In May 2021, as renovation and preservation efforts at the Salt Lake Temple were in full force, Church President Russell M. Nelson donned a hard hat and yellow vest and visited the construction site.
As he stood looking at the project he used three words: “massive,” “amazing” and “inspiring.”
Just as he explained when he announced the closure of the temple in 2019, “obsolete systems within the building” were being replaced and safety and seismic concerns were being addressed.
“We are sparing no effort to give this venerable temple, which has become increasingly vulnerable, a foundation that will withstand the forces of nature into the Millennium,” he said in general conference a few months after visiting the temple site.
During his visit, he walked across scaffolding to inspect the temple’s roof and the steel roof trusses that had been installed on both sides of the original trusses.
He listened as experts detailed seismic engineering technology and the base isolation system that in an earthquake would isolate the earth’s movement from the temple above.
He inspected the temple’s original foundation, where he noted “the effects of erosion and gaps in the original stonework,” and he commented on the steel rods that were being grouted into the foundation to add strength.
He also walked into a tunnel being constructed to connect the temple with the Conference Center and looked back on a shoring wall, made of interlocking concrete piers installed around the outside of the temple to keep the soil contained and stable while workers dug below the level of the original foundation.
Nothing seemed to surpass his notice. He called it thrilling to see the work of craftsmen who were making the temple strong and firm while preserving its history.
Then he paused in the celestial room of the temple and shared a profound thought:
“To see that we can actually prolong the life of what Brigham Young and his colleagues did in the 19th century — well, it’s just been a thrill from start to finish,” President Nelson said.
But, he added, “it is easier to build a temple than it is to build a people worthy of the temple. It is the ordinances and covenants in the building that are the things that really matter.”
I could not get the statement out of my mind.
The project in which he was speaking is a multiyear, extensive, technical, cutting-edge renovation that will not only restore pioneer craftsmanship but will also preserve and protect it from “the forces of nature into the Millennium.”
And that is easier than building a “people worthy of the temple.”
It has now been three years since the day President Nelson walked through the temple. But his focus is still fixed on the temple.
During his nearly six years as President of the Church, President Nelson has announced 153 new temples — or 46% of the Church’s 335 total temples. He has also committed to building multiple temples in selected large metropolitan areas, such as Mexico City, Mexico, “where travel time to an existing temple is a major challenge.” And he has made possible the renovation of historic temples — including the St. George Utah Temple and the Manti Utah Temple.
But just as President Nelson emphasized in the celestial room of the Salt Lake Temple while inspecting the renovation and preservation efforts there, it is not the buildings, but the “ordinances and covenants in the building that are the things that really matter.”
In October 2022 general conference, President Nelson asked Latter-day Saints to focus on the temple “in ways you never have before.”
The Lord is also making it easier for each of us to become more spiritually refined, he said. “I promise that increased time in the temple will bless your life in ways nothing else can.”
I can’t remember many talks given by President Nelson during his time as President of the Church in which he did not mention temple ordinances and covenants or the gathering of Israel.
Even his first message as President of the Church was delivered from the Salt Lake Temple annex — with the intent to “start with the end in mind.”
“The end for which each of us strives is to be endowed with a power in a house of the Lord, sealed as families — faithful to the covenants made in a temple that qualify us for the greatest gift of God, that of eternal life,” he said.
He has reiterated over and over again since then the invitation to focus on the temple and the blessings that will come as a result.
Early pioneers sacrificed to build the Salt Lake Temple because they knew ordinances and covenants would bless their lives. The Church restores those temples, and builds others today, for the same reason.
“We regard a temple as the most sacred structure in the Church,” said President Nelson in April 2019 general conference after announcing plans to renovate the Salt Lake Temple. “As we speak of our temples old and new, may each of us signify by our actions that we are true disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. May we renovate our lives through our faith and trust in Him.”
— Sarah Jane Weaver is executive editor of the Church News.
