MORmONS have nothing to hide in their STUPID MORmON temples........ (besides all that really embarrassing STUPID stuff that is absolutely appalling to real Christians that MORmON leaders want to convert so they can fleece them. MORmONISM is a sick stupid cult and criminal enterprise !) just ask dumb ass Gordon BS Hinckley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ramUzgLLHho

The secret handshakes were an excuse to threaten temple-goers without directly saying "we're going to cut your throat open if you ever talk about this to anyone". The secret handshakes were also a proxy for real secrets that the church doesn't want revealed to anyone.

So why would the church make threats that aren't made directly, to protect secrets that aren't real secrets? A real threat against anyone would be a crime. Real secrets would make the church vulnerable. So why bother, right?

The Endowment ceremony is designed to screw with your mind. For example, in the pre-1990 endowment ceremony, by allowing yourself to be threatened (of sorts) by the church with the prospect of a grusome, terrible and violent death, and to never tell anyone or talk about the threat, the church gains power over your life. The justification for the threat is a secret that needs to be kept. The justification for the secracy is that the object of the secracy is important to your exaltation. But in reality, it's just a stupid handshake, nothing more. What the church really wanted was your obediance to them and for you to never talk about the veiled threat they made against you, ever! For the most part, that worked for generations. No one talked about it. No one called them on it in any way that got public attention.

In 1990, the social media aspect of the internet started growing for the first time in the history of our species. People were starting to connect with others in new ways, some anonymous and some not anonymous. Suddenly you could safely talk about anything to anyone and everyone. The church promptly stopped issuing the threats in their temple ceremonies. Of course, the church still wants to keep their temple-driven financial gravy train going. So they neutered their so-called perfect and unchanging temple ceremony to remove the threats and the sexual boundry violations that were a part of the Initiatory and endowment ceremonies up until that time. Now those gutted temple ceremonies are just plain stupid. You'll get a better movie at Harkins or AMC, and a better spiritual experience in real service to others.