I have to be honest. I have no idea where this one originated from. I can’t trace it anywhere, but I even remember someone mentioning it to me when I was a teenager. Additionally, I have received emails through my website just to ask me what I knew about it, and I have seen it on various sites three times in the last year alone. My personal thought is that this goes back to a need to add deeper meaning to the symbol of the statue, and to emphasize Independence because of the importance of the city to the restoration of the Gospel. As Independence was declared to be the location of the New Jerusalem, it does make a sort of logical sense that the statues face Independence. Or it would, if the LDS faith had any such other tenet. There is no need in Mormonism that members must face a specific direction to do any specific thing, or that temples must face any specific direction so the Angel Facing Independence loses some of its logical credibility.
Despite the uncertain origin, let us take a look at just the first 4 angel statues placed to see how this idea pans out. In the following chart, gold arrows represent the direction the Moroni faces, blue arrows represent the direction from the temple to Independence Missouri. The number to the right of each temple shows the difference, in degrees, between the direction the statue faces and the direction to Independence:
While half of them could be considered pointing roughly towards Independence Missouri, the other two face almost completely the opposite direction. In my studies I have not found any Moroni Statue that actually points directly to Independence.
This myth is told in another form, in that you will occasionally hear people say that all statues must face Salt Lake City. As Salt Lake does not have quite the same importance as Independence, it is confusing how this one could have come to be. A quick look at the temples near Salt Lake puts this one to rest for good.
Additionally, I have seen it reported that the Statue, regardless of where it is in the world, must face the Mount of Olives, in Israel, as it is where Christ shall return.[1]ThirdHour. “Moroni,” 23 January 2008. Accessed 19 May 2021. This is again problematic. For example, the Seattle Statue, again facing west, would have it’s back towards the mount of olives, far to its east. Similarly, the Sapporo Japan Temple, having the statue face east, and the Mount of Olives being west of there, would again have its back to the Mount.
I have not identified any single point, or even multiple points, that all Angel Moroni statues point to. This is one myth that is impossible to justify its continuing spread due to the lack of any evidence and the ease with which modern tools make it to double check.