“Let Him Be Clothed”: A Latter-day and an Ancient Ascent to the Heavenly Temple

 

Shortly after the death of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, the Saints began moving west. In Iowa, a young Saint named Lorenzo Snow kept a small journal that ended with the Spring of 1847. Lorenzo would be called to the Apostleship in 1849, and later he would serve as the fifth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One event that he carefully recorded in his journal is a sign of his being prepared for his prophetic call and ministry.

Lorenzo Snow notes that at a time he was sick, he experienced a vision wherein he was clothed and admitted into what could properly be described as the Heavenly Temple:

My spirit seems to have left the world and introduced into that of Kolob. I heard a voice calling me by name saying “he is worthy, he is worthy, take away his filthy garments.” My clothes were then taken off piece by piece and a voice said “let him be clothed, let him be clothed.” Immediately I found a celestial body gradually growing upon me until at length I found myself crowned with all its glory and power. The extecy of joy I now experienced no man can tell, pen cannot describe it. I conversed familiarly with Joseph, Father Smith, and others, and mingled in the society of the Holy One. I saw my family all saved and observed the dispensations of God with mankind until at last a perfect redemption was effected, tho’ great was the sufferings of the wicked, especially those that had persecuted the saints. My spirit must have remained I should judge for days injoying the scenes of eternal happiness.[1]

Of note is another account of a ritual clothing and introduction to the highest heaven and placement in the Temple therein, found in 2 Enoch 22. 2 Enoch is a pseudepigraphal text likely written sometime in the first century A.D., and while it likely does not contain the actual writings of Enoch, it contains some traditions regarding Enoch’s ritual ascent to the presence of God as understood in an ancient context.

And the LORD said to Michael, "Go, and extract Enoch from |his| earthly clothing. And anoint him with my delightful oil, and put him into the clothes of my glory." And so Michael did, just as the LORD had said to him. He anointed me and he clothed me. And the appearance of that oil is greater than the greatest light, and its ointment is like sweet dew, and its fragrance myrrh; and it is like the rays of the glittering sun. And I looked at myself, and I had become like one of his glorious ones, and there was no observable difference.[2]

Second Enoch was unknown to the western world until 1899, when it was first translated into Latin. And yet, despite its antiquity, finds a comfortable comparison with the vision of a Latter-day prophet who found himself introduced into the presence of the Holy One, clothed in heavenly garments, and exalted with the power and glory of the glorious ones.

Hugh Nibley once effectively argued that Joseph Smith could not have reinvented the Temple to such the degree he did by piecing together clues from antiquity. Even by Nibley’s day, scholars were and still are trying to unravel the full import of the ancient temple around the world and how diffused the temple had become.[3] Here is another piece of evidence that the manner of the Latter-day Temple and the hope to be introduced into the Heavenly Temple is an authentic restoration of an ancient manner of worship upon which civilization rested, upon which the blessings of heaven truly roll forth.

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[1] Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, "The Iowa Journal of Lorenzo Snow," BYU Studies Quarterly 24, no.3 (1984): 269. Spelling and punctuation original.

[2] 2 Enoch 22:8-10, from James H. Charelsworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday, 1983).

[3] See Hugh Nibley, “Looking Backward,” in The Temple in Antiquity, ed. Truman G. Madsen (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University, 1984).