The family is the most important group of people on earth. Our earthly family is patterned after our heavenly family. We were all brothers and sisters in heaven. We were children of God. God was the leader of our heavenly home. We received loving care and guidance from our heavenly parents.
God sent each of us to a family here on earth. He has given parents the responsibility to care for each of His children while they are here on earth. Parents should love their children and provide for them food, clothing, and a home. They should teach their children about God and how they may become like Him.
God made it possible for families to be together forever. He has given the leaders of His Church the authority to bind families together forever. This binding together is called sealing. This sealing can take place only in a temple. Temples are sacred buildings where only faithful members of the Church may go. When a man and woman are sealed in the temple by someone who holds the priesthood and has special power to seal, their marriage will not end when they die. Their marriage will last forever if they keep the promises they made in the temple. This is called eternal marriage.
If a man and a woman are not sealed in the temple, the marriage ends when one of them dies. If we are sealed in the temple, and if we faithfully follow Jesus Christ to the end of our lives, our families can be together forever.
A married couple can go to the temple to be sealed if they are faithful followers of Jesus. There, a priesthood holder who has special authority can seal them to each other. He can also seal their children to them. After they are sealed to each other, they can be together forever, just as if they had been married in the temple in the beginning.
God wants all of His children to plan to be sealed in a temple and to raise an obedient family. Parents should guide their children so that they will be ready to go to the temple to be sealed when they get married. If a man and woman have been sealed in the temple, all children born to them after their sealing will be sealed to them automatically.
I was taught all my life that those who are exalted live together forever as a family unit. But what family? Do I live as a kid with my parents, or as a husband and father with my wife and kids? If me and my wife live together with our kids, what happens to our kids's spouses and their children?
"We have taken up arms in defense of our liberty, our property, our wives, and our children; we are determined to preserve them, or die." - Captain Moroni - 'Address to the Inhabitants of Canada' 1775
DarkHelmet wrote:I was taught all my life that those who are exalted live together forever as a family unit. But what family? Do I live as a kid with my parents, or as a husband and father with my wife and kids? If me and my wife live together with our kids, what happens to our kids's spouses and their children?
Just think of it this way: those sealed to each other will be like a massive family tree together in the celestial kingdom. Does that mean we'll live as family units? Probably not, for the reasons you mention. So, really, the celestial kingdom isn't conceptually much different from traditional "heaven," except of course for the ability to create new worlds, etc.
Why is there even a necessity to 'seal' people together? If both a father and son gain the highest degree of Celestial glory won't they be in the same place anyways?
I think the current understanding of sealing, marriage and Celestial existence is very different from what Joseph Smith and Brigham Young practiced and believed. Back then it was more about establishing priesthood lines back to Adam, the closer you were to him the more dominion you had, and building up you own little earthly kingdom that you could rule in the hereafter. Now it is about one big happily ever after in some vague unending Stepford family existence.
"Any over-ritualized religion since the dawn of time can make its priests say yes, we know, it is rotten, and hard luck, but just do as we say, keep at the ritual, stick it out, give us your money and you'll end up with the angels in heaven for evermore."
DarkHelmet wrote:I was taught all my life that those who are exalted live together forever as a family unit. But what family? Do I live as a kid with my parents, or as a husband and father with my wife and kids? If me and my wife live together with our kids, what happens to our kids's spouses and their children?
Just think of it this way: those sealed to each other will be like a massive family tree together in the celestial kingdom. Does that mean we'll live as family units? Probably not, for the reasons you mention. So, really, the celestial kingdom isn't conceptually much different from traditional "heaven," except of course for the ability to create new worlds, etc.
I think everyone will be sealed to everyone. Think one big wild swinging party.
Following it to it's logical conclusion this is what I come up with too. We will all be sealed together in the presence of God, our father. But why do we need to be sealed together as family units? The family unit won't be relevant in heaven, where we are all sons and daughters of heavenly father, in other words spiritual siblings. It would make more sense if the sealings in the temple sealed us together as spirit siblings and children of god. And the upper level of the CK was a big family with god as the patriarch. Because when you take the current theology to it's logical conclusion, that is what you get. And it isn't much different than mainstream Christianity's concept of heaven.
"We have taken up arms in defense of our liberty, our property, our wives, and our children; we are determined to preserve them, or die." - Captain Moroni - 'Address to the Inhabitants of Canada' 1775
Following it to it's logical conclusion this is what I come up with too. We will all be sealed together in the presence of God, our father. But why do we need to be sealed together as family units? The family unit won't be relevant in heaven, where we are all sons and daughters of heavenly father, in other words spiritual siblings. It would make more sense if the sealings in the temple sealed us together as spirit siblings and children of god. And the upper level of the CK was a big family with god as the patriarch. Because when you take the current theology to it's logical conclusion, that is what you get. And it isn't much different than mainstream Christianity's concept of heaven.
Sealing started out in Joseph Smith & BY's time as a way to connect priesthood authority back to Adam. It was also viewed as a way to increase one's dominion, both here and in the eternities, by increasing the number of people sealed to you. (I like to call it Celestial fantasy football.) The more people that were sealed to you the more power you would have in the hereafter. The closer to Adam you were in priesthood authority line the more people over which you had dominion. Think of it as an inverted tree with Adam at the top, which might have a lot to do with why BY taught Adam-God. Connecting your blood family to yourself was not the most important part of it, in fact if your dad did not hold the priesthood in this life you could not get sealed to him. John Taylor, for example, did not want to be sealed to his father because he thought it was beneath an apostle to be sealed to just a high priest.
Now it became apparent by the time Wilford Woodruff became the prophet that they had a problem with jealousy, infighting and competition in the church over who was getting sealed to whom, especially at high levels, so he changed the emphasis on sealings from a priesthood authority line to family relationship bindings. When it was about authority and position it made sense in the hereafter, now it just seems strange.
"Any over-ritualized religion since the dawn of time can make its priests say yes, we know, it is rotten, and hard luck, but just do as we say, keep at the ritual, stick it out, give us your money and you'll end up with the angels in heaven for evermore."
My old understanding of sealing varied from what is being discussed. The following bullets hit the highlights:
1) Those who are in the celestial kingdom are not tied as spiritual children to God the Father/Elohim but have become "reborn" into the church of the first born as children of Christ/Jehovah.
2) The basic family unit consists of adults sealed to one another as husband and wife which are bound by covenant to God. See 1 above in reference to God.
3) The eternal nature of priesthood is tied to the Patriarchal Priesthood, which consists of father-son sealings and has to do with the importance of lineage in Old Testament teachings about priesthood. A form of Kohenic authority required to become an heir to all that is God's with Christ.
The ideas presented to me by a temple president in a celestial room during a discussion was that the endowment reflected the eternal nature of sealing and that it presented us with as clear of an understanding as possible what the nature of eternal relationships were to be like. The obvious lack of children reflects the fact - if you are being endowed and sealed to a spouse, you aren't children anymore.
So, simply put - the idea is that each couple sealed together represents a link in the chain of patriarchal priesthood from father to son up to Christ, who is the heir of God the Father. Something like that.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
The family is the most important group of people on earth. Our earthly family is patterned after our heavenly family. We were all brothers and sisters in heaven. We were children of God. God was the leader of our heavenly home. We received loving care and guidance from our heavenly parents.
God sent each of us to a family here on earth. He has given parents the responsibility to care for each of His children while they are here on earth. Parents should love their children and provide for them food, clothing, and a home. They should teach their children about God and how they may become like Him.
God made it possible for families to be together forever. He has given the leaders of His Church the authority to bind families together forever. This binding together is called sealing. This sealing can take place only in a temple. Temples are sacred buildings where only faithful members of the Church may go. When a man and woman are sealed in the temple by someone who holds the priesthood and has special power to seal, their marriage will not end when they die. Their marriage will last forever if they keep the promises they made in the temple. This is called eternal marriage.
If a man and a woman are not sealed in the temple, the marriage ends when one of them dies. If we are sealed in the temple, and if we faithfully follow Jesus Christ to the end of our lives, our families can be together forever.
A married couple can go to the temple to be sealed if they are faithful followers of Jesus. There, a priesthood holder who has special authority can seal them to each other. He can also seal their children to them. After they are sealed to each other, they can be together forever, just as if they had been married in the temple in the beginning.
God wants all of His children to plan to be sealed in a temple and to raise an obedient family. Parents should guide their children so that they will be ready to go to the temple to be sealed when they get married. If a man and woman have been sealed in the temple, all children born to them after their sealing will be sealed to them automatically.
I was taught all my life that those who are exalted live together forever as a family unit. But what family? Do I live as a kid with my parents, or as a husband and father with my wife and kids? If me and my wife live together with our kids, what happens to our kids's spouses and their children?
There was a survey posted recently that stated 83% of Mormon families have at least one non active member. So I guess only 17% of families will actually get to live together forever.
“We look to not only the spiritual but also the temporal, and we believe that a person who is impoverished temporally cannot blossom spiritually.” Keith McMullin - Counsellor in Presiding Bishopric
"One, two, three...let's go shopping!" Thomas S Monson - Prophet, Seer, Revelator
honorentheos wrote:So, simply put - the idea is that each couple sealed together represents a link in the chain of patriarchal priesthood from father to son up to Christ, who is the heir of God the Father. Something like that.
That's my understanding, as well, though you have explained it far more clearly than I did. It's basically a patriarchal family tree that goes all the way back to God.
At first, being sealed up to eternal life had nothing to do with marriage or family.
It wasn't until polygamy/celestial marriage/spiritual wifery that the marital sealing came into being.
Actually, I think the marital sealing was just something Joseph made up for Emma.
It wasn't until after 1880 (can't recall exact date) that children were even sealed to parents or considered part of the ordinance.
~Those who benefit from the status quo always attribute inequities to the choices of the underdog.~Ann Crittenden ~The Goddess is not separate from the world-She is the world and all things in it.~