LDS, please explain beliefs on final judgement,end of the world

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Mom_of_5

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A few years ago I had the pleasure of communicating on another forum, with an LDS gentleman. He was very open as to the LDS beliefs. On one occasion he explained LDS final judgement. It went something like this: Jesus will appear in Missouri, with Joseph Smith and other prophets. All will “judge”. Is this the belief of the majority of LDS? If not, what is the actual teaching about the last judgement.

Love and peace

Mom of 5
 
I think I can address that piece of this at least.

LDS believe that time on earth is divided into “dispensations” or measures of spiritually significance. Special prophets are in charge of the dispensation that ey ushered in. Adam, Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Noah, John the Baptist and Joseph Smith are all good examples. They believe in a heirarchical structure in heaven just like on earth and that their church exists as a vital structure in both places. This causes them to believe that there are many tasks to perform in the afterlife and much of the work is delegated by Jesus to various individuals starting with these prophets.

They do believe that the Scriptural Zion, the “New City” will be in Jackson county Missouri and that Jesus will come to the as yet to be built Temple there. (The place has already been dedicated and is referred to as “Temple Lot” but is owned by a splinter group of the LDS church).
They believe that their church will then gather “the righteous” to Zion and present themselves to Christ. Christ will then organize the “total judgement” (including the resurrected) into their various dispensations and delegate much of the judgement process to these prophets who are in charge of said dispensations. There are roles for the patriarchs of Israel (Jacob and his sons), The original Apostles and the Nephite disciples as well. Many of the details beyond this are not clearly defined and thus are relegated to speculation. The judgement sends folks to their appropriate “kingdoms”. The fokks in the lesser two (telestial and terrestrial) basically stay there for eternity with no further progression. A few will be banished to “outer darkness” with Satan. Those who reach the highest (Celestial) kingdom are further subdivided in to servants, ministering angels and at the top of the exaltation ladder Gods who will build their own kingdoms and rule over them in subjection to Heavenly Father, thus growing his dominion and achieving eternal progression.

Questions?
 
In case you haven’t noticed it IS a VERY complex religion. I think that is the natural result of a manmade religion having to cover the first made up “prophecies” with more detailed made up “prophecies” in a never ending process. JS used a very simple and direct approach, giving revelations that caused folks to do what he wanted. (money, land, women, control, etc.) Later “prophets” had to try and turn that into “doctrine” and even later ones had to try and make it “normal” looking doctrine so that they could keep adding converts.
 
Thank you. A good explanation. A religion so complicated leaves little time for prayer life. A young women acquaintance, LDS, had a nervous breakdown as was hospitalized for several months. She told me it was due to her “former” religion putting so much stress and worry on her to be married. She now flits from church to church searching. I pray she finds the front door of our Roman Catholic church where she could come home to rest. However, she still hangs on to some of the teachings she learned as a child against the Catholic church. Sad.

Love and peace
 
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Jerusha:
Yeah---- why do they have to make it so complicated??? :ehh:
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We don’t make it complicated. Majick makes it complicated. The LDS doctrine of the final judgement is essentially the same as the traditional biblical/Christian one. It teaches that God has set apart a day in which He will judge the world according to their works. It will take place after the general resurrection of mankind. We believe in a literal resurrection of all men, followed by a judgement. That is essentially it. The main difference I suppose is the LDS belief in the three degrees of glory. That is to say, people receive different rewards/punishments in the judgement day, according to how they lived their lives in the world. It is not a black and white situation where they will either go to hell or to heaven, as many Christians seem to believe. That is the main difference. Go to the LDS website, click on the “scriptures” link, and do a search for “judgment” (you can narrow it down by adding “day” with “judgment”) and you will get enough scriptural references explaining LDS belief on final judgement.

amgid
 
Don’t blame me. I didn’t invent the LDS religion. Joseph Smith did that. It’s actually even more complicated. I didn’t even go into the sealing ordinance and what that does.
 
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amgid:
That is to say, people receive different rewards/punishments in the judgement day, according to how they lived their lives in the world. It is not a black and white situation where they will either go to hell or to heaven, as many Christians seem to believe.
amgid
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Based on your explanation, it seems you are saying that LDS don’t believe in a total forgiveness for sin, and one truly does have to earn their salvation. It seems to me that you play lip service to the atonement, but then when pressed to describe heaven, you say that every sin in this life is going to be held against you.

If, as you say “people receive different rewards/punishments in the judgement day, according to how they lived their lives”, then what was the atonement for?
 
Jackson County Missouri, huh? Being from Eastern Kansas and having been to Jackson County Missouri, I am forced to ask… why Jackson County Missouri??? :eek: Glad I’m Catholic! 👍

George
 
JS said that’s where the original garden of eden was. He is to appear at the spot where it all started, the same place he first appeared to Adam and Eve. JS also said that the place called Adam-Ondi-Ahman is where Adam first built an altar after leaving the garden. You can see it now too. :cool:

As for me… I’ll gladly follow the teachings of the RCC so that Jesus pays for my sins and I spend Heaven with God, worshipping him.
 
Amgid

A while back you said that to know the History behind the Scriptures / Bible is really not that important. I beleive it is very important.
I asked you a question. You did not respond. Do you remember the question? The Scripture?

God Bless
 
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Tmaque:
Based on your explanation, it seems you are saying that LDS don’t believe in a total forgiveness for sin, and one truly does have to earn their salvation.
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That is not what I said at all. I fail to see how you can read that into my post.
It seems to me that you play lip service to the atonement, but then when pressed to describe heaven, you say that every sin in this life is going to be held against you.
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That is not what I said. The effect of the Atonement is conditional upon our repentance. That is what the Bible teaches. If we repent of our sins, believe in God, and keep His commandments, the Atonement will save us. If we don’t, it won’t. Are you suggesting that nobody will ever go to hell, or be damned? According to the Bible, some will be saved and some will not be. All I was saying was that both rewards and punishments in the next life are graded; and that is in agreement with the Bible. The Bible clearly teaches that of those who go to heaven, some will receive a greater reward than others (Luke 6:32, 35; Hebrews 10:35-36); and that some will be “greater than others” in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:19; 18:4). By contrast, those who go to hell will also not all receive the same punishment. Some will be beaten with “fewer stripes” than others, and some with more (Luke 12:47-48). That means that some will be punished more severely than others.
If, as you say “people receive different rewards/punishments in the judgment day, according to how they lived their lives”, then what was the atonement for?
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You tell me! I was merely quoting what the Bible says. Do you dispute that the Bible says that God will judge mankind “according to their works”? Here are the quotes:

Matthew 16:

27 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.

Revelation 20:

12 And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
The only logical conclusion one can draw from this is that neither rewards, nor punishments in the next life, will be the same for everybody. Both rewards as well as punishments are graded, depending on what their “works” have been—i.e. how they lived out their lives in the world.

amgid
 
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amgid:
We don’t make it complicated. Majick makes it complicated. The LDS doctrine of the final judgement is essentially the same as the traditional biblical/Christian one. It teaches that God has set apart a day in which He will judge the world according to their works. It will take place after the general resurrection of mankind. We believe in a literal resurrection of all men, followed by a judgement. That is essentially it. The main difference I suppose is the LDS belief in the three degrees of glory. That is to say, people receive different rewards/punishments in the judgement day, according to how they lived their lives in the world. It is not a black and white situation where they will either go to hell or to heaven, as many Christians seem to believe. That is the main difference. Go to the LDS website, click on the “scriptures” link, and do a search for “judgment” (you can narrow it down by adding “day” with “judgment”) and you will get enough scriptural references explaining LDS belief on final judgement.

amgid
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Amgid - Hello. As I understand, in LDS, there are three levels to Heaven with the top level for the devout LDS members, the middle level for the LDS members, who are not as devout as those on level 1, and good people (Christians and Jews) who are not LDS, and the third level is for bad/evil people, such as murderers, thieves, etc. Can the “saved” travel between the three levels? What do people do on these levels? Praise God? I had “heard” about the creation of “spirits.” Are these creations from sex among those on the levels of Heaven? Excuse my crudeness of the questions. It is not intentional. I am seeking a better graspa nd handle on the view. Thank you. Jim
 
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jim1130:
Amgid - Hello. As I understand, in LDS, there are three levels to Heaven with the top level for the devout LDS members, the middle level for the LDS members, who are not as devout as those on level 1, and good people (Christians and Jews) who are not LDS, and the third level is for bad/evil people, such as murderers, thieves, etc. Can the “saved” travel between the three levels? What do people do on these levels? Praise God? I had “heard” about the creation of “spirits.” Are these creations from sex among those on the levels of Heaven? Excuse my crudeness of the questions. It is not intentional. I am seeking a better grasp and handle on the view. Thank you. Jim
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You were right about there being three levels in heaven; but wrong about everything else! The answer to your question is given in section 76 of the Doctrine and Covenants. I will let you read it for yourself here.

amgid
 
I was taught by mormon missionaries (when I was about 8 or 9) that there were 3 levels of heaven. If you made it into the highest level of heaven you got to live among god, jesus (from what I understand they do believe god and jesus as being seperate, and are even biologically related) and other sort of angels and heavenly “beings”. If you were to make it to the second level of heaven you only got to live with Jesus for eternity and not ‘god’ or any other heavenly beings. The third level was their idea of “hell”. No fire, no heat, no toturing, no pain, it would look just like the other levels and just as pretty (this is how it was explained to me at about 9) but, your consequence was living for eternity without God or Jesus.
 
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avemaria1:
I was taught by mormon missionaries (when I was about 8 or 9) that there were 3 levels of heaven. If you made it into the highest level of heaven you got to live among god, jesus (from what I understand they do believe god and jesus as being seperate, and are even biologically related) and other sort of angels and heavenly “beings”. If you were to make it to the second level of heaven you only got to live with Jesus for eternity and not ‘god’ or any other heavenly beings. The third level was their idea of “hell”. No fire, no heat, no toturing, no pain, it would look just like the other levels and just as pretty (this is how it was explained to me at about 9) but, your consequence was living for eternity without God or Jesus.
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Not quite. Immediately following death, the souls of the departed go into a Spirit Kingdom, bissected into ‘paradise’ and ‘spirit prison’. Those who are faithful Mormons enter into Paradise and from there can visit the souls in Spirit Prison to proclaim to them the Gospel. Souls which accept the Gospel in Spirit Prison will be accepted into Paradise so soon as people on Earth can perform their ordinances on their behalf in LDS Temples. This is the reason for the vast genealogical enterprise of Mormonism–they endeavor to perform ordinances for all who have ever lived, in order to make those ordinances available to those who accept the Gospel in Spirit Prison. Following the Advent of Christ, we will live through a Millenium, during which it is believed the genealogical work will be completed. After the Millenium, all will be released from the Spirit World, judged, and sent to one of three levels of glory based upon their works and their acceptance or rejection of the LDS gospel. A handful will be condemned, along with Lucifer and the demons, to ‘outer darkness’.

The Celestial Kingdom is ruled over by Heavenly Father, and those who go there have the full fellowship of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Anything less than that is ‘hellish’ in the sense that all human beings were created and intended for Celestial glory.

The Terrestrial Kingdom is intended for less-valiant Mormons as well as for Christians and religious/ethical folk of all sorts. There they will have the fellowship of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit but not of God the Heavenly Father. The Telestial Kingdom is for those who are worldly, irreligious, perhaps not even especially good. They will have fellowship only with the Holy Spirit.

The apostate, the unrepentant murderer, unrepentant adulterers, and other profoundly wicked humans will go to Outer Darkness, having fellowship with no member of the Godhead.

Some Mormons have speculated about how ‘long’ an ‘eternity’ is, since LDS Scripture stresses that ''Eternal" and “Everlasting” are titles or names of God. These Mormons suggest that perhaps a deputation of Celestial souls will at some point be dispatched to redeem even the souls in ‘Outer Darkness’ and especially those in lesser Kingdoms of Heavenly Glory. All of which is purely speculative: the vast majority of LDS assume that the LDS Scriptures mean what they say when there will be ‘no remission’ of punishment in those lesser kingdoms.
 
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