Endowment

The Endowment is a sacred temple ordinance belonging to the higher Nauvoo work of the Prophet Joseph Smith. It introduces the faithful into a covenant order of Priesthood, knowledge, obligation, and promise, preparing men and women for the fuller blessings of the Church of the Firstborn.

This page treats the doctrine and historical framework of the Endowment without publishing sacred ceremony text, ritual instructions, signs, tokens, or private ordinance details. The purpose is reverent understanding, not exposure.

Joseph Smith and the Nauvoo Endowment

Joseph Smith first administered the Nauvoo temple ordinances to selected brethren on May 4, 1842, while setting forth the order pertaining to the Ancient of Days and the principles by which the Saints could secure the blessings prepared for the Church of the Firstborn.1 The Endowment therefore belongs with the Holy Order, the Temple, Celestial Marriage, Adoption, and the wider Gospel of the Father.

It should not be reduced to a single layer of meaning. It contains instruction, covenant, symbol, Priesthood order, and promise together. Its symbolism is rich and beautiful, but the ordinance should not be reduced to symbolism alone.

More Than Symbolic

Modern readers often encounter the Endowment through simplified descriptions that emphasize only ritual symbolism. Symbolism is genuinely present and important, but the early Nauvoo and Utah witnesses treated the Endowment as a real conferral of knowledge and power in covenant form. President Brigham Young’s St. George teaching commonly called the Lecture at the Veil is one historical example of the doctrinal instruction once associated with the temple order.2

The Endowment is therefore best understood as a sacred means by which the Saints are taught, covenanted, and prepared to pass from the preparatory Gospel of the Son into the higher ordinances and Family Order of the Father.

Orders of Priesthood in the Endowment

Fred C. Collier’s doctrinal expositions preserve an important distinction: the Endowment witnesses successive orders connected with the Aaronic Priesthood, the Melchizedek Priesthood, and the higher Patriarchal Priesthood. In that framework, the lower and higher Aaronic order prepare the Saints in foundational law and stewardship; the first Melchizedek order relates to the Apostolic or High Priesthood; and the higher Melchizedek or Patriarchal order points to the fulness connected with fathers, mothers, kings, queens, priests, and priestesses.3

This is one reason the Endowment cannot be understood apart from the Aaronic Priesthood, Melchizedek Priesthood, Patriarchal Priesthood, and Holy Order. It is an ordinance doorway into the full structure of the Father’s Kingdom.

Endowment, Family, and Exaltation

The Endowment does not stand alone. It prepares the faithful for Celestial Marriage, Adoption, and crowning temple blessings. Those ordinances form a connected order by which the Church of the Firstborn is organized as a Family Kingdom under God the Father.4

For this reason, the Endowment should be studied alongside the Two Gospels, Temple & Ordinances, Law of Adoption, Matriarchal Priestesshood, and Second Anointing.

Men and Women in the Order

The Nauvoo temple order was Patriarchal and Matriarchal. It was not designed to exalt men apart from women. Joseph Smith’s work points toward kings and priests, queens and priestesses, fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, sealed into one Family Order. The Matriarchal side of this order is treated more fully on the Matriarchal Priestesshood page.

Further Study

Notes

  1. Joseph Smith history, May 4, 1842, as quoted in Fred C. Collier, The Nauvoo Doctrine in Light of Book of Mormon Prophecy, Part 1: The Concept, Doctrine of the Priesthood, Vol. 3 No. 1 (November 1986), 47; compare Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 237. ↩
  2. Fred C. Collier, President Brigham Young’s Doctrine on Deity, 325–27. ↩
  3. Fred C. Collier, Doctrinal Teachings of Fred C. Collier, Vol. 2, 248–51; see also Collier, Analyzing the Different Orders of the Patriarchal Priesthood, Doctrine of the Priesthood, Vol. 7 No. 8 (August 1991). ↩
  4. Collier, The Nauvoo Doctrine in Light of Book of Mormon Prophecy, Part 1: The Concept, Doctrine of the Priesthood, Vol. 3 No. 1, 31, 38–39. ↩