Temple penalties and the paid preacher: Removed in 1990
Until April 1990, the endowment included penalty oaths with a gesture drawing the thumb across the throat, and a scene in which Lucifer hires a Christian minister to preach the historic creeds. Published transcripts and contemporary news reports document both, and their removal.
The short answer
Did the temple ceremony include penalty gestures?
Yes. Independently published transcripts record penalty wording and gestures in the earlier endowment. The 1990 comparison records their removal. These are identifiable historical records, not Church-issued public scripts.
The defining contrast
The earlier and later records
“I would suffer my life to be taken.”Printed p. 78 · sentence excerpt ↗
The corresponding obligation remains, but the penalty wording and its prescribed gesture are absent.
Record summary · printed pp. 122–123 ↗What the earlier record describes
A physical action accompanied the words
The comparison identifies a gesture drawing the thumb across the throat. It places the quoted words within a promise not to disclose specified ritual information. This is evidence about the ceremony’s content; it does not establish that the Church carried out a physical punishment.
Verification and provenance
The transcripts have an identifiable publication history
Jerald and Sandra Tanner published the comparison in Evolution of the Mormon Temple Ceremony. Their source note identifies a February 1984 Provo Temple recording made by Larry Cozad Jr. and a later recording supplied anonymously. Some gaps were filled from written versions. These are the publishers’ provenance claims; the recordings were not independently audited for this case.
Contemporaneous reporting by John Dart also documented the removal of penalty gestures in April 1990.
Official framing
Administration can change
The Church’s history topic “Adjustments to Temple Work” attributes changes in administration to revelation, members’ needs, and practical concerns, while maintaining continuity in core doctrine and central covenants. That general explanation does not supply the dated scripts or erase the differences recorded here.
Also removed in 1990
Lucifer hires a minister to preach the creeds
The pre-1990 endowment portrayed a “sectarian minister” offering Adam the God of the historic Christian creeds. Lucifer recruits and pays him.
Lucifer: “If you will preach your orthodox religion to these people, and convert them, I will pay you well.”Printed pp. 79–80 · excerpts ↗
Minister: “Do you believe in a God who is without body, parts and passions … who is surrounded by myriads of beings who have been saved by grace, not for any act of theirs, but by His good pleasure?”
Adam: “I do not. I cannot comprehend such a being.”
The Church “quietly dropped from its temple rituals a vow in which women pledged obedience to their husbands, the wearing of face veils by women, and a portrayal of non-Mormon clergy as hirelings of Satan.”Los Angeles Times report, reproduced in the Gregory A. Prince research excerpts ↗
What the scene ridiculed“Without body, parts, or passions” is the language of the Westminster Confession and the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles. Salvation “by grace, not for any act of theirs” paraphrases Ephesians 2:8–9: “by grace you have been saved through faith … not a result of works.” The scene presented both as the preaching of a minister Satan pays. Joseph Smith’s canonized account of his first vision, which says the Lord called all the churches’ “creeds … an abomination in his sight,” remains in the Pearl of Great Price (Joseph Smith—History 1:19).
Finding
What the record establishes
Until 1990, members promised in the temple that they would “suffer [their] life to be taken” rather than reveal its tokens and signs, while drawing a thumb across the throat, and watched a Christian minister portrayed as Satan’s hireling for preaching the creeds. Their absence from today’s ceremony does not erase them. The evidence supports their historical presence and removal, with the transcript provenance disclosed.
Verify the record
Sources and provenance
Document type, dates, and limitations are identified below.
Utah Lighthouse Ministry, a critical Christian ministry. Provenance: printed p. 59 (PDF p. 66); earlier wording and gesture: pp. 77–78 (PDF pp. 84–85); later text: pp. 122–123 (PDF pp. 130–131). Independent transcription, not an official script.
Read source ↗1990 · archival research excerptsGregory A. Prince research collection, University of VirginiaReproduces 1990 newspaper reporting, including the removal of “a portrayal of non-Mormon clergy as hirelings of Satan” and the Church’s confirmation that changes took effect in mid-April.
Read source ↗Current canon · Pearl of Great PriceJoseph Smith—History 1:19“All their creeds were an abomination in his sight.”
Read source ↗May 5, 1990 · contemporary reportingJohn Dart, Los Angeles TimesContemporary corroboration; access may be limited.
Read source ↗2022 · official historical explanationChurch History Topics: “Adjustments to Temple Work”General institutional framing; does not reproduce the specific penalty revision.
Read source ↗