The book of Revelation (14:6) contains a prophecy about the angel Moroni: "And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people" New meaning to verse 8 now: "And there followed another angel" Looks like a new statue may be in order for the Bountiful temple
Deseret News recently Publish an Article regarding this incident.
Deseret News -- Moroni was just doing his job. The statue of the Book of Mormon prophet that rises high on a spire above the Bountiful Temple was struck by lightning Sunday afternoon, but that's one of his twin purposes.
Statues of the Angel Moroni on most temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are more than symbolic landmarks. They also are equipped with lightning rods, which means they are designed to attract lightning strikes away from other parts of the faith's 150 operating temples around the world.
The first Moroni statues were bronze, copper or aluminum. The bronze figure on the Washington D. C. Temple, completed in 1974, weighs 4,000 pounds.
Today's statues are made of fiberglass and weigh about 300 pounds, according to an article in the church's New Era magazine. Then they are gilded with gold. The gold, again, does two jobs. It is striking to look at and is an iconic part of most temple, but it also is a perfect conductor of electricity.
With gold leaf, a place on top of a temple's highest spire and a copper lightning rod that extends out of the top of statue's head and is attached to a grounding cable below, the Angel Moroni makes a good target.
"The angel Moroni statues get hit by lightning all the time," Tyler Wilson, director of special projects at Okland Construction, told the Deseret News seven years ago when the statue on top of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple had to be replaced because of a lightning strike.
"There's a misunderstanding that such strikes are rare, but that's not the case at all," Wilson said.
Most of the time, the lighting rods on the statues channel the energy of a strike through the grounding system. Other times, arcing strikes hit other parts of the statues. But the damage is relatively small and is difficult to see from ground level.For example, when Okland Construction handled the renovation of the Washington D.C. Temple's spires several years ago, workers found repeated lightning strikes to the temple's angel Moroni statue had left damage "not visible to the naked eye, with strikes having left holes the size of a quarter," Wilson said.
The Bountiful Temple's Angel Moroni statue sustained obvious damage when lightning hit at 2:12 p.m. on Sunday. Photos show part of the statue's head missing and a hole in the back.
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