What is an Endowment?

What is an endowment? is an important question to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Simply put, an endowment is “A special spiritual blessing given to worthy and faithful members of the Church in the temple.”¹ James E. Faust, a former counselor in the First Presidency taught:

Each temple building is an inspiration, magnificent and beautiful in every way, but the temple building alone does not bless. The endowed blessings and divine functions—involving much that is not of this world, such as priesthood keys—come through obedience and faithfulness to priesthood authority and covenants made. As we feel and see the awesome beauty of each temple, we see in vision and hold in our remembrance the endless blessings that will come to so many through its being.²

The Endowment – A Gift

Russell M. Nelson, a member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles taught the following concerning the endowment:

In the temple we receive an endowment, which is, literally speaking, a gift. We need to understand the spiritual significance of it and the importance of keeping the sacred covenants and obligations we make in receiving this gift. Each “temple ordinance is not just a ritual to go through, it is an act of solemn promising.”³ The temple endowment was given by revelation. Thus, it is best understood by revelation, vigorously sought with a pure heart.⁴

Elder Nelson went on to teach the importance of preparation in attending to the sacred ordinances of the temple:

Parents should teach the importance of the temple from a child’s earliest days. President Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) taught members of the Church to display a picture of a temple in their homes where children could see it and plan from their earliest years to go there and to remain worthy of that privilege. Under President Gordon B. Hinckley’s inspired direction, temples have become more readily accessible. Now that temples have been prepared for the people, the people need to prepare themselves for the temple.⁵

What is an Endowment?

Echoing President Faust and Elder Nelson’s teachings, Andrew F. Ehat addressed the question What is an endowment? in “’Who Shall Ascend into the Hill of the Lord?’ Sesquicentennial Reflections of a Sacred Day: 4 May 1842”⁶:

The Prophet Joseph Smith did many things publicly to prepare the Saints for the promised blessing of the endowment. Just the record of his public sermons would serve us well in the quest for preparation.⁷ Let us look at only one of these public sermons in which the Prophet Joseph refers to an ancient example of the sacred endowment.

Three days before first administering the endowment, the Prophet Joseph spoke to the assembled thousands in the grove on temple hill near the emerging Nauvoo Temple. There, in his Sunday sermon on 1 May 1842, he spoke of the endowment blessings to be poured out when the temple was completed. In this public sermon, he told them that the endowment would confer on them “the keys of the kingdom. . . . The keys are certain signs and words by which false spirits and personages may be detected from true, which cannot be revealed to the Elders till the Temple is completed. The rich can only get [the endowment keys] in the Temple, the poor may get them on the mountain top as did Moses.”⁸

The one obvious question is, “Where is recorded and when did Moses receive his endowment?” Certainly, his experience recorded in Exodus 3, when he by foot ascended the mount and saw the fiery, burning bush, was a portion of an endowment. In fact, sacred experiences in the Spirit have an infinite spectrum of manifestations, all constituting a true endowment. Any true outpouring of the Spirit becomes a sacred trust, regardless of comparative intensity. But what we speak of here as Moses’ endowment was the profound spiritual experience that occurred many years later. The record of this endowment begins in Moses 1 in our Pearl of Great Price.

This chapter—a restored chapter not found in the traditional scriptures—gives us far greater insight into Genesis. From Moses 1 we learn that Genesis is not merely a general history written by Moses or a pseudepigraphic story of the Hebrews allegedly written in Moses’ name. Instead Moses 1 sets Genesis up as a highly personal revelation to Moses—an essential endowment of knowledge and power given prior to his mission to Egypt to reclaim lost Israel (see verses 25-26). He did not compile history as Elder Richards did: he was shown the history. Moses 1 begins as each endowment begins, with heaven and earth joining. This time, Moses ascended, not by foot but by the transporting power of the Spirit.⁹ He was caught up into a mountain the name of which is not now known to us (see verse 42). There he spoke with God face to face. Once this outpouring of the abundance of the Spirit subsided, Moses found himself on his back for many hours. When he came to his strength again, he exclaimed, “Now . . . I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed” (verse 10). Think of him, reflect on the fact that for the first forty years of his life, he had been primped, pampered, and prepared as a prince, even to become a king in Egypt. For all he had known, he was a member of the royal family, even a god. He had access to the greatest knowledge and library in the world. And now, at age eighty, forty years after his experience at the burning bush, having received the fulness of the endowment for the first time, he realized that he had not been fully prepared for this endowment.

As Moses’ case demonstrates, the actual endowment is not a mere representation but is the reality of coming into a heavenly presence and of being instructed in the things of eternity. In temples, we have a staged representation of the step-by-step ascent into the presence of the Eternal while we are yet alive.¹⁰ It is never suggested that we have died when we participate in these blessings. Rather, when we enter the celestial room, we pause to await the promptings and premonitions of the Comforter. And after a period of time, mostly of our own accord, we descend the stairs, and resume the clothing and walk of our earthly existence. But there should have been a change in us as there certainly was with Moses when he was caught up to celestial realms and saw and heard things unlawful to utter.

The book of Moses is what the Lord permitted him to write of his endowment experience. The scriptural recounting continues with his confrontation with the adversary. When it began, he did not have the keys to detect him. But upon calling on the Lord four times, finally, with sufficient faith, Moses was endowed with the power to cast out Satan. The Lord intervened again. He told Moses that his inquiry to know of all things in the universe could not then be completely fulfilled—that he could then only receive an account of the creation of this earth and its inhabitants. Nonetheless, the Lord gave Moses the grand gestalt of the universe as he explained his ultimate purpose: a purpose that transcends the boundaries of this earth and applies to all worlds: “This is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). And then his endowment continued when he was given an account of the creation of our eternity and our earth. He saw the scenes of the Garden of Eden. He saw the encounter between Adam, Eve, and the great adversary. With this intelligence, and much more, he could return to Egypt with a new identity and power. Who can deny that in the ensuing months Moses proved he had been empowered from on high? As Jehovah’s instrument, he confounded the wizards of Egypt and led the children of Israel from bondage.¹¹

Now, how prepared were the children of Israel for an endowment of power? When they were brought out of Egypt with a “stretched out arm,” one explicit purpose was for them to assemble and offer sacrifice unto the Lord (see Exodus 3:18; 5:3, 17; 8:8, 27-29; 10:25). Three months after the Exodus, when they arrived at Sinai, at the request of the Lord, Moses ascended the hill again. There he was instructed to prepare Israel to receive their endowment three days later. He returned to the people. He charged them to wash themselves clean, to keep themselves pure, to not go in unto their wives for those three days: for it appears that once this charge was given, the Lord did not want anyone in Israel conceived before he came down with his presence on the holy mount to reveal his covenant (see Exodus 19).

Moses directed the administration of their preparatory cleansings. On the third day, each one heard the call to come to the foot of the mount. They had been charged not to come up into the mount or the Lord would break through and destroy them. Obeying the charge and avoiding the appointed penalty, they did not go further up the mount. However, unlike the dramatic display of Cecil B. DeMille’s inaccurate but spectacular production, Moses was not alone, and the law was not first written in stone by the finger of the Lord. Rather, all Israel heard with their own ears God himself speak each of the words of the Ten Commandments. The trials of ensuing months and years would test whether those words were written in their hearts. But all that generation of Israel participated in that preparatory endowment (cf. Exodus 19:1-24:11 with Deuteronomy 5:22-27 [1-33]).

Yet, as President Brigham Young once put it, had they followed the teachings of Moses, it would not have been one year after the Exodus before they would have received their full endowment.¹² As revealed in the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible, they rejected the higher law (see JST Exodus 34:1-2; D&C 84:19-25). Therefore, the holy order, and the ordinances thereof, were taken from among them. A beautiful, yet lesser order, the Levitical order of the priesthood, was introduced. Dutiful offerings of sacrifice would characterize this order, a service first in the tabernacle and later in the temple. To set themselves apart not only from the world, but from any other tribe of Israel not permitted to bear the priesthood, the Lord revealed special clothing they would wear only in the precincts of sacred space. As recorded in Exodus 28-30, the Lord gave to Moses in the mount the divine pattern of the sacred garments of the holy priesthood. In particular, Aaron and his successor sons had the privilege of wearing the beautiful garments of the priesthood that only the High Priest of ancient Israel could wear.

Mr. Ehat wrote of “two other endowment occasions”. One of these was the endowment of the disciples of Jesus who had been “charged by the Savior on the night of the Resurrection to tarry in Jerusalem until they be endued with power from on high” (Luke 24:49).

Conventional Christianity mistakenly believes that the powerful outpouring on the day of Pentecost recorded in Acts 2—the mighty rushing wind, the cloven tongues of fire over the heads of each of the disciples while they spoke in tongues—was all the endowment they were to receive. But, when read more closely, the scriptures reveal that the disciples’ endowment took place in a house (probably an upper room) and was interrupted by a multitude of curious men (see Acts 2:1-6). The rude interference turned out well in the end: Peter gave his first sermon evidencing his own anointing, a sermon that explained the last great mystery the Savior had posed to his detractors, a sermon instrumental in adding more than three thousand souls to the church that day.¹³

But their endowment pales in comparison with what the Savior from behind the veil and out of the heavens taught the Nephites of the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost, that which the righteous received when the Lord appeared among them (see 3 Nephi 9 [cf. especially verses 19-20 with Helaman 5]; 3 Nephi 17; 19:8-36). In fact, the Lord tactfully explained to the twelve Nephite apostles that there were none in Palestine then prepared to receive the endowment that the Nephite disciples received (see 3 Nephi 19:35-36; cf. 3 Nephi 15:14-16:4).

Preparing for the Endowment

Tonight as I attended the temple, I reflected on the following words:

Throughout the ages, the endowment has been a difficult experience for which to prepare. No specific length of time assures proper preparation. Not until he was eighty years of age was Moses prepared enough to receive his endowment. The children of Israel, through four hundred and thirty years of conditioning, were ill-prepared to receive their endowment even though they had passed through three months of torturous travel in the desert and had benefited from the daily, visible protection of the glory of God! And even though Jesus’ disciples had had the direct presence of the Lord during the three years of his personal ministry, the Lord allowed only his twelve apostles in Jerusalem to receive as much of an endowment as they were prepared to and did receive on the day of Pentecost. The Nephite faithful received the full endowment only after the trial of their faith. Even for some of the Kirtland Saints, the seemingly interminable five-year wait for the endowment was not enough. For many of the Nauvoo Saints, another five years was not enough. . . .

From the scriptural history of the endowment of this and past dispensations, may I conclude by suggesting seven prerequisite, continuous preparations required for those who seek these sacred blessings: (1) Experience, especially experience with the Spirit of the Lord; (2) service, as shown by a willingness to serve as a witness of the Savior, not simply by the sacrifice of worldly, but also of other worthy yet less-important enjoyments; (3) purity, in body, in mind, in spirit; (4) prayer and study, particularly about the promises and previous outpourings of such blessings in this as well as in prior dispensations; (5) obedience and repentance, specifically in forsaking your own sins and in forgiving others’; (6) humility, meekness, integrity through fasting, expressed foremost in a willingness to receive and remain true to God’s covenants and promises during succeeding trials of faith; and (7) faith in coming unto Christ for new birth, by prayer, by a broken heart, by boldly petitioning only from him the power revealed through his ordinances. As the Psalmist succinctly asked and answered the great questions of preparation, “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? [Only] he that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation. This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face” (Psalm 24:3-6).

Sources:

1. “Endowment”. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 7 February 2009.↩
2. Faust, James E. “Who Shall Ascend Into the Hill of the Lord”. August 2001. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 7 February 2009.↩
3. Hinckley, Gordon B. Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1997. 638.↩
4. Nelson, Russell M. “Prepare for the Blessings of the Temple”. March 2002. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 7 February 2009. Ed. – See also Temple Endowment Understood by Revelation.↩
5. Ibid.↩
6. Parry, Donald W. ed. Temples of the Ancient World. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and F.A.R.M.S., 1980. 48-62.↩
7. See 2 April, 16 April, 17 May, 11 June, 16, 23 July, 13, 27 August, 9 October 1843; 21 January, 10 March, 7 April, 16 June 1844 sermons as recorded in The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph – hereafter WJS, 168-73, 194-99, 202-4, 209-16, 232-36, 238-42, 243-47, 252-55, 317-19, 327-36, 340-62, 378-83.↩
8. See the “Law of the Lord” account of the 1 May 1842 sermon in WJS, 119-20 (cf. Papers of Joseph Smith, 2:379).↩
9. The temporary transporting of an individual into the presence of the Lord is a fundamental characteristic of the endowment (see D&C 76:5-10, 114-19). For examples, see, in chronological order, Ether 3:13-20; Genesis 28:10-22; 35:6-15; Isaiah 6:1 (1-8); Ezekiel 37:1; 1 Nephi 1:8 (8-14); 11:1 (chapters 11-14), 2 Nephi 4:25; Helaman 5:44-50; Matthew 17:1-9 (cf. 2 Peter 1:16-18); 3 Nephi 28:13-16, 36-40 (cf. D&C 84:33); Acts 7:55-56; 2 Corinthians 12:1-4; Revelation 1:10, 4:1-2; D&C 88:63-69, 45-75); 93:1.↩
10. See the classic comment of Oliver Cowdery (but attributed to Joseph Smith) in Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 51; and David O. McKay, cited by Truman G. Madsen, “House of Glory,” 10-Stake Fireside Address, March 1972, reprinted in The Highest in Us (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1978), 103.↩
11. Moses 1:1-4:32 was received by Moses only a short while before his return to Egypt. Perhaps had Joseph Smith not been interrupted in the process of the translation of Genesis, its translation would clearly show that it was entirely revealed to Moses prior to the return to Egypt.↩
12. “If they had been sanctified and holy, the children of Israel would not have travelled one year with Moses before they would have received their endowments and the Melchisedec Priesthood. But they could not receive them, and never did. Moses left them and they did not receive the fulness of that Priesthood. . . . The Lord told Moses that he would show himself to the people; but they begged Moses to plead with the Lord not to do so” (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 6:100-101).↩
13. The sermon is recorded in Acts 2:14-40. He gave the answer to the mysterious question of the Savior—the question that forever silenced his critics from asking questions again (see Matthew 22:41-46)—recounted in verses 25-36, especially verses 33-36. See Acts 2:41 for the number of converts added to the Church that day.↩

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