Perhaps the most compelling parallel that can be made between Mormon temples and Solomon’s temple is that the Israelites disobediently put an “Asherah pole” — an object which honored Asherah, the wife of Baal (which idolatrous Israelites assumed to be also the wife of Yahweh) — into the temple. Kings and Chronicles repeatedly makes the issue of Asherah a measuring rod when describing the rebellion and idolatry and wickedness of God’s people and the kings of Israel. In the great reform, the Asherah pole was chopped down and burned to ashes (2 Kings 23:6).

Today, Mormons resurrect worship of Asherah in at least two ways:

1. They essentially teach and believe in Heavenly Mother, and this worldview is the framework which informs the endowment ceremony, which under-girds the sealing ceremonies (i.e. sealings are necessary for women to become cosmic queens, goddesses, to further the genealogy of the gods), and the rare second anointings, where women are given assurance, short of subsequently committing murder, of celestial exaltation unto godhood.

2. After re-enacting the Fall, the Mormon participants in the LDS endowment ceremony are told by Satan to run, hide, and make a green apron-covering for themselves, to hide their nakedness. The acted drama or movie is literally stopped to give LDS participant time to obey Satan. The narrator then instructs them to put on their green aprons. In Mormonism, the decision to eat of the forbidden fruit is construed as being wise, righteous, holy, and worth imitating. It is celebrated for allegedly then enabling Adam and Eve to birth mortal children. Whereas Biblically the shameful self-covering of Adam and Eve was replaced with the animal-skin covering that God provided (pointing to Christ), Mormons put the green apron on in a celebratory fashion, not a shameful one. They even put it on over the alleged divine covering (the white undergarments). Mormons are often even buried in their casket with the green apron on. The green apron may be seen as a celebration of the fertility that came with the Fall, when they obeyed Satan’s enticing. Since Asherah was a goddess of fertility, I can’t help but see the connection: not only are modern Mormon apologists like Kevin Barney calling for worship of Asherah as Heavenly Mother, Mormons have inadvertently paid homage to the goddess of fertility in a demonic temple ceremony.