A curated timeline
Temple building and temple worship
the house of the Lord, from Nauvoo's unfinished walls to a worldwide network
In conference discourse, temples move from urgent, unfinished communal projects to a worldwide system designed to put ordinances within reach. The thread also shows a changing emphasis: construction and sacrifice remain visible, but access, repeated worship, family history, and covenant keeping increasingly define what the buildings are for.
1841October General Conferencefragmentary
Baptism for the dead and the Nauvoo temple
Conference record
This fragmentary conference record ties baptism for the dead to a physical font in the Lord's House: Joseph Smith suspends the practice until it can be performed there. Brigham Young then asks elders to remain in Nauvoo and build, treating construction labor as equal to preaching abroad.
1853April General Conferencecontemporaneous report
Temples and the endowment
Brigham Young · President of the Church
At the laying of the Salt Lake Temple's southeast cornerstone, Young places the project in a sequence running from biblical tabernacles through Kirtland and Nauvoo. He also gives a concrete definition of the endowment and makes the unfinished building necessary to receiving it.
1873October General Conferencecontemporaneous report
Why temples, and where
Orson Pratt · Member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
Pratt inventories the temple's distinctive work—washings, anointings, sealings, baptism for the dead, and record keeping—rather than treating it as another meetinghouse. His closing call for temples in northern and southern Utah, so older Saints need not travel six hundred miles, anticipates the later logic of distributed access.
1893April General Conferenceauthoritative print
Salt Lake Temple Dedicatory Prayer
Wilford Woodruff · President of the Church
The Salt Lake Temple dedicatory prayer marks the completion of the building begun forty years earlier. Its detailed petitions for ordinance workers, recorders, genealogists, and work connecting living and dead turn a monumental construction achievement into an operating program.
1900October General Conferenceauthoritative print
Vicarious Work for the Dead
Rudger Clawson · Of the Council of the Twelve Apostles
Clawson insists that a temple's value lies not in architecture or expense but in ordinances for the living and dead. He presents temple service as a field of useful labor for people unable to serve missions and explicitly includes women in that work.
1917April General Conferenceauthoritative print
Temples, expenditures, and ordinance scale
Joseph F. Smith · General Authority
Smith's institutional report records construction spending in Cardston and Hawaii alongside 419,257 temple ordinances performed in 1916—then the Church's annual high. The juxtaposition captures both geographic expansion and the new administrative scale of temple work.
1955October General Conferenceauthoritative print
Why the Latter-day Saints Build Temples
Bruce R. McConkie · Of the First Council of the Seventy
Speaking as the Swiss temple opened, McConkie says temple blessings should be readily available wherever congregations are large enough. He distinguishes temples from ordinary worship spaces and centers them on ordinances, covenants, and continued faithfulness rather than architecture alone.
1985October General Conferenceverbatim
Rejoice in This Great Era of Temple Building
Gordon B. Hinckley · Second Counselor in the First Presidency
Hinckley reports sixteen dedications in little more than two and a half years and states the governing aim plainly: take temples closer to the people. His accounts from Manila, Freiberg, Johannesburg, and elsewhere present temple building as a marker of an increasingly international church.
1998April General Conferenceverbatim
New Temples to Provide “Crowning Blessings” of the Gospel
Gordon B. Hinckley · President of the Church
After describing members traveling for days by inexpensive buses and boats, Hinckley announces about thirty smaller temples and a goal of one hundred operating temples by century's end. The small-temple program changes the scale and speed at which access can expand.
2000April General Conferenceverbatim
A Temple for West Africa
Glenn L. Pace · Of the Seventy
Pace makes unequal access measurable: among 85,000 members in West Africa, he says only 400 had received the endowment because reaching Johannesburg or London was prohibitively expensive. The announced Accra temple appears here as infrastructure needed for a mature regional church, not simply as a symbol.
2008October General Conferenceverbatim
Holy Temples, Sacred Covenants
Silvia H. Allred · First Counselor in the Relief Society General Presidency
Allred remembers a 1976 Central American temple trip that required five days of travel each way and six border crossings, then contrasts it with temples in Costa Rica and Panama and one announced in Honduras. She uses that history of access to explain the ordinances, preparation, and repeated worship the buildings enable.
2021April General Conferenceverbatim
COVID-19 and Temples
Russell M. Nelson · President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
This report documents the first worldwide temple closure and a four-phase reopening governed by local health conditions. Even amid interrupted worship, Nelson notes forty-one temples under construction or renovation and announces twenty more, framing continued expansion as preparation for future access.
2024April General Conferenceverbatim
Temples, Houses of the Lord Dotting the Earth
Neil L. Andersen · Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
Andersen describes 182 operating temples and uses the Philippines—eleven more temples then being built, designed, or prepared—as a case study in network density. The argument has shifted from whether distant regions will receive a temple to how frequent local worship is meant to shape discipleship.