Menu
The temple is a place of peace and revelation, where one enters into important covenants and can draw close to God. Many Latter-day Saints experience these blessings, yet yearn for a better understanding of the temple. This knowledge is hiding in plain sight, right in Exodus, nestled in the very chapters that we are covering in the current reading assignments of Come Follow Me.
Join us in this webinar as Amy Hardison discusses Exodus. She will give you the dots. You can connect them to enrich your understanding of the latter-day temple endowment.
Amy Blake Hardison was born and raised in Phoenix and Mesa, Arizona. She graduated from Weber State University in 1980 in English. Amy chose to be a stay-at-home mother, raising 4 children who are now 42, 40, 37, and 35. When her youngest child was 8 years old, she began teaching institute as a volunteer teacher. She taught for 24 years at Chandler-Gilbert Community College, at the Tempe Institute (ASU), the East Valley Institute, and a valley-wide class for mid-singles. She has participated in four Sidney B. Sperry Symposiums and the Conference on Abraham at BYU. In addition to her articles, Amy has authored 3 books: How to Feel Great About Being a Mother (1987) and Understanding the Symbols, Covenants and Ordinances of the Temple (2016), and The Ultimate Coach (2021). On the surface, these books seem very different, but they encompass Amy’s three passions: her family, the scriptures, and learning. Amy lives in Mesa, Arizona with her wonderful husband Steve. They have been married for 44 years. They have 11 beautiful grandchildren.
Why we know the Exodus really happened, and how to store it in Scripture Notes
Q&A with Avraham Gileadi
Interview with Avraham Gileadi on the Isaiah Translation and End-Time Events
Mental Exertion is Key to Drawing on the Powers of Heaven
Andrew Young – How Hollywood Socially Engineers Your Family
Jonathan Neville – Why Joseph translated 2 different sets of plates
Session expired
Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab. After logging in you can close it and return to this page.
I really love what Exodus says about altars. Exodus 20:24-26 states,
“24 ¶ An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt asacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen: in all places where I record my name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee.
25 And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn astone: for if thou lift up thy btool upon it, thou hast polluted it.
26 Neither shalt thou go up by asteps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not bdiscovered thereon.”
These scriptures make it abundantly clear that earth or soil is the preferred material to make an altar. Uncut stone is the 2nd choice and altars can’t have steps per the Law of Moses. This concept is proven by the mound builders of ancient America. Look at “Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley” at https://archive.org/details/ancientmonuments00squi/page/n169/mode/2up
These platform pyramids were made of soil and they were 6 to 9 feet tall with 50-foot ramps made of soil–no stairs!
We know the mound builders (Adena and Hopewell) built 4 or 5 different mound types (effigy, burial, observation, etc.). I have a NEW theory about why mounds were built. You heard it here first! When the Law of Moses ended, I believe the Nephites and possibly Lamanites that were keeping the Law of Moses wanted to distance themselves from the animal sacrificial altars. I believe they covered these altars with soil and created a mound to hide their old ways and start afresh. This action reduced any chance they would be tempted to go back to the Law of Moses and the mound served as a token reminder that the Law of Moses was over.
Many mounds have been dug into and evidence of fire has been found. For an example, go to a book published in 1890 called “The antiquities of Tennessee and the adjacent states, and the state of aboriginal society in the scale of civilization represented by them; a series of historical and ethnological studies.” Page 37 states, “The large, oblong mound. A, had no stone graves in its upper layer, but a shaft sunk into its center, through its entire depth, revealed, near the bottom and close to the original surface of the earth, a hard, red, burned surface or altar, with ashes and charcoal resting on it. It appears that the mass of earth composing the mound had been erected upon the altar.”