There are many examples of theophany (or appearances of God) in the Old Testament;279 and the place where God generally visits His people is in a temple setting (e.g., on a mountaintop), or in the temple itself (see Ex. 24:9–1; 29:42–46; Ps. 17:15; 42:2; 63:2; 84:7; Amos 9:1). For example, Isaiah testified, “I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple” (Isa. 6:1).
Modern temples are also sacred spaces for theophanies. Joseph Smith’s dedicatory prayer of the Kirtland Temple states that the Saints had built the temple so “that the Son of Man might have a place to manifest himself to his people” (D&C 109:5). We recall that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery saw the Lord in the Kirtland Temple (D&C 110:1–4). Also, Lorenzo Snow reported to Allie Young Pond, his granddaughter, that he saw the resurrected Lord in the Salt Lake Temple standing “about three feet above the floor” and remarked that “it looked as though he stood on a plate of solid gold.”280 Doctrine and Covenants 97:15–16 promises, “Inasmuch as my people build a house unto me in the name of the Lord, and do not suffer any unclean thing to come into it, that it be not defiled, my glory shall rest upon it; Yea, and my presence shall be there, for I will come into it, and all the pure in heart that shall come into it shall see God.”