott Woodward:
So you’re talking about the washing and anointing and blessing in Kirtland is built upon in Nauvoo.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. Yeah. And in this case, I mean, the evidence suggests that Joseph Smith used his prophetic authority, used revelation from the Spirit, to assemble together the endowment that we’re now familiar with from a number of sources. We talked about how probably the most important source is his translation of the Bible and teachings taught in the Bible, but the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham, even Masonic ritual are all sort of combined to create the endowment ceremony that we’re familiar with. And even in this case, I don’t know if we’re 100 percent sure to say that Joseph finished what he was doing. It feels like it was more like he was laying the foundation.

Scott Woodward:
He doesn’t seem to be entirely satisfied by the time he’s done with how it was all arranged, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, he’s continuing to work on it. For example, in 1842, after Brigham Young was given his endowment, Joseph Smith told him, “Brother Brigham, this is not arranged perfectly. However, we have done the best we could under the circumstances in which we are placed. I wish you to take this matter in hand, organize, and systematize all these ceremonies.” So it’s almost like Brigham Young is being given the raw materials, too, and Joseph Smith is saying, I’m doing the best I can. I mean, when he says, I can’t arrange this perfectly, they don’t have a temple, for instance. I mean—

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
—they’re doing this in the Red Brick Store, and so it’s really in St. George, the first temple built in the Intermountain West, where Brigham Young and Wilford Woodruff both sit down. They’re using Wilford’s journals, and they systematize that, and that’s going to be the focus of a later episode, so hang on. We’ll get to that.

Scott Woodward:
Bookmark that for a future episode. Okay. So this kind of makes it clear that this is a line-upon-line sort of work in progress, right? Joseph’s saying it’s not perfect yet. It’s good enough for, you know, the saints in Nauvoo at that time, but it’s going to be refined further. It’s going to be organized and systematized, to use his words. And we can see that that’s exactly what Joseph is doing, as you mentioned. He’s bringing together different strands, different threads. The Bible translation, Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, a dash of Masonic forms and ritual structure, kind of piecing this together, synthesizing it in such a way as to be meaningful as a covenant-making ceremony, helping men and women progress, but it’s not, in his mind, perfect in 1842. It’s got to be refined further.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And I would also add that Joseph Smith wasn’t saying it wasn’t complete: he was saying it needs to be organized and systematized. And that’s something that’s still going on today, right? Like, if you go to the temple and you go through the endowment, you’re not doing exactly what they did in Nauvoo.

Scott Woodward:
Or St. George.

Casey Griffiths:
Or St. George.

Scott Woodward:
Or Utah five years ago.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
It keeps changing. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
This was meant to be a living ceremony that Joseph Smith’s prophetic successors who hold the keys had the right to change and alter according to the circumstances that they exist in. So the covenants are going to be the same, and the principles are going to be the same, but the way that we do it, the organization of it, is subject to change, and I expect there to be more changes in the future.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Good point. They can organize and systematize it further.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Okay, so we’ve got baptisms for the dead in Nauvoo. We’ve got what we’d call initiatories today, which is the washing and anointing, which he introduced that same day as he did the endowment ceremony. They just went into his office in the back of the Red Brick Store on the second floor to do the washings and anointings. There’s records of people bringing up buckets of water to do that first piece. And then he’s introduced the endowment ceremony. This is on May the 4th, 1842. So the endowment ceremony is more or less in place. Now, today we want to talk about the next step, right? The next step is, how does he use the keys he received back in Kirtland to seal, to create eternal families?

Casey Griffiths:
And there’s a lot of different things we could talk about. Like I said, I thought this was going to be a simple episode, but sealing includes sealings for the living. It includes proxy sealings for the dead. A sealing can sometimes refer to the second anointing or having a calling and election made sure, and then there were adoptive sealings in Nauvoo. So all this stuff’s coming together, and we need to point out that this is not happening in a vacuum. Everything’s overlapping with each other, and it’s all happening at the same time, but we’re going to try and pull out those noodles from the spaghetti, basically, and say, “Here’s what this is, and here’s what this is, and you put it all together and it’s delicious.”

Scott Woodward:
Put a little sauce on it. Mm.

Casey Griffiths:
Put a little sauce on it. Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
Okay. So today’s temple spaghetti. Our extemporaneous analogies are—

Casey Griffiths:
We’re getting pretty good.

Scott Woodward:
I mean, we’re getting pretty something. So, spaghetti strand number one. Let’s talk about something that’s hanging in the air in Nauvoo from really the time they get there, and I’m talking about death and how much of it there was in Nauvoo.

Casey Griffiths:
One source indicates that the number of people that were dying in Nauvoo was higher than when we were dealing with COVID a couple years ago. So death rate at the time hovered about thirty deaths per thousand people in Nauvoo. To put that in perspective, that’s about three times the death rate at the height of COVID-19, which was about eight or nine deaths per thousand. So death is omnipresent. That’s being constantly put in their face. They’ve lost people in Missouri because of the persecutions, and they’ve lost people in Nauvoo just because it was a tough environment to start over in. And so death is one thing.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. We would probably say that death is one of the, I guess, two major problems that the temple is going to solve, right? Not that living after death was their primary concern or that they thought that temples would help them live after death. That’s not what we’re talking about.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Like other Christians, Latter-day Saints believe that Jesus Christ has already conquered death and has ensured that all mankind will be resurrected, so they didn’t believe they needed a temple for that, but even for those who accept and acknowledge the reality of the resurrection, one important and nagging question still remained uncertain, which is what’s going to be the nature of our relationships in the resurrection, right? Like, will we be with our loved ones? Will we still associate as husband, wife, children, grandparents, friends? Or are we going to lose all these special relationships after the resurrection? There’s a real fear and uncertainty in that, right? We all feel that keenly when a loved one passes away, and they felt it just as keenly back then, and death was all around at the time. And so certainly that’s on the mind, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And, I mean, the temple is meant to solve part of this problem, right? They believe that they’re going to overcome death. The Book of Mormon teaches that all will be resurrected. So does the Bible. But a major question, and people still wrestle this—with this today, is what’s life like after death? Like, what’s our life going to be like in the resurrection? What’s the nature of our relationships?

Scott Woodward:
Is it possible for loving relationships to endure eternally? I mean, that’s a good question. That’s one of the deepest longings of the human soul, right? And that thread, that spaghetti noodle of the concerns of death and the longing to make loving relationships eternally enduring, is tied back to the Malachi prophecy that Moroni was so interested in telling Joseph about when he was 17 and that Joseph is going to continue to develop and think about and preach about in Nauvoo, about is it possible to connect children and parents and parents and children? And if parents and children are connected, doesn’t that imply that the parents are connected? Fathers is the biblical word for the parents. The parents are eternally connected, and their children are then eternally connected to them, and that connection then spans all the way back down to Adam and Eve. Like, is that really possible? And could the keys that Joseph received in Kirtland from Elijah be connected to Jesus’s phrase that he said to Peter back in Matthew 16 where he told Peter that there was this power that could bind on earth and in heaven?

Casey Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
Joseph makes all those connections in Nauvoo and says yes, and he calls the keys given by Elijah “the sealing power of the kingdom.” And this is where we’re starting to see this coalesce, right? That the keys given by Elijah make possible the eternalizing of human relationships. I mean, that’s a big deal.

Casey Griffiths:
That’s a really big deal. And it’s a key point that people need to understand if they really want to understand Latter-day Saint temple beliefs.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Absolutely. And like we’ve been trying to point out, this did not just come all at once for Joseph. This is coming line upon line. It’s growing. It’s developing in Nauvoo. So that’s problem number one, right, is this problem of death and the eternalizing of human relationships. Could those keys given in Kirtland help solve this problem in a temple context? Yes.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
There’s also the problem, Casey, that I would call the problem of human potential. It’s not that human potential is a problem, it’s that achieving human potential is a problem because we can’t do it without divine help, right?

Casey Griffiths:
So what do you mean by human potential? How would you frame that, and what exactly are we going for here?

Scott Woodward:
Well, the scriptural framing of human potential is really important to keep in mind if you want to understand temple theology. This is huge. We’ve got to start from the very beginning. Let me do a quick version, okay? So Genesis chapter 1. There’s this line when humans are first introduced in the creation story in Genesis 1:26-27 where men and women are created in the image of God. God says “let them have dominion over all the earth.” Boom. Those are some of the first words used by God to explain why mankind was created. So this is a huge piece.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
As God’s image bearers, those who are in the image of God, we were created to have dominion. And that’s just a little hint at the very beginning of the biblical record. Then if you jump over to the very end of the biblical record in the book of Revelation, we see the Apostle John has a visionary sequence of the two-part endgame of this planet, and he first sees resurrected men and women sitting upon royal thrones as what he calls priests of God, reigning on the earth with Christ for a thousand years. Right, so that’s part one. And then second, he then sees the post-Millennium renewal of this earth and the time when God the Father will personally come to this planet to dwell with the faithful, where together they shall reign forever and ever, John says. And then affirming that biblical picture, Restoration scripture, like section 88, declares that this earth will ultimately be sanctified from all unrighteousness “that it may be prepared for the celestial glory, when it shall be crowned with the presence of God the Father, and where resurrected men and women who are of the Celestial Kingdom,” it says, “will possess it forever and ever.” So with that kind of a simple scriptural sketch, we see mankind’s destiny and the full measure of our creation is, A, to dwell on this earth in its renewed and sanctified state forever in the presence of God and His Christ, and then B, to be co-rulers with them as priests of God, John the Revelator says, or section 76 uses the title priests and kings, or Church of the Firstborn, to talk about these people. Now, that same phrase is used by John the Revelator, by the way, in his first chapter of the book of Revelation. He says that “Jesus Christ loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood and hath made us kings and priests unto God. And in Nauvoo church leaders will add the female corollary of that, queens and priestesses, to John’s phrase. And so these phrases start to express this ultimate potential of all men and women to become kings and queens, priests and priestesses, in the kingdom of God, to rule and reign with Him forever. This is the fulfilling of the potential sketched briefly in Genesis chapter 1, to have dominion over all the earth, to rule and reign as God’s image bearers on this earth in a godly way. And so if you understand that much of humankind potential, like, now you start to see how temple theology begins to flesh that out.

Casey Griffiths:
I can kind of see where you’re leading, that this is hinting towards celestial marriage and sealings, and how they tie into not only life after death, but what life after death is like for those that make covenants with God.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, if we want to achieve our fullest potential, we’ve got to do it through a covenant relationship solidified through ritual with Christ. Like, we can only do it, as John said, through the blood of Christ. And I think this is a good moment to point out that all of the ordinances are interconnected with each other, right? That they build upon each other, that they’re actually different pieces of a grander whole. And so it’s not like you should put celestial marriage over here in this box, and then the endowment over here in this one, and washing and anointing over here, and baptism over there. They’re all interconnected, right? Like Jesus says you’ve got to be baptized, in John chapter 3, to enter into the kingdom of heaven. All right, let’s call that entry requirement, but it’s one thing to be born into the kingdom of heaven, and it’s another thing to be invited to sit on the throne with God to rule and reign with him. Like, those are two different things, and so baptism gets you in. Washing/anointing helps you be washed and anointed to become a king and a queen, a priest and a priestess, as President David O. McKay said. Like, we’re preparing for that eventuality. And then the endowment ceremony outlines the covenants that we need to make and keep in order to enter into God’s presence, right? Which is ritualized as we go into the celestial room. And then comes the final piece, which is temple marriage. So always keep these connected. This is a string of pearls. These ordinances are pearls on a string which, put together, create basically, like, the way in which we are able to achieve our full potential, if that makes sense.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, the pearl string analogy is maybe even better than the plate of spaghetti analogy.

Scott Woodward:
That’s a good point.

Casey Griffiths:
Because the plate of spaghetti suggests that it’s a jumble. And this really is sort of progressive. Like, it’s a sequence.

Scott Woodward:
Yes.

Casey Griffiths:
And the way that it’s presented in the church today is as a sequence. This happens, then this happens, then this happens, and this unlocks all these doors.

Scott Woodward:
That’s right. It builds line upon line, and if we see them as pieces of a whole, I think it helps us to see the picture better than to think of them as separate and distinct from each other, right?

Casey Griffiths:
And there’s hints that it’s going to be this case. For instance, the Book of Mormon, when it describes the ideal society, says they were married and given in marriage. In the Doctrine and Covenants in section 49, the Lord says marriage is ordained of God, meaning it was put in place by God. And he even goes so far in section 49 as to say that the earth might answer the end of its creation, that this is a big part of the reason why the earth was created. This is why we have an earth to begin with. And it’s a big part of Joseph assembling all this theology together.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. So let’s talk about eternal marriage. How does that first come about in the church in Nauvoo, both the theology of it and the practice of it?

Casey Griffiths:
So one of the earliest hints is given when Joseph speaks to Parley P. Pratt in, I believe it’s 1840. Joseph Smith goes to Washington D. C. to try and sort out what’s happening with the Saints in Missouri, try to get the federal government to intervene. While he’s there he travels to Philadelphia. Parley P. Pratt meets with him there. He’s on his way to his mission in England, I believe, and Parley talks about having a conversation with Joseph, so this is in Parley P. Pratt’s autobiography. He says, “It was Joseph Smith who taught me of marriage for eternity, that the true dignity and destiny of a son of God is to be clothed with an eternal priesthood as the patriarch and sovereign of his countless offspring, that the highest dignity of a woman is to stand as a queen and priestess to her husband, and to reign forever and ever as a queen mother of her numerous and still-increasing offspring.”

Scott Woodward:
Whoa. That’s 1840.

Casey Griffiths:
That’s pretty early, right?

Scott Woodward:
That’s early.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, it is. And notice how the next thing he writes kind of talks about how knowing this teaching changes his views on marriage, what family means. Parley says, “I had loved before, but I knew not why. But now I love with a pureness and intensity of elevated, exalted feeling which would lift my soul from the transitory things of this groveling sphere and expand it as the ocean. I felt that God was my Heavenly Father. Indeed, that Jesus was my brother, and that the wife of my bosom was an immortal, eternal companion, a kind, ministering angel, a crown of glory forever and ever.”

Scott Woodward:
That’s beautiful, man.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
I think he might have just coined the term eternal companion there. Is that the earliest reference to eternal companion?

Casey Griffiths:
I don’t know.

Scott Woodward:
Wow. That’s beautiful language. The power of the doctrine of eternal marriage to change our views of people that we already love, right? He says it took it from good to great, elevated it with a pureness and intensity and exalted feeling he had never felt before. That’s so beautiful. I remember when I was a teenager, President Hinckley said, “The Lord has made us attractive one to another for a great purpose.” Joseph was explaining to Parley the reason for that, right? At least that’s the highest reason.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
This is intended to lead to kingship and queenship. In fact, that’s cool that Parley says that Joseph used the phrase queen and priestess to describe a woman’s potential.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Very cool. Okay, so 1840, Parley P. Pratt. What’s the next moment in church history that we know that Joseph starts to teach more about eternal marriage?

Casey Griffiths:
Well, we’d probably jump to 1843. Let’s frame this. This is after the endowment has been introduced to several men, but it’s going to introduce this new teaching that brings together men and women. So this happens in this little village called Ramus. Ramus, Illinois is where section 130 and section 131 of the Doctrine and Covenants were given. Ramus is this little town where Joseph Smith’s sisters live. Catherine and Sophronia both live there, and he’d often go and visit them. He also had a number of dear friends in the congregation, like Benjamin and Melissa Johnson. He takes William Clayton along with him, and in May of 1843 he gives several items of instruction that William Clayton writes down, that later on Orson Pratt and Brigham Young are going to say are so important that Clayton’s notes are added into the Doctrine and Covenants as Section 130 and Section 131.

Scott Woodward:
What would that be like, to have your notes become part of the scriptures one day, Casey?

Casey Griffiths:
It would be pretty amazing, right?

Scott Woodward:
Those are good notes.

Casey Griffiths:
You can go and look up the notes by the way, too. They’re on the Joseph Smith Papers site. Very instructive. This is the way Benjamin describes it: he said, “In the evening Joseph called me and my wife to come and sit down, for he wished to marry us according to the law of the Lord. I thought it a joke and said that I should not marry my wife again unless she courted me, for I did it all the first time.” He makes a joke, right?

Scott Woodward:
So Joseph says, Benjamin, Melissa, come, I want to marry you guys together according to the law of the Lord, and he thinks it’s a joke because they’re already married. If we’re going to marry, get married again, then she’s got to do all the courting this time because I had to do it all the first time. And Joseph’s like—I just picture his face, like, kind of straight-faced. He’s like, I’m not kidding.

Casey Griffiths:
I’m not kidding. This is the real deal. Yeah. He said, “He chided my levity. He told me he was in earnest, and so it proved, for we stood up and were sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise.”

Scott Woodward:
Is this in their living room? He seals them by the Holy Spirit of Promise?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
That’s not in the temple.

Casey Griffiths:
That’s something most people might be surprised at, too, is that most of the sealings that took place during the Nauvoo period happened in private homes. They didn’t happen in the temple. The temple wasn’t finished. But interestingly they also didn’t happen in the Red Brick Store, where endowments are coming out. It was a very intimate, personal experience that typically happened in a home setting, where Joseph Smith carried out the ceremony and sealed them for time and all eternity.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Interesting. And it’s interesting in that moment when he seals Benjamin and Melissa Johnson together, he drops a few theological bombs right there in the living room, doesn’t he?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
This is where we get some of those notes from William Clayton that end up in our Doctrine and Covenants section 131, verses one through four. Can I read those?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, go ahead.

Scott Woodward:
So Joseph explains to them why they need to be married according to the law of the Lord and be sealed together. And here’s what he says: “In the celestial glory there are three heavens or degrees.” Sounding familiar? “And in order to obtain the highest, a man must enter into this order of the priesthood,” suggesting that Benjamin and Melissa have now entered into an order of the priesthood together, which Elder McConkie and others will call the patriarchal order. And so think about the keys. What keys did Joseph use to do this, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Casey, when we talked about the Kirtland Temple and the keys that were restored there, we talked about how the keys of Elias were the keys of blessing couples with the promises of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, right? It’s the dispensation of the gospel of Abraham and the keys of essentially the patriarchs, right? These are the patriarchal keys, and that would make sense of what’s happening here if we’re understanding the doctrine right. He says, “In order to obtain the highest, a man must enter into this order of the priesthood,” this patriarchal order. And then Orson Pratt put brackets there that say, “meaning the new and everlasting covenant of marriage.” So that marriage is a new order of priesthood. Interesting. Then he goes on: “and if he does not, he cannot obtain it. He may enter into the other, but that is the end of his kingdom. He cannot have an increase.” And then that’s where the notes cut off in our scriptures, but there’s actually more with that that was actually very helpful in explaining what he meant by “they cannot have an increase.” Let me keep quoting, actually, here from Clayton’s notes. He said, the Prophet Joseph said, “Except a man and his wife enter into an everlasting covenant and be married for eternity while in this probation by the power and authority of the holy priesthood, they will cease to increase when they die. That is, they will not have any children after the resurrection. But those who are married by the power and authority of the priesthood in this life,” he says, “and continue worthily, will continue to increase and have children in the celestial glory.” Woo! So this is the way that marriages are eternalized and the potential for parenthood continues on into the eternities. That’s a big deal. And he taught that right in their living room.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. It’s kind of a cool context, too. It sort of emphasizes that this is a family thing, right? This is something that’s personal between a couple.

Scott Woodward:
It’s intimate. It’s beautiful, yeah. And it’s interesting, according to the history we’ve got, that Benjamin and Melissa Johnson probably were not the first couple sealed by Joseph Smith. The Apostle Heber C. Kimball and his wife Vilate seemed to be sealed by the prophet, most likely in Joseph Smith’s own home, what we call the homestead, that the church recently acquired from the Community of Christ, and then Joseph and Emma are also going to be sealed in that same spot in the homestead on May 28, 1843. And other couples may also have been sealed there, too, or in the mansion house. We’re not entirely sure. So this is the season where Joseph begins to do this privately, quietly, in homes, like you said: in Ramus, in Nauvoo. It is beginning.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And another thing that he teaches in Ramus that maybe has impact here is in section 130, verse 2, where Joseph Smith teaches “the same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it would be coupled with eternal glory.” So he’s thinking about an eternity where there’s these earthly relationships that persist and become eternally glorified. And we sometimes don’t appreciate how radical this was for the time, right? Today, you know, saying a couple will be together forever is something that happens inside and outside the church, but back then Christian theology was that marriage was a mortal thing and that it ended, you know? “‘til death do us part.” Joseph Smith is saying if you love someone here, you’re going to love them there in that sense. The same sociality persists into the eternal.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Excellent. So glorified relationships.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Think about the best relationships you’ve had in this life and then couple that with eternal glory, and that’s the picture that we’re driving at here with sealings.

Casey Griffiths:
So this idea of marriage that lasts beyond this life opens a lot of doors, and one of them is that a significant number of people in Nauvoo had lost a spouse, especially a wife, because it was so dangerous to give birth back then. Those who had lost a spouse could also be sealed to them for eternity. For instance, probably the best illustration of this is Hyrum Smith. So Hyrum, who’s Joseph’s brother, they’re close, close friends. In Nauvoo Hyrum practically acts as assistant president of the church, which is almost a co-president of the church type position. Hyrum married a woman named Jerusha all the way back in Palmyra, and they had five children together, but Jerusha passes away. There’s a little monument to her in the cemetery right next to the Kirtland Temple. Hyrum loses her when he’s there. Now Hyrum is raising five little children on his own, and so it’s natural, too, that he would remarry, which he does. He marries Mary Fielding Smith, this vivacious British convert. She’s going to be the mother of President Joseph F. Smith. I mean, the question is going to come up, you know? If you can be married eternally, Hyrum, which one are you going to be married eternally to? And Hyrum addresses this. In fact, there’s a sermon Hyrum gives in April 1844. This is around the same time as the King Follett Sermon. He said, “I married me a wife, and we had five children, but our marriage covenant was made for our lives only. She fell into the grave. I realized that that covenant is dead, and therefore it had no more force, neither could I have her in the resurrection, and it troubled me.” So there you go again, this idea of, wait, am I going to feel differently about her in the eternities?

Scott Woodward:
That gnawing loss of a cherished relationship in eternity.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. So he said, “Brother Joseph said, you can have her sealed to you upon the same principles as you can be baptized for the dead.”

Scott Woodward:
So sealing for the dead.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
This is the first intimation of that.

Casey Griffiths:
Baptism is an ordinance. Marriage is an ordinance. If we can do one ordinance on behalf of the dead, why can’t we do another one with the powers that we’ve been given? Hyrum goes on to say, “What honest man or woman can find fault with a doctrine as this? None. It has glad tidings of great joy.” And then he explains, “The Lord had given to Joseph the power to seal on Earth and in heaven those who are found worthy. Having the spirit of Elijah and Elias, he has power to seal with a seal that shall never be broken, and it shall be in force the morn of the resurrection. We,” that means Hyrum and his wife Jerusha, “will come up in the morn of the resurrection.” So he’s going to be able to be sealed to her. He’s also sealed to Mary Fielding, which, again, we did a whole series on plural marriage, and this is one of the factors that leads to plural marriage, but the basic idea is, yeah, you can be sealed to someone that’s deceased as well.

Scott Woodward:
Having the keys of Elijah and Elias, he, Joseph, has power to seal with a seal that shall never be broken, and it shall be enforced in the morn of the resurrection. I love how he invokes both keys there. The marriage keys of Elias coupled with the sealing power of Elijah makes possible that eternal marriage relationship. Beautiful.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And you point out plural marriage, Casey.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
I think this is one of the major reasons that Joseph doesn’t go real public about temple marriages or temple sealings to your spouse. Like, in every instance we can find, he’s doing this privately. He’s teaching very faithful couples this in their homes, in their living room, like he did with Benjamin and Melissa Johnson. He’s not giving any sermons to the masses about this. Hyrum is the exception here. This April 1844 sermon you just quoted from, he basically says that this is a teaching that Joseph had taught him, but again, Hyrum is saying, Joseph taught me, privately. Joseph’s not getting real public about this, and I think you can see why this would be a gnarly issue in reference to plural marriage, right? Because a lot of people have had spouses who’ve died, and they’ve remarried. So if there’s a power to seal to both the living and the dead, and I get sealed to my dead spouse, and I’m currently married to a living spouse, then is this not plural marriage? And the answer, of course, would be, well, yeah, in the resurrection, most likely, you know? Unless one or the other of you have a problem with that, then I’m sure another arrangement can be made, but the implication of this is clearly it leads toward the possibility of plural marriages, and the fact that Joseph was already practicing plural marriages, and some others of church leaders were doing that quietly in Nauvoo during this time, like, this would not be the right condition, circumstance, scenario, setting, to start teaching eternal marriages, because that’s going to start stirring up the question of plural marriage, and Joseph does not want to go there, at least not publicly.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
He’s already being hounded. That’s also going to lead, ultimately, to his death, as we’ve mentioned before. So for me that context helps me understand why Joseph’s not publicly teaching this but is definitely teaching this with great feeling to those he trusts deeply. This is the capstone of all the ordinances, the capstone doctrine here with eternal marriage, and it’s something today that we, you know, proclaim from the rooftops.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
It’s something that we’re excited about. It’s a missionary message. Like, do you want to live with your family forever? Awesome. Like, you should get baptized. Then you’re going to be on the path to eternal family, right? Like, today we talk about it like it’s no big deal, but I guess just what I’m saying is that the context was fraught a little bit during this time, and so for me that explains why Joseph is explaining this quietly only to his most trusted and faithful friends.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And let’s be honest, it’s still a little fraught, right?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. People who are married, who’s had a spouse pass away and they’ve gotten remarried and they’re sealed to both of them, like, that troubles some people still. You’re right. This is still a fraught issue.

Casey Griffiths:
It’s still a fraught issue. Most of my classes aren’t aware that women can be sealed to more than one partner as well.

Scott Woodward:
Right.

Casey Griffiths:
The rules are a little bit different. It’s after a woman is deceased, she can be sealed to all the people she was married to in this life. But part of it is there’s complexity in family relationships in this life. If we’re going to say the family relationships endure into the next life, we have to be willing to embrace complexity there as well. This also speaks to the fact that we believe that in the next life people still have agency. They have volition. Relationships will be dynamic. We won’t deal with a lot of the things we deal with down here on earth, but people will still be deeply involved in the lives of the people they love in the next life. That’s one of the central things we’re teaching here.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, great point. Okay, so as we try to wrap all this up, there’s one more layer I want to add, Casey, if that’s okay, to help us to see more clearly the importance of the sealed marriage relationship, and that is some of the theological things that Joseph is teaching during this same time. For instance, the King Follett discourse happens in April of 1844.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
There’s another sermon called the Sermon at the Grove that happens just before his death. And these are big deal sermons. Casey, what’s so important about the King Follett sermon? Like, what theology is added in the King Follett sermon that might have some relationship to talking about eternal marriage?

Casey Griffiths:
Oh, man. I will say as much to say that the King Follett sermon is divisive. I think it’s incredible. Like, if it was up to me, I would canonize the whole thing. I’d put it into the scriptures, but it’s not up to me. I just think it’s incredible, but some people, it does deeply offend them because—what Joseph is doing is in Nauvoo he’s creating the sequence where—you can actually see this in the Doctrine and Covenants. If you look in section 129, Joseph Smith is saying angels and humans are the same type of being. And then in section 130 you flip the page, and he says, “When the Savior will appear, you will see that he is a man like unto ourselves,” that Jesus is a human that has met his highest potential. And then the final frontier here is to say that God and mankind are the same type of being, but God is what the ultimate expression of human potential is like: that if everything goes right, through Jesus Christ and His grace we can ultimately become like God, and that is still controversial today, right? It’s one of the things that people either love or they hate about what Latter-day Saints teach.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, especially in the Protestant strain of Christianity, that’s not super popular. But with Orthodox Christians, they’re totally on board with that. They’re like, yeah, we believe that. And Catholics maybe somewhere in between.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And it’s not just that humans can become like God. Joseph taught in the King Follett Sermon that—in fact, I’ll quote him here: “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man and sits enthroned in yonder heavens,” he said. “If you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form, like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man.” And he says, “It’s the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God, and to know that he was once a man like us, yea, that God himself, the father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did.” Boy. That opens up an entirely new avenue of theological exploration, doesn’t it?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
God himself, if he was once a man like us, that would explain why Joseph would teach in Ramus that God the Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Like, how do you get a body of flesh and bones? Well, you’re born. You’re born on an earth. That’s how you get one. You have mortal parents who get you a body of flesh and bones. His is exalted, though, right? His is a resurrected body, but it’s, you know, it’s as tangible as man’s.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
That would mean that God the Father was not the first God, that he’s a man who became a God, and that’s what Joseph teaches a few months later on June 16, 1844. He says, “There is a God above the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. You may suppose that he had a father also. Where was there ever a son without a father? Where was there ever a father without first being a son? Whenever did a tree or anything spring into existence without a progenitor? Everything comes in this way.” And he says, “Hence, if Jesus had a Father, can we not believe that He had a Father also? So we’re getting into heavenly grandparents and great-grandparents here, Casey.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
But Joseph was fearless to talk about that. He said it’s necessary that we understand the character of God and how he came to be a God, and I say this is all related to celestial marriage because there’s another doctrine that Joseph also started teaching quietly, privately in Nauvoo to certain friends and faithful individuals, and that’s the doctrine of a Heavenly Mother, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
We have, for instance, Joseph’s friend, W. W. Phelps, printing in the Times and Seasons in January 1844 edition, “O Mormonism, thy father is God, thy mother is the Queen of Heaven. Christ was anointed with holy oil in Heaven and crowned in the midst of brothers and sisters while his mother stood with approving virtue and smiled upon a son that kept the faith as the heir of all things.” Woo! That’s the first time that teaching is ever printed in this church, as far as I can find, and that’s in Joseph’s lifetime, January of 1844. Phelps calls Heavenly Mother the Queen of Heaven. We also have other individuals, like Zina Huntington, telling us that Joseph taught her about a Heavenly Mother. Do you want to tell us that story?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, and this one might even be earlier than W. W. Phelps. It’s written down later, though. Zina lost her mother, so she’s one of those people being acquainted with death in Nauvoo. She wrote about a conversation with Joseph Smith: “Will I know my mother as my mother when I get over to the other side?” So, man, you can see in that question just the nature of Christianity that they were raised in. Like, will I know my mother as my mother? “Or will we be completely changed? Do we transcend these human relationships?”

Scott Woodward:
No question there’s going to be a resurrection. No question there’s an afterlife. Just big question on what will be the nature of the relationships. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. Will we still be mother and daughter?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
Joseph Smith’s reply: “Certainly, you will,” she wrote. “More than that, you will meet and become acquainted with your eternal mother, the wife of your Father in Heaven.” “And have I then a mother in heaven?” Joseph replied, “You assuredly have. How could a father claim his title unless there was a mother to share that parenthood?” So he’s just pointing out a salient truth, which is, if we’re saying that men can become like God, we have to talk about women as well, and what does a divine, exalted woman look like? A divine feminine. A mother in Heaven.

Scott Woodward:
So you can see how these two strands are coming together, right? We have the potential to be like God, but God is a married being. There is a woman, a heavenly mother that he’s married to, that is how we came to be. And so the doctrine of celestial marriage grows right out of that, right? With this potential to become like God would suggest that there must be a way in which men and women somehow together become what our Father and Mother are, and eternal marriage is the answer to that.

Casey Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
Subsequently, many church leaders have talked about the existence of Heavenly Mother. We don’t know much about her from scripture, but the most recent very official teaching about her is in the family proclamation, right? We have that line in there that each of us is a beloved spirit son, or daughter of heavenly parents, and as such each has a divine nature and destiny, and eternal marriage teaches us how to achieve that destiny.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So let’s string these little pearls together. God was once a man like us who dwelt on an earth. He must have somehow obeyed all the laws of salvation and exaltation, including celestial marriage, because he’s now a married being. He is the father of our spirits. He has a wife. They are having children, and they will forever, and they represent our potential. They represent what we can become. And so we see here this convergence, right? The Nauvoo doctrine and the Nauvoo ordinances dovetail together perfectly, right? Baptized. Why? To get into the kingdom of God. Washed and anointed. Why? To become a king and a queen and a priest and a priestess in that kingdom. Endowment. Why? To teach us the laws we must strive to obey in order to be able to achieve that potential. Eternal marriage. Why? Well, it’s the capstone ordinance whereby men and women are able to achieve their ultimate destiny. There is a canonized revelation from the Nauvoo time period. This is section 132, and in that the doctrine of celestial marriage is outlined super clear, and if we go to verse 19 you find after a husband and a wife are married in the new and everlasting covenant and sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise, he then talks about the blessings. And notice these blessings and think about them as they connect back to Genesis 1 with this idea that we’re created to have dominion, and then connect it over at the other end of the Bible, where exalted men and women are sitting on thrones ruling and reigning with God. Think about the language here. It says after they come forth in the first resurrection they shall, “inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers, dominions.” There’s that Genesis 1 word. “All heights and depths,” et cetera, and if they go on and remain faithful, “they shall pass by the angels, and the gods, which are set there, to their exaltation and glory in all things, as hath been sealed upon their heads, which glory shall be a fulness and continuation of the seeds forever and ever.” In other words, eternal children. Eternal posterity. And verse 20 says, “Then shall they be gods, because they have no end.” So, whoa. The Nauvoo ordinances rely heavily, Casey, on the Nauvoo doctrine, the Nauvoo theology, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
That these are all coming together, converging together, splashing together in Nauvoo, and to try to understand one of them, you’ve got to understand all of them and how they all piece together to bring about the eternal destiny of mankind.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, and there’s maybe one quote from the King Follett sermon that I think connects all this.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, please.

Casey Griffiths:
Joseph Smith says, “Here, then, is eternal life, to know the only wise and true God, and you have got to learn how to be gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all gods have done before you, namely by going from one small degree to another and from a small capacity to a great one, and from grace to grace.” Now, that beautifully captures this idea found in the Doctrine and Covenants, and that’s one thing I want to emphasize is that Nauvoo is him putting everything together. You can see all these puzzle pieces throughout the Doctrine and Covenants. A big chunk of it is section 93, which talks about how Jesus went from grace to grace, but it’s in Nauvoo where Joseph Smith is able to kind of receive the revelation to bring everything together, and the connecting place is the temple. All this stuff happens in the temple, and what we’ve been talking about today is essentially the purpose of the temple, which is to assist everyone in their path to becoming like the Father.

Scott Woodward:
No wonder Joseph’s successors would want to take the temple to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. To try to put temples everywhere so that all have the opportunity to become what they have the potential to become. It’s beautiful, man.

Casey Griffiths:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Scott Woodward:
I always ask my students when we talk about this in class, what if we drenched our views on dating and marriage in these Nauvoo doctrines? Like, how would that change the game, right? What if we view each other and our potential through the lens of those doctrines? What difference would that make in our lives? What difference would that make in the way we treat one another?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Joseph said of the Nauvoo doctrine, he said, “This is good doctrine. It tastes good. I can taste the principles of eternal life, and so can you.” These doctrines are delicious, and it’s been a pleasure to talk about them today, Casey.

Casey Griffiths:
Nice way to phrase it. That is a lot to digest for now. I’m full, if this is delicious, so plan on next week picking up a couple threads that we’ve laid down here.

Scott Woodward:
Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. Next week Casey and I discuss three intriguing early temple-related rituals, which were later discontinued or have gone into obscurity: namely, adoptive sealings to apostles, prayer circles done outside of the temple, and the second anointing. 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’ll 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.