Except for the white marble exterior, the first-century Jewish Temple bears no resemblance to today’s LDS temples. We know this because we find blueprints for Solomon’s temple in 1 Kings 6, and for Herod’s temple in the Mishnah (tractate Middoth). The Jerusalem Temple building itself was only for the priests. Outside it were the open-air Court of Israel (for Jewish laymen) and the Court of the Women, all of which were surrounded on the perimeter by the Court of the Gentiles, none of which resembles a modern LDS temple. Even Solomon’s bronze sea, on which LDS temple baptismal fonts are modeled, was not rebuilt for the temple Jesus knew.
There was only one authorized Temple at any one time, and Gentile Christians could not go into it. (Paul was accused of defiling the Temple by bringing in Trophimus the Ephesian.) Neither is there any evidence that Christians built their own temples in apostolic times. And nowhere in the Bible or rabbinic writings do we find marriage or endowment ceremonies of any kind, or proxy baptisms, being performed in those temples. Nothing secret took place in the Temple; all that was done there was spelled out in the Torah. Temples were only for sacrifice. And now, because of the once-for-all atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, temples have become entirely unnecessary (Hebrews 10:11-18).
