LDS Quotes on Temples
“One of the major missions of the Church is to uniquely identify these individuals who have died and perform the necessary saving ordinances in their behalf, for they cannot do it for themselves. Once these ordinances are performed, if the individual accepts the gospel in the great world of spirits, then this work will be effective.”
| “Moral Values and Rewards,” Ensign, May 1981, 68.
“The wisdom and mercy of God in preparing an ordinance for the salvation of the dead. . . . Those Saints who neglect it in behalf of their deceased relatives, do it at the peril of their own salvation.”
| History of the Church, 4:426.
“Enter this door as if the floors were paved with Gold; And every wall of jewels all of wealth untold; As if a choir in robes of fire were singing here; No shout nor rush, but hush, for God is here.”
“Any joy we savor in the absence of our loved ones is a partial joy, a fractured joy. Heaven apart from those we love is just hell by another name. Joseph said as much: ‘Let me be resurrected with the Saints,’ he said to his people in Nuavoo, ‘whether I ascend to heaven to descend to hell, or go to any other place.'”
“How are [the Saints] to become Saviors on Mount Zion? By building their temples, erecting their baptismal fonts, and going forth and receiving all the ordinances, baptisms, confirmations, washings, anointing, ordinations and sealing powers upon their heads, in behalf of all their progenitors who are dead, and redeem them that they may come forth in the first resurrection and be exalted to thrones of glory with them; and herein is the chain that binds the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers, which fulfills the mission of Elijah.”
| History of the Church, 6:184
“Whereby all his children, be they alive or dead, might have the privilege of accepting or rejecting the gospel of his beloved Son.”
| Conference Report, April 1945, 69, 71.
“How did we feel when we first heard [that] the living could be baptized for the dead? We all went to work at it as fast as we had an opportunity, and were baptized for everybody we could think of, without respect to sex. I went and was baptized for all my friends, grandmothers, and aunts, as [well as for] those of the male sex: but how was it? Why, by-and-by, it was revealed, through the servants of the Lord, that females should be baptized for females, and males for males.”
| Journal of Discourses, 5:85
“We go to the temple to make covenants, but we go home to keep the covenants that we have made. The home is the testing ground. The home is the place where we learn to be more Christlike. The home is the place where we learn to overcome selfishness and give ourselves in service to others.”
| Ensign, May 1995, p. 12
“At the temple the dust of distraction seems to settle out, the fog and the haze seem to lift, and we can ‘see’ things that we were not able to see before and find a way through our troubles that we had not previously known.”
“Here and now then, we move to accomplish the work to which we are assigned. . . . We gather the records of our kindred dead, indeed, the records of the entire human family; and in sacred temples in baptismal fonts designed as those were anciently, we perform these sacred ordinances.”
| “The Redemption of the Dead,” Ensign, November 1975, 99