MG 2.0 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 26, 2022 8:31 pm
As an alternative plan, what would you suggest?
An immediate lack of an alternative does not render the existing idea believable nor requires any - or even no - alternative proposed.
But, simply ‘knowing God’ - no test
elsewhere required - also works.
That also includes maximum agency.
I’m not sure that there is any real agency in this plan to speak of, aside from some very rudimentary choices. Certainly, most of the circumstances that have the greatest impact on your terrestrial existence appear to have been decided
for you prior to your mortal birth.
By the way, I think that, as many have said here, not everyone is cut out to be a member of the church, per se. But that doesn’t mean that 99% plus of God’s children aren’t going to find the same fullness and happiness in an afterlife as me, you, or anyone else. None of us were members of a church in a premortal world [if it exist(s) (ed)]. None of us will be members of a church in a post mortal existence (if there is such an existence).
I would not be at all surprised to find out that we may have ‘signed on’ to a LIMITED scope/range of experiences before coming to earth. Kind of like signing up for school. Primary, secondary, and post secondary education. With options to matriculate to further opportunities either here or hereafter.
The primary reason for coming to earth is to gain a physical body and gain experience.
Why? Both that
body and that
experience are non-applicable to the post-mortal life. In an eternal, post mortal life within an ‘optimized’ body - as Mormonism suggests - what purpose is served by the knowledge of disease? Physical suffering? Death? Flowers? Mental illness? The taste of baklava? Drunkenness?
If that experience is not to be had here then it will come later albeit under different conditions.
But, that typically cannot happen. Again, in a perfected eternal form, I’ll never have need of experiencing the bemused inconvenience of my children’s socks disappearing from a dryer,
nor need of being slowly and repeatedly stabbed with the horrifying pain of watching one of them slip, bit by fragile bit, from mortal existence via a cancer that ravaged their young body, ultimately stripping them of their desperate and innocent life.
Or anything in between.
The things that would matter in an
eternal existence apply to an eternal existence, and are likely best learned via a process not limited to a lifespan randomized between one hour, and 100+ years, while restricted to a relatively tiny rock. And you would already have been aware of those before your mortal visit.
There will be enough folks that have matriculated through the ‘earth program’ that they may well be able to help others along the way in the hereafter.
Help others to do
what, exactly? Decide that the God that they are subject to in the afterlife - a God that they can clearly see and experience at that point - is the God that they are subject to in the afterlife?
There are so many paths towards enlightenment and perfection. Mormonism teaches that we reach perfection within a sphere unique to ourselves. My perfection is going to vary from yours. The point is, we are reaching towards completeness/wholeness. Different strokes for different folks. So the fact so few sentient beings that experience earth life do so as members of the ‘true church’ doesn’t really matter.
Does the nature of these differences carry weight in an afterlife? Does Jeffrey Holland’s decades spent trying to keep people devoted to and paying into a church that serves no purpose within the eternal afterlife count as more significant than the doctor in Senegal who has never heard of the Book of Mormon, but has spent most of his adult years fighting against disease, and for the health of his community neighbors?
They are gaining similar experiences that they can take into an afterlife.
Work, love, discipline, family, etc.
Were any of these concepts unknown in the premortal existence? Why would knowledge of them need to be provided within a terrestrial environment?
Terryl Givens proposes that the main difference between Mormons and everyone else is that we have been given authority to build and operate temples and the performance of ordinances necessary for both salvation and/or exaltation. Work for EVERYONE, not just those that are members of the LDS Church.
Terryl proposes that temples operate to perform ordinances that have no meaning in a post-mortal life, for what ends?
I think God’s plan is much bigger than we suppose, but I also am of the opinion that the work that the church does through those that accept the fullness of the gospel is critically important in the work of salvation and/or exaltation of God’s children.
What prevented a spirit from being ‘exalted’ prior to assignment on a terrestrial plane?
The emphasis you place on numbers aren’t of any great consequence.
In fact, they weren’t
any consequence at all prior to around 1830, before which untold millions were presented with a terrestrial lifespan and no way to follow the supposed Plan.
God already knows what that ratio of ‘members’ vs. ‘nonmembers’ is going to be and He’s planned out for it.
D&C 76 gives a general outline of how BIG the plan is and how all encompassing. Especially when compared with general Christianity.
Somehow and somewhere along the line I do think that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ.
Why would that ever have been necessary via a quick mortal stint in the first place
if you literally lived with the guy in your pre-existence?
The only perfect Son of God. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we will all follow Him. We will have agency in an afterlife just as we do here. And yes, we will still travel our own path as we do here, but with the knowledge that there is a Godhead and an overall plan which played a part in the life we came from while on earth.
There was no reason to create a terrestrial godhead - after forcibly removing your knowledge of God - in order to possibly get you to believe in a God that you were already aware of and acknowledged in the pre-mortal state.
Unless this was done purely for the amusement of the God in question.
