Hinckley's temple building spree.. How useful has it been?

[_Blixa]

Slightly off topic, but when did the current emphasis on temple attendance begin? When I was growing up, the temple was usually only spoken of in terms of personal work (marriage, endowments). I don't think there even were things like ward temple nights. I could be wrong, but my memory is that this sort of thing was not emphasized nearly to the degree it is now.

Perhaps it goes through phases: my father remembers being rounded up for proxy baptisms as a teen, but that was not something that went down in my ward when I was a kid.

I had some long talks with my grandmother recently (before she died, lol) where I asked her a lot of questions about how her/our family got attached to the LDS church (they were british immigrants and a large extended family group of them left England around WWI when my grandmother was very young).

I was surprised to learn that none of her uncles and aunts were members, but that B___ (the oldest uncle) had come to Utah first and found places to settle for everyone because his mother was LDS and she was interested in possibly moving to the center of the church. However, it was B___, a life long non-mormon, who made the call that it was an amenable place for relocation.

"You mean nobody but your grandmother was even part of the church until they got here?" I asked her incredulously. I had always assumed that's why the family moved en masse to SLC. "That's right. Only grandma. Even later, when my mother started going to church a bit and Aunt R___ and Aunt L___ joined, Grandma was much more intensely into it. She did all that stuff. She even *eye roll* did temple work!"

I got a chuckle out of that being the sign for my grandma of someone who was taking things a bit too seriously, since now there seems to be a great deal of emphasis on "average" members attending regularly.

[_The Nehor]

Yea...
Does that change the fact that Temples serve the Dead rather than Living?
How many lives could be improved if that money were spent on living?

You must remember that I believe that Temples have a real effect on the dead. Freeing people from the pain of hell and entrapment is pretty important to me.

I'm also not a believer that spending money on somebody's problems always improves their life.

"Money can't buy happiness"

"If money can't buy happiness at least it lets you be miserable in comfort."

[_Blixa]

Yea...
Does that change the fact that Temples serve the Dead rather than Living?
How many lives could be improved if that money were spent on living?

You must remember that I believe that Temples have a real effect on the dead. Freeing people from the pain of hell and entrapment is pretty important to me.

I'm also not a believer that spending money on somebody's problems always improves their life.

"Money can't buy happiness"

"If money can't buy happiness at least it lets you be miserable in comfort."

I was under the impression that Mormonism didn't have a hellishly painful hell in which souls were painfully entrapped.

[_why me]

Retention of new members if also a function of temple service. New members are encouraged to become involved in family history work, preparing names of their family members to take to the temple. A new adult member may participate in baptisms for the dead before the year anniversary of their membership is up. Having temples close to make freuqent temple attendance possible is a major benefit to members.

Good point again.I agree 100% with you. The members need temples close at hand. What I don't understand is why critics are griping about temples being built. I would think that they would want TBM's to save time and be with their family more.

[_The Nehor]

I was under the impression that Mormonism didn't have a hellishly painful hell in which souls were painfully entrapped.

Then people have been soft-pedaling hell again. I personally think that while the Savior may have been using metaphor to describe hell that is not an excuse to dodge what the metaphor means.

[_SatanWasSetUp]

Yea...
Does that change the fact that Temples serve the Dead rather than Living?
How many lives could be improved if that money were spent on living?

You must remember that I believe that Temples have a real effect on the dead. Freeing people from the pain of hell and entrapment is pretty important to me.

How can you, or me, or any person who attends the temple, save someone from hell? Isn't that done at judgment, by someone other than you?

[_The Nehor]

Yea...
Does that change the fact that Temples serve the Dead rather than Living?
How many lives could be improved if that money were spent on living?

You must remember that I believe that Temples have a real effect on the dead. Freeing people from the pain of hell and entrapment is pretty important to me.

How can you, or me, or any person who attends the temple, save someone from hell? Isn't that done at judgment, by someone other than you?

Not so much save them but help in Christ saving them. And technically no, it's not done at judgment. Judgment is when only Perdition peoples go to hell. Everyone else is already out.

[_Mercury]

Yea...
Does that change the fact that Temples serve the Dead rather than Living?
How many lives could be improved if that money were spent on living?

You must remember that I believe that Temples have a real effect on the dead. Freeing people from the pain of hell and entrapment is pretty important to me.

How can you, or me, or any person who attends the temple, save someone from hell? Isn't that done at judgment, by someone other than you?

Not so much save them but help in Christ saving them. And technically no, it's not done at judgment. Judgment is when only Perdition peoples go to hell. Everyone else is already out.

How the hell do you know? The mechanism is so nebulous and unknown its a miracle the practice is not discarded from sheer bewilderment as to how it works.

I'm sure it makes sense to you but then again so does magic underwear and a Kolobian space-god.

[_Wintersfootsteps]

Yea...
Does that change the fact that Temples serve the Dead rather than Living?
How many lives could be improved if that money were spent on living?

You must remember that I believe that Temples have a real effect on the dead. Freeing people from the pain of hell and entrapment is pretty important to me.

I'm also not a believer that spending money on somebody's problems always improves their life.

"Money can't buy happiness"

"If money can't buy happiness at least it lets you be miserable in comfort."

I don't understand why God would want it this way. It doesn't make sense to me... let me explain.

He is all knowing, all powerful, and loving. Why in the world would he want to make it so that people couldn't reach the certain levels of heaven (for the record, I don't believe there are different levels of heaven, but for the sake of argument...) before getting temple work done (either by their own power when they were alive or by proxy after they are dead)? Seems to me that if God is the all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing being that I believe him to be, he could look at the soul of the person and make a decision then and there. Why is it that these ceremonies exist? It just doesn't add up to me... just my opinion.

[_the road to hana]

Slightly off topic, but when did the current emphasis on temple attendance begin? When I was growing up, the temple was usually only spoken of in terms of personal work (marriage, endowments). I don't think there even were things like ward temple nights. I could be wrong, but my memory is that this sort of thing was not emphasized nearly to the degree it is now.

It wasn't.

I'm sure there are at least one or two of us here who remember when there were only a dozen or so temples worldwide, and for many people, going to the temple was a several-state (if not several-country) excursion. "Temple nights" would have been completely impractical and indeed, unheard of, on a churchwide basis.

Many members used to go for their own endowments and sealing, and that was it, or perhaps to attend the wedding of a family member.

My own sense is that temple attendance picked up after the building of the Provo and Ogden temples particularly, and was stressed more probably by Spencer W. Kimball than it had by previous presidents. Gordon B. Hinckley no doubt was the church leader to stress it most and build up the arsenal of regional and local temples, but you're correct, it didn't used to be emphasized the way it is now. For many youth groups in the 1960s and early 1970s and before, to attend a temple to do baptism usually involved a significant journey. While that might still be the case for some, there are now a great many more who have temples nearby, so regular attendance is emphasized.