What Will Those Who Qualify Only for the Telestial and Terrestrial Kingdoms do for Eternity?
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By canard78
Random question, but I was doing some study on the different stages in individual progress and looking into the origins and symbolic implications of the Telestial, Terrestrial, Celestial experience in both Temple worship and eternal kingdoms.
So we have:
1/ Celestial
2/ Terrestrial
3/ Telestial
The first two have established meaning. The third seems like a made up word, it's not English. Is it?
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By swfarnsworth
Ever since I finally memorized that the Terrestrial is the moon glory and the Telestial is the star glory (I got them mixed up a lot as a kid), I've thought that the two names should be switched. Here's why:
"Telestial" is an invented word to describe the unnamed degree in 1 Cor. 15 created from a combination of the names of the other two degrees, so it would make sense to have it be the name of the degree in between the Celestial and Terrestrial. In the JST, Joseph could have simply inserted the word "Telestial" in between references to the other two (making the stars correspond to Terrestrial and the moon to Telestial) rather than adding it as an appendage.
Though the earth will become a Terrestrial sphere during the millennium, it is presently a Telestial sphere. The word Terrestrial comes from the Latin word for earth, so it would make sense for the earth to be called a Telestial sphere when it is in between its present earthly state and the Celestial state it will be in after the Millennium.
I'm not suggesting that the names should actually be switched; rather, I'm asking if there is a particular reason (or reasons) I haven't thought of yet that the degrees have the names that they do.
As a side note, I remember being in primary sharing time lesson with a Plan of Salvation flow-chart. Though I did often get the names mixed up, I could still remember that the order was sun, moon, stars. The primary presidency member teaching the lesson had the degrees stacked in this descending order: sun, stars, moon. At the end of the lesson, another member of the presidency quietly pointed out her mistake, which had been bothering me for the duration of the lesson. When she switched the star and the moon pictures (I can't remember if the names were in the right places or not), she said "I guess you learn something every day!". This boosted my "I'm a smart little kid" ego.
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