I've been very curious what actually occurs with the Church of LDS's highly secretive ceremonies held in the Temple's Room reserved strictly for the Latter Day Saint's highest ranked members. Do you happen to know what really goes on there?
Yes, I do, because I've often participated in them. But, trust me, I'm certainly not any higher-ranking than anybody else. Here's
a link for you. It's not going to give you much in terms of detail, but it will answer the basic question of why we have temples and what they're used for. Here are a few paragraphs I wrote up for someone years and years ago:
Like our regular churches (our regular meetinghouses), our temples are places where we go to learn and to worship. Unlike our regular churches, they are places where only those who have demonstrated their willingness to live their lives according to a particular standard of worthiness are allowed. In other words, you might think of a temple as sort of an “institute of higher learning” with respect to spiritual knowledge. It is in our temples that we make covenants with God, a covenant, of course, being a two-way promise or mutual agreement. Consequently, we believe that when we live up to the promises we make in the temple, God will in turn grant us certain blessings. We refer to this covenant-making ordinance as the Endowment. We believe that both the covenants and the blessing associated with them to be eternal in nature. Many of them serve to unite families not only for this life but for the next as well.
Most people imagine that a temple looks much like a cathedral inside. After all, from the outside, there is a certain resemblance. In our temples, however, there is no one large room like the nave of a cathedral. Rather there are many rooms (170 in the Salt Lake Temple -- the Salt Lake Temple being only one of over 150 temples worldwide), each designed for a specific function. There are, for instance, fourteen rooms in the Salt Lake Temple that are used exclusively for marriages. We call them “sealing rooms” because we believe that marriages performed in our temples “seal” a couple and their posterity together forever. A Latter-day Saint temple wedding is beautiful. The couple kneels together and holds hands across a velvet and lace covered alter. When the individual officiating pronounces them husband and wife, he states that their marriage will endure “for time and all eternity” as opposed to “until death do you part” or "as long as you both shall live." On either side of the room there are large mirrors, directly across from one another. What do you see when you look in a mirror which reflects another mirror? You see an image which appears to go on forever. This is, of course, symbolic of the covenant we make in the temple when we marry there.
Another important and unique function of our temples is to enable us to do vicarious work for those of our ancestors who have gone before us. This work would include baptism, the endowment and eternal marriage. We are prohibited from discussing the details of these ordinances with those who have not participated in them themselves. As a matter of fact, they are so sacred to us that we don't even talk about them among ourselves outside of the temple.
Not all members of our Church have proven themselves worthy of the blessings the Temple offers. The fact that a person is a baptized member of the Church doesn’t mean that that individual is committed to living up to the required standard of obedience that entrance to the temple requires. All Latter-day Saints are encouraged to strive for that commitment and worthiness, however. I hold a current, valid Temple Recommend that entitles me to attend any of the Church’s more than 100 temples worldwide. Every two years, I need to renew this recommend. I do so by requesting a meeting with either my Bishop or one of his counselors. (These three men are the leaders of an individual LDS Ward, or congregation – much like a parish.) The person I meet with will ask me a series of questions. I’ve been asked these many, many times, so I ought to be able to remember most of them. They run pretty much along these lines:
Do you believe in God, the Eternal Father, in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost?
Do you have a firm testimony of the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ?
Do you sustain President Russell M. Nelson as Prophet, Seer and Revelator, and as the only individual holding the Keys of the Kingdom of God on the earth today?
Do you pay a full tithing? (This would be 10% of our income.)
Do you strive to attend your Church meetings?
Are you morally clean? (To us this means no pre-marital or extra-marital sexual relations of any kind.)
Do you live the Word of Wisdom? (This is our health code which prohibits alcohol, tobacco, stimulants and illegal drugs.)
Are you honest in your dealings with your fellow men?
Is there anything in your relationship with members of your family that is amiss?
Do you affiliate with members of any apostate group?
After I have been interviewed by a member of my Bishopric, I must meet with a member of my Stake Presidency. The Stake President and his counselors preside over about six to eight wards, making it roughly equivalent to a diocese. He asks me the same questions. If I am able to honestly answer them to the satisfaction of both of these men, I am given a Temple Recommend. I have to carry it with me whenever I go into the Temple, since I won’t get beyond the front door without it.
