Is There Not An Apparent Problem To The Doctrine Of The Trinity?

[Calm]

My mom is a faithful LDS person, does all the things she is supposed to do and believes the teachings of the Mormon church. My view is, in her belief she will be in the celestial kingdom. I, according to Mormon belief, will not. I've never seen anything coming from LDS teaching that would indicate otherwise. The yearly lesson on personal apostasy makes it very clear where I stand, in the mind of Mormons. My mom believes what she is taught by the Mormon church.

https://www.lds.org/ensign/print/2014/03/faithful-parents-and-wayward-children-sustaining-hope-while-overcoming-misunderstanding?lang=eng&clang=eng

"President James E. Faust (1920–2007), former Second Counselor in the First Presidency, provided the most comprehensive explanation of this eternally important concept:

“I believe and accept the comforting statement of Elder Orson F. Whitney:

“‘The Prophet Joseph Smith declared—and he never taught more comforting doctrine—that the eternal sealings of faithful parents and the divine promises made to them for valiant service in the Cause of Truth, would save not only themselves, but likewise their posterity. Though some of the sheep may wander, the eye of the Shepherd is upon them, and sooner or later they will feel the tentacles of Divine Providence reaching out after them and drawing them back to the fold. Either in this life or the life to come, they will return. They will have to pay their debt to justice; they will suffer for their sins; and may tread a thorny path; but if it leads them at last, like the penitent Prodigal, to a loving and forgiving father’s heart and home, the painful experience will not have been in vain. Pray for your careless and disobedient children; hold on to them with your faith. Hope on, trust on, till you see the salvation of God.’6

“A principle in this statement that is often overlooked is that they must fully repent and ‘suffer for their sins’ and ‘pay their debt to justice.’ I recognize that now is the time ‘to prepare to meet God’ [Alma 34:32]. If the repentance of the wayward children does not happen in this life, is it still possible for the cords of the sealing to be strong enough for them yet to work out their repentance? In the Doctrine and Covenants we are told, ‘The dead who repent will be redeemed, through obedience to the ordinances of the house of God,

“‘And after they have paid the penalty of their transgressions, and are washed clean, shall receive a reward according to their works, for they are heirs of salvation’ [D&C 138:58–59].

“We remember that the prodigal son wasted his inheritance, and when it was all gone he came back to his father’s house. There he was welcomed back into the family, but his inheritance was spent. [see Luke 15:11–32.] Mercy will not rob justice, and the sealing power of faithful parents will only claim wayward children upon the condition of their repentance and Christ’s Atonement. Repentant wayward children will enjoy salvation and all the blessings that go with it, but exaltation is much more. It must be fully earned. The question as to who will be exalted must be left to the Lord in His mercy.

“There are very few whose rebellion and evil deeds are so great that they have ‘sinned away the power to repent.’7 That judgment must also be left up to the Lord. He tells us, ‘I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men’ [D&C 64:10].

“Perhaps in this life we are not given to fully understand how enduring the sealing cords of righteous parents are to their children. It may very well be that there are more helpful sources at work than we know.8 I believe there is a strong familial pull as the influence of beloved ancestors continues with us from the other side of the veil.”"

Exaltation is not excluded as a possibility after repentance. Plus exaltation is only the highest level of the Celestial Kingdom, the parable of the Prodigal Son indicates that children who return are accepted into "heart and home" and thus are with the family in the CK.

Edited May 16, 2014 by calmoriah

[saemo]

https://www.lds.org/ensign/print/2014/03/faithful-parents-and-wayward-children-sustaining-hope-while-overcoming-misunderstanding?lang=eng&clang=eng

"President James E. Faust (1920–2007), former Second Counselor in the First Presidency, provided the most comprehensive explanation of this eternally important concept:

“I believe and accept the comforting statement of Elder Orson F. Whitney:

“‘The Prophet Joseph Smith declared—and he never taught more comforting doctrine—that the eternal sealings of faithful parents and the divine promises made to them for valiant service in the Cause of Truth, would save not only themselves, but likewise their posterity. Though some of the sheep may wander, the eye of the Shepherd is upon them, and sooner or later they will feel the tentacles of Divine Providence reaching out after them and drawing them back to the fold. Either in this life or the life to come, they will return. They will have to pay their debt to justice; they will suffer for their sins; and may tread a thorny path; but if it leads them at last, like the penitent Prodigal, to a loving and forgiving father’s heart and home, the painful experience will not have been in vain. Pray for your careless and disobedient children; hold on to them with your faith. Hope on, trust on, till you see the salvation of God.’6

“A principle in this statement that is often overlooked is that they must fully repent and ‘suffer for their sins’ and ‘pay their debt to justice.’ I recognize that now is the time ‘to prepare to meet God’ [Alma 34:32]. If the repentance of the wayward children does not happen in this life, is it still possible for the cords of the sealing to be strong enough for them yet to work out their repentance? In the Doctrine and Covenants we are told, ‘The dead who repent will be redeemed, through obedience to the ordinances of the house of God,

“‘And after they have paid the penalty of their transgressions, and are washed clean, shall receive a reward according to their works, for they are heirs of salvation’ [D&C 138:58–59].

“We remember that the prodigal son wasted his inheritance, and when it was all gone he came back to his father’s house. There he was welcomed back into the family, but his inheritance was spent. [see Luke 15:11–32.] Mercy will not rob justice, and the sealing power of faithful parents will only claim wayward children upon the condition of their repentance and Christ’s Atonement. Repentant wayward children will enjoy salvation and all the blessings that go with it, but exaltation is much more. It must be fully earned. The question as to who will be exalted must be left to the Lord in His mercy.

“There are very few whose rebellion and evil deeds are so great that they have ‘sinned away the power to repent.’7 That judgment must also be left up to the Lord. He tells us, ‘I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men’ [D&C 64:10].

“Perhaps in this life we are not given to fully understand how enduring the sealing cords of righteous parents are to their children. It may very well be that there are more helpful sources at work than we know.8 I believe there is a strong familial pull as the influence of beloved ancestors continues with us from the other side of the veil.”"

Exaltation is not excluded as a possibility after repentance. Plus exaltation is only the highest level of the Celestial Kingdom, the parable of the Prodigal Son indicates that children who return are accepted into "heart and home" and thus are with the family in the CK.

Wow, very different from anything I remember being taught. Also a nice view of sealing. Thanks.

 

What I remember is, get yourself up all the laid out steps of the ladder to exaltation or be left behind. Period. End of story. The result being, for people like me, Old Testament style destruction.

Edited May 16, 2014 by saemo

[mfbukowski]

Miserere, hi.

 

I used to have this book written by Edith Stein who converted to Catholicism while studying philosophy under Edmund Husserl, who was a Lutheran and also Karol Wotyla's (Pope John Paul II) esteemed teacher of phenomenology. This work was in the form of a dialogue between Husserl and Aquinas which attempted to reconcile the the two ways of thought. In the end, I couldn't judge myself if she achieved what she attempted. However, I spoke about it to a man I knew, a Thomist, who now teaches philosophy at Notre Dame, for what that may be worth, who was familiar with the work. He said that she failed.

 

You seem to have a respect, or appreciation for postmodernism that I lack. You may have seen me suggest to Mark that I thought we had to choose between what has been fondly labelled philosophia perennis, or his own postmodernism. I wonder if you agree with that, or are you kind of hoping for some kind of reconciliation as Edith Stein did? I am thinking that Benedict and John Paul II were also "Steinian". 

 

Thanks.

 

Rory

From the postmodern side I think it is very easy to make the reconciliation. We just have to notice that for you guys, Thomist philosophy gives you all you need to approach God. For us it is, to put it crudely, a model which "works" for you.

But you will not see that as a reconciliation, because you believe there must be one and only one absolute "TRVTH" etched in stone in Latin in some pediment somewhere.

So I have no problem saying "Thomism works for you- that's fine- it just doesn't work for me, now let's go to church together and you see it as you will and I will see it as I do".

I am certain there are postmodern Catholics who see it that way as well- I have met them, and know some well.

But it's not a bi-lateral thing. For a Thomist to admit that postmodernism was a possible way to go, he would have to be a postmodernist. It's the difference between relative truth and absolute truth.

And incidentally I think it is clear that Ratzinger believes in relative truth. THAT is how heresies help develop truth. It is a Hegelian dialectical approach. You see that again and again- the words relation and dialogue. It sees truth as relative to its social context.

 

Hegelian dialectic, usually presented in a threefold manner, was stated by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus as comprising three dialectical stages of development: a thesis, giving rise to its reaction, an antithesis, which contradicts or negates the thesis, and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis. Although this model is often named after Hegel, he himself never used that specific formulation. Hegel ascribed that terminology to Kant.[31] Carrying on Kant's work, Fichte greatly elaborated on the synthesis model, and popularized it.

On the other hand, Hegel did use a three-valued logical model that is very similar to the antithesis model, but Hegel's most usual terms were: Abstract-Negative-Concrete. Hegel used this writing model as a backbone to accompany his points in many of his works.

The formula, thesis-antithesis-synthesis, does not explain why the thesis requires an antithesis. However, the formula, abstract-negative-concrete, suggests a flaw, or perhaps an incomplete-ness, in any initial thesis—it is too abstract and lacks the negative of trial, error and experience. For Hegel, the concrete, the synthesis, the absolute, must always pass through the phase of the negative, in the journey to completion, that is, mediation. This is the essence of what is popularly called Hegelian Dialectics.

To describe the activity of overcoming the negative, Hegel also often used the term Aufhebung, variously translated into English as "sublation" or "overcoming," to conceive of the working of the dialectic. Roughly, the term indicates preserving the useful portion of an idea, thing, society, etc., while moving beyond its limitations. (Jacques Derrida's preferred French translation of the term was relever.)[32]

In the Logic, for instance, Hegel describes a dialectic of existence: first, existence must be posited as pure Being (Sein); but pure Being, upon examination, is found to be indistinguishable from Nothing (Nichts). When it is realized that what is coming into being is, at the same time, also returning to nothing (in life, for example, one's living is also a dying), both Being and Nothing are united as Becoming.[33]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic#Hegelian_dialectic

 

 

He is not saying that successive errors lead to truth. I think he said that they are important as "ciphers". I am not sure what that means. But he distinguishes between the cipher and the "abiding truth". It is the abiding truth which leads to more truth, not successive error.

Ciphers are puzzles.  Ratzinger is saying that heresies provide the puzzles and the dialogue necessary to find "truth".  Very Hegelian, very Germanic and very postmodern.  Truth arises out of dialogue and questions/problems and is then sythesized into a new way of seeing things.  Truth is not absolute and "found"- it is created through social interaction

 

Augh! back to work!

Edited May 16, 2014 by mfbukowski

[Calm]

Saemo,

You must have come from a ward with a different mindset than the ones I grew up in. I can picture one of my grandparents teaching something like that so I am not saying it is impossible, just that there has been variation over time and location and the above is what is being currently taught through the top leadership (and has been Iirc since the 1980s at least, I think that is when I started really paying attention to it...possibly because I was now a parent or because I knew of families with "wayward children".

I might see how far back that phrase goes after I get some sleep.

Edited May 16, 2014 by calmoriah

[saemo]

You must have come from a ward with a different mindset than the ones I grew up in. I can picture one of my grandparents teaching something like that so I am not saying it is impossible, just that there has been variation over time and location and the above is what is being currently taught through the top leadership (and has been Iirc since the 1980s at least).

I left in spirit by 1980, physically by 1985, atheist by 1990.

 

Baptized Catholic on Easter 2008. (Thanks be to God.)

Edited May 16, 2014 by saemo

[mfbukowski]

Saemo,

You must have come from a ward with a different mindset than the ones I grew up in. I can picture one of my grandparents teaching something like that so I am not saying it is impossible, just that there has been variation over time and location and the above is what is being currently taught through the top leadership (and has been Iirc since the 1980s at least, I think that is when I started really paying attention to it...possibly because I was now a parent or because I knew of families with "wayward children".

I might see how far back that phrase goes after I get some sleep.

I joined in 1980 so it has to go back longer than that.  THAT was fully what appeared in every lesson, manual etc.

[Calm]

I left in spirit in 1980, physically by 1985, atheist by 1990.

Baptized Catholic on Easter 2008. (Thanks be to God.)

If you are happy in your faith, I am grateful to God as well.

The teaching is from Joseph Smith so it has been around a long time...it just has been paid much more attention to more recently or so it seems to me, though as I said that may be because I've paid more attention to it. Hopefully your mom has heard it and is receiving comfort from it.

Edited May 16, 2014 by calmoriah

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

I recall being taught that each kingdom of heaven, in LDS belief, will be located on another planet. And that those in upper kingdoms can visit those in lower kingdoms. This indicates that visiting someone in a different kingdom of heaven requires that one goes to a different planet. Has this changed?

I had never heard that. In fact I am not sure there is anything really official out side of what happens to this earth.

[saemo]

If you are happy in your faith, I am grateful to God as well.

The teaching is from Joseph Smith so it has been around a long time...it just has been paid much more attention to more recently or so it seems to me, though as I said that may be because I've paid more attention to it. Hopefully your mom has heard it and is receiving comfort from it.

Eh, Mormons are different than when I was growing up. What is taught is different. People here call me anti-Mormon, when all I am doing is remembering what I was taught. If you teach me heaven is three separate planets, that is what I remember. I remember a graphic of planets, labeled with the kingdom of heaven names, one for each level. Now apparently, that is anti-Mormon. I can't keep up with the changes.

 

Anyway, I thought my parents softening up was a result of aging! Now I'm thinking what they are being taught has softened up, and they follow suit. My mom finds comfort in her Mormon children.

Edited May 16, 2014 by saemo

[Calm]

I joined in 1980 so it has to go back longer than that.  THAT was fully what appeared in every lesson, manual etc.

I am not surprised, I don't remember being taught the hard line myself though I can well imagine my grandmother using it to instilled fear and guilt so that her students would adhere to the iron rod without fail....though I hope she was actually more gentle with people who weren't members of her family as opposed o her grandchildren. Now my other grandparents...I think they would have chosen to teach the faithful parents take heart (given one of my uncles was an apostate) and my parents actually did.

[Calm]

Eh, Mormons are different than when I was growing up. What is taught is different. People here call me anti-Mormon, when all I am doing is remembering what I was taught. If you teach me heaven is three separate planets, that is what I remember. Now apparently, that is anti-Mormon. I can't keep up with the changes.

 

Anyway, I thought my parents softening up was a result of aging! Now I'm thinking what they are being taught has softened up, and they follow suit.

Did you live in a variety of wards/locations? Just curious.

[saemo]

Did you live in a variety of wards/locations? Just curious.

Ward boundary changes, moving, all in Utah. I don't know what makes Mormon variety. I think of Mormonism as homogenous. Everyone in suits and dresses, the same music everywhere, the same architecture everywhere, the same everything, the same things being said in testimony meetings, the same touchy-feely method of teaching, in every ward around the planet…the Mormon Tribe.

Edited May 16, 2014 by saemo

[Vance]

Vance, do you have references that my mom and dad will be together even though he became Atheistic at the end of his life, and she was temple worthy at her death?  They were sealed in the temple early in their marriage.  And the only reason my dad became Atheist was because of the pain my mom went through at the end of her life, he'd seen a lot of pain, with losing his dad at an early age too.  Please refresh my memory of the process.  I know we do work for the dead, how would someone do work for someone like my dad?  He even became bitter about the church in the end.  I remember trying to reassure him that there is an afterlife, and he'd be with mom.

You are presenting a different situation from the one I was responding to.

[Calm]

I lived in the 60s and 70s in California, Illinois and a bit in Salt Lake and Provo areas. I have been in places where the architecture is quite different. Music is pretty much the same, just varies in tempo depending on how good a conductor and organist are. Clothing pretty standard everywhere though the Russian ward definitely was poorer. Depending on the ward, testimony meetings and lessons varied tremendously, my favourite Testimony meetings being in Russia.

I think we often carry our first impressions with us and interpret what we hear in that way, especially when there is a gap left for us to fill.

Edited May 16, 2014 by calmoriah

[Vance]

My mom is a faithful LDS person, does all the things she is supposed to do and believes the teachings of the Mormon church. My view is, in her belief she will be in the celestial kingdom. I, according to Mormon belief, will not. I've never seen anything coming from LDS teaching that would indicate otherwise. The yearly lesson on personal apostasy makes it very clear where I stand, in the mind of Mormons. My mom believes what she is taught by the Mormon church.

Like I said before, you either don't understand it or are misrepresenting it.

Unless I am mistaken, you have never been a member of the Church. You will be given the chance to get it right in the spirit world. Besides, you are not dead yet. There is still an opportunity available to you.

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

Like I said before, you either don't understand it or are misrepresenting it.

Unless I am mistaken, you have never been a member of the Church. You will be given the chance to get it right in the spirit world. Besides, you are not dead yet. There is still an opportunity available to you.

I am not even sure that being a member, previously, means you wont have a chance on the other side. After all it is all about the light and knowledge you had in this life and what you did with it.

Edited May 16, 2014 by Mola Ram Suda Ram

[Vance]

I said, I accept that the Catholic Church is the Church that Jesus founded.

Good for you.

You are wrong, but still good for you.

I hold no belief, as Mormons do, that there is a primitive church that became stagnant and never received guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Even though the scriptures declare such a situation would occur.

 

It is not an invention, to a Catholic like myself, it is the Holy Spirit working through the successors of the Apostles. Something I understand you reject, but that is the belief I hold.

Good for you.

You are wrong, but still good for you.

[Calm]

I am not even sure that being a member, previously, means you wont have a chance on the other side. After all it is all about the light and knowledge you had in this life and what you did with it.

I am actually quite positive that some members haven't actually had a chance yet. The D&C makes it clear that some LDS parents won't be teaching their children and therefore the sin is on the head of the parent (if they knew better...some of those parents are likely children that weren't taught by their parents, etc). Edited May 16, 2014 by calmoriah

[Vance]

Interesting.

 

I was taught the the earth will become the celestial kingdom and the other kingdoms will be somewhere else. Being that LDS cosmology has God living on a planet and the celestial kingdom is a planet, that somewhere else is logically another planet.

That may be the "logical" assumption, BUT since the location of the other kingdoms has not been revealed, it is VERY inappropriate for it to be represented as a belief.

[Vance]

Eh, Mormons are different than when I was growing up. What is taught is different. People here call me anti-Mormon, when all I am doing is remembering what I was taught.

It is most likely that you NEVER really understood Mormonism or you would not have become an atheist.

Just saying.

[saemo]

It is most likely that you NEVER really understood Mormonism or you would not have become an atheist.

Just saying.

 

 

My what ifs are different than that. :-)

[saemo]

Like I said before, you either don't understand it or are misrepresenting it.

Unless I am mistaken, you have never been a member of the Church. You will be given the chance to get it right in the spirit world. Besides, you are not dead yet. There is still an opportunity available to you.

Yes, I took that opportunity. I recommend it to everyone.

[Tacenda]

I am not surprised, I don't remember being taught the hard line myself though I can well imagine my grandmother using it to instilled fear and guilt so that her students would adhere to the iron rod without fail....though I hope she was actually more gentle with people who weren't members of her family as opposed o her grandchildren. Now my other grandparents...I think they would have chosen to teach the faithful parents take heart (given one of my uncles was an apostate) and my parents actually did.

I'm having deja vu,  I swear we've had this same conversation and I've posted some quotes before.  Maybe we are getting planets confused with worlds, even though they seem to be the same.  It might just be a language barrier. 

 

Here are a few quotes out of many I found on the internet.  But I do need to be honest, I really didn't think much about any of this growing up.  And would only hear bits of this throughout my life, I guess my faith crisis has brought it full circle.  Why even in the temple I never gave it much thought, at all and I'm serious.   

 

https://www.lds.org/new-era/1971/04/people-on-other-worlds

Differences in Other Worlds

Another basic truth is that all of the worlds out there are not the same. Some are celestial. Some are terrestrial. Some are telestial. Some, such as ours, are in a phase of temporal existence. And there are other phases, probably some we don’t even know of.

The Lord has said that “there is no space in which there is no kingdom … either a greater or a lesser kingdom.” He has also said, “All kingdoms have a law given.” All kingdoms are not given the same laws, but “unto every law there are certain bounds. …”¹²

Our earth and its inhabitants are under the laws of temporal existence.¹³ We know a little about the bounds of the laws of this earth’s temporal existence. We know that our world is to undergo a major change to prepare for the Millennium. Many fascinating things are going to happen. Few other events in all scripture have been so clearly and definitively outlined as that which will happen to our world in preparation for and during a one-thousand-year period called the Millennium. But that is a subject for another article. It’s enough to point out here that our earth is now subject to one set of laws, and in the future it will be subject to another set of laws. In other words, our world already has gone through and will yet go through certain planned phases. The same thing happens to other worlds in outer space.

A vital point to remember here is that our science—our core of understanding concerning the operations of our world—is based on experience. And human experience apart from God’s revelations has been limited to a world under a temporal set of laws. We can hope to determine with some accuracy the scientific laws and principles that pertain to this order of the world. But if we assume a uniformity in space and time so complete that we picture the whole universe—past, present, and future—as being subject to the same order that God has given our temporal world, we fail to understand the potentially rich variety of other types of laws that God has given to other worlds. Many of these worlds have passed to a higher state of existence than our own.

Interestingly, the revelations from the Lord do assure us that worlds and heavens do continue one above the other.¹⁴ As our earth’s atmosphere (“firmament” or “expanse”) in which the birds fly is sometimes referred to as a “heaven,”¹⁵ so also our solar system of planets is referred to as the earth’s heavens.¹⁶ Seemingly, this order of heavens is what is referred to when the Lord promised that “the heavens and the earth shall pass away” and there shall be “new heavens and a new earth.”¹⁷

But there are heavens beyond the “heavens” for our earth. “… the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee,” wrote Solomon.¹⁸ And Joseph Smith commented: “the heaven of heavens could not contain him [Christ]; for he took the liberty to go into other heavens.”¹⁹

We do not know how extensive is the order of heavens that pertain to our Lord Jesus Christ and that were created by him. It may consist of the local group of stars to which our sun belongs, or of our whole galaxy, or of our cluster of galaxies, or of all of the galaxies we have so far discovered.

Abraham was shown that in our Lord’s system of heavens, one planet exists above another “until thou come nigh unto Kolob, which … is set nigh unto the throne of God, to govern all those planets which belong to the same order” as our earth.²⁰

As a side note, unbelievers have always found it difficult to picture the work and power of the Lord on such a vast scale. In the days of St. Augustine, 400 years after Christ, Christian scholars vigorously debated the possibility of people living on the other side of our world! Men debated whether such a land, virtually another world, actually existed, and if it did, whether it was inhabited by men of some form or other. Their speculations and questions about another “world” at the antipodes almost exactly parallel those of our own science about other worlds in space. Augustine himself came to the conclusion that if there were such a place, it could not be inhabited by men.

A similar problem to Augustine’s arose once again in the time of Copernicus and Galileo. At that time the apostate Christian church had accepted the science of Aristotle, which taught that there was but one earth, located at the very center or lowest place in the universe. When Copernicus proposed his new theory of the order of the universe, he placed the sun at the center and the earth in the heavens. It opened the door once again to the question of other worlds.

Centuries later, when Columbus and other explorers found that there truly was a “new world” in the midst of the ocean, and that it was inhabited by men, Christian missionaries lost no time in trying to convert them. Once men had crossed the “impossible” ocean barrier, the “new world” became one with the old world and the problem simply disappeared. The Book of Mormon throws a flood of light on the relationship of the gospel to the ancient inhabitants of America. The Lord could, and did, send angels and revelations of his truths to prophets in America as well as to prophets in Palestine. And though Augustine and the men of his time could not cross the oceans to America, the resurrected Christ certainly could—and did.

Certainly it is no harder for the Lord to visit other worlds than it was for him to visit the Nephites on this continent after his resurrection. When speaking of other worlds, the Lord told Joseph Smith that “all these are kingdoms,” and he likened them to a field in which different servants labored, each of which he visited in turn; “and thus they all received the light of the countenance of their Lord. … Therefore, unto this parable will I liken all these kingdoms, and the inhabitants thereof—every kingdom in its hour and in its time, and in its season, even according to the decree which God hath made.”²¹

 

Another quote:  "We educate ourselves in the secular field and in the spiritual field so that we may one day create worlds, people and govern them." (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball [1982], 386).

 

https://www.lds.org/ensign/2002/10/education-for-real-life?lang=eng

 

Real Life Is Eternal Life

The real life we’re preparing for is eternal life. Secular knowledge has for us eternal significance. Our conviction is that God, our Heavenly Father, wants us to live the life that He does. We learn both the spiritual things and the secular things “so we may one day create worlds [and] people and govern them” (Spencer W. Kimball, The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball [1982], 386). All we can learn that is true while we are in this life will rise with us in the Resurrection. And all that we can learn will enhance our capacity to serve. That is a destiny reserved not alone for the brilliant, those who learn the most quickly, or those who enter the most respected professions. It will be given to those who are humbly good, who love God, and who serve Him with all their capacities, however limited those capacities are—as are all our capacities, compared with the capacities of God.

 

 

 

Quote by Spencer W. Kimball:  “Brethren, 225,000 of you are here tonight. I suppose 225,000 of you may become gods. There seems to be plenty of space out there in the universe. And the Lord has proved that he knows how to do it. I think he could make, or probably have us help make, worlds for all of us, for every one of us 225,000”

 

*Last post till morning, all out of them.  Some of you will be thrilled, I'm sure!

 

 

 

[pogi]

Good quotes cal!  Most of those have to do with other inhabited worlds (pre-judgment) and are not refering to the 3 kingdoms post-judgment though.

 

I would not be suprised if the 3 kingdoms are different worlds, but I have never heard it taught that way.  The question I have though is this - does it really matter if the kingdoms are different worlds or different kingdoms on the same world?  The fact is, they are different kingdoms with different laws and glories and will feel like different worlds for all intents and purposes.  If they exist on the same planet or are light years appart is kind of irrelevant.

 

You seem to be upset that there might be a possibility that your parents will not be an eternal family according to LDS theology.  But keep in mind that first, that is not for us to judge.  Second, at least they have that possibility in LDS theology, unlike in other faiths.  Third, I think your father has a better chance of glory as an atheist in LDS theology than any other (I would not necessarily exclude the possibility of celectial glory either).

Edited May 16, 2014 by pogi

[Calm]

It was Tacenda, not me.