Abstract: This essay traces the modern-day usage and understanding of temples from the Kirtland Temple to Nauvoo and the Salt Lake Temple. Architecture was used to teach principles. While the Kirtland Temple was preparatory (think of the vision of Christ and the conference of keys by Abraham, Moses, Abraham, Elias, and finally Elijah), the Nauvoo Temple was dedicated to ritual usage. In 1879, the Church reduced temple usage to rituals, and thus assembly rooms are missing from later temples. Through his paper, Cowan shows how temples have changed according to revelation and how prophets have seen models in vision that then have been incorporated in the temples God’s people built.

[Editor’s Note: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the Latter-day Saint community. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.

See Richard O. Cowan, “Latter-day Houses of the Lord: Developments in Their Design and Function,” in Temple Insights: Proceedings of the Interpreter Matthew B. Brown Memorial Conference, “The Temple on Mount Zion,” 22 September 2012, ed. William J. Hamblin and David Rolph Seely (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation; Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2014), 203–218. Further information at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/temple-insights/.]

[Page 92]I am honored to participate in this conference, which pays tribute to Matthew Brown, and to talk about temples, a subject he loved. Elder James E. Talmage spoke of “a definite sequence of development” in understanding the purposes for which temples are built and that these changes are reflected in the buildings themselves.1 The piecemeal restoration of temple understanding in the latter days is reflected in the design of temples built during this dispensation.

Some basic patterns were set in earlier dispensations. The layout of the tabernacle and its grounds emphasized its sacredness and separation from the world. The tabernacle tent was divided into two rooms. The larger outer room was known as the “Holy Place,” and the innermost room was regarded as “The Most Holy Place” or “Holy of Holies.” The tabernacle was surrounded by a courtyard secluded by a fence of fabric panels. As the Israelites pitched their camp, the twelve tribes were arranged around the tabernacle as if to provide a protective shield from the outside world. Only those who were worthy could enter the courtyard, only priests were admitted into the tabernacle’s outer room, and only the high priest could enter the innermost room — The Holy of Holies — once a year on the day of Atonement. This illustrated the principle that the more holy the area, the fewer the number of people who could enter there.

Since Old Testament times, temples have served two major functions. They have been places of contact between heaven and earth — revelation between God and man. They also have been places where sacred ceremonies or “ordinances” have been performed by which the faithful enter into covenants with God. Both of these functions would need to be restored as part of the “restitution of all things” (see Acts 3:19–21) “in the dispensation of the fullness of times” (Ephesians 1:10).

The Kirtland Temple

The first of the functions mentioned above was restored at the Kirtland Temple. In 1833, the Lord promised to endow the Saints “with power from on high.” He specified that the temple was not to be built “after the manner of the world,” but according to a plan that He promised to reveal to three whom the brethren would appoint (see Doctrine  & Covenants 95:1-4).