Episode 74: D&C 124

Shiloh and guest co-host Christopher Hurtado talk about the early Saints’ consistent divine call to create sacred space. Whether in Kirtland, Jackson County, Caldwell County, Daviess County, or Nauvoo, the Saints are instructed to construct a temple in order to perform sacred ordinances or to have revealed sacred things. When, in the New Testament, the Jews asked for a sign of authority for Jesus Christ’s actions in driving out the money changers of the temple, he answered by saying “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The people, thinking he was talking about the physical temple of stone, did not understand that “he spake of the temple of his body” (John 2:13-22). The temple is symbolic of each of us individually and of our own sacred journey. Each act in the sacred temple drama is our own story. By commanding an outward and physical edifice to perform sacred rites, rituals, and ordinances, God is presenting an outward observation of our own inward sacred, divine adventure. But what is the “sacred” and how is it created? Is it an objective thing in and of itself (sui generis) that we can step into and out of by our choices (sui generis)? Is it something that we create, experience, and deem as sacred? Perhaps it is a combination of these two things? But what would that even mean or even look like?