Temples. It's difficult to overestimate their importance in the Latter-day Saint

movement. In fact, it could be said that what is accomplished inside

Latter-day Saint temples is at the beating heart of the purposes of the

restoration. In today's episode of Church History Matters, we begin a new series exploring the development of Latter-day Saint Temple Worship.

We're starting at the very beginning and probing such questions as,

How early on did Joseph Smith understand the temple-centric

nature of his prophetic mission?

What is the meaning of the word Endowment?

Which was the first temple commanded to be built in our day?

And which temple was actually built first?

And how are we to make sense of what appears to be a failed prophecy in D.N.C. 84

about the building of the Missouri temple in the first generation of the church.

I'm Scott Woodward, a managing director at Scripture Central, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths,

also a managing director at Scripture Central.

And today Casey and I dive into our first episode in this series,

dealing with the development of Latter-day Saint Temple Worship.

Now let's get into it.

Hi Casey.

Hi Casey.

Hi, how are you so good so good I'm better than good because we're starting a new series yes and this is one we've wanted to do for a really long time.

And it's come highly requested by several listeners actually.

Yeah, several of our listeners have said, can you guys take this on?

...