The Hosanna Shout is a sacred ritual that belongs to temple dedications and other sacred assemblies. God revealed to Joseph Smith the order of the Hosanna Shout,166 and it has been a sacred part of temple dedications in this dispensation beginning with the Kirtland Temple. According to President Gordon B. Hinckley, the Hosanna Shout constitutes “beautiful words of worship”167 and a “sacred salute to the Father and the Son.”168
Hosanna appears in the Old Testament, set in a temple context: “Save now [Hosanna]. . . . we have blessed you out of the house of the Lord” (Ps. 118:25–26). Hosanna is also manifest in the New Testament; when Jesus entered Jerusalem, several people “took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord” (John 12:12–13; see also Matt. 21:9, 15; Mark 11:9–10).
Joseph Smith concluded the dedicatory prayer of the Kirtland Temple with these words: “O hear, O hear, O hear us, O Lord! . . . that we may mingle our voices with those bright, shining seraphs around thy throne, with acclamations of praise, singing Hosanna to God and the Lamb!” (D&C 109:78–79). After the prayer, President Sidney Rigdon led the Saints in the Hosanna Shout; he “cried Hosannah, that all the congregation should join him, and shout hosanna to God and the Lamb, and glory to God in the highest.”169 Wilford Woodruff revealed that “angels on high” joined with mortals in the Hosanna Shout on this occasion.170
On April 6, 1892, Lorenzo Snow, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, was assigned to lead more than forty thousand Saints in expressing the Hosanna Shout at the laying of the capstone of the Salt Lake Temple. To prepare the Saints for the shout, President Snow explained, “This is no ordinary order, but is—and we wish it to be distinctly understood—a sacred shout, and employed only on extraordinary occasions like the one now before us. We wish it also to be distinctly understood that we want the brethren and sisters not only to express the words, but that their hearts shall be full of thanksgiving to the God of heaven.” After demonstrating the order of the Hosanna Shout, President Snow then directed the Saints, “Now when we go before the Temple, and this shout goes forth, we want every man and every woman to shout these words to the very extent of their voices, so that every house in this city may tremble, the people in every portion of this city hear it, and it may reach to the eternal worlds.”171