page_title: Endowment (Latter Day Saints)
section_title: The 1836 Kirtland endowment
hierarchical_section_title: Endowment (Latter Day Saints) / The 1836 Kirtland endowment
caption_attribution_description: Kirtland Temple English: The Kirtland Temple in Kirtland, Ohio Deutsch: Der Kirtland Temple in Kirtland, Ohio
context_page_description: In the theology of the Latter Day Saint movement, an endowment refers to a gift of "power from on high", typically associated with Latter Day Saint temples. The purpose and meaning of the endowment varied during the life of movement founder Joseph Smith. The term has referred to many such gifts of heavenly power, including the confirmation ritual, the institution of the High Priesthood in 1831, events and rituals occurring in the Kirtland Temple in the mid-1830s, and an elaborate ritual performed in the Nauvoo Temple in the 1840s.
  The term endowment has the most significance to adherents of the Latter Day Saint branch known as Mormonism, including most prominently The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which practices a form of the Nauvoo endowment. The Nauvoo endowment ceremony, introduced by Joseph Smith and codified by Mormon leader Brigham Young, consisted of symbolic acts and covenants designed to prepare participants to officiate in priesthood ordinances, and to give them the key words and tokens they need to pass by angels guarding the way to heaven.
context_section_description: A year and a half after the June 1831 endowment, Smith said he received a revelation in December 1832 to prepare to build a "house of God", or a temple. A revelation soon followed identifying the location of the temple in Kirtland, Ohio, and another revelation affirmed that in this building the Lord "design[ed] to endow those [he] had chosen with power on high". In a later revelation the Lord indicated that the elders were to be "endowed with power from on high; for [he had] prepared a greater endowment" than the 1831 endowment. Upon the completion of the Kirtland Temple after three years of construction (1833–36), the elders of the church gathered for this second promised endowment in early 1836.
  The Kirtland Temple endowment ceremonies were patterned after Old Testament sacerdotal practices. They consisted of preparatory washings, administered in private homes, in which men washed and purified their bodies with water and alcohol. After this, they gathered in the temple where they were anointed with specially consecrated oil and with blessings pronounced upon their heads by Smith and other church leaders. The men's anointings were sealed with uplifted hands. Following these ceremonies many men reported participating in extraordinary spiritual experiences, such as seeing visions, speaking prophecies or receiving revelations. The culmination of the endowment was a solemn assembly, held on March 30, in which the men partook of the sacrament and then washed each other's feet. Those present spent the rest of the day and night prophesying, speaking in tongues, testifying and exhorting each other. To those present it was a "day of Pentecost". Indeed, Smith told the solemn assembly that they could now "go forth and build up the kingdom of God".
  On April 3, 1836, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery recounted the appearance of Jesus to them in the Kirtland Temple, and his acceptance of the building as his house. This was followed by the appearance of three Old Testament prophets: Moses, Elias, and Elijah, each of whom bestowed additional temple-related authority on the two men.
  
  Initially, Smith intended the Kirtland endowment to become an annual affair; he administered the same ceremonies again in 1837. However, because of persecution the Mormons largely abandoned Kirtland and its temple in 1838-39 and moved west. As Smith's theology expanded during the 1840s, the Kirtland endowment was superseded by the Nauvoo endowment. Mormons looked back upon the Kirtland Temple rituals with the authority bestowed by the three prophets as preparatory to the greater endowment revealed at Nauvoo. This was certainly the view of Brigham Young, who said: 
  And those first Elders who helped to build it [Kirtland Temple], received a portion of their first endowments, or we might say more clearly, some of the first, or introductory, or initiatory ordinances, preparatory to an endowment. The preparatory ordinances there administered, though accompanied the ministration of angels, and the presence of the Lord Jesus, were but a faint similitude of the ordinances of the House of the Lord in their fulness.
caption: Kirtland Temple, site of the Kirtland endowment in 1836 and 1837.
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