When was endowment ceremony created

Two midth-century milestones in the history of the endowment made the ceremony more accessible to Latter-day Saints around the world.

During the 19th century, when Saints still gathered to Utah to attend temples, the endowment ceremony was administered only in English. Ivins to translate the endowment ceremony into another language, Spanish, for the first time. Saints from Mexico and from Spanish-speaking branches in the United States gathered to the Mesa Arizona Temple for the first Spanish-language endowments in Hinckley to develop a new way to present the endowment in multiple languages once the Bern Switzerland Temple was completed.

Years later, as President of the Church, President Hinckley initiated an unprecedented era of temple building, making the endowment even more accessible to Latter-day Saints around the world.

As we come nearer to God we see our imperfections and nothingness plainer and plainer. Approaching the Lord in His temple meant being dressed in a way appropriate to entering into His presence. Phelps made special mention of this to Sally.

Many other journals made general reference to the endowment. Orson Pratt explained:. Brigham Young confirmed that the Kirtland endowment was preparatory to the Nauvoo endowment. Nevertheless, we must be careful not to minimize the Kirtland endowment. It was central to the purpose for building the Kirtland Temple. Kirtland Saints compared the ordinances of that endowment to sacred ordinances conducted in ancient times. From the Kirtland endowment sprang temple ordinances and instruction central to subsequent temple practices.

Today, building upon keys and ordinances given in the Kirtland Temple, millions of people receive the fulness of the temple endowment and its accompanying sacred ordinances. Church history is filled with amazing stories of courage and divine inspiration, but often we skip over the profound events that happened to the Saints in Kirtland, Ohio.

In this volume, author Karl Ricks Anderson brings to light unparalleled events and divine manifestations that were given during those early years of the Restoration. In Kirtland, the Savior personally directed His Church and taught His Saints by appearing to at least twenty-three Church leaders or by speaking to them. Brother Anderson points out that more first-person words of the Lord have gone out to the world from Kirtland than from any other location in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The term endowment as used in this chapter refers to ordinances performed in the Kirtland Temple. The Kirtland ordinances of endowment might be more generally included today under the category of initiatory ordinances.

William W. Orson Pratt, in Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. This article traces the endowment ceremony from the formative period in Kirtland through the s. Joseph Smith left no direct statement of how the endowment ceremony came to be. In relating the ceremony to Masonry, Buerger observes that there are parallels, though not with reference to the rites practiced in Kirtland. He discusses the possible influence of friends on Joseph Smith , as well as Joseph Smith's own association with Masonry in Nauvoo.

He notes the similarities in the ceremonies, particularly with reference to signs, tokens, penalties though he does not discuss these three things , and prayer circles, but also notes that the creation and fall narrative, covenants, and washings and anointings have no parallel. The temple ceremony cannot be explained as wholesale borrowing from Masonry, but neither can it be explained as completely unrelated.

Joseph Smith's associates interpreted the similarities as evidence that Masonry was a corrupt form of the endowment.