Moroni Statue Part 1

Viewpoint on Mormonism, the program that examines the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a Biblical perspective. Viewpoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry. Since 1979, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now your host for today's Viewpoint on Mormonism. Bill McKeever is that angel you see on top of many LDS temples. Welcome to this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism. I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, and with me today is Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM. Now, I'm sure, Eric, if there are any Latter-day Saints listening to that opening, they're probably rolling their eyes, thinking, Good grief, Bill, you don't really know who that angel is on top of Mormon temples.

Of course, it has to be the angel Moroni. And I would agree that that is probably the common understanding that this is the angel that supposedly came and visited Joseph Smith in 1823 and told him about these gold plates that contained what later came to be known as the Book of Mormon. But there was an interesting story in the church news.

It's dated July 30th, 2020, an article written by Valerie Walton. And the title of this article is, Why Do Temples Have the Angel Moroni on Top? Here's a look at the history of the iconic statues.

And in reading this article, I have to admit there were some things I really learned from this article that I was not even aware of. And I thought it would be fun to go through this article and talk about this because most people just naturally assume that it was always to be understood that it was the angel Moroni on top of the temple. Now we know that the Salt Lake Temple and the statue of Moroni got a lot of attention not too terribly long ago when we had an earthquake here and Moroni, as he's understood to be, dropped his trumpet. That was news. That was news all over Salt Lake City.

That was a big deal. But there is another side to this story. And the fact is, it was not always understood, even by Latter-day Saints, that that was to be the angel Moroni. And this article brings out what I think are some very interesting bits of history. But let's look at this article.

What does Valerie Walton say in this article? Why do temples have the angel Moroni on top? Angel Moroni, standing atop the spire of a temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, heralding in the Restoration, seems like a natural and required finishing touch to each house of the Lord. But Moroni's presence on temples dotting the globe is a relatively recent addition to these sacred buildings, only becoming mostly standard in the last few decades. Quote, We think of angel Moroni statues as standard for temples today, but that's because they've been put on temples since the 1980s, when the vast majority of temples have been built. End quote, said Emily Ut, Historic Sites Curator for the Church History Department.

And I think she's absolutely correct there. You just naturally assume this, because I think for much of Mormonism's history, at least since they moved out west to the Salt Lake Valley, that has been a basic understanding that the statue on top of the Salt Lake Temple was, in fact, the angel Moroni. Now, when Emily Ut says that they've been put on temples since the 1980s, when the vast majority of temples have been built, now of course that would go back to the time of Gordon B. Hinckley.

Gordon B. Hinckley, I think was really, before Russell M. Nelson came along, was the one responsible for building quite a few of these buildings throughout the world. Many of them were the much smaller versions of temples that were built in areas that did not have quite as high an LDS population as you would probably find in Utah, for instance. But at least it gave the opportunity for members of the church to visit a temple in somewhat of a close proximity and not making them having to travel hundreds, perhaps even thousands of miles to go to the temple. Now, when Hinckley started doing this, I remember commenting to you, Eric, that I thought this was ingenious because if a Latter-day Saint did not feel compelled to go to the temple because it was too far away, it may also compel them not to pay their tithes. And of course, in order to get into a Mormon temple to receive a temple recommend or the little card that gives you permission to enter a Mormon temple, you must be a full tithe payer. So even though these buildings do cost the church millions of dollars for the building itself and plus the property in which they are built, I think they are making up that revenue by encouraging people to go to the temple, which they're supposed to if they are a Latter-day Saint, and in order to do so, they are going to be full tithe payers.

So the revenue is going to come in to eventually pay for that building anyway. The article continues, Ut spoke with the church news about the origins of the angel Moroni statues and why they are featured on temples of the Church of Jesus Christ. The first temple to feature any sort of angel was the Nauvoo, Illinois temple, which had a weathervane angel. Ut explained that in the 1840s, weathervane angels were extremely popular in the United States. Now, let me stop you there, because in talking with Latter-day Saints, even about the Nauvoo temple, again, they assume that that's the angel Moroni. Now, this is what's interesting, and I did not know this. I did not know that weathervane angels were extremely popular in the United States. Not knowing that, and seeing photographs of the Nauvoo temple, it's natural to assume, oh, that must also be Moroni, because he is an icon in Mormon history. But yet this article says, no, not necessarily.

This was not uncommon at all. To assume that the weathervane angel on top of the Nauvoo temple, and I should say the original Nauvoo temple, because that temple eventually burned down. It was destroyed, but it was rebuilt and dedicated in 2002. Today, the Nauvoo temple, the newly rebuilt temple, does have a statue of Moroni, very similar to all the other statues of Moroni on several other temples around the United States and around the world. But I did not know that that was pretty popular, and so we can't assume that's how it was understood in the early years of Mormonism. Utz said, quote, So when Joseph Smith is building the Nauvoo temple, they put a weathervane on that temple, and it's an angel, because that's just what you did.

That was a very common theme, end quote. This unnamed angel holds a trumpet to its lips and a book in its hands. It references the angel in the book of Revelation, heralding in the second coming, and in parentheses, Revelation 14.6. And that also intrigues me, because here we have a person who works as a curator for the church history department admitting that the angel mentioned in Revelation 14.6 is not the angel Moroni.

And why is that? Now, if nothing else, what we find in this article is that they're, one, admitting that the angel that was on the Nauvoo temple was unnamed. It did not have the name Moroni. And it also references the angel in the book of Revelation, but not heralding the coming forth of the restored gospel, as many Latter-day Saints understand it today, but heralding instead the second coming. That's what we learn in Revelation 14.6. I've always said that it's hard to say the angel mentioned in Revelation 14.6 can be the angel Moroni, because that is an event that has yet to happen.

That angel, to put it quite bluntly, hasn't flown, okay? That angel is not flying yet, because this is something that happens later on, and as this article points out, the angel in the book of Revelation in 14.6 is heralding the second coming, not the coming forth of the restoration, as the Mormons understand it. Because, Bill, we've talked to a lot of Latter-day Saints, and how many times have we had Revelation 14.6 brought up to us?

And they would say, this is a reference, obviously, to Moroni. Isn't that wonderful how we have the restored church with an angel that is heralding in the Book of Mormon? And it's mentioned in the Bible, so it must show that Joseph Smith's story has to be accurate. If this article is correct, and I believe it is, that the angel mentioned in Revelation 14.6 is really heralding in the second coming, then he can't be heralding the coming forth of the restoration. Which means, quite a few Mormon leaders got it wrong, and there are leaders who have said that this is not really an angel heralding the second coming, but rather the angel Moroni.

Let's just give three of the leaders. Harold B. Lee, the 11th president, said that Moroni announced to the prophet that the time was at hand for the gospel in all its fullness to be preached in power unto all the nations. This was in fulfillment of that which had been promised to John when the angel would fly in the midst of heaven, having the fullness of the everlasting gospel to preach to them that dwell on the earth, getting that from Revelation 14.6.

The restoration of that fullness of the gospel was accomplished when the Book of Mormon, which was declared to be a record in which the fullness of the gospel was contained, was restored to the world through the prophet Joseph Smith. And that's from Teachings of the Presence of the Church, Harold B. Lee, which was a church manual, pages 75 and 76. So what we have with this being in a church manual, vetted allegedly by the first presidency, you have a Mormon president taking a verse out of context, and his badly exegeted passage is being vindicated by the first presidency by the very fact that that quotation is in a church manual.

Now, if they can get it wrong on this, what other things can they get wrong? Because certainly Harold B. Lee was not accurate in the way he was understanding Revelation 14.6. Let me give you George F. Richards, an apostle, speaking at a general conference in April of 1927, and he said, the testimony of all these witnesses is a direct testimony of the truth of the Book of Mormon. Here we have another leader in the LDS church getting it wrong. They're looking at a passage in the Bible. They're not looking at the proper context. They're just merely inserting their own presupposition and telling their people, hey, this angel in Revelation 14.6, it's got to be the angel Moroni when there's really no biblical reference to that whatsoever.

Let me give you one more. This is 70 Milton R. Hunter speaking at general conference in April of 1946. He says, John the Revelator, however, had looked down through the stream of time and had beheld that a divine restoration from the heavens would take place. He declared what he saw in vision as follows, and then he quotes Revelation 14.6-7, and then he says, this prediction was fulfilled on September 21 and 22, 1823, when the angel Moroni appeared to the prophet Joseph Smith and told him of a sacred record buried in a hill not far from the boy's home. This record, the angel said, contained the everlasting gospel as understood and practiced by the ancient inhabitants of America, the Nephites. So even Milton R. Hunter, who was a 70 in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, goes on record in giving a wrong identity to the angel mentioned in Revelation 14.6. Tomorrow we're going to continue looking at what I personally think is a fascinating part of Mormon history, and that is the statue of the angel Moroni on top of many Mormon temples.

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