JKC concludes his guest series.

Finally, the conclusion of my series about how the endowment and the eucharist perform similar functions. (For the rest of the series, see Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.) I’ll apologize in advance for getting a little personal in this one. Thanks for indulging me! [Read more…]

JKC continues his series

In the last three parts (Part I, Part II, Part III), I have suggested that although we as latter day saints are accustomed to thinking of the Kirtland endowment, if at all, as an incomplete chapter of our history that was later superseded by the endowment ceremony administered in the Nauvoo temple, another way of looking at the endowment liturgy could be to see it as a way to organize and systematize the principles that were revealed first in Kirtland, and provide an ritual through which saints that were not present at the Kirtland endowment could symbolically participate in the same spiritual gifts, blessings, and powers by symbolically becoming sanctified, symbolically receiving the divine law, and symbolically receiving God’s presence.

In this part I finally get into the discussion of how all this relates to the Eucharist. Sorry it took so long to lay the groundwork! [Read more…]

JKC continues his series

In the last two Parts (Part I & Part II), I explained my suggestion that despite the fact that the endowment liturgy that is now familiar was first administered in some form, in Nauvoo, the essential principles of the endowment were all revealed in the Kirtland-era revelations in the early to mid 1830s, and that the Kirtland endowment experience was not just a single event, but ranged from late 1830 to early 1836, culminating in the 1836 vision of Jesus in the temple, declaring that his servants had been endowed in that house.

In this part, I’ll sketch out my new perspective on the Nauvoo endowment liturgy as an ordinance that perhaps looks back toward the Kirtland endowment. [Read more…]

This is the second part in JKC’s guest series discussing his perspective on the Endowment. Part I is here.

In the last Part, I explained that there was an endowment in Kirtland, but that to find it, we may need to be prepared to look for something that does not necessarily resemble the ceremony that we know today as the endowment. This Part is my attempt to find the principles of the endowment in the Kirtland revelations. [Read more…]

Jared Cook, who occasionally comments in the bloggernacle under his initials JKC (the K is for Kimball), was born in Ogden, Utah, raised in Rochester, New York, served a mission in Phoenix, studied English at BYU, went to law school in Minneapolis, and then returned to Rochester where he lives now and works as an employment lawyer. He’s a lifelong member of the church and a lifelong democrat. He’s a father of three, husband of one, and a lover of the outdoors, Tolkien, and history (especially obscure church history, medieval history, and Mormon history). He cannot flatter himself that he is a writer, but he does occasionally scratch out the odd poem or essay.

“How the Endowment is to the Kirtland Temple as the Eucharist is to the Last Supper (Part I).”

This is series of posts that will attempt to gather and put down some of my thoughts about the LDS temple endowment. [Read more…]