The LDS Church Public Affairs has just published a fantastic video explaining what temples are all about to Mormons. In it they have a conversation with Elder William R. Walker, Executive Director of the Church Temple Department. Elder Walker gives a great walkthrough tour of LDS temples, somewhat like a video walking tour through many of the rooms and parts of modern day temples, very similar to what you might see during an open house of a new temple. Some of the video shown of the interiors is some I’ve never seen before, including video of inside the Salt Lake Temple celestial room and baptistry. It is gorgeous, in full 1080p Hi-Def resolution.
I’m very pleased and excited about this new video from the Church. I’m glad that we are taking this opportunity now, with such a great spotlight on us as a people, to explain our beliefs, particularly about the temple, and have this kind of open “conversation.” We too need to learn how to similarly converse with others about the temple. There are so many misconceptions that abound, even still today, and it is great to see the Church use such innovative media to help explain things. Some believe that by taking our temple practices out of context, in exposé fashion, they might do damage to us. I have always felt that those who are honest in heart, who truly want to learn about something, will go to the source.
The video is unusually quite lengthy, at 15 minutes, which is great! I hope that everyone that sees this video shares it, and helps pass it on to others. I think things like this will go a long way in helping others learn what LDS beliefs truly are, and what the temple is all about. Watch the video below.
I’m so happy the Church put this together.
Thanks for sharing… I doubt the Church has ever had video made of the inside of the SLC Temple until now. The last photos that the Church made inside were probably a few decades ago. It’s great to see this, but surprising as well. I’m happy to see that as the world gets to know us better, we’re being much more open about who we are, what we believe, and what really goes on inside our temples. It’s really nice.
Bryce, it might be worth a blog post on the history of photography of both inside and outside the temples. It seems like years ago this was very rare, but now has become much more common as we build more and more temples. It seems to be that the more and more we seem to be leaving obscurity, the more comfortable we are with being open about such things.
@Joshua, The recent addition to the South visitor’s center on Temple Square included a model of the temple where you can see the interior, plus several touch-screen kiosks with videos of interior shots. The one of the Celestial Room in the Salt Lake Temple is used at the visitor’s center. The other interior shots of other temples look like the B-rolls compiled for temple open houses.
I would assume that any modification of the temple where they paint over woodwork (as they did in SLC) or significantly changing the ceiling (recently the Laie and Idaho Falls temple) would have as a standard practice to take before and after photos for the Church and temple archives. That’s just a guess. I also assume that the reason most the behind-the-scenes temple construction, design choices and so on aren’t publicly available is to ensure the body of the Church focuses on worship of God in the temple rather than adoration of the temple.
Also, the church film “Mountain of the Lord” has magnificent shots of the inside of the Salt Lake Temple. Much of the music from that film was used in this short youtube film.