What Really Happens Behind LDS Temple Doors? A Pastor Lays 9 Secret Ceremonies Beside the Bible

By Kevin Pirnie

Friends, I want to talk with you about something that has been heavy on my heart for a long time.

Some of the kindest, hardest-working, most family-loving people I have ever known are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They keep their word. They show up with casseroles when someone is sick. They raise their children with discipline and devotion. This article is not an attack on them. I love them.

But love tells the truth, even when the truth is uncomfortable. A friend who sees the bridge is out and says nothing is not a friend at all.

1. Why the secrecy?

LDS temple ceremonies are closed to the public. Even most Latter-day Saints cannot walk through the doors without a temple recommend signed by their bishop and stake president. Members are taught that the ordinances are too sacred to discuss outside the temple walls.

Now listen to Jesus when the high priest questioned Him about His teaching:

“I spake openly to the world… and in secret have I said nothing.”
John 18:20

The apostle Paul stood before King Agrippa and said the same thing about the death and resurrection of Christ: “this thing was not done in a corner” (Acts 26:26).

Truth does not need a locked room. Light never asks to be hidden. The gospel of Jesus Christ has never had a back room. It was preached on hillsides, in marketplaces, along lakeshores, and from a cross outside a city wall where everyone could see.

2. Baptism for the dead

In the temple, a living person stands in the font and is immersed on behalf of someone who has died. The proxy is then confirmed a member of the LDS church for that dead person, and men are ordained to the Melchizedek priesthood on their behalf. The practice began in Nauvoo in 1840, and millions of names have passed through the fonts since.

But Scripture draws a firm line at the grave:

“It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.”
Hebrews 9:27

Notice the order. Death, then judgment. Not death, then a second chance by proxy. When the rich man in torment pleaded for relief, Abraham answered, “between us and you there is a great gulf fixed” (Luke 16:26). And Ezekiel wrote, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father” (Ezekiel 18:20).

People often point to 1 Corinthians 15:29. Read it carefully. Paul says “they,” not “we.” He mentions a practice to make a point about the resurrection, but he never commands it, never practices it, and no New Testament church ever did it. Building a worldwide ordinance on one unexplained reference, while setting aside the plain teaching of the rest of Scripture, is building a house on a single post.

3. Washings, anointings, and the garment

In the initiatory ordinance, the person is ceremonially washed with water and anointed with oil. For many years the officiator touched each part of the body as he spoke a blessing over it. That was modified in 2005, but the purpose remains: to become clean from the sins of this generation, and to be anointed to become a king and a priest hereafter.

Here’s the problem. The Bible says the washing has already happened, and it was done by blood, not by water and oil in a temple.

“Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God.”
Revelation 1:5-6

Look at the verbs: loved, washed, hath made. Past tense. Bought and paid for at Calvary. And “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). Not some sin. Not the sins of this generation. All sin.

The garment as a shield

Members are then told to wear the temple garment throughout their lives, and that it will be a shield and protection against the destroyer as long as they are faithful to their covenants.

Do you remember what happened in 1 Samuel 4? Israel was losing a battle to the Philistines, and the elders said, in effect, “Let’s go get the Ark of the Covenant and carry it into battle. That will protect us.” They took the holiest object in Israel and treated it like a lucky charm. They lost the battle. Thirty thousand men died. And the Ark itself was captured.

God has never put His protection in an object, and He certainly has not put it in a piece of fabric.

“The Lord is my rock, and my fortress… my buckler.”
Psalm 18:2

My covering is not underwear. It is “the robe of righteousness” that Christ places on me (Isaiah 61:10). Paul warned about religious rules that “have indeed a shew of wisdom… but are not of any value” against the flesh (Colossians 2:23).

4. New names, secret handshakes, and the veil

Here is where the ceremony becomes truly foreign to the Bible.

Each person receives a new name they are told never to reveal, except at a certain place later in the ceremony. They are taught a series of tokens, which are special handclasps, along with signs and names. One is called the Sign of the Nail. Another is the Patriarchal Grip, which comes with a long phrase about health in the navel and marrow in the bone.

At the end of the ceremony, the person stands at a veil and must give these tokens, names, and words to someone representing the Lord before being allowed to pass into the Celestial Room, which represents the presence of God.

A ceremony that keeps changing

Before April 1990, the ceremony was darker still. Participants made gestures showing how their own lives would be taken, including drawing a thumb across the throat, and swore they would suffer death rather than reveal the tokens. Those penalties were removed in 1990, and the ceremony was revised again in 2005, 2019, and later.

So let me ask a gentle question. If these ordinances were restored directly from heaven and are eternal, why do they keep getting edited?

“I am the Lord, I change not.”
Malachi 3:6

Jesus Christ is “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8). What comes from Him does not need revision every few decades.

Where the ceremony actually came from

As a student of LDS history, I’ll add this. Joseph Smith became a Freemason in March 1842 and introduced the endowment ceremony less than two months later, in May 1842. The square and compass marks sewn into the garment, the grips, the signs, and the oath penalties closely track Masonic ritual. They do not come from Moses, David, Jesus, or Paul.

The veil God tore Himself

Now think about that veil. When Jesus died, “the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom” (Matthew 27:51).

From the top down. No human hand could reach the top of that massive curtain. God tore it Himself, and He tore it at the very moment His Son finished the work. The barrier was removed from heaven’s side.

“Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh.”
Hebrews 10:19-20

Why would anyone sew back together the curtain God ripped in two?

When the prodigal son came home, his father didn’t stand at the door demanding a password and a secret handshake. The Bible says, “when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him… and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him” (Luke 15:20).

5. Lucifer’s apron

In the version of the endowment that members went through for many years, the drama portrays Lucifer wearing an apron. When Adam asks about it, Lucifer says it is an emblem of his power and priesthoods. Then he tells Adam and Eve to make aprons, and every person in the room puts on their own green apron.

Friends, I have read the Bible cover to cover more times than I can count, and I can’t find anything like that anywhere in it. In Scripture, the fig-leaf covering Adam and Eve made for themselves was the symbol of man’s failed attempt to hide his own shame. God replaced it with coats of skin, which required a death (Genesis 3:21). From the first pages of the Bible, God was teaching that our covering must come from Him, through sacrifice, not from our own hands.

6. Covenants and “through your faithfulness”

At the altar, members covenant to keep the laws of obedience, sacrifice, the gospel, chastity, and consecration. The law of consecration is a promise to give their time, talents, and everything they have or will have to the LDS church. Over and over, the promised blessings are attached to one phrase: through your faithfulness.

That phrase can become a weight no one can carry. How faithful is faithful enough? How do you know when you’ve arrived?

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
Ephesians 2:8-9

Grace and earning cannot share the same throne. “And if by grace, then is it no more of works” (Romans 11:6). Paul asked the Galatians a question that still cuts to the heart: “having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:3).

You can’t climb your way to God on your knees, and you can’t covenant your way there at an altar.

7. Eternal marriage and becoming gods

In the sealing room, couples are married for time and all eternity and are promised thrones, kingdoms, dominions, exaltation, and “eternal lives,” which in LDS teaching means eternal increase as gods. LDS President Lorenzo Snow famously taught, “As man now is, God once was: as God now is, man may be.” Doctrine and Covenants 132:20 says of those faithful to this covenant, “Then shall they be gods.”

I love my wife dearly. But Jesus said that in the resurrection “they neither marry, nor are given in marriage” (Matthew 22:30). And listen to God Himself:

“Before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.”
Isaiah 43:10

“I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God” (Isaiah 44:6). God did not say there are no other gods yet. He said there never were and never will be.

The oldest lie in the world was spoken in a garden: “ye shall be as gods” (Genesis 3:5). It didn’t come from God then, and it doesn’t come from Him now.

8. The second anointing

Most Latter-day Saints have never heard of this one. By invitation only, and under the direction of the church president, a small number of couples receive a second anointing. The husband is anointed a king and priest, and the wife a queen and priestess to her husband. They are blessed with the power to attain godhood and are sealed up to eternal life. They are charged not to tell anyone they received it. Afterward, in their home, the wife washes her husband’s feet.

So there is a secret ordinance above the secret ordinances, reserved for a select few.

That is nothing like the church of the New Testament. There is no inner circle of elite saints.

“There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”
1 Timothy 2:5

A wife does not come to God through her husband. “There is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). And every believer, not a chosen few, can “know that ye have eternal life” (1 John 5:13). Assurance is not a reward for the elite. It is the birthright of every child of God.

9. What was the Bible’s temple actually for?

The Old Testament temple had no baptisms for the dead, no endowments, no weddings, no new names, and no handshakes. It was a place of blood sacrifice, where one high priest entered the Holy of Holies once a year, and every part of it pointed forward to Jesus.

When Jesus came, He fulfilled it. “By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Hebrews 9:12). Once. Eternal. Nothing left to repeat.

Today, believers themselves are God’s temple (1 Corinthians 6:19). And in the New Jerusalem, John says, “I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it” (Revelation 21:22).

Side by side: the temple and the Word

So when we set LDS temple worship next to the Bible, we are not looking at a slightly different flavor of Christianity. We are looking at a different god, a different gospel, a different priesthood, and a different way of salvation. Paul warned of exactly this: “another gospel: Which is not another” (Galatians 1:6-7).

Now hold the genuine bill

Paul summed up the gospel in a few short lines:

“Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.”
1 Corinthians 15:3-4

Think about the thief on the cross. He was never baptized. He never wore a garment. He never learned a token, received a new name, or knelt at an altar. He simply turned to Jesus and said, “Lord, remember me.” And Jesus answered, “To day shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).

When Jesus cried from the cross, “It is finished,” He used a word that could be written across a settled account: paid in full. There is nothing left for you to add. Adding to a finished work doesn’t complete it. It insults it.

That’s it, friend. Look to Jesus.

The church Jesus built is still here

When the church began in Acts 2, it was beautifully simple. People heard the gospel preached openly. They repented and believed. They were baptized, once, for themselves, as a public picture of what Christ had already done in their hearts. And then “they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42).

The Lord gave His church two ordinances: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Both are done in the open. Both point to Christ. Neither one saves you; they celebrate the One who does. The church was led by pastors and deacons, gathered around God’s Word, and its doors were open to anyone who wanted to come.

That same simple faith is still practiced today in Bible-believing churches all around the world, in cathedrals, storefronts, living rooms, and under trees. No recommend required. No secret words. No handshake at a veil.

If you have questions, message me anytime. I’d love to sit down with you over a cup of coffee and open the Bible together.