When Christ was on the earth, why did he not introduce the temple endowment? You know baptism for the dead, signs and keywords, sealings, etc. He could have done this on a high mountain.

If the endowment is so important why was it not introduced back then or say even further back? I mean all those people who died back then have had a long wait til the endowment was introduced in modern times.

Is this a case of a round peg not fitting in a square hole?

I mean all I hear in Edmonton is temple, temple, temple. Of by the way last Friday night. One session had about 10 people out of about 40 seats. 6 people out of 20 who signed up in our ward showed up for temple cleaning. Maybe the temple is not that important but its an illusion that is being created.

If temple work was so important, why is the Church building a neighborhood in some state and not building all the temples now that have been announced in the past few years. Ex: Winnipeg, Canada had ground breaking in Dec but no construction has started. I think the reason is the general contractor has to move from one of the temples being dedicated soon to begin construction on the new temple. After all we can not not have local contractors build these buildings. The people in Utah will not get rich.

So its not about dead people folks or these temples would be fast tracked. The Church has the money.

As far as I know, mormons claim he *did* introduce it -- and then it was "lost" (and edited out of the bible) by the apostate christians.

Of course, no evidence whatsoever backs that up...
But then, it can't be "proven" false by evidence, either.
So it's a dodge they love.

This is coming from the cobweb and recesses in my tired memory banks, but I believe that Bruce R., in the Doctrinal New Testament Commentary, said he believed that on the Mount of Transfiguration is where the apostles received their endowment.

I don't have those books anymore so I may be wrong (again).

And I think there may have been another mental leap, related to the modern temple endowment, by Bruce R in a later volume of the same DNTC, where Peter (1 Peter?) talks a little about having your calling and election made sure.

Ironically, Richard Carrier, and some other respected scholars and mythicists make the case that the gospels are not worth the papyrus (or whatever) they were written on because they were myth copied by Mark (originally) from Greek literature. And 1 Peter was of course not written by Peter at all. It was written to convince Christians to believe him (and he would come).

Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, Vol. 2, p. 170:
"ENDOWMENT OF PETER, JAMES, AND JOHN. Now under these conditions, when there is no house of the Lord and the work is urgent, the Lord makes it possible that not only baptism for the dead but also the ordinances that pertain to the house of the Lord may be performed in the wilderness, on a mountain top, or in a lake or a stream of water. I am convinced in my own mind that when the Savior took the three disciples up on the mount, which is spoken of as the 'Mount of Transfiguration,' he there gave unto them the ordinances that pertain to the house of the Lord and that they were endowed. That was the only place they could go. That place became holy and sacred for the rites of salvation which were performed on that occasion."

Joseph Fielding Smith, Church History and Modern Revelation, Vol. 4, p. 138:
"The Savior had to give an endowment to Peter, James and John, on the Mount of Transfiguration."

Bruce R. McConkie, Doctrinal New Testament Commentary, Vol. 1, p. 400:
"It appears that Peter, James, and John received their own endowments while on the mountain."

Bruce R. McConkie, The Mortal Messiah, Vol. 3, pp. 57-58:
"Truly Peter, James, and John, while on this holy mount, received their endowments and were empowered from on high to do all things for the building up and rolling forward of the Lord's work in their day and dispensation."

Bruce R. McConkie, The Mortal Messiah, Vol. 3, pp. 92-93:
"The sealing power! The apostolic power possessed by Adam and all the ancients; the heavenly endowment enjoyed by Enoch and Abraham and Elijah; the power of the Great God without which man cannot ascend to heights beyond the stars! Such now is resident with all of the Twelve – not with Peter only, to whom it was promised; not with the Chosen Three, who received it by angelic and divine conferral on the mount of Transfiguration, but with all of the Twelve."

It's far dodgier than that. What about all those people who's names were never recorded. How were they ever going to get their temple work done. Wait! You tell me it will all be worked out for them??

Then tell my why it can't all be worked out for everybody?

There has been a belief in Freemasonry that its origins date back to the Temple of Solomon. After Joseph Smith became a Freemason, he incorporated much of Freemasonry's ceremony into the Mormon temple endowment, supposedly restoring and correcting what had been lost or corrupted from Old Testament times.

But Mormonism claims that the temple endowment goes back even further than Solomon:

"The explanations given to certain figures contained in Facsimile No. 2 in the Book of Abraham must convince the thoughtful Latter-day Saint reader that Abraham was acquainted with the sacred endowments and hence a temple or its equivalent in which they would be administered."

https://www.lds.org/ensign/1972/01/ancient-temples-and-their-functions?lang=eng