SUPERCUT: Secrets of the LDS Temple Endowment!

[Music] welcome ladies and gentlemen back to Ward radio. I'm your host Cardinellis, and today I'm joined via the interwebs, via Zoom, with none other than Jonah Barnes, comedic editor at large, the associate professor of all things apocryphal, who recently just completed a very popular live stream talking about all parts of the LDS temple endowment that are found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And believe it or not, a request has come in for "Secrets of the LDS Temple and Endowment featuring Jonah Barnes," the name of the live stream, okay, to be made into a super cut. Yes, it is true. In the comment section, we were able to fish out a specific plea to please make a super cut of this video, edit out every distraction from the endowment history information. So, first off, um, Devin Benan 68, I don't know what you're calling a distraction, all right, bro, but I think that our humorous interjections are quite necessary. However, in his magnanimous generosity, Jonah Barnes has actually compiled a 38-minute, uh, abbreviation, abridgement, just like Mormons abridge. You have abridged the LDS temple endowment live stream from 3 hours into just 38 minutes. I don't know if that, I don't know if that means we talk too much or what. Is there anything you want to say before we cut straight to the super, uh, super cut, my friend? We had a lot of fun on that live stream, but we just wanted to concentrate this down so you guys could enjoy it uninterrupted. So, we present the super cut of the LDS temple endowment live stream here, 35 minutes, 38 minutes or so, for your enjoyment. Super cut. Go.

Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the Ward Radio live stream. I am your host Carden Ellis, and today I'm joined in the studio by none other than Ed Thomas, fearsome bodyguard, and also Jonah Barnes. We're going to talk all things awesome endowment because it's one of the greatest, coolest, and most interesting aspects of our faith, and Jonah Barnes here is going to back it up with some serious manuscript science. Just so that everybody's aware, so the, if you're not familiar, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the LDS Church, has a temple ceremony called the endowment, and it is a sacred ceremony, and we do not apologize for things being sacred. So, the first thing you have to do is get it in your head that it's okay to be secret. That's the first thing we got to do. We have it in our head that anything secret is evil, and that is just that. We just have that in our head, and we have to get that out of our head. We're going to talk about how Jesus Christ didn't think that was evil because he was doing secret things all the time. We're going to talk about some of those things, and just a disclaimer for everybody out there, all three of us are temple endowed, uh, members of the Church of Jesus Christ. We have taken oaths, we will never reveal certain sacred things, and we won't. We're going to talk a lot about how this ceremony has been practiced for thousands of years, um, and it has turned up recently in the discoveries in Qumran, discoveries in the Nag Hammadi library, excavations in Egypt. Um, we're going to talk about where these things have popped up, uh, and how Joseph Smith again is just the best guesser in the world. Absolutely. He's just so good at guessing. You know, how does he do it? Just to lay the groundwork here, guys, the temple endowment has been changed 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 times. Jeez, really? Since the start of the restoration, the endowment has been changed 19 times. Jeez. Okay, just so that everybody's aware, the endowment changes, and that happens. It's okay.

In the book of Acts, chapter one of the book of Acts, the very first thing it says in the book of Acts, okay, uh, it says, "Hey, I'm writing this book. It's the book of Acts." He says, "The former treatise." He says, "I've already written a treatise. I've already written a book." We think Acts was written by Luke. Okay, what, give me the reference. I'll pull it on the screen. Uh, Acts chapter 1, verse 1, the very first words. Okay, Acts chapter 1, verse 1. It says, "The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach." So, he wrote another book about the stuff that Jesus did and taught. Okay, well, that sounds like the Gospel of Luke, right? Uh, yeah, most likely, probably, right? But now listen, he says, "all the things he began to teach until the day which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen." So, wait a minute, until the day he was taken up? Well, he was taken up after spending 40 days with the apostles after his death and resurrection. Where's that treatise? There's no treatise. There's no such treatise. Oh, interesting. Is this one of the lost books of the New Testament then? So, this is a, this is a record that's gone. So, Luke isn't, a ton of information. Yeah, Luke is not saying, "Oh, this is the, this is the Gospel of Luke." He says, "I, I wrote all the things he began to do and teach, but right before he was ascended to heaven." We don't have that. Nobody has that. The 40-day teaching. And we just assume because tradition holds that Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke as well as wrote The Acts of the Apostles, the the treatise he was referring to was the Gospel of Luke, but in reality, that's a misnomer based upon his very own explanation. Yeah, so if you read it carefully. So, he says, right after that, "to whom also he showed himself alive after his passion, after his death, by many infallible proofs, being seen of them 40 days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God." Wow. 40 days is a long time, especially when this resurrected Jesus Christ is revealing the secrets of the universe, and we don't have any of it. It's just gone. Okay, so then he says, uh, "and being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart out of Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me." Now, everybody assumes that that is the day of Pentecost, the gift of the Holy Ghost that comes two chapters later, okay? But the word "promise" in Greek is endo, which is where we get the word endowment. Oh, so in Acts chapter 1, he says the 40 days Jesus Christ was teaching this stuff that we don't have, and he said, "wait here for the endowment." Okay, so right at the very beginning of the book of Acts is talking about endowment, secret teachings that we've lost, and the 40-day ministry.

There once upon a time, there was a book, and, uh, actually, it was a letter that Clement of Alexandria wrote to somebody talking about a book that's all we have. And he says, "Hey, in this book, um, it has the hierophantic teachings of Jesus Christ in the Discord." Now, the most recent thing that I popped in there is a small excerpt from this letter written by Clement of Alexandria to, uh, Theodore, some guy we don't know who that was. He's talking about, um, that 40 days. Well, he's talking about he's talking about these secret writings. Okay, he says, "As for Mark, then, during Peter's stay in Rome, he wrote an account of the Lord's doings, not however declaring all of them, not yet hinting at the secret ones, but selecting what he thought most useful for increasing the faith of those who were being instructed." Okay, but when Peter died a martyr, Mark came over to Alexandria, bringing both his own notes and those of Peter, from which he he transferred to his former book the things suitable to whatever makes for progress toward knowledge. Thus he composed a more spiritual gospel for the use of those who were being perfected. So, there's two gospels, one for those being instructed, and one for those being perfected. Perfected. Okay, this is what Clement is explaining. He says, "Mark wrote two, and one of them is more complete. It's for those being perfected." Nevertheless, he did not yet divulge the things not to be uttered. So, even in the secret, in the secret Gospel of Mark, the perfected Gospel of Mark, he still didn't say, "I threw it in the in the Discord." Little, uh, little excerpt there. Okay, let me pull it up. He, he says, he still didn't put in the super sacred things, right? Um, he says, "nor did he write down the hierophant teachings of the Lord." Hierophant, if you know, is the Greek word for a temple worker. So, whoa, really? So, hierophantic teachings means secret temple teachings, is what it means. Okay, uh, but to the stories already written, he added yet others, moreover, brought in certain sayings of which he knew the interpretation would, as a mogue, lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of the truth, hidden by seven veils. Okay, so Clement of Alexandria is saying there's two Gospels of Mark, one is for the those being instructed, and that's what we have. We have the basics, the milk. Then he says there's a second Gospel of Mark that was written afterwards, and it's more secret, and it's for only for those being perfected. Wow. That's what this letter says. Yeah, and it's referring to these mysteries that he taught in the 40 days. And you believe that, uh, because the word for endowment from the Greek actually, uh, referred to, uh, what did you say? Um, what was the word again in the Greek? Endo. Endo. And that was referring to that 40-day, that 40-day time period after he was resurrected to the time he was taken up into, um, so you, taken up into heaven. So, you believe Jesus Christ, when it said he perfected these people, that he was actually providing them with the temple rites and ceremonies that would lead to spiritual perfection? Yes. And that this was hidden in, uh, a secret gospel, presumably during the apostasy, by those that were probably trying to protect it, I'd assume, or what? Yes, to keep it sacred. Because sacred is okay. That's the thing we mess up in our society. We think secret, well, it must be evil. No, secret is okay. And proof, by the way, if you read the Gospels, Jesus Christ preaches things to his apostles that he doesn't say to the disciples. Right? He preaches things to the disciples. He doesn't just say to anybody. There's levels, and there's levels all through the New Testament. So, don't pretend like it's all open for everybody all the time. That was never the, it was never the case. That is a purely Protestant, modern, mainline Christian view that every, anything secret must be evil. That is, it's just, that's not supported by scripture at all. Yeah, that doesn't make sense. And besides, half of the early Christians met in secret in order to not get killed during the years of, yeah. So, oh, you know what the ear, other early Christians were doing? Here's some other stuff that they were doing. Well, probably that was almost a topic for tonight, and I'm glad we're not covering that tonight. Awesome. Keep going.

All right, so in the first of our apocryphal works is the Pistis Sophia, which is a Gnostic script discovered in the Nag Hammadi library. So, so the the story goes that this secret book from Mark was taken to Alexandria, and the, and after the apostasy started happening and people started dying, these guys snuck in and made a copy of it and snuck out and started doing this secret knowledge. Okay, secret knowledge. Kno, that word knowledge that we get from English comes from the Greek word Gnosis, comes from these guys called the Gnostics, and they had a library at a place called Nag Hammadi, Egypt, and we dug it up, and this is where this book comes from. So, these guys are saying, "We have the secret knowledge that Jesus taught in that 40 days," and they put it in this book called The Pistis Sophia, and in the, the Book of G, and these things. And so, they're saying these are the secret things that he taught. Sophia, okay, Sophia says that Jesus quote, "Left behind the first vesture in the last mystery." Now, by the way, the word mystery in Greek means temple ordinance. That's literally what the word translates. I had heard that too. Yeah, so when we, in school, I think before anything to do with church. Yeah, now, now it developed over the years, um, to mean something very secret because temple ordinances were very secret, and now today we use kind of a, a mutated version of the word, meaning anything secret. It's a mystery, when actually mystery referred specifically to temple ordinances. A mysterion. Myster. Goog. These are people who did temple ordinances. It was the things inside the secret Greek temples. That's the word. That's what the word means. So, he says, "Jesus left behind the first vesture, in vesture like a mantle, like a, a garment." Mhm. "In the last mystery, and he put on the new vesture and came to teach the order of the second place of the prime ordinance." So, he's teaching something called the prime ordinance, or the first ordinance, an ordinance about earlier times, or something. And he said, "Okay, now I'm going to teach you the second space of this," and he changes his robe to do so. That's from the Pistis Sophia. What, what year did the Pistis Sophia come out? That was, we think written in the 3rd century. So, this is super early, just as early as our earliest manuscript of Luke or of John and things like that, and it's talking about a sacred ordinance that was known as the mystery, that was the perfection of the saints, and the early Christians in the church, that was first administered to them by God, or by Jesus Christ, uh, specifically in between the, uh, um, the resurrection and the ascension into heaven, and that it required the first ordinance being taught to the people before a robe was changed into the second one, and they're changing clothes. Okay, now I should s, let me connect. Are there 12 calves that happened to surround the font too, or like, is this like a, that comes from that comes from the temple, but yeah, here's some more.

So, the Gospel of Philip, in the Gospel of Philip, he says, "The Lord did everything in a mystery, a baptism, and a chrism, and a Eucharist, and a redemption, and a bridal chamber." Now, I think I put that in. Wait, that literally sounds like freaking like in what's it called, in in chrism is an anointing because chrism is where the word Christ comes from, and it's the, it's the, the root terminology of Messiah, just in, in the Greek instead of in the Hebrew, right? And then a marriage. That totally sounds like, uh, you know, sealing. Yeah, temple sealing. That was the word I was looking for. You said there was a baptism. All right, that's the living ordinance that is done. What was the other one that you mentioned? Uh, Eucharist. Yeah, Eucharist. That's a sacrament. Well, for all our, all our Greek speakers out there, Eucharist means a prayer of Thanksgiving. So, you're, so what if another way to translate this is, "The Lord did everything in an ordinance, a baptism, an anointing, a prayer, a redemption, and a sealing." Okay, awesome. Now, if you're familiar with what goes on in temples today, that's exactly what goes on in temples today, in that order. Yeah, in, in a way that is, it's the, the true Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints is the only church that has all of these ordinances performed in a sacred manner. Okay, order in space is all laid out. Yeah, and, and all right, so where were we? So, the Gospel of Philip lays it out, and says, and the, and the Pistis Sophia lays it out. They're changing clothes and moving from room to room. They're doing these ordinances in this order: uh, baptism, uh, uh, an anointing, a prayer, some kind of resurrection, some kind of redemption, and a sealing. Now, the Acts of John, another apocryphal work, which is also Gnostic from these people who claim to have the secret 40-day teaching, is a crazy book. The gos, the Acts of John, and it talks all about this dance, right? Jesus gets together with this, uh, with the apostles, and he does this dance, and he, and by the way, all these things, Jesus has Mary and Martha and women with them. All of these things, they have women included. Okay. Interesting. Which the early, those, which those Creed people did not enjoy. Acts of John, he says they're doing a round to make a point. The, uh, the, uh, so that this round dance really upset the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea. The Acts of John was the most hated book at the Council of Nicaea. They hated the Acts of John, and they, oh my gosh, unanimously right out of the gate, they said, "Anathema, anathema," and they said, "Every copy that we ever find, we're going to burn." They hated the Acts of John because it had Christ dancing. Now, dancing is kind of a funny word. They're chanting and they're dancing. Well, chant or canter or cantos back in Greek kind of means to pray, actually. And then dancing, they're referring to hand motions or hand clasping that they're doing in a circle and a formation. And so, I think they might have been overreacting. Yeah, clearly not a, an ancient, um, it's not, it's not a break dancing part. It's not a, um, this round dance. We have some images in the Discord now. We can finally get some these images. Awesome. This one right here. Yeah, right there. Okay, boom. Now, this specifically is the ascension. So, this is when Jesus Christ finally left after 40 days. So, he taught these people something, and then after 40 days, they stood in a circle and they did this, this dance or whatever it was, and, and said goodbye to him as he went up into heaven. There's also, uh, other images. This one is a, it's a recreation of a of a ceramic that was discovered. It shows a a winged serpent wrapped around an altar, and the people surrounding them are doing some kind of hand motions in this type of dance that offended the people at the Council of Nicaea. They did not like this stuff. They did not like this stuff at all. Interesting. So, specifically because of the hand motions that were discovered in the original of this artwork, the council and Nicaea said, "Anathema. We don't like this potentially pagan nonsense," so on and so forth, and crushed it underneath their boot, much like North American Protestants tried to kill Mormons because they just hate anything newer and cooler. Well, yeah, but but think about that. The pro, why would you get, or I say older and better, but why would you get so mad, mad about that? I mean, Joseph talked about this. Why are they so mad? We're just living on our own. We're out here in Nauvoo. We're not hurting anybody. Why are they so mad at us? These people in the Council of Nicaea weren't just angry that, oh, this is some pagan silliness like Galileo. Oh, this is pagan silliness. Let it go. Let it die. No, they went and found these books and they burnt them. That isn't just, I don't like it. That's, you guys are abusing something that is sacred.

All right, all right. There, there's more. There's just so much more. I don't even know if we're going to be able to get through. I, we could talk about this for six hours. We haven't even scratched the surface. Haven't even scratched the surface. Oh my gosh. Go.

In the book of G, in the book of G, or the book of Eugnosticus, okay, um, chapter 38, my wife is saying, "Reference it. Reference it." I can hear her. I can hear her saying it. Yes, chapter 38, or page 80 to 100ish, um, it talks about, um, a few of the things that they do in this Gnostic ceremony, or that purportedly Jesus taught during those 40 days. It says, "When you come to this place, seal yourselves with this seal, while the cipher," and as this is a very strange word, we're not totally sure how this translates, "cipher is in your hand. Furthermore, say this name. Say it three times, and the witnesses and the veils are drawn back until you go into the place of their father, and he gives you his seal and his name, and you cross over into the gate of light." Whoa. So, literally, you are sealed to Christ until you cross over the Gate of Light, which I assume is a crappy translation for the veil, correctly? Because like, that's the whole entire essence of Adam and Eve getting kicked out of the garden. It's the whole entire essence of that's what broke when Jesus Christ was, um, murdered is not the word, what I'm looking for, crucified, okay, um, before he gave up the ghost. And then the, the veil is what Brigham Young says is thinnest in the temple, you know what I'm saying? Because we're doing, you know, vicarious work for the dead and so on and so forth. So, he, he literally references, uh, symbolically, this idea that you're doing an ordinance to access, pass through, effect, I don't know what the word is, uh, the veil in that translation, which kind of insinuates an internal significance, definitely not just for this life only, right? Yes. Well, we know that in this book, it's they actually have drawings of a of what they thought was the temple. Did you put those in the Discord too? No, they're weird, but, but it's a, it's concentric. Oh, man. Okay, it's concentric, uh, squares, and you're passing through curtains, getting lighter and lighter until you reach the inner sanctum, and there's people who are guiding you through to the veils of the old temple in the Old Testament, which was a traveling temple, and that's where actually most likely we get the significance of the veil in our temple currently, because it's not a mockery, but a mockup, or a, what's the word I'm looking for? Not a type, but a shadow, a version, a type and a shadow, exactly. So, so again, it says, and this is on, in Second Eugnosticus, page 122, again, "You will pass into the interior to the rank of the veils which are drawn before the great king in the in the treasury of light, or in the Holy Sanctum, and they will give you their great mystery." And there, they will give you your great. And you said mystery means translated in Greek, temple ordinance. Like a temple ordinance. Yeah, so they, they will give you their great temple ordinance. Okay, and there's something about they will give you the great name of the treasury of light, so that at the veil, there's some kind of a great name, a final name that you get, and they will be drawn back, the veils, until you cross over and pass into them, until you reach the great man with a capital M, he who is the ruler of the whole treasury of light. Oh, whoa. And anyways, it's talking about you're getting some kind of a, you're getting names, seals, and ciphers. Wait, is this the concentric squares right here that you have on Wikipedia? The veils? Okay, so I'm pulling this up, and it says the Book of Eugnosticus. Gnostic texts through independent works, both the first book of Eugnosticus and the second book of Eugnosticus appear in Sahidic Coptic and Bruce Codex. No, sorry, in the Bruce Codex, right? They are a combination of a gospel and an esoteric revelation. The work professes to record conversations Jesus had with both male, sorry, with both male apostles and his female disciples. Good. They, uh, delineated their, you know what I was thinking for a second, we were going woke, but no, I'm just kidding. But, and the secret knowledge, Gnosis, revealed in those conversations. And then here's the picture that is intriguing. Those were the square, uh, what do you call them? The veils. They're called veils. Okay. Wow. And they have little passages through them, and people who are escorting you through them. Um, and this is all, this is all according to, this is what they claim was contained in the secret Gospel of Mark that Jesus taught in the 40 days. Wow. That is intriguing. I'm loving this. Keep going.

All right, all right. So, now we got some other cool things. So, uh, some archaeologists went over to Egypt, and they started digging around these places, and they found early Christian communities. These are not Gnostics, but these are early Christians. Um, and I put in the chat, in the, uh, Discord, a couple, a couple pictures. So, this is a diagram of an excavation that was completed in Fayoum, Egypt, and these were people, early Christians. We're talking early, early Christians, and they were buried, and of course, they're buried, uh, with their feet facing East, so that at the resurrection, they will rise up and face the Risen Lord. Um, and they have, there's some very interesting things that they found in this, in this crypt. So, this is a knot. It's a knot, a very strange little knot that appeared on the shoulder of the clothes that these people were buried in. They were buried with these, these knots either on the left or the right shoulder of their garments. This picture is even more interesting. It has tiny rosette knots that are, that are, this is amazing that think this is preserved so well because it was, they were buried in this garment. It's very hard to see what people were buried in. They were buried in this shirt that has rosettes sewn over each breast, over the right leg, and then a large, 6-inch slit cut across the abdomen. Uh, there's nothing on the left leg. And so, it has, are you kidding me? I'm not kidding you. I'm not kidding you. What the heck? Yeah, yeah. And this is what they were buried in. And what, what year was this burial? So, this burial ground was used from 200 BC to 800 AD, approximately. Dude, that is freaking nuts. I mean, even the church is doing YouTube videos about like, you know, temple clothing and so on and so forth. So, that's not like that topic's off limits because they're doing that on straight up YouTube now. The idea that there's like a thousand, 2,000-year connection from the modern day and the modern church to then the early church. What year was this excavation? So, uh, 1981 was the excavation. There's no way Joseph Smith would have known about this, made it up, or that the Freemasons could have snuck from somebody. This is crazy. All the stuff we're talking about, Joseph Smith, there's no way he could have known about any of this stuff. And, and remember, so where's the archaeologist saying the Mormons were right? We know that, and which is that's really interesting in light of what we read about, uh, uh, in the Pistis Sophia, that Jesus Christ was changing a robe. He said, "In my first robe that I had on, I was talking to you about the first order of the prime mystery. Now I'm going to change into this other robe and talk about the second order of this prime mystery." And so, that's interesting. It correlates with these, uh, special garments that they're wearing with knots over their shoulders, or, or, or rosettes into the garments. Um, interesting, interesting stuff. Maybe it's connected, right? Okay, so, um, what else here? Okay, so here's, here's one of the most basic things that helps me every time I think about this. Okay, the word Christ means anointed with oil. So, Christian doesn't, I mean, it means somebody who believes in Christ, but it actually kind of really means somebody who's been anointed with oil, right? The really means the anointed. Yeah, yeah. So, there's women through all of this, and, uh, uh, Christ means anointed, and then, um, Church. Cool word. The word church comes from the same word, Kirk, which is where we get circle, which is where they get the word circus, cuz a circus was always in a circle. Okay. Oh, interesting. Goes back to circle. Circle. Think you're thinking way, way back. What did Christ establish? If you say it in Greek, he established a circle. A circle. It's a circle, literally, is what he did. They, part of the circle. Okay, and they had circles, and this was a circle. That circle. Okay. And then, then we eventually kind of mutated up until it means church. So, uh, by the way, going all the way, and to everybody listening, when you're going to the temple, you're not just going to something that Joseph Smith made up or Brigham Young made up. You are revisiting 5,000-year-old ceremonies that are faithful, are are for faith fathers were doing in Egypt and in the Near East. They were doing it on mountaintops. This is, this is amazing stuff. We got to be a part of this. This is not, this is not a modern invention. You are part of something that is older than the United States, older than the New World, older than the planet itself. You are, you're participating in sacred, ancient, cosmically amazing things. The temple is amazing. Speak. We've got literally temple garments buried in ancient sites, discovered in the '80s of early Coptic Christians who were basically establishing a link, um, between Jesus Christ and the original temple ceremony given in the C, okay, of the early Christians, and now the temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But no, no, no, pump the brakes. But Thomas B. Marsh, bucket of cream, but the bucket of cream, but the bucket of cream. Don't go in active over a bucket of cream. You know, it's like, it's crazy, man. You are, you are putting on vestments and participating in things that are thousands of years old. It's unbelievable. Unbelievable what Joseph and Brigham put together, and they didn't know about any of this. All the stuff I'm bringing up here, guys, they had no clue about any of it. This stuff was discovered in the 1940s and '50s. This stuff was scattered all over the world in different languages. It's only now kind of being cobbled together by professors and and and and Ward Radio and Ward Radio professors are putting this together so that you can see it. They had no idea. This stuff, they received a restoration of temple ordinances and rites that had been lost in the dust, in the sands of history for thousands of years, and you get to go taste it anytime you go to the temple. It's crazy. We got to be a part of this. It is crazy when you think about it. Okay, cool.

Something, so I got a whole list of the changes that were made. Most of the changes aren't a big deal. It doesn't mean it's changing. No, and this is the part we're going to talk about now. Okay, the temple endowment is a compilation of a couple different things. Okay, cool. The temple endowment has an instruction portion where you learn about things. Mhm. Essentially, you're reading something, kind of like the Book of Moses is what you're doing. You're learning about creation and about the fall. Okay. There's also a portion which is very sacred, and we do not talk about, and that's the covenants that you make. Okay, the covenants and and those things, and we don't talk about those, and I'll never talk about those. Those are very sacred, and we don't, we don't bat them around. And by the way, yeah, look, look, some things are sacred, and some things are secret, and that's okay. If you don't have anything sacred in your life at all, that's a sad life. You don't believe in anything more important than your own, you know, in their own narcissism. I haven't seen a picture yet, but I'm sure we will. I really want to get to, I really want to get to this this important point here. Okay, you guys are hearing this at Ward Radio, okay, and when this happens, I want you all to be like, "Oh, Ward Radio totally got this." Okay, you were hinting. I agree. Okay, listen, uh, seriously, listen. I agree. The LDS temple endowment has been changed 19 times, and it's going to be changed again. And here's what's going to happen. Okay, when, like we were saying, when you do a baptism, you have talks, hymns, all kinds of stuff, then you have the actual ordinance of baptism. If you were to take away the talks, would it still be a sal, a salvific ordinance? If you take away, if you took away 49 minutes of the entire baptismal, ah, meeting, ah, you would have an ordinance that really matters. Yes. That's 20 seconds. Now, we love the talks, and and those are all wonderful, but when we do baptisms, vicarious baptisms for the dead, we don't do all those things. We don't have talks and hymns and all that stuff. We just do the essential salvific ordinance. Same thing with confirmations. Mhm. Same thing with other ordinances, except the endowment. When it comes to the endowment, when you do it live for yourself or vicariously for the dead, it's all 90 minutes long or something like that. I'm not sure exactly the timing. 89, something. It's a long time. Okay. Now, I think that what needs to happen, and what they will do, is they will splinter, they will divide up the endowment into sections. Mhm. And have an instructional section, and you can go and you can hear the instructional portion. You can read the Book of Moses. You can do that in a different room. They will have a section that is just the prayer circle. Mhm. They will have a section that is the covenants, and perhaps the veil, the the salvific piece to it, and you can go and you can do 20 minutes, less than that, 15 minutes, and you can do an endowment and then go around and do it again vicariously for the dead. When you go through the first time for yourself, live, sure, let's do the whole deal. Mhm. Whole deal. That's totally fine. But I think that it is unsustainable to take 90 minutes to do one ordinance. I think temple attendance would skyrocket because you could go for 20 minutes, 15 minutes, and you could get these ordinances done. You could go just see the instructional portion of it. It would edify all the saints. You could just do the prayer circle. Think how much more prayer power we'd have in the world. I think that that needs to happen, and it's probably going to happen, and when it does happen, it's a good thing. It's not a bad thing. The important piece of it is going to be preserved, and it's always going to be there, but these other parts of it, I think need to be divided up. Right. And so, that is my theory, and I am, I await a call from my bishop to repent. Well, order a call from the prophet to consult. Consult, cuz your, your, uh, your education was in, uh, process analysis and industrial, that's true. Industrial engineering, process improvement, that's true. Okay, cool. Could you make it so there's more than one bathroom in my stake center? I was going to say, to be even more controversial, if we haven't already ticked off my bishop and stake president yet, to say that the instructional portion of the endowment is essentially just an apocryphal version of the creation and the fall. It's like the Book of Moses. It's basically the Book of Moses. You don't even really need that in the temple. You could have most of that in your chapel as a temple prep course if you wanted to, um, and then devote more rooms or more time to just shuttling people through for vicarious ordinances for the dead. Look, guys, we're not getting, make it, we're not going to make it. We're not going to be able to endow everybody if it takes 90 minutes to complete an endowment. It's never going to happen. It takes way too long. By the way, endowment used to take days. Used to take weeks to finish, okay? And now we've got it down to 90 minutes. Okay, if we can get it down to 15, we might have a shot. But there's 17 billion people who need the. Well, so look, look, look, look, look, the temple end, look, the first half of the temple end, the instruction, look, if you would just think of yourself as Adam, yeah, like really, not just when you're at the temple, when you kneel down to pray every night, when you put on your garments every morning, just think of, if you really internalize this, like think of yourself as an Adam, as a type of Adam, just the point.

Okay, so just to recap what we've gone over. We could go forever and ever, but just to recap what we've covered here, people. All right, so in the first, uh, verses of Acts, we read that there's some kind of a missing record about Christ's teachings during the 40 days. Letter of Clement of Alexandria says these secret teachings were written down by Mark and kept in a separate gospel in Alexandria. The one that we have in the New Testament is for those being instructed. The secret one was for people being perfected. When the apostasy kicks into full gear, these people sneak out that book and they call themselves the Gnostics because they say they have the secret knowledge. They also screw it up, okay? Gnostic stuff gets wacky too, but they say they have the secret teachings that Jesus Christ taught during those 40 days, and some of their works we've read here tonight show that they had, uh, circles of prayer that they were doing. They were changing robes and garments and passing through veils. They had rosettes, uh, sewn onto their garments, and they were doing hand signals. They had ciphers, seals, and names that they were repeating to pass through the veils, um, and they were, what else did we miss? Oh, and that they were buried with knots that were tied in there. Yep, on their shoulders and rosettes on their, on their, uh, clothing. Um, and all these things are kind of hinted at, and of course, they've been, they've been perverted and messed up, but they are so sacred that the, uh, Council of Nicaea ordered every copy they could find of these things to be burned. You don't do that to somebody you just don't like. You do that to something you never want anyone to ever see. It's like the Chautauqua. You don't send somebody to the Chautauqua if they're guilty. You send them to the Chautauqua if they're innocent. But so anyway, um, yeah, this has been awesome. Do you have anything you want to say, uh, Ward Librarian, before we go? Um, just, you're part of something so amazing. Go to the temple. Wear your garments. It, you're part of something so amazing. We, we can't even believe how, how cool it is. It's all over these ancient documents, and no one else in the world has a clue what they mean. We know what they mean. Before we go, sorry, Carden, messing you up. Uh, since we've been talking about, uh, temples, uh, everybody, I don't want to sound like the old preachy guy, but if you go to the temple, just do initiatories and slow down a little bit. Ask for some time in between them. Think about them. You will quickly find that the initiatories might be the most important part of the of the temple ceremony process. Seriously. You, you have no idea how important it is to symbolically be covered in the atonement of the Messiah. You have no idea. And when you wake up every morning, or get out of your shower, and you, and you put the atonement of Jesus Christ on you every day, it changes everything. [Music]