Temple Changes

Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out. My name is Jim Bennett. I am here as always with Ian Wilkes. Hello, Ian.

Hello, Jim.

So we're going to talk about, uh, temple ordinances today, and that's always a fraught topic because people are really nervous about talking about the temple in ways that I think are unjustified. In the temple, we make covenants and promises not to reveal very specific, certain things, and it's a very small part of what happens in the temple. And from my perspective, I think it's important that we spend more time talking about what happens, and I am grateful to see that the Church to some degree agrees with me because the Church has become increasingly open about what goes on in the temple. A few years ago, they posted a video that showed temple clothing with the hat and the apron and all that stuff, also showed temple garments. They don't show anybody wearing either of those things, but they do show you what the clothing is, and then they talk about the fact that it's a ritual reenactment of the creation story and all of that kind of thing. And I thought, these are things that we would never have been allowed to talk about when we were missionaries 30, 35 years ago, and it's encouraging to see greater transparency. So I decided I wanted to go through a temple session and see all of the new changes that are being talked about all over the place. And most of what they are saying online is true, is accurate. The thing that I really like the most is the fact that we no longer have to worry about loud laughter. You know, at one point there was a charge to avoid all light-mindedness, loud laughter, evil speaking of the Lord's anointed, the taking of the name of God in vain, and every other unholy and impure practice. That was the language back from the day, and now it's light-mindedness, unworthy, or either unworthy— I can't remember if it's unworthy or unholy thoughts and actions. And that substituted for loud laughter. And I think that's great because no one could ever tell me what that loud laughter prohibition was. Because I'm a very loud guy. You may have noticed that. And I laugh loudly, just naturally. And I've never felt that there was anything remotely sinful about that. And I remember having conversations with my father right after the session and said, well, what does that mean, Dwight? Is there a decibel level? You know, at what point have I reached sin? And he said, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what it means. And I said, okay, well, what does it mean? Oh, well, it's talking about like people who are drunk. And I thought, okay. And I sort of hung on to that. But I've since had conversations with a number of other people about it, and nobody can give me a straight answer because they all insist, no, it doesn't really mean loud laughter. It means mockery of sacred things. It means I mean, I've heard so many different explanations and none of them make a lot of sense. And now it's gone. I welcome the changes. I think they're positive for the most part, and we can get into the details on them. I am troubled somewhat by our inability to confront what changes mean, because the emphasis— again, when I went through at the beginning, there's about a 10-minute Introduction where they sort of outline, they outline all the covenants you're going to make, although they don't really outline them. They just list them. They say you're going to covenant to the law of the gospel and the law of sacrifice. And if you don't know what those are, you're lost. But by the time you get to the actual covenant, before the covenant, they actually detail what they all mean, which is nice again. And from what I can tell, they have put these covenants in the general handbook of instructions so that you can read them before you go in. And I think that that needs to be essential because in the past they've just been put on the spot. There they are and all of this kind of thing. But, but the broader question for me is, okay, I went through the temple, you went through the temple in the mid to late '80s when the temple ceremony was markedly different. And we made covenants, and some of them were worded very differently. It is not as big a deal for the men as it is for the women because at the time the women covenanted to obey their husbands. And then that was changed to they covenanted to obey the law of the LORD and hearken unto their husbands. And now that is gone. And now they covenant directly with God the same way the men do at the same time, although they've slipped in language in other covenants. So now the sealing covenant, for instance, includes a phrase that says the men will preside. That was absent when I was sealed. And so I look at this and I go, well, all they've done is really sort of shuffle all of this around But they don't really want to say, okay, men and women are equal completely, and our covenantal relationship with God is identical. And I've read things saying, from women saying, so which covenant am I bound to? Am I bound to the one that's there now? Am I bound to the one that I went through before? You know, and I think of, okay, the things that were removed from the temple, They're very disturbing, the penalties. I covenanted never to reveal those. It gets very, very confusing. And I'm thinking probably your perspective as someone who has left is markedly different. I bet I look a little bit silly to you in terms of how I'm thinking about this.

No, not at all. Not at all. Just listening intently to what you were saying there, Jim Bennett, you were talking earlier, so many things that you said there that were discussing, you know, what do the changes mean? I would go, I think it goes beyond that. You know, what did the original principles and doctrines and penalties and tokens, what did they mean? You know, what did they mean before these changes? You know, I had so many questions about what am I getting into? What does that actually mean? You know, we take these covenants extremely seriously. They implement every aspect of the membership life in a very personal, in a very significant way. And so what are we agreeing to? What are we committing to, and when there's the different versions, variations of the endowment which have changed significantly, I think from the very beginning, you know, when Joseph Smith was learning about the endowment through his Freemasonry experience. And we've talked a bit about that. And there's some, there's another conversation there. There's a very interesting conversation there. How has the endowment and the rituals, how they've evolved over time and the change and watered down, et cetera. And to your point, you know, do they, you know, does the pre-1990 Temple ritual endowment. Is that the prevailing version that we need to subscribe to? Does this trump the other one? What do you commit to? It's very confusing. So me going through the temple for the first time in the late '80s was very confusing. Lots of questions. You couldn't talk about them outside the temple. I was given— let me go back. During the endowment session when he talked about loud laughter, I have a bit of confession here. A mate of mine who was also a convert to the church, remember our backgrounds were different. I was not versed in all the rules and regulations that you were growing up. I wasn't as conditioned. I was this rough and ready working-class council estate 20-year-old unfamiliar with any of this going through the first time. And when they talked about loud laughter, a mate of mine actually burst out laughing quite loud. At that very point because I can be quite loud and I like to laugh out loud. And we got these looks from almost everyone at the time that they're frowning upon us, disapproving of our loud laughter. And none of it made sense to me. And so, for many years, and I was a veil worker as well for a number of years and I had questions. I'm just thinking about this. I went to the temple, I taught temple preparation class, which really didn't prepare people to go to the temple.

Not at all.

When you go on the temple prep training class, I don't know if you're aware that the teachers get training, right? So, the teachers are trained to deliver this, I think it's a 6-week program of temple prep, and you give an instruction of what you can and what you can't talk about. And I think the most important things that you need to talk about, understand, is what you're committing to. They're left, they're not discussed, and you can't talk about those in the in the lesson. You couldn't talk about garments. You see garments now on the church website. You couldn't talk about them, let alone show an image of them, right? So people were not prepared. And then going forward, when I was a veil worker in the temple and I would ask questions of the temple president or the temple counselor or some of the people have been going there for many years, questions, what about this token? What about this penalty? Why in the you know, in the pre-1990s, did we have to, um, which really disturbed me, by the way, and I had nightmares, little nightmares where I had to slit my throat, slit my bowels open to simulate. That was absolutely awful for me. It was just, it just filled me with fear, not the spirit of, of God. It, it was just awful. And I dare not speak or even think, um, anything that was going into the temple at that time. And so when I was having these conversations with people who were very seasoned in temple activity for decades, a lot of the questions they couldn't answer, and they said, Ian, just rely on faith. If you're struggling with it, pray about it. Things will be— the answer is all will be revealed. Further light and knowledge will be revealed just like it was to Joseph Smith, et cetera. And so I got very few answers, even in the temple, even in the celestial room. That is the only place I think you can talk about these things. The church says that it's sacred, not secret. I disagree. I think it is secret. You are specifically told, instructed, directed not to talk about these things under literal pain of death. Bad things will happen to you if you talk about these things outside the temple. And there's only a time and a certain place, a certain time that these things can be, can be discussed. And so the whole experience for me, and I'm sure many others, is complex. You know, what does it mean? What do these changes mean? Do they prevail now? And certainly would like to get into some of the, you know, some of the changes. And then the other thing about the loud laughter that you kind of opened this conversation to, I do know that from my research, my studies, that Joseph Smith himself acknowledged that he was a frivolous person and he could be quite boisterous and aligned to loud laughter and funny wrestle. He'd wrestle, he'd loud laughter, be noisy. And I think he said that about himself at times in a number of different sources. And I found that great because I thought that was— People said the loud laughter, well, Joe Smith was boisterous, he was frivolous, he was playful is the word I think. And, and I am like that, and I've been like that, and I found that to be very human and very normal. And so laughter, you know, um, what did that mean? I had so many questions about that, and all loud laughter, and, and I got so many answers, you know, from different people, from, you know, very, uh, strict member in Scotland that you, you, you can't even— if you smile too much, that, that's considered to be disrespectful. Right through to, you know, oh, you can laugh loud as long as you're not having any bad thoughts about loud laughing. There's a piece in the temple, I'm not sure if it's still there because I've not been there for a while, but I've been in the temple where on a few occasions where he talks about, you know, we're doing the prayer circle and anyone with any bad feeling towards anyone in this circle should leave the circle and I've had, I've seen 3 times or 4 times where someone's actually left and then been advised or told in the past that if you're laughing loud about someone's downfall or laughing about someone personally, that is a sin. So if someone that you don't like, you're laughing about them or someone falls down in the street and it looks funny, laughing about that, that's not, God doesn't approve of that. And so it's confusing. And what does the, you know, I go back to what I was saying, what do the original principles, doctrines, tokens, rituals mean? I think that historical context is really important to understand where this whole thing came from and what were those fundamental things taught in the early stages. Secondly, what are the different doctrines, principles, and rituals that were taught through the evolution of the, of the temple, going right up until 1990, and then the changes that have been made since. So that historical context of the evolutionary changes with the temple experience, because it's so important, Jim Bennett. People go to the temple every day and they get up in the morning at 5 o'clock in the morning. I've done it myself. And then they'll have a whole week-long session at the temple. If in UK, you'll go down to London to the, at the time before Preston was built, you'd travel to London as I did for a week and you'd be up super early. You'd go through the whole thing every day for a week. And it had such a profound impact on your time, on your life, on every decision. It was filtered through the temple covenants, et cetera. What did all that mean? It was never explained to me as a temple prep teacher. Even now, 35 years, you know, in the church— I'm not in it anymore, but, you know, 30 since I was 16, right, almost 40 years— still don't understand a lot about the Temple Church. If I was still active and still going, I can guarantee that I would have still many of the same questions now, and more questions now with the changes that I made, um, with very few answers that I've sought and never really obtained.

And when you talk about the history of the temple, I've had these discussions and I've looked into this a little bit. Initially, the temple ceremony was, was essentially a day-long experience beginning with washings and anointings where they didn't bother— not only did you not wear garments or anything else, they didn't bother with the shield. The washings and anointings initially were completely naked, and you would go through this and, uh, you know, there was a preacher that came out. This was still in the pre-1990 version that we went to. There was a a preacher that would come out and Satan would hire him to preach to the people. And he would, you know, recite sectarian creeds. Do you believe in a God who sits on the top of a topless throne, whose circumference is everywhere, but his radius is nowhere? You know, and all this kind of thing. And then he demands to be paid. My father says that what he went through, the preacher used to lead the entire congregation in a sectarian hymn, and Dad couldn't even sing the hymn. It wasn't a hymn that's in the hymn book. It wasn't a Mormon hymn. It was a Protestant hymn. Oh, and also the penalties— by the time we went through, the description of the penalties had been removed. We were told the penalties just indicated various ways in which life may be taken, whereas the original penalties use the Masonic language. That talked about, you know, "May my bowels gush out and be eaten by the birds of the field," and all kinds of just gruesome, gruesome imagery. That had, had gone by the time I went through. I went through in 1987. And so we were on our missions and I came back and it was changed shortly after I came back because I got back in September of '89. It was changed. I'm not sure what the month was, but it was changed in 1990, and they removed the penalties altogether. So the temple ceremonies have gotten shorter. They've gotten more focused. Harold B. Lee apparently complained at one point when they were shortening. He says this is supposed to be a long, solemn ceremony, that the length and the boredom were features to him. You know, and so you look at it more and more and more and you just kind of— yeah, I mean, the questions— I mean, I used to sort of niggle over word choices. You know, there's something really significant about the fact that Satan doesn't say, "I'm doing that which I have done in other worlds." When he gives him the fruit, he says, "That which has been done," you know, and And you look for sort of a secret meaning in all these words and all these phrases. And what really hit me this time when I went through yesterday was that's a, that's a silly exercise because those words are completely subject to change, you know, and so many of them were. I mean, lots of them were. They've done things like it used to be they would say, you know, Jehovah, have you done all these things? Yes, I've done them. Elohim. Oh, it is well, which doesn't grammatically make any sense. And I remember as a grammar Nazi thinking, that doesn't work. Well, maybe there's just some reason for it. Maybe, maybe God's teaching me. And now they say it is good, which is the grammatically correct thing to say, you know. Or they used to say, after you make your covenant, they would say, that will do. Now they say, thank you. You know, I mean, that doesn't change any kind of doctrine or anything, but, but so there were changes. So a few of the changes that I thought were interesting when I went through the first time I went through, I went through the Salt Lake Temple live session. So you have these old actors who were, who were mumbling their lines and hard to hear. And Satan comes out and he's dressed up in this regalia that includes a purple apron. And the line was, "What is that apron you have on?" He said, "It is an emblem of my power and priesthoods." Priesthoods? Yes, priesthoods. But after 1990, they took out the priesthoods part, but they still made reference to the apron, but they never showed it. I remember looking like, "Well, I can't see the apron. It doesn't look like the one I saw in 1987 in the Salt Lake Temple." but they made reference to it. Well, that reference is gone now. And the other thing, I was reading an article from somebody who was complaining. He says, look, it's always terrible because the first thing that Adam and Eve do after they fall is they obey Satan's instructions to make an apron. You know, Satan says, see, you are naked. Father will see your nakedness. Find you fig leaves and make you aprons. Quick, hide. Okay, they've changed that. So Satan no longer— Satan says you're naked and they panic. And then they figure out for themselves that they should build aprons or whatever it is. And for people who, as I listened to those kinds of changes, I thought people who take the temple ceremony literally, like they assume that this is a journalistic recounting of a historical event. That's got to drive them crazy, because if this was a historical event, then either Satan told them to make aprons or he didn't. And the fact that we changed it in the ceremony wouldn't have changed the history. I no longer see it as anything but symbolism. And they use a whole bunch of— they interject a lot of, "This is symbolic, this is symbolic," throughout the ceremony. You know, the fact that it is so malleable and so subject to change, and even the covenants themselves can be changed. The language of the covenants has changed. They changed the language of the marriage covenant— not the marriage, the chastity covenant. Used to be they would talk about to your husband or wife to whom you are legally or lawfully wedded. They don't use the words husband and wife anymore. I don't remember specifically what the exact wording is, I've given up trying to crack the code. I've given up trying to find the sort of secret nuggets of wisdom that are hidden in this clunky language because the language is clunky. It's sort of this 18th century, 19th century, you know, oh, you will not. Well, we shall see. I mean, nobody talks that way, but maybe they did in the 19th century. And I used to think there was some kind of significance in that, too. But so it then becomes, all right, I'm going to take the temple on my own terms. I'm going to go in and what I can find that is valuable, I am going to take it and hold it to my heart and it's going to be part of me. And anything that I don't find valuable, no thanks, I'm just not interested. And I don't see how you can do it any other way given the kinds of changes, because a lot of misogynist guys talk about the fact that, look, you need to know, women, you really are supposed to— we're the guys in charge. Even as the temple softens and softens and softens that language without really fully getting rid of it. If you have that kind of an absolutist view of the temple, I think it's nothing but disappointment. And I think this— it doesn't, but it should convince members of the church that all of us are in this together. All of us are learning together, and all of us make mistakes together. And that includes all the way up to the highest levels of the church, that these men are doing the best they can to, to lead and guide this church. But if they never make mistakes, then why has the temple ceremony changed? I mean, if it was perfect when Joseph Smith revealed it, then it should never have changed. And it's changed significantly over time.

It has. Yeah. We, we're talking about undoubtedly the most important aspect of a, a committed, devoted member's life. We have lost count how many times President Nelson and, and others have talked about keep, keep on the covenant path. Is talking about the covenants, but he's also talking about the temple covenants. There's endless talks, references over every generation from the very beginning when the church was organized to going to the temple, understanding the covenants, keeping the covenants, et cetera, et cetera. So because it's so important, so significant in a committed member's life. Every word in that temple experience, from washings and anointings to the wedding ceremonies, sealings, endowment, etc., is very, very important. You know, when you're talking about changes in the language of Satan and Adam and Eve, you know, go get aprons, see you naked, run, hide. I got I got something important from that. I got, first of all, that actually happened. I took it literally, you know, 'cause I was committed. Secondly, there was a reason why Satan said that. You know, he was now putting, you know, some responsibility on Adam and Eve. The onus was on them. There's some pressure on them to, you know, to go deal with the nakedness that they just learned that they were naked. They were told that they were naked and that was a bad thing. You're naked, bad, go get aprons. They didn't know that before Satan had told them. So Satan plays a very distinct role in the covenant teaching elements of the temple experience. So those words are very, very important. So if they remove that, does that, to your point at the very beginning, what does that mean? What does these, you said at the beginning, what does these changes mean? And I think people will be having questions, they'll be wrestling with this. They have questions, they don't actually get the answers, they have to go back to the temple, I guess. And then the other— I had a question for you. You talked about changes to the 5 ordinances, or one of the ordinances of chastity. So I've got— can you be more specific on the changes to the law of chastity? And can you also tell us what changes, if any, have been made to the law of obedience, law of sacrifice, law of the gospel, and the Law of Consecration? Is there any other changes in relation to those?

Well, I'd have to go back and find the wording, 'cause I was struck by the wording in the Law of Chastity. I don't think it changes the substance of it, but it used to be, I just remember, well, when I first went through, the wording was the Law of Chastity is that a man or woman shall have no sexual intercourse. Which seemed to be a really clinical, harsh word.

I think that's correct.

Yeah. No sexual intercourse except with their husbands to whom they are legally and lawfully wedded.

Yeah.

In 1990, that was changed to no sexual relations, which is a gentler euphemism. Although I've heard some people say, well, that, that's stuck 'cause intercourse, it meant that you could do everything up to intercourse. Mm-hmm. You were fine. But the minute you— I mean, this is how seriously people take the temple.

Yep.

And how much they dissect and parse the language of the temple. So even that change, I think that change was just a trying to use a softer, gentler word for the same thing. And then in 2019, when they changed the temple to change the covenants for the woman and have her covenant directly with God rather than covenant to her husband. They changed the chastity covenant to say, "Between your husband and wife according to God's law," which I took to mean— so don't think that this is for gay marriage, you jerks. Which seemed to be the message.

Right.

Yeah. So, so, so the language this time was it's that the sons of God or the daughters of God will have no sexual relations with anyone except to those to whom they are legally and lawfully wedded according to God's law. So that isn't different really, but the husband and wife words aren't there. And so I thought, now why did they feel like they needed to do that? And if I take them at face value, because they say at the beginning, the covenants haven't changed. All this is just procedure. The covenants haven't changed. Well, then why are you changing the language of them if they haven't changed? What was wrong with them? So it's interesting, at the beginning they list the covenants. So there's a 10-minute introduction. Where that has this sort of soft music playing behind it, has lots of pictures of Jesus, very similar to the pictures you'll see in any chapel. There aren't any kind of new and exciting pictures, although there were some I don't know that I'd seen before and some that I know I had seen before.

Is Jesus white?

Jesus is— well, Jesus is a BYU football player.

Of course. Yeah.

Yeah. So Anyway, no, he can't be a BYU football player because he's still got a beard. But anyway, so they say in the list, they say you'll be asked to make 5 covenants. And they list them and they say, and they are the law of obedience, the law of sacrifice, the law of the gospel, the law of chastity, and the law of consecration. Now, If I haven't had any prep beyond that, I don't know what any of those things means. And in fact, when you get to them in the old ceremony, you still didn't know what they meant. They would say, "You covenant to live the law of obedience as described in the Book of Doctrine and Covenants." And that was it. And okay, yeah, sure I do. Well, it's interesting because when you get to that point in the ceremony now, They say, "Do you covenant to live the law of obedience, which is..." And then they get very specific as to what it means. And I can't remember those specifics. They were all very reasonable from what I heard and consistent with what I'd always understood it to mean. So they do enumerate them there. So the benefit is that people can make a more informed choice as to whether or not they're going to make these covenants. At the same time, that's still a very difficult time to back out. You see that list of 5 covenants and you go, "I don't know." So you stand up and leave. I have a member of my family, and I'm extended family, who did that and who has not been back to the temple, who got through it and got to the point— well, I'm going to reveal a gender here because she had to veil her face. And she didn't want to veil her face and this is wrong, this feels terrible, I'm going to leave. And she left before completing the endowment. That's the only case of that I've ever heard of. I've never seen it. I think it's very rare. And I think when you go through for the first time, you are under so much pressure. I really feel like temple prep needs to include specific discussion of those covenants at length, in depth, before they are made. All right. So as you go through this new version, at various times in the ceremony, all of the action sort of comes to a halt and they discuss, discuss how this has to do with the life of Jesus and how Jesus wants us to do this. And picture of Jesus comes up and all this kind of thing. So the word covenant is used a whole lot more now than it was before. For instance, when Peter, James, and John come to visit Adam and Eve for the first time and they say, uh, have you any tokens or signs? And Satan says, have you any money? Well, now they say, have you been true to the covenant that you made in the Garden of Eden? Which is interesting. I mean, the whole idea of the covenant path— they never use the term covenant path, thankfully, because that term drives me crazy. But everything's about covenant. I mean, you can see Russell M. Nelson's fingerprints all over this. I mean, this is very clearly Russell Nelson's interpretation of what the endowment should be, which is fine. But it's just very, very obvious that he had a hand in this. I would not be surprised if a lot of this was written by him. So the emphasis is on covenants and obedience and obedience and obedience and obedience. And if you don't walk up to every single one of these covenants, you'll be in Satan's power. And you, you need to obey. You need to obey. You need to obey. Oh, and by the way, here's Jesus. It doesn't feel like Jesus to me because the reason we have a savior, the reason Jesus matters is that we're not going to perfectly walk up to all of those covenants. We're going to make mistakes. We're going to screw up. And the message of the temple is when you do that, well, you're giving yourself over to Satan. And, and, oh, but here's Jesus. It just didn't— it felt shoehorned. And the other thing, at one point, and this is, I think, the subject of an entire podcast all by itself, At one point, they quote the Book of Mormon scripture about grace. I firmly believe that one of the biggest problems in the church now is that we refuse to acknowledge or accept or teach about or do anything to understand the concept of grace. And grace to me is at the heart of the Atonement. We are saved by grace. We are not saved because we are righteous. We are saved because we are not righteous. We do not deserve to be saved, but Jesus saves us anyway. And, and that's the beauty and the glory of Christ and of the message. And that's the message that is all over the Book of Mormon. But they choose the one verse in the Book of Mormon that says, "It is by grace we are saved after all we can do." And it's used to say, okay, so in other words, work yourself to the bone, obey, obey, obey, obey, and then, you know, if you're good enough, then Jesus will take care of the last, you know, you pay your $3,000 and Jesus will pay the last 50 cents. And there's a scholar by the name of Dan McClellan who used to work for the church. He wrote a paper who talked about the fact that whoever wrote that verse in the Book of Mormon, whether you believe it was Joseph Smith or whether you believe it was Nephi, Whoever wrote it, it is very clear from the 19th century context of how those words are used that "after all we can do" does not mean the— what it is used to mean in this new temple ceremony. It means despite all we can do. Like, at the end of the day, after all we can do, it's grace that saves us. You know, it's a phrase, and he shows several examples of how that phrase is used in other things Joseph Smith wrote and other things that were written in the 19th century, proving that that's exactly what that verse means. But we have taken it to mean, uh, look, you earn your salvation and Jesus sort of puts— sprinkles a little grace on it and all is well. And so that was my biggest problem with all of the Jesus insertions, is that this was obedience Jesus. This was not grace Jesus. And the older I get, the more I realize how far I fall short, even as hard as I try. And I can either develop scrupulosity and hate myself and do all the kinds, you know, have the kind of guilt and shame that fueled my mission, or I can allow Christ's grace to work within me, help make me a better person. And that's the Jesus that I did not feel. Was represented here. I can't decide what actress Eve looks like. She looks like somebody very famous, and as soon as I see her, I'll be able to point it out.

I thought that—

what?

But Helen Mirren would play a really good, uh— oh, she's, she's probably an old Eve then.

She's an old Eve. She would be a whole—

I always liked the British accent as the devil. Um, you know, British accents.

Uh, did he have a British accent?

Well, there's some of the devils, some of Satan's had British accents. Um, oh, they sounded British. I think one of them did. And, and I think the British accent can sound really evil. Um, yeah. Yes. So, uh, but, but you think this person's famous then? This Eve is famous, you think?

Well, she's not famous, but she looks like somebody famous.

Okay.

Adam looks like a combination of Tom Cruise and Brandon Flowers with a bad haircut.

Okay.

But what's weird, so they've gotten rid of the witness couple and they've gotten rid of any interaction, like any physical contact. So you see the signs and tokens on the screen and then you're not, you're not asked to make them until you get to the veil.

And that's a big change.

Well, that happened apparently during COVID I hadn't been since COVID so that did not happen in this most recent stage.

Okay.

Also, you stay seated the whole time. And I thought, are they just trying to make it easier for people to fall asleep?

Yeah.

Because you don't have to stand up to make your covenants. The prayer circle is unchanged. What's weird is that Adam and Eve, you know, so it used to be that the movie stops and Adam says, "These are true messengers. Pay attention to what they have to say." And this lovely music swells, and then you get into everything else. Well, now, because there's no witness couple, it's Adam and Eve in temple clothing. At an altar, and Peter, James, and John. It was interesting because the guy playing Peter is in the Tabernacle Choir, and they're in this sort of nondescript room, and they're doing all the temple covenants, and they're making all of the signs so you can see them. And that seemed just a little bit strange, but I, you know, I don't know how else you would do it.

I'd like to play Satan with a Sean Connery Action. I'd like to say, "Sean Connery, she, she, you are naked. Go get your pants. Quick, hide, run." I feel shaken but not stirred. I think a Satan Sean Connery twist would be, I think people will be lining up to come to the temple if you had a little bit of— I remember visiting the Salt Lake Temple. I've been there a few times. Real quick here. Went through several times pre-1990. And the funny thing, I burst out loud laughter, got looked upon as well quite by a few people, where Jesus Christ had forgotten his lines. There's a lot of senior folks who were acting it out literally, as you know, it's a live endowment session. And Satan came to his rescue. And I thought that was really good of Satan that had come to help Jesus Christ. And I quit that, you know, Satan's not such a bad guy after all. But I found that absolutely hilarious. I kind of throw that in there because I find it, it's just so funny and prone to loud laughter. How evil of me. But anyway, back to you. Go ahead.

No. Well, no, there are lots of fun stories like that. We would go through the Salt Lake Temple was our temple when we first got married. And we went through after 1990 and sometimes they would forget and try to lapse back into the old language. No, no, no, no, we don't do that anymore. But the best was there was this one guy who was a— he was playing Peter and he had a very pronounced limp. And he walked up to the front and my wife heard this. And she heard this woman behind her whisper as loud as she could, this older woman, and she didn't care who heard her. "It's a nice looking man, but I think he's a cripple." You know, so I mean, we're going to lose all of that because the Salt Lake Temple isn't a live session anymore. President Nelson has gutted the Salt Lake Temple, gotten rid of all of the pioneer era murals, and is transforming it into another temple just like all the rest of them. And that breaks my heart. It really makes me sad that they're doing that.

I don't know why. Yeah, he's just so much history there.

Yeah, there's so much history. And, and the temple, the endowment, I mean, I prefer a shorter endowment. This endowment, by the way, is 13 minutes longer than the endowment from 2019 that it's replacing. And I'd say that at least that most of that, if not all of it, is the introduction, because the introduction just really gets into depth as to what's going to happen. In a perfect world, I would love to see a 10-minute endowment. I'd love to see an endowment where you go and you make your covenants and you do your signs and tokens and you go through the veil, bada-bing, bada-boom, and you're done. But there is something valuable about knowing that the original, or at least the vestiges of the original endowment, still exists somewhere. That there are still people who are going through that live ritual experience that that's being preserved, and it's not. It's been discarded completely. And I think, hoping maybe we will come back to it when we realize what we've lost. Overall, as I look at the temple and as I look at the temple's relationship to my life, I am happy to engage with the temple in ways that will lift and inspire me to live a more Christlike life. And I am encouraged by what I see as efforts to equip the endowment with the tools to do that. And I think that the instinct to bring more of Christ into the endowment is a good one. I don't think it works yet. Hopefully it will. Hopefully we can do something with it. But I came out of this session thinking, okay, these are positive changes. I would like to see more changes. And I also kind of came out of the session completely absolved of my responsibility to reconcile it with previous sessions. I mean, that would, that would have been a huge thing for me 30 years ago, and it's absolutely not an issue for me at all. They could swap out an entirely new temple ceremony that has none of the same language and none of any of that, and I'd be fine with it.

Thank you for that. Just a few thoughts, bullet point thoughts. Thinking, listening to your experience there, I think if I was going through the temple for the first time now, it would be a lot easier for someone like me. To, you know, experience it. The first experience was traumatic. It was disturbing. I was— I almost left the church. It really, really affected me. I felt I'd joined a cult, a very cultish— and it was a very deeply disturbing experience for me and very traumatic. I too, I was angry at one point that and jump in on this if you will, please. But when I went to the temple the first time and since, when they talk about if anyone wishes to leave with their own free will, they can do so now. When I went through the first time, I didn't know what I was getting into. When you sign a contract or you sign a mortgage or you You know, you sign some insurance, you know the terms and conditions, you know what you're getting into, you know all the facts, right? And you need to have that information in order to make an informed decision. I felt that was taken away from me, and I had no idea, Jim, as you, you know, we all know those who've gone through the temple, you don't know what's, you know, for the first time, you don't know what's ahead of you, right? And I still feel the church has a responsibility to, be much more open, much more transparent about what people are getting into and what does this all mean and where's the history. And it's got a long way. The changes are good. It sounds like they're improvements. We've still got a long way to go. The other thing I want to highlight as well, third point, it is an important point. The question is, and I use this a lot in business, I'm not trying to sound cynical here, but what are the drivers behind these changes? Throughout this conversation, you've said, you know, why are they doing that if they, if it was perfect or, you know, it didn't need to change, why, if they didn't make any mistakes, why have they changed? I think you said that. Well, as I listen to that, I think about, you know, what's driving these changes. And I think the answer to that question is the answer to the reason why they will never, the church will never reposition itself away from the fundamental doctrine of the church, which is We are saved by grace after all we can do. And the two are tied together, I think, um, they're very much, uh, very much part of the temple experience that the church, in order for the church to maintain commitment from its members, and yes, I'll say financial commitment because there's the 15 yes or no questions in the temple recommend, which I'd like to get into in a podcast in more detail at some point, uh, those, uh, you know, those covenants, uh, you know, uh, keep on the covenant path, the tithing, the They say, you know, there's quotes where— I can't remember where it came from or who said it, but we ask a lot of our members. No other church on the, on the earth apparently, um, or some quote, asks as much of its members. And the reason why we do that is to, to bring people to salvation. We ask a lot of our church members, and the church certainly does. And in order to maintain that commitment, that devotion, you have to Being saved by grace, I think from the church perspective, dilutes that commitment. It undoes the need for church, undoes the need for, look, if I'm gonna get saved regardless, 'cause of my imperfections, et cetera, and that's what other faiths teach, being saved. I met many people on the doorstep who's gotten to work saved, and we pushed back and we would say, not only without, works, you know, you're not saved. You have to make an effort. A good friend of mine in Scotland, actually, I won't mention his name, is a former stake president, I believe, and counselor 3 times, has left the church and is now an advocate of this new principle, you know, that we're saved by grace despite, you know, all we can do, to your point. And the church won't change that because it needs to have that lifelong devotion, that lifelong commitment, that lifelong covenant by covenant commitment and strictness, including tithing, including service, because that's what ties not just the person's life, but their standing in the church where they get a calling. It ties to their standing in the family. They tie this to— it's very smart, very clever, really. And again, forgive me for being sound and cynical, but it ties generation to generation over time and throughout all eternity. The temple experience is a multi-generational experience for families, right? And you know that more than I do. I'm a convert to the church. You understand that more than I do. And so it will never dilute that after all we can do of it because it needs that work element and that commitment level instead of, hey, you know, we'd have to do any of this stuff, we're going to be saved anyhow. There was a talk, and I, I, I, it's a really important talk, and I can't remember, and I've read it 2, 3 times, can't remember the person. I'd love to do a podcast on this, it's so important. There's a general authority that gave a talk years ago, and in, in general conference, I think it was in the '80s, and I must remember the name, um, I'll research after this podcast. And he gave a talk. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, he's the one, he's the one. He's the one. Thank you, your memory is better than mine. And he said, I got from that, one of the key things I got from that was, look, if we live in the gospel naturally, we're doing things because we want to, not because we have to, not because we're keeping covenants. You know, we're told what to do. We go on a mission, you have to tick all these boxes. Did you get up on time? Did you companion study? Did you do this? Did you do that? You know, being instructed on everything. And the church says, by the way, that we shouldn't It's not good to be commanded in all things, which is another conversation. He says that if you're living naturally the gospel, loving people because you want to be like that because of Christ, because of who Christ is, and you want to be kind and thoughtful and do it motivated by love, essentially, he said we won't need all the church programs. We won't need all the church institutions. We won't need all these different layers, et cetera. That was the message I got from that talk. I thought that was One of the most profound talks I've ever heard. The church, by the way, had him redo that talk with a cough, what they call a cough soundtrack in the background. Is that correct? That's what I heard. He had to go back in, they changed his wording, rejig it, make some serious changes, which he did. He had a cough soundtrack in the background to make it sound like he was still at conference and they They published it as though the second version, as though he was at conference, which I thought was a little bit disingenuous and a little bit misleading. But the main principle I got from that was the original talk was, hey, we'll live the gospel. We don't need all these different instructions on every single level. I thought he was right, and I still do to this day. The church, that's a risk to the church. So The question I'm asking is what's driving this, right, these changes? And it ties to the need and the church to take this very seriously. It takes impact from public opinion, political opinion, and it definitely takes very seriously, perhaps more seriously, anything that threatens the dilution or watering down of members' time, service, financial commitment. You're not going to see a change in position on the works piece of being saved, right? We ask ourselves what's driving these changes, and I think it's trying to wrestle with the need to maintain that lifelong membership commitment and the need to balance public opinion and member opinion and try to modernise— that's the word I would use— modernise what is a 18th, 19th century Presbyterian, Protestant, Freemasonry structured organized events and experience. And I think you're going to see more changes where there's going to be watering down and trying to modernize it and bring it into some level of less cultish. But it will never, I don't think it will, convinced it will never take away the need for people to covenant to make a lifelong promise and covenant with their assets and their financial covenants and etc., etc., because the church relies on that for its survival and for its success. And it will— it's not in any— if you're a business, again, without being cynical, the one rule of your business, and people will know this out there, you protect your investment. That's number one. You protect and safeguard your investment. You got a house, you protect it. If you got a business, you protect it. If you have investments, you're on them every day, diligently looking at your investment. And the members are the church's biggest investment in the church financially, the service. Look at what would happen if the, if the, if the people didn't give the service that they did. The church simply wouldn't function. It couldn't pay for, you know, clergy like Church of England do, or Church of Scotland, which pays its clergy. The church, I mean, could afford it, you know, I think we'd all be doing extremely well. I wonder what the salary would be for a bishop, by the way. It's interesting, or a state president. I'd love to know what the salary would be for that. But you're going to see more changes, positive changes. We said at the very beginning that, you know, we want to see the church improve, right? Where can it improve? Where can the changes be made? And That means that it will be a better church, a more inclusive church, a more inclusive experience. It's going in the right direction on some things for sure. It's going in the opposite direction on some other things. As time goes on and some of the leaders are no longer there, I think we will see a further modernization, an advancement of these universal principles and a more inclusive approach. Who knows, you know, if years to come, if the church is more inclusive and somewhat kinder, you know, would I even go back or even go to a service? I don't know. We'll see. Who knows?

My goal is to help make the church a place where Ian Wilkes can feel at home.

Right.

If that happens, yes, you know, then I'll know we've done it right.

I'm encouraged by the, you know, the changes where they make people feel a bit more comfortable And to your point, if they can just explain what things are and what they mean and why is it important and how does it impact you and just provide a substance behind the messaging instead of window dressing, that will be so important for people that think and not church broke, people actually think and ask have genuine questions that really want to know how these covenants, why they're so important to keep. I was real quick, just finishing off here. I was always terrified because I did really well on the temple endowment, all the wording, both on the patron side and on the veil side, until I got to write it to the very end where I would always screw up on the final few words. "Should run and not be weary," "Strengthen the loins and the sinews through all generations time." I can't remember all the wording. And the last two lines I'd screw up almost every time. And then in the Celestial Kingdom, I had a temple council say, "Ian, you've got to get that wording down." I said, "I know." I said, "I just seem to mess it up." And he said, "If you don't get it word perfect, you can't enter the kingdom of God." I went, you're kidding me. He said, no. I said, so I said, you are joking. This is a Cecil room. He said, no. He said, if you get one word wrong, I said, what if I've devoted my entire life to serving and then doing things behind the scenes and being righteous? So he said, no. He said, if you get those words wrong at the veil, you're not going to make it into the celestial kingdom. One, I thought he was talking bullshit. I didn't tell him that in the celestial room. I don't think that would've been appropriate. But he was, I didn't believe that for one second. And two, I just thought the people that do believe that, they must be, can you imagine getting into the, you know, you die, you go to the veil, and you get all the words, you know, and let's say you've lived a crappy life, you've not been very kind to people, 'cause that's the other part of this, isn't it? Covenant keeping. One thing going to the show is quite another living it, isn't it? Um, and then you go there and you mess up a few words, and Peter says, look, Jim, you know, you're awesome. Your family's been in the church since the very beginning of time. That, you know, David or Mackay is like waving at you. That— McKay, Mackay in Scotland— waving behind, Jim, Jim, uh, you know, we're here. And then Heber J. Grant, Jim, we're over here. And you're like, hey guys, and they're like, Ollie Farmer, like, I can't get in. What do you mean? I messed up. I'll see you guys. And where are you going? Going down, I'm going to the elevator. And what's going on? Yeah, I messed up. I just, the whole thing is absurd for goodness me. But I know people that really were terrified. Even somebody who passed away shared with me, they were afraid, they were terrified that they wouldn't memory was failing in old age, and I gave them a blessing. And the blessing was, by the way, to remember. They said to me, can you bless me to remember specific— to remember the wording in the temple? It gave her hope, and she died without worry, from what I understand. But it's scary stuff.

I don't think any of us are going to be barred from the kingdom because we can't remember some words. But if you remember these words, if you're listening to this, please be sure to like us and subscribe to our podcast and join us in our next edition of Inside Out. Thank you, Ian.

Thank you, Jim Bennett.