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Rebuilding
of Nauvoo Illinois Temple Completed
NAUVOO—The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will open the doors
of its rebuilt Nauvoo Illinois Temple to an expected one-third million
visitors beginning 6 May 2002—an event that promises to be
one of the most extraordinary and historic organized by the Church
in its 172-year history.
Although all
112 operating temples of the Church have the same function, the
Nauvoo Illinois Temple—the Church's 113th—has special
significance to many of the 11 million Latter-day Saints worldwide.
Thousands of
Church members have ancestors who lived in Nauvoo, and millions
more—even recent converts—have closely studied the history
of the city established by Church founder Joseph Smith. The original
temple was destroyed after some 12,000 early Latter-day Saints were
driven from Nauvoo in 1846.
"There is a
great interest in Nauvoo ... on the part of our people," says Church
President Gordon B. Hinckley. "The thousands who lived in Nauvoo
have become tens of thousands in their descendants. They look back
on their people with affection and remembrance and with a great
desire to honor them and respect them."
This temple
is unlike any other the Church has constructed in recent years.
It is built on the same site and to virtually the same specifications
and design as the original Nauvoo Temple—the last landmark
seen by fleeing Church members a century and a half ago.
Mormon pioneers
wrote in their journals that the promises they made to God in the
Nauvoo Temple gave them strength to endure the historic, 1,300-mile
trek across Iowa and America's vast central wilderness to the Rocky
Mountains.
On 4 April 1999,
approximately 14 years after the Church dedicated a temple in Chicago,
President Hinckley announced plans to rebuild the Nauvoo Temple.
He told Latter-day Saints that the temple would be "a memorial to
those who built the first such structure there on the banks of the
Mississippi."
Architectural
drawings of the original temple that surfaced in 1948 provided much
information on the exterior of the temple, with some interior details.
Combining these renderings with an
early daguerreotype
of the temple and other meticulous research, a team of restoration
architects and a research committee of historians and Nauvoo experts
pieced together a reconstruction plan with remarkable attention
to historic detail.
The open house
will begin with a media and VIP preview, followed by public tours
beginning Monday, 6 May 2002, and continuing through Saturday, 22
June 2002. No tours will be offered on Sundays. Public tours are
from 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. daily, except on Mondays, when tours
are offered from 7:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Open house tickets
are required and can be obtained by telephoning 1-800-537-6719.
Following the
public tours, the temple will be formally dedicated Thursday through
Sunday, 27-30 June 2002. Thirteen separate dedicatory sessions are
scheduled to accommodate the Latter-day Saints in the area who will
be served by the temple, as well as members of the Church from other
areas.
Because of the
historic significance of this event, the dedication will be broadcast
via satellite to Latter-day Saints worldwide.
The Nauvoo Illinois
Temple will be the primary temple used by more than 13,000 Latter-day
Saints in western Illinois and eastern Iowa in stakes (similar to
dioceses) in Nauvoo, Peoria, Cedar Rapids, Davenport and Iowa City.
Latter-day Saint
temples differ from the hundreds of meetinghouses or churches where
members typically meet for Sunday worship services and midweek social
activities. Temples are considered "houses of the Lord" where Christ's
teachings are reaffirmed through marriage, baptism and other sacred
ordinances that unite families for eternity.
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© 2002Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
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