Does anyone know of specific explanations given for the changes in 1990? Has the church, or prominent leaders of Zion, ever given insight or spoken of these changes?

They conducted a membership survey asking a lot of questions about temple attendance because of declining attendance.

Two things stood out:

1. The creepy agreement to have your throat slit if you revealed temple "secrets".

2. Converts were particularly offended by the Christian minister portrayed as a minion of stan.

http://www.lds-mormon.com/whytemplechanges.shtml

Surprise! Changes were made.

So, apparently God works in not so mysterious ways - public opinion surveys.

Of course TSCC never admitted that temple attendance might be down because there's something inherently unwholesome about voluntarily submitting to monthly threatening, belittling the beliefs of others, and forcing people to simulate their own executions.

It was always the members' fault for lack of devotion and faithfulness.


Anagrammy

Some of the changes:

1. Women no longer had to "obey" their husbands, but rather "heed their counsel".

2. Penalties (body slitting, etc.) were removed.

3. Role of Protestant minister (hireling of Satan) was removed.

4. Five points of fellowship (hug through the veil) eliminated.

5. Ancient Adamic Language (Pay Lay Ale) removed and changed to English (O Lord Hear The Words Of My Mouth). Apparently HF understands English as well as Ancient Adamic and Reformed Egyptian.

6. Lecture at the Veil eliminated. I believe the Lecture was included only when the session included persons receiving their own living endowments. It was a review of what had transpired during the session. The following link gives you pre- and post-1990 of the Veil portion of the ritual, with the Lecture At The Veil marked in red (because it was entirely eliminated in 1990):

http://ldsendowment.org/parallelveil.html


Pre-1990 endowment readers here may be able to correct me ....what I have read was that the Lecture was omitted if no one in the session was receiving his/her living endowment.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/22/2011 01:00PM by PtLoma.

Typically, sessions are noted as "for the living" or not. If for the living, in other words first time through, then it would include the lecture. Due to scheduling of rooms, it was planned to inlcude or exclude in advance.

Just as a side note, the lecture including discussion of adam/god until early 1920s.

I don't know that we teach that.

The Mormon temple no longer command respect
and reverence from mormons even.

It is fast becoming a big joke among ward members :)

gideon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The Mormon temple no longer command respect
> and reverence from mormons even.
>
> It is fast becoming a big joke among ward members
> :)

It would be good if that were true, but I think that is a bit of wishful thinking.

I admit, I don't know the attitudes of the current membership that well, but I can't see it.

How well I remember going to the old endowment for a full four hours or more, depending on the number of people present and how many had to be helped through at the veil because they couldn't remember the handshakes and names of the tokens. Then I went one day and it was only two hours, and a lot had been omitted. I went to do the "Five Points of Fellowship" thing, and they guy corrected me. He didn't say, "Hey, Bud, we quit doing that." He got a frowny face and told me just to put my hand through, as if to say, "What the f**k you doin', man?" Anyway, for me confusion reigned, and I came out a bit perplexed. No one had said anything. Where the hell was the preacher-man?, with all his talk about Satan having horns and paws like a bear? But on the other hand, the endowment only lasted two hours, and that part was pretty sweet.

When I got the courage to ask someone later, I was pointed to an official message that indicated that temple work was so popular, and there were so many converts coming into the church and going to the temple, that SOMEthing had to be done to ease the congestion. So they took some less valuable things out to truncate it a bit. That was before I knew that any change that has happened in the church--ever--came about because of extreme negativity among members and pressure from outside sources, particularly if it involved money.

Changes in the temple were actually the result of a questionnaire that the church had sent out to a part of the membership in which they asked what it would take to get you out to the temple more frequently. It opened up a Pandora's box of complaints.