KENSINGTON, Md. — An apostle invited people to tour the Washington D.C. Temple in an article he wrote and published on Medium ahead of a six-week open house that begins next week.
Elder David A. Bednar also talks in a new video about how, as a college student, he appeared in a video that used to play at the temple’s visitors’ center.
Many of the millions who have seen the freshly renovated temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints rising above the trees on the Capital Beltway that encircles the nation’s capital may have some basic questions about it, wrote Elder Bednar, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
In the Medium article, Elder Bednar gives succinct answers to three questions:
- What is a temple?
- What happens in the temple?
- Why do we build temples?
“In the holy temples, what we learn and promise to do changes us from the inside out, enabling us to become more devoted disciples of Jesus Christ,” he wrote.
Read the full article here.
The article mirrored Elder Bednar’s remarks during three press conferences Monday, when he addressed 150 journalists at the visitors’ center. He also led journalists on tours of what is the third-largest temple of the Church of Jesus Christ.
The Church News posted a new video Wednesday night about how church leaders and temple tour hosts help people find stillness and peace during a temple open house.
In the video, Sister Susan Bednar says that while her husband was a BYU student, he had a role as an angel in a film that was shown at the visitors’ center.
Elder Bednar described spending this week leading tours for CBS Sunday Morning, groups of reporters — including one from the New York Times — and interfaith leaders.
“When you can take people on tours of a temple, one of the stops is in the Celestial Room,” he said. “And we specifically invite people to not say anything; just go in, sit down and we can discuss it after we come out of the Celestial Room, but we won’t speak in the room. The quiet in that setting with those people just reminds me of the verse, ‘Be still and know that I am God.’
“We bring people through of all kinds of religious and professional backgrounds, but for a few minutes, regardless of who they are or where they came from, they sit in the Celestial Room and they are still.”
The temple will be open to the general public from April 28 to June 11, except Sundays. Demand for free tickets is high and hundreds of thousands are expected to tour the temple, which has been closed to the public for 48 years.
Tickets are available at dctemple.org/open-house.