By Bill McKeever

Note: The following was originally printed in the September/October 2024 edition of Mormonism Researched. To request a free subscription, please visit here.

Published on September 26, 2024

One of the more noticeable features on many temples built by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the golden statue of an angel blowing a trumpet. Today, members of the LDS Church associate the angel with Moroni, the angel who allegedly appeared to Joseph Smith on September 21, 1823. In his first appearance, Moroni told Smith of a record of ancient inhabitants written on “gold plates” that were buried not far from the Smith family home.

Moroni knew precisely where the plates were buried because he, as a human centuries earlier, personally buried the plates. Given the fact that the Bible never teaches that humans can eventually become angels, we should approach Smith’s narrative with much skepticism. Smith would not be allowed to retrieve the plates for another four years; once he claimed to have retrieved them, he insisted that no one could see them lest he be “destroyed.”

Including an angelic being on an LDS temple is not a mandatory requirement. In August of 1833 Joseph Smith claimed God commanded him to build a “house” unto the Lord in Kirtland, OH. On March 27, 1836 the building was dedicated and used mainly as a house of worship and a place of education. Relatively simple in its design, the Kirtland temple had a steeple and a weathervane, but it included nothing that resembled an angelic being.

Smith claimed that he was commanded to build temples in Independence, MO, Far West, MO (near Kingston, MO), and Adam-ondi-Ahman (near the town of Gallatin, MO). Despite God’s instruction, none of these buildings ever became a reality. That being the case, it is difficult to surmise whether or not the finished temples would have included an angel in their design.

Conflict in Missouri forced the Latter-day Saints to set up their headquarters in what was known at the time as Commerce, Illinois. It was renamed Nauvoo in April 1840. That same year Joseph Smith announced a temple would be built on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. Though he did not live to see the finished product, atop the steeple was a weathervane depicting a horizontal angel that appears to be flying while blowing a trumpet and holding a book.

There doesn’t seem to be evidence to suggest that the Nauvoo angel was officially known as Moroni. In fact, Rachel Felt explains in her article on the church website titled “Ask Us: Top Five Reference Questions about the Angel Moroni” that “the Nauvoo Temple also had an angel on it, although it was not designed to be the angel Moroni.”

After Smith’s violent death at the Carthage Jail, Brigham Young was determined to see the Nauvoo temple eventually dedicated. After doing so in 1846, he led most of Smith’s followers to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. In 1848 the Nauvoo temple was set ablaze by an unknown arsonist. Much of what was left later succumbed to a tornado that swept through the area in 1850.

When the Saints moved west to Utah, temples were built in St. George, Manti, and Logan. None of these “pioneer” temples had angelic statues. The first temple to include the golden angel familiar to most people was the iconic Salt Lake City temple that was finished in 1893. Cyrus Dallin, a non-member of the LDS Church, was commissioned to design the angel.

According to Rachel Felt, “Dallin sculpted an angel based on descriptions of Gabriel in the Book of Revelation.” However, while Revelation mentions seven angels that were each given trumpets, none of them are given names. And while the angel Gabriel is mentioned in the Book of Daniel (8:16, 9:21) and Luke (1:19, 26), he isn’t mentioned at all in the Book of Revelation.

In that same article, Felt goes on to say, “On April 2, 1892, Marriner Merrill, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, went to visit the completed statue. Upon seeing it, he wanted to call it Moroni. The name stuck. By April 6, when the statue was placed atop the Salt Lake Temple, Moroni had become the statue’s accepted name.”

An article simply titled “Angel Moroni” available on the official church web site states that “more than 50,000 Saints gathered to witness the laying of the capstone on the Salt Lake Temple. During the ceremony, President Wilford Woodruff activated an electrical switch, and a machine lowered the granite capstone into place.

Later that day, workers installed a gold-leafed, copper statue of an angel on the tallest spire. Though some identified the angel as Gabriel and others as ‘the angel fly[ing] in the midst of heaven,’ referenced in Revelation 14:6, almost all Latter-day Saints since that capstone ceremony have identified the statue as the angel Moroni.”

Identifying Moroni with Revelation 14:6 seems out of place when it is understood that this angel will come on the scene only after the 144,000 faithful believers appear with Jesus on Mount Zion. That event has not happened yet.

Following the Salt Lake temple, the church built temples in Laie (HI), Cardston (Alberta, Canada), Mesa (AZ), Idaho Falls (ID), and Bern, (Switzerland). All without an angelic statue. With the building of the Los Angeles temple in 1956, Moroni showed up again. With few exceptions, most of the temples built during the tenures of  Gordon B. Hinckley and Thomas S. Monson had Moroni statues.

One wonders if President Russell M. Nelson is not a big fan of Moroni statues. When he became the 17th president of the church in January 2018, there were already several temples being planned or under construction.

As of April 2024 Nelson has announced 168 temples, far surpassing that of any of his predecessors. However, when one looks at the designs of the buildings he personally announced, it appears that Moroni will no longer be a prominent figure.

While many of the designs still have steeples, Moroni appears to be going into retirement.