Ordinance room

In temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), an Ordinance room is a room where the ceremony known as the Endowment is administered, as well as other ordinances such as Sealings. Some temples perform a -style ordinance where patrons move from room to room, each room representing a progression of mankind: the Creation room, representing the Genesis creation story; the Garden room represents the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve lived prior to the fall of man; the World room, where Adam and Eve lived after the fall; the Terrestrial room; and the Celestial room representing the Celestial Kingdom of God, or more commonly, heaven. There is also an additional ordinance room, the Sealing room, and at least one temple has a Holy of Holies. These two rooms are reserved for the administration of ordinances beyond the Endowment. The Holy of Holies is representative of that talked about when the temple is discussed in the bible.

The first building to have ordinance rooms, designed to conduct the Endowment, was Joseph Smith's store in Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1842. Using canvas, Smith divided the store's large, second-floor room into "departments," which represented "the interior of a temple as much as circumstances would permit" (Anderson & Bergera, Quorum of Anointed, 2). The departments included a garden with potted plants and a veil. (Anderson & Bergera, Quorum of Anointed, 3-4). After conducting the endowment services, Smith told Brigham Young, "This is not arranged right but we have done the best we could under the circumstances in which we are placed." Smith concluded that he wanted Young to "organize and systemize all these ceremonies." (Anderson & Bergera, Quorum of Anointed, 6-7). After Smith's death in 1844, Young also used canvas to divide the large attic room in the Nauvoo Temple in the departments. Participants in the Nauvoo Temple ceremonies used the same names for these departments as the ordinance rooms in later temples: Garden Room, World Room, Terrestrial Room, Celestial Room, and Sealing Room, which was also called the Holy of Holies. (Anderson & Bergera, Endowment Companies, 2-4, 377; Smith, 204-206). With the resumption of temple ordinances in Salt Lake City in the 1850s, Young followed the same method of using canvas to divide an upper floor of the Council House into the ordinance departments (Hyde, 90-99).

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