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Resurrection Question


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22 hours ago, HappyJackWagon said:

My nutshell understanding of the resurrection is that the body and the spirit will be reunited in a perfected form. The level of glory of the perfected body will be dependent on the righteousness of the individual and their final judgment. Christ was the first fruit of the resurrection and all the righteous who died previous to his resurrection were then resurrected as well. Is it accurate to think that the reunion of the spirit and body is intended to be literal, as in the physical remains will be rejoined in a perfected form with the spirit? Or is the previous body (remains) really not a part of the resurrection?

I was always taught that this was a very literal thing, that not a hair of the head will be lost.  I kind of always pictured it as a super hero kind of resurrection in my youth.  That my new body would be at the peak performance it is capable of and I would be invincible, nothing could hurt me, I would be able to eat and sleep, but I wouldn't be required to do those things to sustain my body.  I could have sex, but only with my wife or wives of course.  I could teleport to any place in the universe instantaneously. 

I never thought much about the different degrees of resurrected bodies, that part didn't make much sense to me.  It seems like if you're immortal then you're immortal.  I guess if we're to believe some church leaders those without celestial bodies would be stripped of their sex organs, that sounds horrible, btw.  

Topics like this remind me that Mormon theology often smacks of being developed by a bunch of prepubescent boys with wild imaginations.

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54 minutes ago, Storm Rider said:

It is my understanding that our resurrected bodies will appear as we are i.e. we will be recognized as ourselves.  However, it is not my understanding that our actual remains, the actual atoms that make up my body today will be used in this resurrected body.  We are splitting hairs and seeking a mystery without a degree of benefit.  We will be perfected through Jesus Christ - we cannot really define how that happens, but we have faith that we will.  When people say that not one hair will be lost (joyful for those who have already lost most of their hair) I tend to interpret that as saying we will be in the prime of mortal existence.  Said another way, we will each be at the peak of health and physical fitness.  I still am not comfortable with how I am describing this because the words are only defining a physical appearance when the spiritual is so much greater and more significant.  There will be a perfect union between body and spirit.

Thanks for sharing. I get your PoV. As evidenced by the myriad understandings and beliefs shared on this short thread, there seems to be some confusion about church teachings on this.

Quote

From lds.org -  Resurrection is the reuniting of the spirit with the body in an immortal state, no longer subject to disease or death.

https://www.lds.org/topics/resurrection?lang=eng

To me, this sounds like the spirit would be rejoined with the body. But as others have stated that doesn't fully make sense either. It's a little confusing.

The resurrection is such a pillar doctrine in the church it feels like there should be better and more consistent understanding

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1 hour ago, HappyJackWagon said:

The resurrection is such a pillar doctrine in the church it feels like there should be better and more consistent understanding

You would think, but then folks have been debating the nature of the Godhead for  millennia , and that doctrine is quite central also.  I will go out on a limb and suggest that Christ's resurrection was an outlier. There is no way we know what happened inside the tomb. The mortal body had to disappear for the guards and others to know that  there was a resurrection. The scriptures say that the graves were opened and many of the dead appeared to others. Were the graves literally opened/holes empty? That would have been quite the story on the evening gossip round table.

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22 hours ago, JLHPROF said:

Scripture says not a hair of our head will be lost and that we will raise our bodies up as we lay them down.

If we are to take that literally, then someone is going to need to get a backhoe and dig up my grave and raise up my casket with a "lowering device", find the mortician that laid me in the casket and ask them to pull me back out just as I was laid down :P

The resurrection of the same bodies we have at death simply is not possible (for everyone).

What we should take as literal is this - "you are what you eat". 

The building blocks of your physical body are donated (probably unwillingly) from other living things.  Considering that all of God's creation will be resurrected via the atonement of Christ (see links below), that means that the resurrection will of necessity be from other matter other than your body (because your body doesn't belong to you alone, but it also belongs to all the plant and animal bodies that you have eaten.  So, who gets "your" body in the resurrection when it belongs to a multitude of other bodies too?  IT is an impossible scenario without using new matter. 

Here is what you have to understand, it is still the same body even if new matter is used.  Our body replace every single cell in our body every 7-10 years from new matter.  You don't have the same body that you were born with, yet you have only had one body.

http://emp.byui.edu/marrottr/resurrection_animals.pdf

http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Animals

 

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49 minutes ago, strappinglad said:

You would think, but then folks have been debating the nature of the Godhead for  millennia , and that doctrine is quite central also.  I will go out on a limb and suggest that Christ's resurrection was an outlier. There is no way we know what happened inside the tomb. The mortal body had to disappear for the guards and others to know that  there was a resurrection. The scriptures say that the graves were opened and many of the dead appeared to others. Were the graves literally opened/holes empty? That would have been quite the story on the evening gossip round table.

But doesn't that sound like part of the job description for a prophet? We have the fullness of the gospel except when we don't because "how could we possibly know". It feels like organized religion makes the effort  to answer questions of life. Where did I come from, why am I here, where am I going after I die. Yet, even in the church, where we claim to have continuing revelation, where we claim to have prophets distilling the word of God to the masses, there doesn't seem to be a consistent teaching or understanding of a principle tenet of the faith: resurrection. The nature of the Godhead has been hotly disputed for millenia as you say, but doesn't the church claim to answer that question? Yet there are many variations on that topic amongst the prophets as well.

I've said this many times but it seems like it would do well for the church to admit that we don't know very much. And if we don't know very much we should stop acting like we do.

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On 11/16/2017 at 12:47 PM, smac97 said:

There's a bit of folklore about a Mormon farmer who observed a resurrection of a little girl.  Here's a link.  I can't vouch for it, but I don't dismiss it out-of-hand, either.  The story's depiction of the girl resurrecting as a girl rather than as a woman seems strange, but then the whole story is strange.

Joseph had sometimes taught that children are resurrected as children. As I recall the King Follet Discourse teaches it but typically when printed by the Church that bit is excluded. "as the Child dies so shall it rise from the ded & be living in the burng. of God.--it shall be the child as it was bef it died out of your arms Children dwell & exercise power in the same form as they laid them down"

As to the question about bodies - there was a long tradition that the body in the grave would be put back together but for reasons others already noted that doesn't make a lot of sense. For one thing it presupposes that the matter in a resurrected body is the same as a mortal body. There's a ton of reasons to presuppose that's not the case. More significantly we can just think of victims at ground zero of a nuclear explosion to see why the idea doesn't ultimately make a ton of sense. More to the point why bother using the same molecules or atoms? I can't see a point to it.

The key idea is I think that you return to your mortality to be resurrected. There's a certain poetry to it. But I bet for those who don't want to be resurrected at their grave they don't have to be. Interestingly for a long, long time people in the Church opposed cremation precisely because it was so confusing for the resurrection if taken in terms of the dead body. Even though this never made sense (after all lots of people are cremated anyway and they still need resurrected) it was a big tradition until recently in the Church. As I recall the Church policy changed primarily due to places where buying people in the traditional American way was either not part of the culture or unfeasible. My dad has it in his will be be cremated and his ashes scattered to the wind off a particular mountain in southern Alberta. This used to cause no end of consternation at Church. LOL.

Edited by clarkgoble
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4 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

I was always taught that this was a very literal thing, that not a hair of the head will be lost.  I kind of always pictured it as a super hero kind of resurrection in my youth.  That my new body would be at the peak performance it is capable of and I would be invincible, nothing could hurt me, I would be able to eat and sleep, but I wouldn't be required to do those things to sustain my body.  I could have sex, but only with my wife or wives of course.  I could teleport to any place in the universe instantaneously. 

I never thought much about the different degrees of resurrected bodies, that part didn't make much sense to me.  It seems like if you're immortal then you're immortal.  I guess if we're to believe some church leaders those without celestial bodies would be stripped of their sex organs, that sounds horrible, btw.  

Topics like this remind me that Mormon theology often smacks of being developed by a bunch of prepubescent boys with wild imaginations.

Ah, yes. Now we look at the Protestant description of the afterlife and the resurrection - no bodies, just spirits - yeah, this one comes from those that haven't a clue about that perfect Word of God they talk about. Then there is the flying around in heaven with wings - I always liked that fanciful bit of mythology coming into play.  Then it gets better - the purpose of the resurrection is to wake everyone up so they can be judged.  Then what?  Not a clue.  Yup, we are riding high on the big idea of the Protestantism now. 

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2 hours ago, HappyJackWagon said:

But doesn't that sound like part of the job description for a prophet? We have the fullness of the gospel except when we don't because "how could we possibly know". It feels like organized religion makes the effort  to answer questions of life. Where did I come from, why am I here, where am I going after I die. Yet, even in the church, where we claim to have continuing revelation, where we claim to have prophets distilling the word of God to the masses, there doesn't seem to be a consistent teaching or understanding of a principle tenet of the faith: resurrection. The nature of the Godhead has been hotly disputed for millenia as you say, but doesn't the church claim to answer that question? Yet there are many variations on that topic amongst the prophets as well.

I've said this many times but it seems like it would do well for the church to admit that we don't know very much. And if we don't know very much we should stop acting like we do.

This reminded me of a conference talk given by Neil L. Anderson:

Quote

 

Our spiritual journey is the process of a lifetime. We do not know everything in the beginning or even along the way. Our conversion comes step-by-step, line upon line. We first build a foundation of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We treasure the principles and ordinances of repentance, baptism, and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. We include a continuing commitment to prayer, a willingness to be obedient, and an ongoing witness of the Book of Mormon. (The Book of Mormon is powerful spiritual nourishment.)

We then remain steady and patient as we progress through mortality. At times, the Lord’s answer will be, “You don’t know everything, but you know enough”—enough to keep the commandments and to do what is right. Remember Nephi’s words: “I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things.”

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2008/10/you-know-enough?lang=eng

 

2 hours ago, HappyJackWagon said:

I've said this many times but it seems like it would do well for the church to admit that we don't know very much. And if we don't know very much we should stop acting like we do.

How much we know is relative to what we are comparing ourselves against.  Compared to the rest of the world, the church does indeed know a lot (relatively speaking), compared to all that can be known, we know very little.  I think Elder Anderson said it best though, "you know enough".   

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40 minutes ago, pogi said:

Do you have a reference for this?  This subject is currently being discussed in the CH1 thread. 

I don't. I just remember my dad talking about it when it was eliminated.  In 21.3.2 it talks about allowing cremation. The closest I can find for the old policy was the Encyclopedia of Mormonism from 1992 which states the old policy. There's also the Ensign article on it from 1991, likely written with the same involvement. I've not followed the other thread so I don't know if those were brought up. As I recall the change was in the late 90's primarily due to Asian concerns but I don't recall the date although I've not searched closely. Looking around there doesn't appear to be any papers on the subject. Sam Brown doesn't even address it in his book on Mormon death. So there's a paper for MHA ripe for the taking if someone has time to consult the special collections at BYU which I believe has old copies of the handbook.

Edited by clarkgoble
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2 hours ago, Storm Rider said:

Ah, yes. Now we look at the Protestant description of the afterlife and the resurrection - no bodies, just spirits - yeah, this one comes from those that haven't a clue about that perfect Word of God they talk about. Then there is the flying around in heaven with wings - I always liked that fanciful bit of mythology coming into play.  Then it gets better - the purpose of the resurrection is to wake everyone up so they can be judged.  Then what?  Not a clue.  Yup, we are riding high on the big idea of the Protestantism now. 

Funny, I was raised Orthodox Mormon and I’m talking about invincible physical resurrected bodies.  I couldn’t tell you what Protestants believe.  

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49 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Funny, I was raised Orthodox Mormon and I’m talking about invincible physical resurrected bodies.  I couldn’t tell you what Protestants believe.  

Funny, you may have been raised LDS, but you are certainly not LDS any longer.  Are you saying that you do not belong to any other church now?  You seem to have the same style of attack/comments consistently.  Where does that come from and what is the purpose?

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13 hours ago, Storm Rider said:

Funny, you may have been raised LDS, but you are certainly not LDS any longer.  Are you saying that you do not belong to any other church now?  You seem to have the same style of attack/comments consistently.  Where does that come from and what is the purpose?

And this is where you go off the rails. You have ZERO business telling someone they are "certainly not LDS any longer".

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Literalism is death.

Giving it up and having no part of that dead body is resurrection. ;)

 

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On 11/16/2017 at 11:27 AM, HappyJackWagon said:

My nutshell understanding of the resurrection is that the body and the spirit will be reunited in a perfected form. The level of glory of the perfected body will be dependent on the righteousness of the individual and their final judgment. Christ was the first fruit of the resurrection and all the righteous who died previous to his resurrection were then resurrected as well. Is it accurate to think that the reunion of the spirit and body is intended to be literal, as in the physical remains will be rejoined in a perfected form with the spirit? Or is the previous body (remains) really not a part of the resurrection?

I am going to respond because I have a little more to say.

Some have alluded to your comment about "The level of glory of the perfected body will be dependent on the righteousness of the individual and their final judgment." I am not going to say that is affirmatively not so, but I believe we have no scripture to support this belief. I tend to believe it is not so. I don't believe degrees of glory will be in a physical immortal body, but at some stage this might be so. I don't believe for instance that all resurrected being will look like the Father, but the Son might. So, it is possible the Son's resurrection is an exception to my general belief. I believe the rest of us will retain a degree of physical individuality.

As to whether our exact body will be resurrected, I don't believe so. All the water molecules from a cremated person are scattered, and can even be reconstituted in other people. A water molecule is generic. I don't need all my exact water molecules back. I regularly lose some daily - in fact every time I breathe. Our physical body can be reconstituted from anywhere else in the universe. Further, I believe the resurrection will involve a recreation of a soul - I view the soul as a place in our body that is capable of communicating with God. In the resurrection, it may also possible to communicate with others through our souls.

 

 

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On 16/11/2017 at 1:27 PM, HappyJackWagon said:

Is it accurate to think that the reunion of the spirit and body is intended to be literal, as in the physical remains will be rejoined in a perfected form with the spirit? Or is the previous body (remains) really not a part of the resurrection?

I can agree with other posters. The original body will be resurrected.  Jehovah's Witnesses loosely use the term resurrection
but they actually believe that a new physical body is created. The old dead body eventually ceases to exist. They should
eliminate their use of 'resurrection' and instead use 're-creation.'

Jim

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nevermind- I misread a comment

Edited by mfbukowski
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15 minutes ago, theplains said:

I can agree with other posters. The original body will be resurrected.  Jehovah's Witnesses loosely use the term resurrection
but they actually believe that a new physical body is created. The old dead body eventually ceases to exist. They should
eliminate their use of 'resurrection' and instead use 're-creation.'

Jim

I didn't know that.  Interesting.

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On 11/16/2017 at 12:52 PM, bluebell said:

It fits in with other fringe mormon theology, such as the teaching that parents will get to raise the children that died young during the millennium.

 

On 11/16/2017 at 1:37 PM, smac97 said:

I suppose.  I've never really understood that one, though it has apparently had some "mainstream" treatment.  See also hereThis also has some interesting stuff.

Thanks,

-Smac

I don’t regard this teaching as fringe at all. I have been taught it before and have always accepted it as true. 

The fact that it has been included in an official manual of the Church as recently as the Teachings of Presidents of the Church manual on Joseph F. Smith (see the link Smac provided) indicates the Church regards it as authoritative teaching. 

It has always seemed to me it would be comforting to parents, mothers in particular, who lose their children in infancy or youth. They will have the privilege to rear those children at some future time and to do it in an environment free from the buffetings of Satan that we parents have to put up with in this stage of mortality. 

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48 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I don’t regard this teaching as fringe at all. I have been taught it before and have always accepted it as true. 

I meant fringe as in peripheral.  You hardly ever hear it taught.  I agree it's a very comforting doctrine that i'm inclined to believe is true but I don't have super strong feelings about.  I'm not sure how a resurrected body would grow and mature, since a resurrected body is supposed to be perfect and whole and unchanging.  In that way, it seems to conflict with other doctrine.

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14 minutes ago, bluebell said:

 I'm not sure how a resurrected body would grow and mature, since a resurrected body is supposed to be perfect and whole and unchanging. 

Hmmm...I have never assumed a perfect immortal body would be unchanging, even if "no longer subject to death or disease".  For example, do we believe finger and toenails and hair won't grow, always the same identical hair style?  I think with perfect control over our bodies, we will be able to alter it within certain limitations.

https://www.lds.org/topics/resurrection?lang=eng

Do we actually teach "unchanging" or is that just a common assumption of what perfect means?

Edited by Calm
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