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RebeccaJ
Guest
So, you had the impression to make **** up? Interesting. Should we laugh or cry? It’s hard to know.
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Jay53
Guest
Will the “spirit children” (that parents in the celestial kingdom are supposed to nurture and prepare for life on an earth similar to ours) be sent to an earth with sin and death like ours, or will it be more of a “Garden of Eden” type earth without sin? Will these “spirit children” then have free will, as well as the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the “choice” to make whether or not to partake of that fruit?
(Please note that these are serious questions. No bashing or snotty responses please.
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ParkerD
Guest
Hi, Jay53,Will the “spirit children” (that parents in the celestial kingdom are supposed to nurture and prepare for life on an earth similar to ours) be sent to an earth with sin and death like ours, or will it be more of a “Garden of Eden” type earth without sin? Will these “spirit children” then have free will, as well as the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the “choice” to make whether or not to partake of that fruit?
There are two ways to look at what may happen in future worlds. One is that since this world had the Savior, it had the greatest “opposition” during the course of its history, but that would not mean that other worlds won’t have opposition and have the need for there to be choices between “good” or “evil”. What forms those choices may take might be similar to our world, but I don’t think it’s clear that the opposition will be as great as on our world.
It may be like the Millenium some of the time, when the “opposing” force of evil is constrained because of the righteousness of the people and because of the power of Christ being used by the forces for good on those worlds.
But I assume there will be the beginning choice of a “tree of knowledge of good and evil”, since that is a choice that humankind needed to make as to whether to move into a condition of being able to choose, being able to gain wisdom from making choices, and being able to sin and repent and be saved by the atonement of Christ, and thus be able to be resurrected from death into a condition of being pure to dwell with God. This means that the spirits would not be “perfect” in their condition as spirits, in that they would be like we were and not like Christ in His pre-mortal perfection.
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Jay53
Guest
Thank you for the information and the charitable response.
Will Christ be the Savior to these future worlds as well if they do in fact choose that route?
EDIT: Skip that question. I just re-read that and saw your statement “sin and repent and be saved by the atonement of Christ”. Although I’m unsure as to how that would work if these spirit children do not know Christ and are unaware of their premortal existence once they are born. How will they know about Christ and His atonement?
What will happen if they don’t choose that route?
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ParkerD
Guest
Jay53,Thank you for the information and the charitable response.
Will Christ be the Savior to these future worlds as well if they do in fact choose that route?
EDIT: Skip that question. I just re-read that and saw your statement “sin and repent and be saved by the atonement of Christ”. Although I’m unsure as to how that would work if these spirit children do not know Christ and are unaware of their premortal existence once they are born. How will they know about Christ and His atonement?
What will happen if they don’t choose that route?
Those are good follow-up questions. The LDS belief is that Christ created more worlds than only this world, and those worlds had people sent to live on them who would be saved by Christ and His atoning grace. So the logical assumption is that they have scriptures such as the Nephites had scriptures and prophets among them to testify of the life of Christ on an earth other than where those people will have been living (that is, our earth but from their perspective, “another earth” just as the Nephites knew that Christ would live in a place apart from them, so in those cases on another earth rather than in another hemisphere), and that Christ actually may logically have visited those other earths to reveal Himself and perform miracles just as He visited the Nephites and performed miracles after His resurrection.
Since Christ is not bounded by time or space, He could be the Savior for future worlds as well as for present and past worlds, and His infinite atonement will still be applicable but be larger in scope than we are aware of in this world of ours.
I assume your last question refers to the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It would be the logical conclusion that each newly created couple sent to an earth as its “first couple” will be pre-known as to their personality just as Eve and Adam were pre-known as to their personality, and thus it will be known in advance that they will have the kind of innate desire for wisdom that will be foreknown to lead to their making a choice for knowledge of good and evil and a choice for remaining with each other and supporting each other in the difficulties of life after their fall from an Edenic paradise. Thus their children would come into a world where they also would be faced with opposition and needful growth through making choices, some wrong but hopefully most right, but the wrong ones (sins) leading to the necessity of humility and the necessity of the Redeeming grace of Christ.
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Dominic_Korozya
Guest
I understand what you are saying regarding baptism, but what I really need to know also is why (if married) it would be a good choice to get your marriage sealed? I don’t quite understand exactly everything about this. What difference would there be for the couple who were not sealed? What would be the difference in outcome?
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zerinus
Guest
A marriage that is “sealed” or performed in the temple is eternally binding, and lasts forever, whereas a civil marriage is only valid during your lifetime here on earth. You will not remain married after you die.
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ParkerD
Guest
Dominic,
I have thought I should provide some of the ramifications about these questions and their answers, rather than a fairly simple answer, because the ramifications are very important.
The assumption in either a “covenant eternal marriage” or a “lifetime only marriage” can be that the couple loves each other and are devoted and faithful to each other, and also that they love God with all their heart, so under those circumstances as assumptions, let’s explore the differences:
1–Christ taught “what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” which gave the pattern of the eternal covenant marriage since God is eternal and what He does is for eternity. Christ cited Adam and Eve as the example of the eternal covenant marriage. So, what did they do in that marriage? (Eve was taken “from Adam’s rib” so she was his equal, his partner, the one at his side, the one created and chosen to be his “help meet” meaning his “helper” who was “meet” or in other words, “sufficient and just right” to be his companion. When Adam faced the choice of whether to allow Eve to be sent away from the garden of Eden alone and to face death alone, he quickly decided that the fact she had been given to him to “be with him” and to be a “help meet” for him meant that he had best make the choice that would keep them together and allow him to be her helper and (knowing man’s personality) to be her protector in a “fallen” world.
In a “fallen” world, people including a husband and wife are not only going to make a lot of mistakes and have a lot of misunderstandings (thus needing a lot of changing and repentance and forgiveness), but they are going to need a feeling of safety and support as they go through that process. Hence, an eternal marriage covenant provides a very significant “platform” or “relationship” wherein those feelings of safety and support can be felt even as the couple goes through the process of finding out about their hidden weaknesses and making the changes necessary to become more Christ-like, more holy, more forgiving, more loving toward each other and toward children and others. Imagine the significance of knowing “we have promised to love and support each other forever in righteousness, with Christ at the center of our marriage, forever.”
2–A couple married for “lifetime only” may feel they can “endure” differences and disappointments without resolving them, and hence may carry around “baggage” with them within their marriage relationship that clouds communication and does not lead to the kind of oneness (spiritual oneness) that can only come as a couple communicates with emotional intimacy–again, with a feeling of “safety and support” in place as emotional intimacy explores the differences, the “baggage” of hurt feelings or misunderstandings.
3–Assuming a couple married for “lifetime only” is able to gain the emotional intimacy that is reflected in the word “oneness”, by being selfless and loving and forgiving and by listening well, then they are probably going to wish their marriage could be “forever” because they will recognize that without their marriage companion, they are really only “half of a person”. They will recognize that their marriage has synergy that builds each of them to a greater combined entity than would be accomplished without their marriage. (i.e. the sum is greater than the parts)
4–If item 3 is the case, then they will be looking for a way to choose a course that makes their marriage an eternal one, a “forever marriage”–and as they desire that, God has ordained a way for this to really happen, but it means they would need to be humble enough that the Holy Spirit would guide them toward that kind of covenant making that is only done by the authority Peter and the apostles held to “bind and loose on earth and in heaven.”
It means also that 1 Peter 4:6 becomes applicable if they lived their lives without that opportunity on earth, so that they can be “judged according to men in the flesh” but “live according to God in the spirit.” It means that the promise of Malachi 4:6 becomes applicable, and the promises of Malachi 3:3,4,16,17 become applicable through temple ordinances in behalf of those ancestors (the “fathers”) who may themselves be waiting to choose such a marriage for themselves, but needed someone on earth to have the sealing done in their behalf (which they can choose to accept if they have been wanting it).
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RebeccaJ
Guest
No one does.
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Dominic_Korozya
Guest
That does make more sense now ParkerD, so does the LDS church advise all marriages to be sealed? Is there the option?
Okay, but does this process make divorce very difficult? How does the LDS church handle divorce cases?
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zerinus
Guest
The LDS Church certainly does advise all marriages to be sealed; but the option also exists if they don’t want to. To us entering into the covenant of eternal marriage is one of the sacraments of eternal salvation. Those who neglect it through lack of faith or personal righteousness risk losing their exaltation.
You ask intelligent questions! I like that. It does make divorce more difficult, but not impossible! Divorce, like marriage, can either be civil or eternal. A Mormon temple marriage performed in the United States (as an example) is recognized by the law the same as any civilian marriage would be. That means that it can also be divorced as a civilian marriage could be. But the “eternal” aspect of it (recognized only by the LDS Church) cannot be cancelled by a civil divorce. That aspect of it can only be cancelled by the Church, by the same priesthood authority that solemnized it in the first place. In rare exceptions such divorce can be granted.
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ParkerD
Guest
Dominic,
I think Zerinus has given good answers and that there are certain situations that may need clarification.
If a couple are anxious to be married and if they are not ready through their spiritual maturity to be “sealed” in their marriage in a temple, then I think they would be advised to go ahead and get married. Many LDS bishops or other leaders perform civil marriages through the authorization of the laws of the land where they live. They do this for either members or for non-members (I know from personal first-hand experience of officiating as such). There is always the option, and always the most important goal is for the couple to go ahead and get married if there is any uncertainty at all about them waiting and being chaste while waiting if there is a time constraint for either of them to have a temple recommend. The goal of chastity far outweighs the goal of being married in a temple.
The reasons a couple who has divorced “civilly” are not considered divorced “eternally” are that having divorced, they may change their mind and realize they really did love their spouse and work out their differences and remarry, in which case a “re-sealing” is not necessary because their temple “sealing” was always contingent on their righteousness and their supportiveness of each other anyway. Their repentance brings the “sealing” back into a covenant situation if they remarry and are supportive of each other the second time around. Also, a sealing of a couple also means children are “sealed” to the parents and to the ancestors of those parents, so the sealing needs to remain in place (bound on earth and in heaven) with respect to the children having a “sealing” to their ancestors since there are thus eternal ties to those ancestors. A civil divorce does not remove that aspect of the children being sealed and having eternal ties to their ancestors.
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paulp1002
Guest
I have question that I have recieved conflicting answers. Is it true that if a couple cannot be seal in a Temple (i.e., inter-faith marriage,) that after the non-member dies, the couple could then be sealed to the spouse, as long as they are a righteous person?
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zerinus
Guest
As you probably know, one of the things that Mormons do in their temples is to perform baptisms (and other sacraments) vicariously on behalf of the dead. Mormons typically to this for their own deceased relatives. If in a mixed marriage the non-member partner dies, it is possible for those ordinances to be performed for them in the temples, including ordinations to the priesthood and the sacrament of eternal marriage. This does not mean that they are forced into it. They still have the choice accept or reject it in the spirit if they choose to. But we believe that many of them will accept it in the spirit world.
Stephen168
New member
No the Eucharist is not taken as seriously in the Mormon Church, because they reject the teaching of Christ that it is his body and blood.
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ParkerD
Guest
Dominic,
One of the important aspects of the teachings of the Savior is how He taught the Jews, “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35) This was during His very eloquent and incisive sermon on the “Bread of life,” long before the Last Supper and the beginning of the use of “bread and wine” for a remembrance of His body and blood. It came when the crowds began following Him after He had “fed the five thousand”; after that sermon, “many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.” (John 6:66)
The message is that they were wanting the physical bread to eat rather than the spiritual bread and the knowledge that He is indeed the “Bread of life” and the “water of life” (John 4:14) in that His atonement provides grace for all those who accept His grace in their lives, to lift them up and have their lives changed, enlivened, renewed, energized, and filled with the Holy Spirit until they become sanctified. I love the spiritual Bread and Water of life, even Jesus Christ and His atoning grace.
Have a wonderful Easter Sunday.
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RebeccaJ
Guest
Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.
Stephen168
New member
Christ instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper (Matthew 26:26-28). The Eucharist is a holy sacrifice, a holy communion, and a memorial. It makes present the sacrifice of Christ. (Hebrews 13:15, 1Peter 2:5) We are united with Christ into one body (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). Eucharist is taken where the faithful are assembled in a solemn manner by people that are worthy and believe the bread and wine are the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. (1 Corinthians 11:17-34). How the bread and wine become Jesus through the consecration has always been a mystery, but Jesus said it was true. (Matthew 26:26-28, Mark 14:22-24, Luke 22:19-20). After Jesus first said this, many of his follows left him because they knew he was not speaking figuratively (John 6:51-68). Unleavened bread is used because it is the Passover bread. Wine is an alcoholic drink made from grapes (Genesis 9:20-21, Ephesians 5:18). The authority to consecrate the bread and wine was given to the Apostles (1 Corinthians 11:24-25) and the authority was passed to the Bishops and Priests of his church. Every Sunday they not only remember the sacrifice of Christ but they would join in the Mystical body of Christ and his Church.
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