Temples: The Promises and Blessings of Temple Attendance

“Because Jesus Christ is at the center of everything we do in the temple, as you think more about the temple, you will be thinking more about Him.” — “Go Forward in Faith,” April 2020 general conference

Pres. Russell M. Nelson, Becoming Exemplary Latter-day Saints, Oct. 2018

My dear brothers and sisters, the assaults of the adversary are increasing exponentially, in intensity and in variety.³ Our need to be in the temple on a regular basis has never been greater. I plead with you to take a prayerful look at how you spend your time. Invest time in your future and in that of your family. If you have reasonable access to a temple, I urge you to find a way to make an appointment regularly with the Lord—to be in His holy house—then keep that appointment with exactness and joy. I promise you that the Lord will bring the miracles He knows you need as you make sacrifices to serve and worship in His temples.

Spend more time in the temple

“My dear brothers and sisters, construction of these temples may not change your life, but your time in the temple surely will. In that spirit, I bless you to identify those things you can set aside so you can spend more time in the temple. I bless you with greater harmony and love in your homes and a deeper desire to care for your eternal family relationships. I bless you with increased faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and a greater ability to follow Him as His true disciples.” — “Let Us All Press On,” April 2018 general conference

Spiritual strengthening and tutoring

“After we receive our own temple ordinances and make sacred covenants with God, each one of us needs the ongoing spiritual strengthening and tutoring that is only possible in the house of the Lord.” — “Becoming Exemplary Latter-day Saints,” October 2018 general conference

Safety, solace and revelation

“If you don’t yet love to attend the temple, go more often — not less. Let the Lord, through His Spirit, teach and inspire you there. I promise you that over time, the temple will become a place of safety, solace and revelation. — “The Temple and Your Spiritual Foundation,” October 2021 general conference

The power of Jesus Christ

“Each person who makes covenants in baptismal fonts and temples — and keeps them — has increased access to the power of Jesus Christ. Please ponder that stunning truth. The reward for keeping covenants with God is heavenly power — power that strengthens us to withstand our trials, temptations and heartaches better. This power eases our way.” — “Overcome the World and Find Rest,” October 2022 general conference

Spiritual doors will open

“I plead with you to seek — prayerfully and consistently — to understand temple covenants and ordinances. Spiritual doors will open. You will learn how to part the veil between heaven and earth, how to ask for God’s angels to attend you, and how better to receive direction from heaven.” — “The Temple and Your Spiritual Foundation,” October 2021 general conference

Pres. Russell M. Nelson, Sisters’ Participation in the Gathering of Israel, Oct. 2018

Establish a pattern of regular temple attendance. This may require a little more sacrifice in your life. More regular time in the temple will allow the Lord to teach you how to draw upon His priesthood power with which you have been endowed in His temple. For those of you who don’t live near a temple, I invite you to study prayerfully about temples in the scriptures and in the words of living prophets. Seek to know more, to understand more, to feel more about temples than you ever have before.

 

President Nelson "Hear Him" April 2020

We can also hear Him in the temple. The house of the Lord is a house of learning. There the Lord teaches in His own way. There each ordinance teaches about the Savior. There we learn how to part the veil and communicate more clearly with heaven. There we learn how to rebuke the adversary and draw upon the Lord’s priesthood power to strengthen us and those we love. How eager each of us should be to seek refuge there.

Please schedule regular time to worship and serve in the temple. Every minute of that time will bless you and your family in ways nothing else can. Take time to ponder what you hear and feel when you are there. Ask the Lord to teach you how to open the heavens to bless your life and the lives of those you love and serve.

 

While worshipping in the temple is presently not possible, I invite you to increase your participation in family history, including family history research and indexing. I promise that as you increase your time in temple and family history work, you will increase and improve your ability to hear Him.

Pres. Russell M. Nelson, Hope of Israel, June 2018

These surely are the latter days, and the Lord is hastening His work to gather Israel. That gathering is the most important thing taking place on earth today. Nothing else compares in magnitude, nothing else compares in importance, nothing else compares in majesty. When we speak of the gathering, we are simply saying this fundamental truth: every one of our Heavenly Father’s children, on both sides of the veil, deserves to hear the message of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. They decide for themselves if they want to know more.

Participating in the gathering of Israel will require some sacrifice on your part. It may even require some changes in your life. It will definitely take some of your time and energy and your God-given talents.

 

My dear extraordinary youth, you were sent to earth at this precise time, the most crucial time in the history of the world, to help gather Israel. There is nothing happening on this earth right now that is more important than that. There is nothing of greater consequence. Absolutely nothing.

This gathering should mean everything to you. This is the mission for which you were sent to earth.

 President Nelson, "The Temple and Your Spiritual Foundation," Oct. 2021

It is now time that we each implement extraordinary measures—perhaps measures we have never taken before—to strengthen our personal spiritual foundations. Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures. [See Alma 49:8.]

My dear brothers and sisters, these are the latter days. If you and I are to withstand the forthcoming perils and pressures, it is imperative that we each have a firm spiritual foundation built upon the rock of our Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

The temple lies at the center of strengthening our faith and spiritual fortitude because the Savior and His doctrine are the very heart of the temple. Everything taught in the temple, through instruction and through the Spirit, increases our understanding of Jesus Christ. His essential ordinances bind us to Him through sacred priesthood covenants. Then, as we keep our covenants, He endows us with His healing, strengthening power. And oh, how we will need His power in the days ahead.

He is the One who wants you to experience fully His sacred ordinances. He wants you to comprehend your privileges, promises, and responsibilities. He wants you to have spiritual insights and awakenings you’ve never had before. Should distance, health challenges, or other constraints prohibit your temple attendance for a season, I invite you to set a regular time to rehearse in your mind the covenants you have made.

 

Messages about the Temple from President Nelson https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2023/01/nzl-eng-local-pages/local-news-001?lang=eng :

President Nelson, COVID-19 and Temples, April 2021

Meanwhile, keep your temple covenants and blessings foremost in your minds and hearts. Stay true to the covenants you have made. Ordinances of the temple fill our lives with power and strength available in no other way.

President Russell M. Nelson, “Open the Heavens through Temple and Family History Work”, Ensign October 2017

That means sacrificing time we normally spend on other activities. We need to be spending more time in the temple and in doing family history research, which includes indexing. Over time, I realized that if I was working on an overwhelming project and I was out of time, energy, and ideas, if I would make a sacrifice of time by finding the ordinance-qualifying information for some ancestors or by going to the temple to be proxy for them, the heavens opened and the energy and ideas started flowing. Somehow I had enough time to meet my deadline. It was totally impossible, but it would happen every time. I invite you to prayerfully consider what kind of sacrifice—preferably a sacrifice of time—you can make in order to do more temple and family history work this year.

 

President Thomas S. Monson

I think there is no place in the world where I feel closer to the Lord than in one of His holy temples.

Gordon B. Hinckley, “Recent Addresses of President Gordon B. Hinckley,” Ensign, Jul 1997

If we are a temple-going people, we will be a better people, we will be better fathers and husbands, we will be better wives and mothers. I know your lives are busy. I know that you have much to do. But I make you a promise that if you will go to the house of the Lord, you will be blessed, life will be better for you. Now, please, please, my beloved brethren and sisters, avail yourselves of the great opportunity to go to the Lord’s house and thereby partake of all of the marvelous blessings that are yours to be received there,

President Monson, “The Holy Temple—a Beacon to the World,” April 2011

Some degree of sacrifice has ever been associated with temple building and with temple attendance. Those who understand the eternal blessings which come from the temple know that no sacrifice is too great, no price too heavy, no struggle too difficult in order to receive those blessings. There are never too many miles to travel, too many obstacles to overcome, or too much discomfort to endure. If you have been to the temple for yourselves and if you live within relatively close proximity to a temple, your sacrifice could be setting aside the time in your busy lives to visit the temple regularly.

1.      Increased Spirituality, Peace, and Help to Bear our Trials

Thomas S. Monson, “Blessings of the Temple,” Apr. 2015 General Conference

As we enter through the doors of the temple, we leave behind us the distractions and confusion of the world. Inside this sacred sanctuary, we find beauty and order. There is rest for our souls and a respite from the cares of our lives.

As we attend the temple, there can come to us a dimension of spirituality and a feeling of peace which will transcend any other feeling which could come into the human heart.

My brothers and sisters, in our lives we will have temptations; we will have trials and challenges. As we go to the temple, as we remember the covenants we make there, we will be better able to overcome those temptations and to bear our trials. In the temple we can find peace.

Boyd K. Packer, “The Holy Temple,” Ensign, Oct 2010

No work is more of a protection to this Church than temple work and the family history research that supports it. No work is more spiritually refining. No work we do gives us more power. No work requires a higher standard of righteousness. 

Pres. Monson, Until We Meet Again, Apr. 2009

To you who are worthy and able to attend the temple, I would admonish you to go often. The temple is a place where we can find peace. There we receive a renewed dedication to the Gospel and a strengthened resolve to keep the commandments. What a privilege it is to be able to go to the temple, where we may experience the sanctifying influence of the Spirit of the Lord.

2.      Receive Revelation and Other Help for All Our Affairs

David B. Haight, “Temples and Work Therein,” Ensign, Nov 1990

John A. Widtsoe wrote: “I believe that the busy person who has his worries and troubles, can solve his problems better and more quickly in the house of the Lord than anywhere else. If he will … [do] the temple work for himself and for his dead, he will confer a mighty blessing upon those who have gone before, and … a blessing will come to him, for at the most unexpected moments, in or out of the temple will come to him, as a revelation, the solution of the problems that vex his life. That is the gift that comes to those who enter the temple properly.” (“Temple Worship,” The Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine, Apr. 1921, pp. 63–64.)

The moment we step into the house of the Lord, the atmosphere changes from the worldly to the heavenly, where respite from the normal activities of life is found, and where peace of mind and spirit is received. It is a refuge from the ills of life and a protection from the temptations that are contrary to our spiritual well-being.  

President Boyd K. Packer, “The Holy Temple,” Ensign, Feb. 1995

When members of the Church are troubled or when crucial decisions weigh heavily upon their minds, it is a common thing for them to go to the temple. It is a good place to take our cares. In the temple we can receive spiritual perspective. There, during the time of the temple service, we are ‘out of the world.’

Sometimes our minds are so beset with problems, and there are so many things clamoring for attention at once that we just cannot think clearly and see clearly. 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.

The Lord will bless us as we attend to the sacred ordinance work of the temples. Blessings there will not be limited to our temple service. We will be blessed in all of our affairs.

Howard W. Hunter, “A Temple-Motivated People,” Ensign, Mar 2004

Let us be a temple-attending and a temple-loving people. Let us hasten to the temple as frequently as time and means and personal circumstances allow. Let us go not only for our kindred dead, but let us also go for the personal blessing of temple worship, for the sanctity and safety which are provided within those hallowed and consecrated walls. The temple is a place of beauty; it is a place of revelation; it is a place of peace. It is the house of the Lord.

Let us share with our children the spiritual feelings we have in the temple. And let us teach them more earnestly and more comfortably the things we can appropriately say about the purposes of the house of the Lord. Keep a picture of a temple in your home that your children may see it. Teach them about the purposes of the house of the Lord. Have them plan from their earliest years to go there and to remain worthy of that blessing.

David B. Haight, “Temples and Work Therein,” Ensign, Nov 1990

The moment we step into the house of the Lord, the atmosphere changes from the worldly to the heavenly, where respite from the normal activities of life is found, and where peace of mind and spirit is received. It is a refuge from the ills of life and a protection from the temptations that are contrary to our spiritual well-being.

ATTENDING THE TEMPLE IN SPITE OF OPPOSITION

President Boyd K. Packer, “The Holy Temple,” Ensign, Feb. 1995

Temples are the very center of the spiritual strength of the Church. We should expect that the adversary will try to interfere with us as a church and with us individually as we seek to participate in this sacred and inspired work. Temple work brings so much resistance because it is the source of so much spiritual power to the Latter-day Saints and to the entire Church.

At the Logan Temple cornerstone dedication, President George Q. Cannon made this statement:

“Every foundation stone that is laid for a Temple, and every Temple completed according to the order the Lord has revealed for his holy Priesthood, lessens the power of Satan on the earth, and increases the power of God and Godliness, moves the heavens in mighty power in our behalf, invokes and calls down upon us the blessings of the Eternal Gods, and those who reside in their presence” (Millennial Star, 12 Nov. 1877, p. 743).

Elder Richard G. Scott, “The Source of Strength and Power in Times of Need,” Ensign, May 2009

I have seen that many times individuals have made great sacrifices to go to a distant temple. But when a temple is built close by, within a short time, many do not visit it regularly. I have a suggestion: When a temple is conveniently nearby, small things may interrupt your plans to go to the temple. Set specific goals, considering your circumstances, of when you can and will participate in temple ordinances. Then do not allow anything to interfere with that plan. This pattern will guarantee that those who live in the shadow of a temple will be as blessed as are those who plan far ahead and make a long trip to the temple.

President Thomas S. Monson, “The Holy Temple, A Beacon to the World,” April 2011

Today most of us do not have to suffer great hardships in order to attend the temple. Eighty-five percent of the membership of the Church now live within 200 miles (320 km) of a temple, and for a great many of us, that distance is much shorter.

If you have been to the temple for yourselves and if you live within relatively close proximity to a temple, your sacrifice could be setting aside the time in your busy lives to visit the temple regularly.

President Brigham Young, “Temple Ordinances,” Teachings of Presidents of the Church

Does the Lord require the building of a temple at our hands? I can say that he requires it just as much as ever he required one to be built elsewhere. If you should ask, “Brother Brigham, have you any knowledge concerning this; have you ever had a revelation from heaven upon it?” I can answer truly, it is before me all the time (DBY, 411).

Some say, “I do not like to do it, for we never began to build a temple without the bells of hell beginning to ring.” I want to hear them ring again. We completed a temple in Kirtland and in Nauvoo; and did not the bells of hell toll all the time we were building them? They did, every week and every day (DBY, 410).

Fasting and Prayer Often Brings the Blessings of the Lord

 

Bible Dictionary: Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other. The object of prayer is not to change the will of God but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant but that are made conditional on our asking for them. Blessings require some work or effort on our part before we can obtain them. Prayer is a form of work and is an appointed means for obtaining the highest of all blessings.

Matthew 17:21 Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.

Omni 1:26 I would that ye should come unto Christ. Yea, come unto him, and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him, and continue in fasting and praying, and endure to the end; and as the Lord liveth ye will be saved.

Alma 5:46 Behold, I say unto you they are made known unto me by the Holy Spirit of God. Behold, I have fasted and prayed many days that I might know these things of myself.

Alma 6:6 Nevertheless the children of God were commanded that they should gather themselves together oft, and join in fasting and mighty prayer in behalf of the welfare of the souls of those who knew not God.

Alma 17:3, 9 But this is not all; they had given themselves to much prayer, and fasting; therefore they had the spirit of prophecy, and the spirit of revelation.

And it came to pass that they journeyed many days in the wilderness, and they fasted much and prayed much that the Lord would grant unto them a portion of his Spirit to go with them.

Alma 28:6 And now surely this was a sorrowful day; yea, a time of solemnity, and a time of much fasting and prayer.

Alma 45:1 Behold, now it came to pass that the people of Nephi were exceedingly rejoiced, because the Lord had again delivered them out of the hands of their enemies; therefore they gave thanks unto the Lord their God; yea, and they did fast much and pray much, and they did worship God with exceedingly great joy.

Helaman 3:35 Nevertheless they did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ,

Moroni 6:5 And the church did meet together oft, to fast and to pray.