Stockholm...except serves Norway as well. Norway has two stakes. Danes have their own..so all could use it. Three language offerings plus English would not be a problem
My vote is on one of the Aussie temples. If you look at the Adelaide temple schedule, they only have 7 endowment sessions a week. Like most temples they are closed on Monday's, but they are also closed on Tuesday's.
Oh please let it be the Adelaide temple. It is so ugly A dirty grey at an angle to a busy road but down in a dip. I drive past it twice a year or so and it was is always deserted. I'm sure most of the locals don't even know what it is.
I also don't think it will be a temple in the US that will be among the first to close, since that would be easily noticed. If anything, it would be somewhere in Europe where the membership is actually shrinking, and too far from a touristy city that Americans visit. After all, some of the temples closer to a touristy city are more likely to have Morridor Mormons visit for a brief session. My best guess is that it might even be the Kiev, Ukraine temple that closes first because with the violence going on, there have been times when all missionaries were told to stay in their apartments for their own safety, even on P days.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/05/2017 04:26AM by adoylelb.
The prevailing thought by the church is like the Field of Dreams 'if we build it, they will come', when it comes to temples.
But what happens when no one in the local area wants to pay tithing? No one local would be 'worthy' to enter the temple, even to volunteer to work there. So then, only the weakest of newly qualified recommend holders in the area and possibly some mormon tourists, (both of who would be very small in numbers), would able to enter that temple.
So within slightly more than a year from when a new convert first hears about the church, they find themselves sitting relatively alone in the temple, waiting for customers who never show up. Eventually they lose interest, and quit volunteering. A year after that, they've left the church and they find themselves feeling stupid as they tell all of their friends and relatives who are non-members, about what a mistake they made, about the stupid secret handshakes and the magic underwear which they no longer wear.
So, eventually LDS inc finds themselves paying for an empty building which no longer serves as a part of any profit center. All it really does is spread their emberrasing secrets. Without a large group to start with, it's difficult to create the group-think necessary to keep anyone under the church's control. At the rate the church is building new temples in remote parts of the world, this day will come.
Once the first temple closes, it'll be like collapsing dominos for the rest of the many other non-profitable temples to close. The church will claim that this is a sign that we're in the last days. But the seeds of their crap business model and core secrets will have been publicly exposed all around the globe. It'll be like Amway. Who wants to sign-up? Once the church's product has been publicly exposed and rejected globally, the novelty wears off and then everyone knows the truth. Then the days of having something new and mysterious are gone forever. The church will attempt to adapt, but that won't work.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/05/2017 09:49AM by azsteve.
Exactly what happened in Poland. In 1991 or so, the LDS church built a really nice meeting house in Warsaw. It got huge attention, and they said that they felt that if they built it, people would come. German or Austrian architects made it have a Polish or almost Orthodox flair to it. I went to sacrament meeting a few times there, and while it wasn't packed, there was pretty good attendance. I understand that it's struggling now, a few members rattling around inside. It also happened in Kassel and Hanau, Germany. Then it falls to a few local members to care for the building.
I wonder if the Anchorage Alaska temple may be a candidate. It only offers 3 sessions 4 times a week. It does look like a tiny temple anyway so perhaps there is only so much room for endowments. It would only take a dozen volunteers to keep that place running.
Just my wild-assed-guess. How is the church doing up there anyway?
for now 7 months a year for Princes Cruises. She has to drive 2 hours to get to an lds church on Sundays. They have a meeting for the mormons at the lodge she works at about 1-1/2 hours from Denali. I think she likes being up there so she doesn't have to be too involved as she hates the mormon culture here, but she is SO TBM. She has been to the Anchorage temple recently, but she didn't tell me about it. I'm actually surprised she's only been once as she was working in Anchorage since the 1st of March until last week. When was the Anchorage temple built?
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2017 12:00AM by cl2.
Even if the membership falls, I don't think you'll see temples closing for a long time. All the "staff" are unpaid, so my grandparents told me, with all the money they get from tithe and other things, I bet they could pay electric and water on an empty building if only to save face.
Bismarck, ND temple is pretty tiny too. About the same size as the chapel it sits next too. A few die hard TBMs in the area but you have to be pretty die-hardy to live in that state. Winter's are extremely harsh and the only thing that saves a person from the on-slot of miserable mosquito's and bugs in the summer is that it is really short. Only place I've been in the summer where the sky was dark from bugs (and clouds) They loved feasting on me. lol.
North Dakotans prefer the point of view that 40 below keeps out the weak, whiney and useless. Those that are left can gut and clean a deer with one arm tied behind their back, and can change a flat tire on an 800 HP tractor with a pair of water pump pliers and a can of WD-40.
. . . and that, someday, LDS missionaries would go there and baptize them, even though the moon has no water.
Unless the moon is hollow and hiding these Mormon-to-be moonbeam Quakers who are said to hover around 6 feet in height, I don't think there's enough of a native population base to create out of it a Mormon-convert demographic large enough to build temple garment sales, to build a temple in the first place, or to build tithing tevenue to high enough levels needed to keep a Mormon moon-managed temple up and running.
So, wherever this LDS lunar temple may happen to be on the moon (if it's even there yet), it ain't swarmin' with Mormons and, thus, will probably be the first one to close due to a lack of interested investigators or investable income, not to mention indigenous inhabitants.
Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 05/08/2017 02:55AM by steve benson.
and we also forgot The vintage Nauvoo Temple was sacked and burned as a closing ceremony.
That renovation covered over a hundred years with the new and improved version dedicated by the Hinckster a decade or so ago. (I'm too lazy to look up the details.)
Scandinavia would be a good option because they can blame it all on the naughty apostate Swedish people, or Ukraine and blame the Russians. Far more likely though to keep them open just to save face.
These tiny little Mc-temples (the size of a ward house) that we see all around Utah and Arizona are another story. The church is already successful there, so they add more temples to increase the drive to get everyone in. Then they push temple attendance and the need to pay tithing to be worthy to go there. It's just another revenue boosting scam.
I always thought it would be the one in Tokyo. My logic was that one to the north and one to the south would logistically better work for the mormons in Japan.
Then they announced that the so-called "temple" in Tokyo would undergo a remodel. I figured that it would be an ogden-level remodel and they would build a multi-story, multi-use property.
A few years ago, they sold off the Japan MTC that was next to the temple to the (Sweden? Swiss?) Embassy.
Not one single temple has been permanently closed. I doubt the cult will close any. It may close church houses, but is on the increase with temple building.
It seems to want to project its image as one of growing and thriving in the world - to the four corners in fulfillment of prophecy.
It might also come in a different way. Like I can see them making one of the less promising temples available by appointment only, then never having appointments. I know that some temples that already open by appointment only have very few patrons.
And then, they schedule two days a week. Like Friday and Saturday. Then.....they give "callings" to local mormons and their calling is to attend one session a week? would they do that?
Most likely the ones where membership is declining because they found out JS is a con man and the TSCC has defrauded them. So, Japan, Taiwan, Sweden, and England.
Wow, most of these countries are the nice ones. If they close, does that mean the missionaries won't be sent there anymore either? Soon, only the crappy to live in countries will be left, even for the ones from well connected families.
Kiev is a no-brainer, but everyone is forgetting the sharp decline of the church in South America.
Meanwhile, I'd put $100 on at least one of the UK temples or one of the eastern US temples being dropped to "by appointment only" status before the church bicentennial in 2030.
I'm in UK. Apparently members from areas local to Preston are being 'called' to attend the temple and do sessions, as in going through as a patron. Then some senior couples are 'called' to do the same thing, busy make the temple look busy.