Friday, May 19, 2017

Salt Lake Temple: Most Expensive Temple Ever?


THE next time you enjoy the gothic and symbolic features  of the one and only Salt Lake LDS Temple, consider it’s dollar price to build -- $3,469,118.
That was the price given by Elder George Reynolds, a member of the Quorum of the Seventy, back in 1895, to a Philadelphia newspaper, as quoted in the Deseret Weekly News of March 23, 1895.


Factor in the inflation and even in 1916 dollars (the furthest back an on-line government inflation calculator goes), that price equals at least $86,559,450 in 2017 dollars.
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints hasn’t revealed the actual costs of any temples for many decades now.)
However, in contrast the San Diego Temple, which opened in 1993, was reported by the Los Angeles Times to have cost an estimated $24 million. (That’s $40.6 million in 2017 dollars.)

                                                             San Diego Temple.

And, the original Ogden Temple, that opened in 1972, cost $4.29 million (or some $25 million in today’s dollars.)
Note that the Salt Lake Temple required some 40 years to build – far more than any other temple. Also, some volunteer, unpaid labor was used back then, or the price over four decades likely would have been much more, likely $100 millon plus.
Furthermore, Elder Reynolds in that 1895 article stated that exact costs of the temple were impossible. Still, he said about the Salt Lake Temple’s construction:



“In the early stages the progress was slow and very expensive, for it took four yoke of oxen four days to bring a single stone from the quarry twenty miles distant.”
He said some estimated it cost $100 for every stone cut, moved by oxen to the temple site and then laid in place. He also stressed that metal and other materials were very expensive to obtain, especially until the railroad came along.

                                                        Pencil drawing by Steve Arave




Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Did the Gadianton Robbers live in the Wasatch Mountains?

                       The High Uintas, with the Wasatch Mountains in the far background.

DID the infamous Gadianton Robbers of the Book of Mormon (Helaman 6:18-29) inhabit western U.S. mountains?
Yes, they did and even the Wasatch Mountains, according to Brigham Young:
"There are scores of evil spirits here -- spirits of the old Gadianton robbers, some of whom inhabited these mountains, and used to go into the south and afflict the Nephites. There are millions of those spirits in these mountains, and they are ready to make us covetous, if they can; they are ready to lead astray every man and woman that wishes to be a Latter-day Saint." (Journal of Discourses, 8:344, from a discourse by President Young on January 20, 1861, in the Tabernacle of Salt Lake City.

-On a trip to southeast Deseret territory by W.D. Huntington and with 11 other men and one Indian in 1854 by a request from Brigham Young, is another Gadianton Robber tale:

This group of explorers found some extensive Indian ruins which the current Native Americans said they didn't build and which were very old. The estimates were the group was about 500 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. Here was the men's conclusion:

"We very readily came to a conclusion drawn from  the Book
Of Mormon In second Chapter of  the  book  of
Nephi that the ancient possessors of these strong holds
were robbers of the Gadianton band and we considered this locality as one of their strongholds." (-From the Deseret News Dec. 28, 1854.)


              Navajo Mountain in S.E. Utah.                                   Photo by Ravell Call


-EXTRAPOLATING on these comments is more proof that NORTH AMERICA was where the Nephites and Lamanites primarily lived, NOT Central or South America ....

NOTE: This article and all of the NighUntoKolob blog are NOT an official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They are the author's conclusions and opinions only.