The Rock of the Temple

I had a strange dream about the temple lately, and now I may have found the key.

I recommend very much the book Plain and Precious Things.  Books, I think, recommended it awhile back and I finally got around to reading it.  Its a highly readable, plain language discussion of ancient temple ritual symbols and how they show up all over the Book of Mormon in a way that deepens your understanding of the message.  It stretches the bounds of probability a bit towards the end but the bulk is extremely compelling.

Plain and Precious Things describes two major ancient ordinances which seem to combine modern ordinances.  The Day of Atonement started with a baptism before moving on to the sacrifices.  The “Peace Ordinance” had initiatories, the sacrament, and an endowment all built in.

Plain and Precious Things says that the ‘throne’ was an important part of the temple worship and that the ‘rock’ was treated as equivalent with the ‘throne’.  We know that the Rock is a symbol for Christ but is also a symbol for the throne of Christ, the seat of his Majesty.

So now lets look at the dream.

I described it briefly here.

There is a temple built of stone.  All the stones were hand cut and hand hewn and hand placed.  The only light is from the sun.  When you go there, you repeat all the prior ordinances starting with baptism before you do the new one you came for.

When you come for your endowment, you bring a stone that you and your family hewed out by hand and you haul it to the temple without machines.

Christ’s throne is the deeds and lives of his worshippers.

I believe that I had this dream in advance of reading this book by the design of Providence.  It feels like an affirmation of the meaning and significance of the temple to me despite, as some of you know, the difficulty I have had with the latest edited version of the temple ceremony.