However, one station precedes them all—the Altar of Sacrifice. Why is this large object the first in the battery of items one must see before he is considered fit to enter God's presence? I believe that its position of prominence can teach us many things about the Temple, the gospel, and the plan of salvation.
If the font represents a womb, where we are immersed in water and "born again," it stands to reason that it should be first on our trek through the obstacles, or rather, necessary preparation stations, marking our way back home. But it is second. Why is the symbol of death the first?
Floor Plan Mirrors the Plan of Salvation
Jesus is referred to by Peter: "Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you..."
The scriptures refer to Jesus as "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8, Moses 7:47). Nothing could proceed in the plan until someone agreed to make the ultimate sacrifice and pay the price for the sin and wickedness that could, and eventually would occur on the earth. Abraham 3 puts the selection of a Savior, Jesus Christ, first in order, followed by the execution of the plan of creation. Just as the Altar precedes the Font in the floor plan of the Old Temple, the guarantee of a sacrifice precedes the creation of the world.
A Gentle Reminder to All
Standing in open air of the outer courtyard, visible to anyone on that side of the Temple in Jerusalem, the Altar was twenty feet square and fifteen feet tall, emitting smoke and the scent of buring hair, cooking fat and meat, black ashes and piles of bones, with the cries, waste, and blood of animals continuously present. A huge column of smoke rising from the Altar probably made it visible for miles in all directions. Why such noisy, garrish prominence?
It probably served as a constant reminder to Israelites in the vicinity that a sacrifice was required to enter God's presence. Sheep and oxen were wealth anciently. (Job's vast wealth is emphasized with a long inventory of the animals he owned.) They provide food, clothing, towing power, and most importantly, animals begot more of themselves. Parting with a sheep or ox would have been a pinching-painful sacrifice, indeed, especially since they had to be healthy and free of blemish. (Imagine driving a new car to the parking lot of a modern Temple, where a deacon or priest would flip a switch and crush the car into a worthless cube.) Pigeons were used when the pilgrims coming to the Temple could not afford the more valuable animals, which is what Jesus' parents did when He was born.
Sacrifice Makes It Real
Obedience to strange, arbitrary rules raises eyebrows, but it does not hurt. Imagine receiving a rule at general conference that all Latter-day Saints were now required to wear something blue, visible or not, on their bodies. No explanation would make such a rule strange, but most would shrug their shoulders and go along. It would not be painful, just weird.
Now imagine instead having chocolate added to the list of items prohibited by the Word of Wisdom. To qualify for a Temple recommend, one would have to give up eating any cocoa products. This is more than obedience; it is a specific kind of obedience, a sacrifice. Sacrifices pack a sense of "ouch," of loss, discomfort. Sacrifice makes obedience real. It makes it palpable, three dimensional, hot and cold. Just as Adam and Eve did not know how good the garden was till they were expelled, so obedience is tepid until the dimension of sacrifice is added to it. (Sacrifice without obedience is also incomplete, as Cain painfully learned.)
Just as the Atonement is central to the plan of salvation, the sacrifice at the Altar is pivotal to the rest of the Temple. Blood from the sacrifice had to be sprinkled on everything at some point in the ceremonies, even the hidden Ark of the Covenant and the priests themselves. Blood from the sacrifice seems to power everything else, legitimizing it.
Repentance and Humility
Another possible interpretation of the prominence of the Altar of Sacrifice is the need for humility and repentance.
All parts of the gospel presuppose a measure of humility. Even faith, the first principle of the gospel, also requires humility. Alma 32 makes this clear—the first twenty five verses on the masterful discourse on faith are devoted to Alma's exultation that the people's humility has prepared them to hear the word and exercise faith in it.
When Jesus speaks to the Nephites who are shrouded in the mist of darkness after the great destructions and before His arrival, He cancels the requirement for blood sacrifices, and institutes another form of offering: "And ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit. And whoso cometh unto me with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, him will I baptize with fire and with the Holy Ghost, even as the Lamanites, because of their faith in me at the time of their conversion, were baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost, and they knew it not" (3Ne. 9:20). To bring one's precious possessions to the Temple and give them up is hard in any age, and would have required the attitude described above, a broken (crushed) heart and a contrite (punctured) spirit.
The sacrifices at the Altar prefigured the ultimate sacrifice of Christ for sin, but they required something of the devotee as well. Jesus' sacrifice absolves us of debt to justice, but we also make a painful sacrifice at the Altar. He gave up His sinless life; we are required by the gospel to surrender our sinful life. This is a destructive sacrifice—throw away those books, magazines, internet sites, cigarettes, drugs, habits; abandon harmful relationships, burn bridges, terminate acquaintances with evil places, people, and things. As Lamoni's father said, "I will give away all my sins to know thee." To meet God and become acquainted with Him at the Temple requires shedding sin, wiping our dirty feet off at doorstep.
There is more here than getting rid of overt sin. In sacrificing worldly wealth, we show we are leave the world behind, forsaking attachments, even to the civilized and tame parts of it. We are entering a new culture when entering God's presence. Being proper and decent by worldly standards will not take us there or make us fit. We need to shed excess weight, drop anchors and shackles binding us to the economics and attitudes of this world before we can ascend to God. A stalwart heart and an unconquerable spirit are fashionable in this world; we need a broken heart and contrite spirit to enter heaven (without embarrassment).
Cleansing Fire
I am certain there is a lot more to it that what I have postulated above, why the Altar takes the first place in the series of symbols we face as we come into the presence of the Lord, but its importance is emphasized not only by its position, but by the sprinkling of blood on everything. Convenience may have played a role too; only priests were allowed in certain parts of the Temple, but the whole world was commanded to bring sacrifice to the Temple. There had to be an overlap of the geography of the world and the geography of the sacred precincts. But a very small one indeed. When Jesus drove the money changers and animal sellers out of the Temple, He was not banning those things from the Temple. Rather, He was restoring the order of the Temple. Instead of having a menagerie of animals, a noisy market near the Altar, there was only supposed to be one animal at a time. They probably infiltrated the Temple by degrees, slowly turning the sacred space into a mundane carnival by crowding around the door, then spilling into the perimeter near the door, then vying for space in front of each other, until the courtyard became a riot.
Jesus did not cleanse the Temple by degrees, however. He drove the perpetrators out in one sweeping motion. I believe that He cleans us out the same way, "baptiz[ing] us with fire and with the Holy Ghost." But only after we make the appropriate offering.
