Moroni Speaks

Moroni Speaks

Jay Earl Jones was chief of security for the Church back in the late 1970s, early 1980s. After his retirement, during a fireside speaking opportunity at Dixie State College on 16 January 1983, he related several anecdotes about his time as head of security, including one late night story from Salt Lake Temple Square.

2 individuals, apparently fairly drunk, were on their way home very late one night, and decided to take the opportunity to get into the Salt Lake Temple. The gates at Temple Square had long since been locked, but the drunk men decided they could overcome this by climbing partway up the gate, rattling it, and yelling loudly.

At the same moment, a member of the Security staff was on his way up to the roof of the temple. A light up there had begun flickering, and he had decided to go on up and replace it.

Jones indicates that the Security guard opened a window high up there, though it is not clear that the few windows up there open at all. The guard would have had to go outside the temple to replace any of the exterior lights, so perhaps he had just stepped out onto the roof. Either way, he became aware of the two drunk men, just in time to hear one yell “Hey Moroni! Why don’t you talk to us?”

Unable to resist, he leaned out from his unlit perch a bit and hollered back, ‘Yes, what do you want?’

Brother Jones said, “You never saw two men run so fast in your life!”^[1]“Try Telling Gospel with a Prophet,” The Daily Spectrum, Church Life, p.2, 21 January 1983

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