Saturday, December 17, 2011

TEMPLE

Reason 27

Christians believe our bodies are the temple. Mormons agree, but also believe the temple is a building to perform sacred ordinances.


     Acts 17:24
God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. 


     1 Corinthians 3:16-17
Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.

     1 Corinthians 6:19
Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?

     2 Corinthians 6:16
And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will dwell in them And walk among them. I will be their God, And they shall be My people."

     Ephesians 2:19-22
Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. 

     Ephesians 3:17
that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

The Old Testament Temple was actually used for animal sacrifice, not marriage, baptism, or other ceremonies. Christ fulfilled the OT use of the temple. We are now the spiritual temple of God.

     And article about Temples
mormonhandbook.com/home/temples

     A video about Temples
ldsvideo.org/2011/04/mormon-temple

Mormons claim they are the one true church as they have "the temple." They overlook the fact that God tore the veil of the temple when Christ died (signifying the entrance into the holy of Holies). Now a person can come to the throne room of God through faith in Christ who is represented as the veil. The old temple ritual is over! The Mormons are trying to sew the curtain back up. (Let the Scriptures Speak, p. 40, Suzanne Bishop)

     Mormon Doctrine, p. 779
Temples are holy sanctuaries wherein sacred ordinances, rites, and ceremonies are performed which pertain to salvation and exaltation in the kingdom of God. 

The temple is a necessity because they [LDS] believe that certain ordinances are only effective when performed in the temple. (Approaching Mormons in Love, pp. 45-48, Wilbur Lingle)

A few of these ordinances are

  1. Celestial Marriage
  2. Endowments
  3. Sealings
  4. Other Ordinances - where the living perform the ordinances for their dead relatives or others to help them achieve exaltation.
I attended the temple many times while I was lds. Every time was just as unsettling as the time before. I always felt extremely uncomfortable inside the temple. The clothes, signs, tokens, ordinances, prayers, etc. were very troubling to me. Friends who were also members continued telling me, "Just keep going back. It will begin to make sense if you attend often enough with a sincere heart." Well, it never began to make sense to me. It only brought up more questions that no one would answer.

My unanswered question was:

Since the Bible tells us in Acts 17:24 that God does not dwell in temples made with hands, why does the lds church build temple after temple to perform sacred ceremonies?

I was initially devastated when I received this answer that the true God really does not dwell in lds temples, yet overjoyed to find the truth that He now dwells in my heart! I certainly do not need to attend a temple to have God with me.

3 comments:

  1. I don't see a place for e-mailing you so I'm commenting here - not necessary to post. You say you are on the "right path" and yet you have two favorite books which are aberrant at the least and heretical at the worst - Don Piper's "90 Minutes in Heaven" and Burpo's "Heaven is for Real." These books are just as fraudulent as the Book of Mormon.

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  2. I'm not sure the point of this post was to suggest books, but to point out the problem of LDS doctrine requiring work in the temple for eternal life in contrast to the words of Christ:

    "Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval. Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?" Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

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  3. I noted in my first line that the comment wasn't about the post, and that it didn't need to be posted. I saw no other way to contact the blog owner, so I did it this way. I'm just trying to point out that two books listed as favorites are just as fraudulent as the BOM!

    ReplyDelete