It’s hard to miss when cruising down the Capitol Beltway in Maryland. Its six golden spires rise from the horizon like the Emerald City in the, while its towering white marble is reminiscent of Disneyland. But it’s not an amusement park nor a storybook city—it’s the area’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, although you most likely know it as “the Mormon Temple” .
The temple being built in the 1970s. Photo courtesy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Originally designed by Fred L. Markham, Harold K. Beecher, Henry P. Fetzer, and Keith Wilcox, the temple’s interiors and exteriors haven’t noticeably changed since the renovations, which focused mostly on mechanical and electrical needs. “The vast majority of people that come here will think that we just replaced the carpet,” Utt said. “The changes are really subtle.”
Gong repeatedly compares entering the temple to “crossing a bridge” from the earthly outside to the heavenly inside. Emphasizing his point alone is the color scheme of the temple’s interior. In sharp contrast to the verdant green lawn with its vibrant floral gardens, the inside of the temple is almost exclusively white, cream, and sage, with soft hues of blue here and there.
In addition to the dressing rooms, a tour of the temple takes you through several other ceremonial rooms—many of which are small and meant for extremely intimate, somewhat-secret occasions, such as the “sealing rooms” where couples become married and, thus, “sealed together for eternity,” according to LDS faith.
Among other rooms, the tour also takes guests through the temple’s high-ceilinged celestial room. Meant to evoke images of heaven, the room is a designated space for silent contemplation, in which you listen to your “deep heart’s core,” said Gong, referencing a W.B. Yeats poem.
sambbenson Because it is sacred. It is a modern-day representation of Mount Sinai in Moses' time. If you recall from the Scriptures, only Moses, Jehovah's prophet, was allowed to advance to the summit. The Israelites were only allowed at the foot of Sinai.
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My husband remembers his family taking a tour just before they opened. It was opened to the public briefly.