Abraham is promised that if he and his wife will keep the covenant they make with the Lord, and marry under the Everlasting Covenant of Marriage, they will have seed or posterity like the sand on the seashore and like the stars in the heavens. This promise of endless posterity is symbolically represented on the outside of the Salt Lake Temple, as well as other temples such as the Nauvoo Temple.

 

 

 

 

Starting from ground level, and ascending along the exterior walls, the Salt Lake Temple has an earthstone, moonstone, and a sunstone. Finally, the starstones are up on the towers.

In Genesis 15:5, the promise is stated as,

“And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.”

Later, Isaac is promised the same in Genesis 26:4,

“And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed;”

Joseph who is sold into Egypt has a vision and sees his father, Jacob and his mother Rachel and his 11 brothers all bow down to him, in Genesis 37:9-10 it reads,

“And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me. And he told it to his father, and to his brethren: and his father rebuked him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?”

Clearly, Jacob is the sun, and Rachel is the moon and the 11 brothers are the stars. So the moonstones represent the female and the sunstones the male and the stars on top of the temple towers the endless

posterity of children.

The final temple ordinance for both the living and the dead is the sealing or the New and Everlasting

Covenant of Marriage which makes it possible for a man and a woman to have endless posterity if they keep these covenants made in the Holy Temple and fulfill for themselves the Abrahamic Covenant.