Myth 13 | Moroni always marks the completion of the Exterior/1 year out to dedication

Myth 13 | Moroni always marks the completion of the Exterior/1 year out to dedication

A lesser story I have occasionally heard about the statues is that the placement of the Angel Moroni Statue marks the completion of the exterior of the temple. A corollary to this is that when the statue is placed it means the temple dedication is one year away.

Neither of these is true.^[1]See Chapter 7- Construction Timeline for a full chart of where the angel falls in the construction process on each temple. Both of them most likely trace back to that first Angel Placement, the Salt Lake Temple. The statue was placed the same day as the capstone, and, in that case, it marked the completion of the temple exterior. Famously, the members were given a challenge at that time to complete the interior in time for the temple to be dedicated one year later.

We have already discussed one example where the statue was placed well before the exterior was completed. At the Seattle Temple, protesters were able to scale the temple and hang a sign atop the statue because the unfinished exterior left girders open and exposed.

As for the statue being placed one year before the dedication, this also seldom happens. At the time of writing, about 93 temples had their statue placed within the last year, less than a year, before the dedication. At the same time, about 43 temples had the statue place more than a year, in one case just over 2 years before the dedication.

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