Why Does the Temple Still Have a Veil?

The veil was torn at Calvary — so why does a house of God still have one? Because the only New Testament writer who ever tells us what the veil means says it is Christ, and that we go through it.

The Objection — Stated Fairly

The argument deserves to be stated at its strongest, because at its strongest it is a serious one. When Jesus died, the veil of the temple “was rent in twain from the top to the bottom” (Matthew 27:51). Many Christians read that as the end of every barrier between God and man. Hebrews then says believers have “boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus” (Hebrews 10:19). If access to God comes through Christ our High Priest and not through ritual, then a temple with a veil, sacred names, signs, tokens, and officiants guiding you through looks like the barrier being rebuilt after God tore it down.

Grant the fair part first. Matthew 27:51 is real. The tearing was from the top down — God did it, not man — and it means something enormous. No Latter-day Saint disputes any of that. But notice what Matthew does not do. He never interprets the event. He reports it. The only New Testament writer who tells us what the veil signifies is the author of Hebrews, and he is the very writer this objection quotes. So let him define his own symbol.

Hebrews Never Says the Veil Is Gone. It Says the Veil Is the Way.

Hebrews 10:20

“By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh.”

Read it again slowly. Not around the veil. Not instead of the veil. Through it — and the veil is identified as Christ Himself. The author of Hebrews had every opportunity to say the veil was abolished. He said the opposite: it is the way in, and it is the Savior’s own flesh.

So when a Latter-day Saint passes through a veil to enter the presence of God, that is not a contradiction of Hebrews 10:20. It is Hebrews 10:20 acted out. It is John 14:6 in motion: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” You pass through Him. There is no other door, and the temple teaches that with your body instead of merely telling it to your ears.

The Proof Text Ends in Ordinances — Two Verses Later

The objection quotes Hebrews 10:19 and stops. Read to the end of the sentence.

Hebrews 10:22

“Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.”

Sprinkling. Washing. Bodies. If the torn veil abolished ritual as a category, the author of Hebrews missed it in the very breath he used to announce the new access. He does not set access-by-blood against washing — he prescribes them in the same sentence, as one continuous thought.

Any reading that makes verse 19 abolish ordinances has to explain why verse 22 commands one. You cannot claim a verse as your foundation and then discard its conclusion three clauses later. The Latter-day Saints are not adding ritual to Hebrews 10. We are the ones still doing what Hebrews 10 says.

“Let Us Draw Near” Is a Command, Not a Status Report

An opened door is not the same thing as a body already inside the room. That distinction carries the whole argument.

God opened the way from His side — that is exactly what “from the top” means in Matthew 27:51 — and then commanded us to enter. “Let us draw near” is an imperative. If the tearing had already placed every human being in the Holy of Holies, the command would be meaningless. You do not tell a man who is already in the room to come in.

Every ordinance in the Church of Jesus Christ is that entering. Baptism. The sacrament. The endowment. The blood of Christ opens the way; covenant is how you walk it. Grace is not a substitute for the walking — it is what makes the walking possible.

The Argument Proves Far Too Much

Here is the test. If the torn veil ended mediated forms as a category, then baptism is a barrier. The Lord’s Supper is a barrier. Ordination is a barrier. A pastor standing before a congregation with a Bible is a barrier. Laying on of hands is a barrier. Confession is a barrier.

Nobody who makes this argument actually lives by it. They still baptize. They still break bread. They still ordain, still preach from a pulpit, still lay hands on the sick. So the objection is not a principle at all — it is a rule invoked against one church and quietly suspended for every other. A standard that its own advocates will not apply to themselves is not a doctrine. It is a weapon.

Ordinances have never been the barrier. Hebrews 3:19 names the actual one: “they could not enter in because of unbelief.” Unbelief is the barrier. It always was.

The Apostles Kept Worshipping in the Temple After the Veil Tore

This is the part that should end the discussion. If Calvary abolished temple worship, the men who were standing there never got word.

The Apostolic Record After the Crucifixion

  • Luke 24:53 — after the Resurrection, they “were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God.”
  • Acts 2:46 — “daily with one accord in the temple.”
  • Acts 3:1 — Peter and John went up to the temple at the hour of prayer.
  • Acts 5:42 — “daily in the temple” they taught and preached Jesus Christ.
  • Acts 21:26 — Paul took a vow, entered the temple, and completed the days of purification with an offering.
  • Acts 22:17–21 — “while I prayed in the temple, I was in a trance” — and there received his commission to the Gentiles.

Look hard at that last one. Paul — the apostle of grace himself, the man this objection is usually built on — not only worshipped in the temple decades after the veil split, he offered sacrifice there and received revelation there. That is not a leftover Jewish habit the apostles hadn’t shaken. That is a pattern, recorded by Luke without a syllable of apology.

And God Is Not Finished With Temples

If the temple ended at Calvary, the rest of the Bible did not receive the memo either. Malachi puts the Lord’s coming to His temple in the future tense: “the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple” (Malachi 3:1). John, writing long after the Crucifixion, is handed a reed and told, “Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein” (Revelation 11:1).

Heaven itself is shown as a temple, opened (Revelation 15:5), complete with an altar, incense, priests, and robes. Ezekiel receives nine chapters of temple blueprint (Ezekiel 40–48) for a temple never built in his day.

And where the New Testament speaks of the temple in a new way, it expands the idea rather than abolishing it — your body is a temple (1 Corinthians 6:19), the Church is a temple “fitly framed together” (Ephesians 2:21). A symbol being enlarged is not a symbol being retired.

Names, Signs, and Tokens — Every One of Them Is Biblical

The second half of the objection targets the ritual vocabulary: sacred names, signs, tokens, clothing. But not one of these is a Latter-day Saint invention. Each is in the Bible, given by God or by Christ directly.

Where Each Element Comes From

Read that list once more and ask the obvious question. If sacred names, tokens, signs, holy clothing, washings, and anointings are pagan accretions smuggled into Christianity, then the objection is not against Joseph Smith at all. It is against Moses, against John the Revelator, and against the Lord who commanded every one of them.

And withholding sacred things from the world is the Savior’s own practice, not a Latter-day Saint peculiarity. “Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given” (Matthew 13:11). He taught the multitude in parables, and “when they were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples” (Mark 4:34). “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs” (Matthew 7:6). Paul heard “unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter” (2 Corinthians 12:4), and fed milk before meat (1 Corinthians 3:2; Hebrews 5:12–14). Sacred reticence is not a Mormon invention. It is the Lord’s own pedagogy.

On Mediation — No One in the Temple Stands Between You and Christ

“There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). That is not in dispute, and never has been. An ordinance worker is no more a mediator than the man who baptizes you is. Every ordinance is performed in the name of Jesus Christ and by His authority — never in place of Him.

And the New Testament is emphatic that authorized hands are God’s own design, not a human intrusion. Saul met the risen Christ personally on the road to Damascus — and Christ still sent him to Ananias for the ordinance (Acts 9:6, 17). Cornelius saw an angel face to face — and the angel still sent him to Peter (Acts 10:5).

Ask it plainly: if direct divine contact did not exempt Saul or Cornelius from authorized hands, why would it exempt anyone else? When God Himself routes it that way — twice, in the two most dramatic conversions in Acts — the routing is not a barrier. It is the design.

Passing Through the Veil Is What a Priest Does

Under the law of Moses, one man passed through the veil, once a year, on behalf of everyone else (Leviticus 16:2; Hebrews 9:7). That was the restriction. That was what needed to end.

And what does the New Testament say replaced it? Peter says that in Christ we are “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9). John says He “hath made us kings and priests unto God” (Revelation 1:6; 5:10). A royal priesthood does what priests do: it enters.

So what does the restored temple actually do? It stops restricting that passage to one man once a year and brings the whole covenant body through — men and women alike — by the blood of Christ, in His name, through the veil which is His flesh. That is not the Levitical system rebuilt. That is the promise of Hebrews 10 finally extended to everyone Peter said it belonged to.

The Verdict

The tearing of the veil did not abolish the Holy of Holies. It opened it. Those are opposite claims, and the whole objection depends on confusing them.

This is what Jesus taught: “no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” — He is the way in, and the way in is a person you pass through. This is what the author of Hebrews wrote: the new and living way runs through the veil, that is to say, his flesh, and it ends with bodies washed in pure water. This is what the apostles practiced: they worshipped, sacrificed, prayed, and received revelation in the temple for decades after Calvary. This is what Peter declared the covenant people to be: a royal priesthood, made kings and priests, entering where once only one man could go.

So the question comes back the other way. Christ said the way in is through Him. Hebrews says the veil is Him. If both are true, what exactly is objectionable about a house of God where the way in is through the veil — by name, by covenant, by His authority — and where the last thing that happens is that you are received into His presence?

Reject the temple veil and you have not rejected Joseph Smith. You have rejected Hebrews 10:20, Hebrews 10:22, Luke 24:53, Acts 21:26, Revelation 2:17, and 1 Peter 2:9. The veil in the temple is not a barrier God tore down and men rebuilt. It is Christ — and passing through Him is the only way anyone has ever entered, or ever will.

For the fuller case that the ordinances themselves are rooted in the New Testament — baptism for the dead, the sealing keys, the endowment of power, and the sacred washings — see Temple Ordinances and the New Testament.