Sunday, September 6, 2020

John Taylor on the Command to Build Temples being Limited to this Dispensation, not the New Testament Era

 

In a sermon dated March 2, 1879, John Taylor was recorded as saying the following wherein he seems to limit the command to build temples was not part of the New Testament era, but only this, the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times (cf. D&C 128:18). This would explain why we find hints in the New Testament and later texts of temple practices but no evidence that the early Christians built temples:

 

Now then, we have got a priesthood organized here upon the earth, as there was one organized in the days of Jesus, only with this distinctive difference,—that that was a dispensation of God to them; this we live in is the dispensation of the fulness of times, embracing all other dispensations and times and powers and authorities that have existed upon the face of the earth, in the various ages, from the commencement to the present time. Herein it differs from others. Hence we are requested to gather together, something which they were not commanded to do. We are told to build Temples: they were not. We are told to administer for the living and the dead, which ordinances were only performed then to a very limited extent. We are called upon to build up not only the Church, but the kingdom of God, and to introduce the rule and government of God upon the earth. (JOD 2:257-58)