Page:The House of the Lord.djvu/27

Rh destruction of the Temple had been foretold by our Lord, while yet He lived in the flesh. In the year 70 A. D. the Temple was utterly destroyed by fire in connection with the capture of Jerusalem by the Romans under Titus.

The Temple of Herod was the last temple reared on the eastern hemisphere. From the destruction of that great edifice onward to the time of the re-establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ in the nineteenth century, our only record of temple building is such mention as is found in Nephite chronicles. Book of Mormon scriptures affirm that temples were erected by the Nephite colonists on what is now known as the American continent; but we have few details of construction and fewer facts as to administrative ordinances pertaining to these western temples. The people constructed a Temple about 570 B.C. and this we learn was patterned after the Temple of Solomon, though greatly inferior to that gorgeous structure in grandeur and costliness. It is of interest to read that when the resurrected Lord manifested Himself to the Nephites on the western continent, He found them assembled about the Temple. The Book of Mormon, however, makes no mention of temples even as late as the time of the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem; and moreover the Nephite nation came to an end within about four centuries after Christ. It is evident, therefore, that on both hemispheres temples ceased to exist in the early period of the apostasy and the very conception of a Temple in the distinctive sense perished amongst mankind.