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The St. George Temple in southwestern Utah is one of a series of detailed pencil drawings and paintings created by the artist Chad S. Hawkins. In 1989, at the age of seventeen, Chad started this unique temple series becoming the original LDS artist to involve hidden spiritual images in his artwork.
In the bluffs behind the temple and below the flag, Chad has placed the words, “We the people,” taken from the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States, this being inspired by the experience of Wilford Woodruff, the first president of the St. George Temple. President Woodruff said he had the spirits of the signers of the Declaration of Independence gather around him saying, “You have had the use of the Endowment House for a number of years and yet nothing has ever been done for us. We laid the foundation of the government you now enjoy, and we never apostatized from it, but we remained true to it and were faithful to God,” President Wooduff then went straightway into the baptismal font and was baptized for the signers of the Declaration of Independence and fifty other eminent men, making one hundred in all, including John Wesley, Columbus, and others. (Journal of Discourses, XIX, p. 229.)
“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Consti-tution for the United States of America” (Preamble, Constitution of the United States).
