The temple - passwords

I had a hard time understanding why our Heavenly Father would require anyone to know a password to obtain His glory and live with Him in the eternities, but that's what Mormonism teaches you in the temple. For those of you who want to be prepared just in case, it goes a little something like this:

"Health in the navel, marrow in the bones, strength in the loins and in the sinews, power in the priesthood be upon me and upon my posterity through all generations of time and throughout all eternity".

Assistant, "Eve", sentinel of the Veil 

OK, so there's a little more to "passing through the veil" than just that. You have to do the Freemason handshakes with someone who offers his or her hand to you from the other side of the veil, you have to summon that person by knocking, you have to be accompanied by a temple worker who acts as an intermediary between you and the hidden hand shaker. If you want to know how it all goes down just go to your favorite search engine and the mysteries of Heaven can be yours within seconds.

Why would God require all this bizarre back and forth and recitation of cryptic blabber about strong loins and generations? It made no sense to me. Where was Jesus waiting to accept me with open arms? Why did God have to send someone to open the doors to His Kingdom instead of coming Himself? Where was God in any of this? 

The temple - secret signs and tokens

In the Mormon temple endowment ceremony you learn a lot of great stuff like all the different handshakes that will get you into the Celestial Kingdom.

It's not a joke. The really do teach you how to handshake your way into Heaven. I couldn't believe it myself. Seriously? This is how I'll unlock the Pearly Gates? I literally have to physically do this move on an angel standing guard? Oh, they're seriously so important I can't tell anyone about them? Wow... And no one else has let this out of the bag yet? Satan doesn't know about this? I can imagine Satan could really mess up the whole who-gets-into-Heaven thing if he knew about this.

The "signs and tokens" I was taught in the temple struck me as completely arbitrary and superfluous to heartfelt Christian belief and yet I was told that these were gestures passed down from God to man from Adam until the present day. The temple was supposed to be the oldest, most sacred ritual in the history of man. 

I knew enough about the Israelite's tabernacle in the wilderness, Solomon's temple, and the temple in Christs time to know that the whole story sounded a bit funky. I also kept somewhere in the back of my mind the allegation that Freemasonry had something to do with the temple, but I never dared look into it. I nurtured my faith instead of my suspicions and doubts.

As it turns out I should have followed up on the whole Freemason thing. The temple endowment, as it turns out, is a complete rip off of Freemasonry. And we're not just talking about a simple handshake here,

 

all of the handshakes were lifted from the Freemasons,

 

as are most of the words, explanations, now purged penalties, clothing, etc. All I did when I went through the temple was become a pseudo-Freemason. Look it up. This shit's not just weird, completely unrelated to ancient worship, and devoid of any real Christian significance, it's really not that exciting. 

I say if you want to become a Freemason, go to the Freemasons, not the Mormons.