Temple Archetypes

I always come away from my Old Testament class being like "Woah I never knew that that's so cool my spiritual mind is blown!" :) It's awesome. Today we talked about temple archetypes and the Garden of Eden as a temple. I found it to be super interesting and profound. :)

Here are the 10 characteristics that all temples share; or, what makes a temple a temple.

The Garden of Eden meets each one. Ready? :)

1. Area made sacred by the presence of God
2. Represented the primordial hillock
3. Architectural embodiment of the cosmic mountain
4. Associated with the waters of life
5. Contains a Tree of Life
6. Sacred marriage
7. In it worshippers are clothed
8. Place of sacrifice
9. Destruction or loss is calamitous & fatal to community
10. God's word is revealed inside

:) It makes me super want to go to the temple. We're going this friday yay! :)

Clarification of a few points: 

We talked about how the foremost purpose for going to the temple is to be in the presence of God, not to do ordinances or anything else (though those are important.) It makes me so excited!! :)) And you don't even have to be endowed for that. (I feel like everyone here is endowed except me.) You can go do baptisms in the temple and be in God's presence there! :))

I had no idea what the primordial hillock was until a few hours ago haha. We talked in class about the Creation and how in antiquity water represented chaos and the land was God's imposition of order. Some Jews believe that Jerusalem was the land first raised out of the water/chaos, and Muslims believe it was Mecca.

The cosmic mountain archetype is seen in the pyramids of Egypt, the ziggurats of Mesopotamia, and the mountains all throughout the Bible. {There's a reason we call the temple the mountain of the Lord. :)} It represents that place above the earth, closer to where God dwells, that man must ascend to (involving work/effort on our part) and God must condescend to, and where we can be in the presence of God. 

The Garden of Eden had four rivers running through it. Today I would say the waters of Life represent Christ. :)

The Tree of Life one could be both figurative and literal (well not a real tree today, but a painting of one, in addition to the Love of God / Christ.)

I thought the clothing one was interesting, especially since Latter-day Saints catch so much grief for temple garments.

In the Garden of Eden, God sacrificed an animal and used the skin to clothe Adam & Eve. In the Tabernacle, the sacrifices are pretty obvious. I assume that today, after Christ, it's the sacrifice of a broken heart & a contrite spirit. 

The others seem pretty obvious to me. Anyways, I just thought this was super interesting, and it taught me a lot about temples and made me really excited to go!! How awesome to be in the presence of God :))

Just another example of how much He loves us!! :)

xox