SeekingUnderstanding Posted January 16, 2014 Posted January 16, 2014 (edited) (which I hope you'll read),Don't worry, I did So the Saviour's tempters didn't understand that marriages (even in Israel) only become eternal when they are solemnized by the sealing power of God. Without a marriage being solemnized by one possessing this sealing power, the best one could hope for was to be made equal only to the unmarried angels, who are servants of the Most High but not inheritors of all the Father possesses through the sacrifice of Christ. The point here is that many non-LDS Christians believe the truly faithful will become greater than the angels. The Lord's saying that those not sealed in marriage by the power of God will become only as the angels and worthy only to obtain that world is in reality a designation and relegation to a lower degree of glory than the fullness of celestial glory. Thanks for your response. I guess to clarify my view, I don't get worked up over things like this. I don't think this scripture disproves the LDS view of marriage in the eternities. I do believe that the most straight forward reading of just this story (ignoring unambiguous modern revelation, and other slightly ambiguous scriptures) has Jesus dismissing the idea of marriage in the eternities. As evidence I give the 2000+ word article FAIR has about it, and all of the other apologetic readings (some of which you have provided) surrounding this short excerpt from the New Testament. If Jesus had just said she'll be married to whoever she was sealed to, we wouldn't have any issues. I will add the messiness of marriage (multiple different marriages, divorce, children sealed to a father from a previous marriage) etcetera continue to perplex us. We just have to walk in faith that things will work out in the eternities (this would have been my response to my atheist friend). Edited January 16, 2014 by SeekingUnderstanding
teddyaware Posted January 16, 2014 Posted January 16, 2014 (edited) Don't worry, I did Thanks for your response. I guess to clarify my view, I don't get worked up over things like this. I don't think this scripture disproves the LDS view of marriage in the eternities. I do believe that the most straight forward reading of just this story (ignoring unambiguous modern revelation, and other slightly ambiguous scriptures) has Jesus dismissing the idea of marriage in the eternities. As evidence I give the 2000+ word article FAIR has about it, and all of the other apologetic readings (some of which you have provided) surrounding this short excerpt from the New Testament. If Jesus had just said she'll be married to whoever she was sealed to, we wouldn't have any issues. I will add the messiness of marriage (multiple different marriages, divorce, children sealed to a father from a previous marriage) etcetera continue to perplex us. We just have to walk in faith that things will work out in the eternities (this would have been my response to my atheist friend).Appreciate your point of view. These verses in Matthew 22 are a perfect example of why living prophets and continuous revelation are essential. When it comes to the scriptures, accurate exegesis is often very difficult, because when it comes to the scriptures there really is a tyranny of words. The inspired men and prophets who wrote the sacred books knew exactly what they were thinking as they used the words they chose to convey those thoughts. But we often can't know precisely what was on their minds because the phrases and sentences they speak, on any given topic, are often little more than literary skeletons; sparse frameworks that could really use complete essays or doctrinal expositions in order to give a much more complete picture of exactly what was on their minds as they spoke (in this case) or wrote. As an addendum to my previous post, I'd also like to ask: Why in the world did these tempters of the Lord think to ask such a question in the first place? Who put it into their heads that some marriages could be everlasting and eternal? We know that at this point in time the religion of the Jews was in a state of apostasy and they hadn't had a true prophet to guide them for many years. So where did this strange notion come from? Could it be that they had heard the Lord was teaching the principle of eternal marriage, so they asked their convoluted question as a way to mock and defeat the sacred teachings of the Lord? If this was their motive, little did they know their hypothetical question would be turned on its head, all because they didn't understand the question was faulty one. And this because they didn't understand marriages could only be made eternal by the sealing power of God. Edited January 17, 2014 by teddyaware
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