The following is excerpted from the Church News. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
Building a temple in Nauvoo, Illinois, when early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints worked to make the bend in the river a hospitable place to live, wasn’t convenient or easy.
“They understood that there was something really important that superseded any inconvenience on their part and that was bringing the power of godliness more fully into the lives of men and women,” said Church historian Spencer McBride, who is also an associate managing historian of the Joseph Smith Papers project.
The Nauvoo Temple is the focus of the third Joseph Smith Papers miniseries podcast that McBride has hosted. The first of the documentary-style podcasts is about the First Vision and the second is focused on the priesthood restoration. All of the episodes of “The Nauvoo Temple: A Joseph Smith Papers Podcast” were released Thursday, Oct. 14.
These podcasts are designed to “do deep dives into certain pivotal events in Joseph Smith’s life,” McBride said. “The Nauvoo Temple is absolutely essential to understanding Joseph Smith’s doctrinal teachings and to understanding the Restoration.”
It’s in the Nauvoo Temple where the early Church members were introduced to the endowment and sealing ordinances.
“Understanding why that temple was built, how it was built and how the ordinances were revealed to Church members by Joseph Smith is an essential component of our history,” McBride said.
The eight-episode series starts with the history of the community on the bend in the Mississippi River — which some maps labeled Commerce, Illinois — to the rebuilding of the Nauvoo Illinois Temple, which was dedicated in 2002.
To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
