President Russell M. Nelson instructed, “In the temple we receive an endowment, which is, literally speaking, a gift. In receiving this gift, we should understand its significance and the importance of keeping sacred covenants.”87 The endowment is of such great consequence that Joseph Smith was anxious that the Saints receive it: “‘Hurry up the work, brethren,’ he used to say,—‘let us finish the temple; the Lord has a great endowment in store for you, and I am anxious that the brethren should have their endowments and receive the fullness of the priesthood. . . . Then,’ said he, ‘the Kingdom will be established.’”88 Although the Prophet was speaking to men at this moment in time, both women and men actually received their endowments and the fullness of the priesthood in Nauvoo.
Regarding the temple endowment, we may consider the following items:
(1) The endowment is connected to power; both ancient and modern scripture use the phrase, “Ye shall be endowed with power” (D&C 43:16; see also Luke 24:49). The dedicatory prayer of the Kirtland Temple three times connects the temple with power (see D&C 109:13, 22, 35).
(2) The endowment of power comes “from on high” (D&C 38:32, 38; 95:8), meaning, the power comes from God Himself, who lives on high. As a matter of fact, the endowment gives men and women power “to overcome all things.”89 Women and men receive the same endowment and access to the same Godly power.
(3) The Lord labels the endowment a “great endowment” (D&C 105:12), and on three occasions the Lord makes it clear that the endowment is associated with “blessings” (D&C 105:11–12, 18). Note this verse: “The hearts of thousands and tens of thousands shall greatly rejoice in consequence of the blessings which shall be poured out, and the endowment with which my servants have been endowed in this house” (D&C 110:9).
(4) Regarding the endowment, President Brigham Young explained, “Let me give you a definition in brief. Your endowment is, to receive all those ordinances in the house of the Lord, which are necessary for you, after you have departed this life, to enable you to walk back to the presence of the Father, passing the angels who stand as sentinels, being enabled to give them the key words, the signs and tokens, pertaining to the holy Priesthood, and gain your eternal exaltation in spite of earth and hell.”90
(5) Jesus, too, has received His endowment. Wilford Woodruff taught, “He has had His endowments long ago; it is thousands and millions of years since He received His blessings, and if He had not received them, we could not give them to Him, for He is far in advance of us.”91 Also Heber C. Kimball: “Think of your holy endowments and what you have been anointed to become, and reflect upon the blessings which have been placed upon you, for they are the same in part that were placed upon Jesus; he was the one that inducted his Apostles into these ordinances.”92 And Joseph Smith: “If a man gets a fulness of the priesthood of God, he has to get it in the same way that Jesus Christ obtained it, and that was by keeping all the commandments and obeying all the ordinances of the house of the Lord.”93
(6) The meaning of the word endow, as deduced from the Greek and Latin, also means to “clothe oneself in, put on, wear.” In the temple setting, endow has the meaning of clothing oneself in sacred vestments, which is akin to clothing oneself with power. Greek scholar Roger Macfarlane wrote: “Luke 24:49 contains in the KJV the clause ‘until ye be endued with power from on high.’ . . . The operative verb is ἐνδύω [enduo] which in the middle voice means ‘clothe oneself in, put on, wear’ (Bauer, Gingrich, Danker). . . . So, the Greek and Latin both mean ‘to clothe’ or ‘to don upon oneself.’”94