MB comes for a first guest post in response to a question from Mormon Heretic on Guy Templeton’s post about Excommunication after Sealings.
I was married in the temple to my excellent spouse in the new and everlasting covenant of marriage. But we were not sealed to each other.
But before I go into details, let’s first let’s start with an understanding that different people have different ideas about what should and should not be discussed outside the temple. In order to respect those sensibilities I’ve been careful in this post to use only information that is available to all in church publications (hence, all the footnotes) that you can read on your own as well. And let’s also start with some definitions.
“The new and everlasting covenant”[1] is composed of ‘All covenants, contracts, bonds, obligations, oaths, vows, performances, connections, associations, or expectations’ that are sealed upon members of the Church by the Holy Spirit[2] (ratified as in effect by the Holy Ghost)[3]. The covenants referred to are made in conjunction with God’s authority and power. The new and everlasting covenant is also called “the fulness of the gospel”[4], in part, I believe, because it refers to a complete (full) covenant on the part of an individual to following the revealed gospel of Jesus Christ, uniting him or herself fully with God.
“The new and everlasting covenant” includes, therefore, all covenants to more fully live the gospel, including those made at baptism, sacrament, marriage, priesthood ordination etc.
“The new and everlasting covenant of marriage” is the gospel marriage covenant, made in conjunction with God’s authority and power, and made between God and two of his children who are in or are entering into a marriage[5]. It involves a man and a woman accepting one another in the marriage covenant[6] and, like every other holy covenant, making a covenant of faithfulness to the principles of the gospel on their part as well[7]. And it involves promised blessings on the part of God, pronounced by someone who has been given godly power to do so,[8] which covenant, “in [the] process of time[9]”, may be “sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise” as the result of faithfulness, integrity, and steadfastness in honoring gospel covenants.[10]
But that’s too long to say. So we shorten it. And we shorten it to “temple marriage” or “sealed in the temple”, or “getting sealed” and, when it involves proxy work, “doing sealings”. And it’s that “sealing” abbreviation that gets us into trouble theologically.
Contrary to Mormon vernacular and happy but theologically sloppy Primary songs and even the misuse of the phrase in church manuals, a husband and wife are not “sealed to each other” in the temple. Rather, they make a “new and everlasting covenant” about their marriage, (a commitment to create a marriage based a full commitment to principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ), they are pronounced married in a marriage that may (if they are faithful) last beyond this life[11] and divine blessings are conditionally “sealed” upon them[12], dependent upon their individual faithfulness to that commitment they have made. This is classic covenant pattern.
Temple “sealings,” in other words, the things that are actually sealed in a marriage in a temple, are not sealings (bindings, tying, gluing, eternally in the same celestial mansion) of two people to each other. They are provisional sealings of specific future blessings upon individuals who have made specific promises to God.[13] The blessings that are sealed upon them, dependent upon their faithful keeping of their promises to live by the word of God[14], are blessings that, like the blessings of other covenants, are ones connected to a holy or celestial life.[15]
But what if it turns out that one or the other does not honor his or her side of the covenant? Are the sealings of these blessings undone for both?
It is important to note that the sealings of temple marriage blessings are given to each person individually.[16] When a member of his stake goes through the experience of a parent in a family choosing to have a sealing cancelled, a stake president is sent a letter counseling him to make it clear to the spouse and children of that individual that one person abandoning his or her promises in that covenant, or rejecting them, or having them cancelled does not affect the condition of those sealed blessings of a celestial nature in the life of his or her spouse or children who seek to honor the promises of faithfulness made and also wish to continue to live a life centered on the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Someone in your family rejecting their sealed blessings of a celestial nature does not mean a change in the celestial life and joy blessings sealed upon you.
Temple marriages are a new covenant on our part to seek to continue to apply the gospel in our lives fully, this time in a marriage relationship. Our covenant there with God includes blessings of heavenly or holy life “sealed” upon us, conditioned upon our own continuing to strive to live a life of godly love, faith and repentance by the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Those are blessings the promise of which we may live and choose to retain regardless of the decisions of our spouse or our parents.
So my question is, how do you teach your young people about temple marriage to better prepare them to understand covenant making and receiving there?
———————–
Note: Parent to child sealing ordinances are also interesting to consider and good fodder for a different discussion. .
[1] Doctrine and Covenants 22:1
[2] Doctrine and Covenants 1
[3] Joseph F. Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 2:46
[4] https://www.lds.org/scriptures/gs/new-and-everlasting-covenant, Doctrine and Covenants 66:2
[5] Doctrine and Covenants 132:19
[6] Preparing to Enter the Holy Temple, lds.org
[7] True to the Faith, p. 171
[8] Doctrine and Covenants 132:19
[9] Moses 7:21, David A Bednar, Ensign May 2007, p. 22
[10] D&C 76:51-53, Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 2:94-95, David A Bednar, Ensign May 2007, p. 22
[11] Harold B. Lee, Stand Ye In Holy Places, p.53
[12] Doctrine and Covenants 132:19-20
[13] Kree-L Cofford, “Marriage in the Lord’s Way, Part 1”, Ensign June 1998
[14] Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 2:46, Doctrine and Covenants 132:21
[15] Doctrine and Covenants sections 121 and 76 as well as 132
[16] Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 2:46
Wheat & Tares 
“Note: Parent to child sealing ordinances are also interesting to consider and good fodder for a different discussion.”
Thanks for the post MB! I have a request for your 2nd post concerning the comment above!!! 🙂
I think you have a very interesting perspective, but I still have some questions regarding your point about “we were not sealed to each other.”
The new essay published on LDS.org today states,
We’ve got to be sealed to SOMEONE in order to receive the sealing ordinance. The above quotation says that without the ordinance, marriages end at death. So, while we may receive sealing blessings even if a spouse is unfaithful/unworthy of those blessings, we ARE sealed to each other as well as to God.
Furthermore, (and I don’t want to get sidetracked into a discussion of polygamy but), the essay goes on to say concerning Joseph being sealed to multiple women,
So once again, this linkage between families is not just to God, but to families as well. So I have a hard time reconciling your statement that “we were not sealed to each other”, when the Church just today said sealings are ways of “linking families together.”
I agree that we should ditch the “sealing” terminology and focus more on the covenant people terminology. Although I should reread and digest this at least one more time to get a better grip on it. Thanks.
It sounds like nonsense. If you can receive the same blessings or sealing if your spouse leaves you, why did you need a spouse in the first place? Why not just have individual endowments and sealings to God? Or not. Aren’t we all already part of his family anyway?
Interesting interpretation MB, and it makes sense from the original scriptural definitions. It also might help explain away some of the rampant polygamy going on with Joseph Smith if we can separate the idea of being sealed to a person, to having blessings sealed upon an individual.
But Ryan’s question is a good one: “…why do you need a spouse in the first place? Aren’t we all already part of his family anyway?”
Kristine said something in some comment (maybe in the MH post that prompted this one) about our being sealed not so much to each other as to the covenant people of God. I’ve been pondering that a lot lately, because what that thought seems to help me with is a perspective on having my children sealed to me.
This is something of a sidetrack, but as we know, lots of LDS couples, me and my wife included, have had occasion to be thankful that our kids our born in the covenant, since they are then “sealed to us” in the event they should die in childhood (my oldest son spent his first week in ICU with pneumonia). But we also know that once the little boogers are grown, they find their own spouses (that son was married in the temple a little over a year ago), and his primary eternal relationship will be with his wife, as her husband, not with me and Sis. Iconoclast as their son (which is good – he was a turdsicle growing up). So we sing “families can be together forever,” but we’re really only talking about couples anyway. I don’t expect my kids to be my children, still learning at my feet, for eternity.
I never had a lot of trouble with that; I always understood that it was a comforting thing Primary kids sang to reassure themselves that Mom would never leave them. But Kristine’s comment helped me really contextualize it.
I think it also helps answer Ryan’s question, if the prophetess Eliza Snow hasn’t already – “In the heavens, are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare!” If we rate the highest level of the CK, we’ll have a spouse. [God willing, only one.] We’ll need one. Ideally, that will be the one with whom we’ve built the foundations of the eternal relationship here on earth. Divorce is an aberration. You don’t get those blessings and sealings without a spouse. You just don’t lose them when you divest yourself of the spouse here in mortality, and you won’t retain them without one in eternity.
Ryan we need marriage because it is designed very different than all other relationships (parenthood is too).
Our lives on earth are training ground for all eternity. You can be friends or acquaintenances with hundreds of people. Those people come in and out of our lives all the time.
Marriage is different. It’s far more exclusive and intimate and a central part of HF’s learning plan for us.
I am uniquely chosen to offer my husband lessons and teaching opportunities that are far more intense than any friend can offer. The fact that we have children and sexual intimacy further complicates and deepens this relationship. The love we experience through the annoyances of marriage is unique to the institution.
Friendships are wonderful and unique too, but their uniqueness is defined by personalities and a few situations. Marriage is that times infinity squared. If it isn’t, then the marriage isn’t what it’s supposed to be.
Ryan,
“If you can receive the same blessings or sealing if your spouse leaves you, why did you need a spouse in the first place?”
This post does not address the marriage covenant-the promise you make to enter a marriage relationship, which promise, according to Doctrine and Covenants 132, you may still hold to beyond this life if that marriage is entered into by God’s law and you both enter into celestial glory. That is a covenant that you make in the temple that has it’s own set of hopeful, good blessings intrinsic to its nature, but that covenant is not sealed upon you there.
This post addresses the fact that the only things that are “sealed” upon you in a temple marriage ceremony are a host of blessings that are sealed upon you individually that people tend to totally overlook because they are only thinking about who is connected to whom.
That leads people to be concerned about losing “temple blessings” when a spouse rejects the marriage and seeks to “cancel a sealing”. My point is that the sealings pronounced at a temple marriage are not about who is married to whom.
MH,
Doctrine and Covenants 132 does make it clear that a marriage performed in the temple as proscibed there and later sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise may still be in force in the life to come. But the marriage is not sealed in the temple. The use of the word “could” in the first passage you cite is a good choice.
As to the second passage, child to parent (birth family)temple sealings are, in fact, as stated there, “sealed”, creating generational links. That’s a different ordinance. And perhaps we can discuss it, as you mentioned, in a different post.
Your ideas are well thought. While I appreciate your attempts and making sense of something the essay on polygamy @ lds.org just stated ‘there are things we just don’t understand’…. you miss the larger picture. the gospel is sold to us as plain and precious and simple truths. You just explain a very complex view of a covenant. No one in our church is taught what you just stated. we are taught that the sealing covenant is a triangular relationship. We are not taught as men that if our wife break that covenant we cannot get that feeling covenant undone. We are also taught that the sealing covenant is only in effect when a woman obeys her husband as he obeys the Lord. I think you also conflate two separate things. the actual covenant versus the blessings tied to that covenant. Just like anything here on earth is understood with respect to a covenant,once a party has broken that covenant, the covenant is no longer valid. to deny a party the ability to exit a covenant broken by the other party is to deny the very basics of our gospel and that is free agency.what should be taught in our church is that the marriage sealing covenant in the temple is binding regardless of the actions of either party.I just don’t know many people who would be willing to enter into a contract that could not be severed.
Randall,
I believe you have misread my post.
A marriage covenant can be rejected by one party or the other, There are no contracts with God that you cannot choose to sever.
A marriage covenant in the temple, when it is made, is not “sealed”.
There are other blessings that ARE sealed upon a husband and a wife, individually, when they marry in the temple that are independent of the durability of their marriage, or their spouse’s faithfulness to God and to the marriage covenant.
All blessings sealed upon any person are conditioned upon their own personal righteousness in any covenant with God.
Your spouse’s permanent rejection of your marriage or the unrepentant, continuing mistreatment of the other by either of you will, as far as I can tell, make your marriage connection with your spouse after this life impossible for both of you, but it will not affect any of the other good blessings that were enumerated upon your head when you were married. Only you and your faithfulness to the teachings of Jesus Christ, or lack thereof, can affect those.
I agree with Randall that the church teaches a triangular relationship. If not, we could be sealed without having to be married to someone else. “Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man in the Lord.” This scripture is frequently cited as a reference to marriage sealings.
MH,
And I think that triangular relationship is because the qualities one must develop in order to learn and develop a celestial nature that accompanies those sealed blessings require what both a man and a woman may separately, in righteousness, bring to a relationship. Personal righteousness can only go so far. If we have not learned how to create harmonious gospel relationships (and many of us long to do that) we cannot develop the qualities that require the kind of unity and harmony that are celestial existence. I think there’s something in many of us long for that.
Which is one reason why the prospect of remarriage with a good spouse is so often looked forward to by a faithful individual whose marriage has not survived. When one has caught a vision of the divine nature that a marriage could have and has experienced one that did not have it, the hope that one that involves gospel light and truth and love may be possible in the future is sweet.
But the spouse is an essential part of the sealing ordinance then, because if we are sealed to God and not each other, then marriage is not necessary. Theoretically we could be sealed without marriage.
The points by Ryan and NI echo mine, and I’m not quite ready to call what’s written in the handbook and other places sloppy writing. In one of the Celestial Marriage manuals, it shows a triangle relationship with God at the apex, with promises/commitments flowing from God to Husband and Wife; From Wife to God and Husband; then from Husband to God and Wife. I agree that a spouse’s failure to keep his/her covenants severs his/her ties and blessings, ultimately leaving the covenants and blessings intact for the righteous spouse. (Which is why leaders aren’t too keen on cancelling sealings between divorced couples.) However, I think we’ll ultimately be sealed “to” a spouse in the Celestial Kingdom.
I appreciate your response MB. But again, respectfully you are wrong. you posted ,”A marriage covenant can be rejected by one party or the other, There are no contracts with God that you cannot choose to sever.
A marriage covenant in the temple, when it is made, is not “sealed”.
This is not true. I asked for a sealing cancellation, was initially denied and given a clearance for my current wife. I sent a formal appeal with my SP also writing a letter to the First Presidency. All we got was a phone call from an “analyst” for the first presidency who denied the appeal for cancellation.
SO to your post…..I am living proof that not only do we still practice spiritual polygamy but that you cannot in most cases have your sealing cancelled.
MH
We are not “sealed” to our spouse nor to God or to anyone else in a temple marriage.
Just blessings are sealed. And they are sealed upon us conditioned upon our faithfulness.
The scripture you cite indicates pretty clearly that faithfulness, upon which blessings are conditioned, includes unity and harmony and much growth and learning between married couples as they work with the Lord.
So these blessings sealed upon you and as described as celestial in the Doctrine and Covenants 132, by definition of faithfulness, require marriage. So solo, won’t work.
IDIAT,
As to “being sealed to each other in the next life”. I think that such is the common phrase used to express the words in Doctrine and Covenants 132:19 where a marriage covenant, in which the spouses have been faithful and the marriage has been ultimately sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise (the affirmation of the Holy Ghost) “shall be in full force when they are out of the world”.
So yes, there is indication that you are right.
Randall,
A rejection of sealing blessings does not have to be formalized by the church for it to be rejected. As in any gospel covenant,a person can reject those blessings all on his or her own if he or she wishes.
Most men who apply for a sealing cancellation (rather than a sealing clearance) do so because they believe that somehow that previous ordinance in the temple ties them irrevocably to their former spouse. It does not. They were not sealed to that former spouse. They and their first spouse made a commitment in the House of the Lord to enter into the marriage and live it righteously. In a situation such as yours, apparently one or both did not do so. Therefore, the marriage was not “sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise”. That only comes much later after many years of righteous, loving, light-filled living. And only marriages that have been lived that way receive that. Neither party involved in a temple marriage gone bad will be forced to live it in the hereafter if they do not wish to.
Maybe some of us are using differing definitions of the word “seal.” I acknowledge that in the sealing ceremony, the sealer is sealing blessings upon the husband and wife. And, of course, in the sealing of children to parents, the sealer (paraphrasing) says he seals child to parents. Certainly the relationship between parent and child is different than the relationship between husband and wife. On the other hand, are we not all brothers and sisters? Even though we have children in mortality, it seems like we’ll have this dual relationship, being both up/down as well as laterally. Anyway, I just think most of us are equating the eternal “joining” of spouses as a “sealing” to each other. I’m not sure what else it would mean to be married “for eternity.” Perhaps I’m straining too hard at the details.
““If you can receive the same blessings or sealing if your spouse leaves you, why did you need a spouse in the first place?”
Yeah, as said elsewhere we are not sealed as in glued to a marriage partner but blessings are “sealed” on each individual who are in that marriage. The blessings are those related to full exaltation, or entry into the highest level of the celestial kingdom. Some people like Alvin, Joseph’s dead brother and babies who die as babies, receive those blessing without a spouse as yet, however for us (normal average people) we only receive those sealing blessing on or after a marriage during mortality, irrespective of who that partner is, to be tested and tried. What I mean by that is you are given a key (sealing blessing) which opens the door to that top level of the celestial kingdom but to actually enter the doorway we do so with a member of the opposite sex. For Alvin he has that key now but will have to find that woman, or maybe has found her already in the spirit world. Then they just need to go through the ceremony of marriage and after that walk into their exaltation together. For those whose spouse has left them they still hold that key in their hand but, as with Alvin, they will need to find a new partner to enter doorway into exaltation.
I’d suggest that or think that you MB, are being far too timid when talking about the sealing and temple covenants. I understand they are sacred but without a clear explanation which includes clear reference to the sealings blessings people are left with unanswered questions, questions which 25 year old Bishops also don’t know how to answer. Or they will answer things like Randall Brower on October 23, 2014 at 8:48 AM did here until the church releases another youtube video explaining this with nice sweet background music.
And Randells answer about sealing cancellations for men also prove a point: that people don’t consider what sins and unfaithfulness does to the sealing covenant, how it cancels the blessings involved. Because its true that men simple aren’t granted sealing cancellations but probably because they have left that right up to women to exercise as suggested in D&C 132.
Also the post doesn’t explain how one loses a sealing when one is excommunicated. Because, true the letter is sent to stake pres about innocent parties in cancellations but nothing is sent when a pres excommunicates a man who is sealed. Problem is that 132 is probably one of the most misunderstood sections in mormon theology, as pres Kimball pointed out in the miracle of forgiveness. Members seem to think that one can commit almost any sin but still enter into their exaltation so they reason that the sealing is still in place and valid after things like divorce or excommunications ….but I’ve written way too much now.
“Neither party involved in a temple marriage gone bad will be forced to live it in the hereafter if they do not wish to.”
I think you need to find a good reference for that. It is true but which authority, prophet or apostle taught as much.
you are all missing one important thing. My original stake president that met with my current wife so we could go to the temple to be sealed Specifically asked me if I wanted a cancellation or a clearance. he reminded me that is my ex wife repented of all her wrong doings and was worthy in the sight of God,the Sealing to me would stay in place. that’s why he asked because he agreed that a cancellation would be best considering my ex wife’s infidelity and inactivity for now nine years.
I believe you are all absolutely wrong in saying that the sealing in the LDS temple isn’t sealing between people but just a sealing to blessings. That is not how we are taught. that is not what is explained when talking about Elijah and linking. and that is why my stake president mentioned the sealing still be intact if my ex was forgiven
Your SP may not have been on point about your ability to obtain a cancellation as opposed to a clearance. There really isn’t an obvious way for a man to request a sealing cancellation to his ex-wife.
A man who has been divorced from a woman who was sealed to him must receive a sealing clearance from the First Presidency before another woman may be sealed to him…
I guess you could ask for it, but I doublt it would be granted unless the Ex joined in the request. I’ve often cited your dilemma when thinking about sealings. In deed, what happens if your ex-wife repents and at the end of the day, is worthy of the celestial kingdom? I don’t think there is that much to worry about. I think there is plenty of time in the Spirit World to develop other relationships so that ex-wife will find someone else with whom to spend eternity. Still, I can understand the angst of you and your second wife.
All_Blacks,
It’s actually in verse 19 of Doc. & Cov. 132. That verse states that the following must be met in order for a marriage covenant to have the qualities that enable it to last beyond this life:
The man and woman must married by God’s word which is God’s law
They must be married by the new and everlasting covenant (the covenant that the bride and groom make in the temple).
That marriage covenant must be sealed unto them by the Holy Spirit of Promise (which David Bednar states happens much later, see my footnotes)
They must continue to “abide in the covenant” that they have made. In other words, maintain the promise/covenant they made in the temple to start and continue a marriage relationship.
They must continue to abide in God’s law (which means live the gospel fully)
That fourth one is the one you are looking for. A person may choose not to honor the promise/covenant her or she made to enter and maintain (abide in) a marriage relationship. If either spouse chooses not to do number 4, then that marriage doesn’t fit that list of qualities necessary to last in eternities. Both have to choose to abide in the covenant in order for it to last.
Charlie,
“I’d suggest that or think that you MB, are being far too timid when talking about the sealing and temple covenants”
Perhaps. This was a conscious choice, as I mentioned in the second paragraph of my post.
I do not object to more frank discussion, and I think it can be helpful between people who know and trust each other. I simply choose not to in a online venue where I do not personally know the sensibilities and understanding of the various readers.I wish to avoid derailing the conversation with debates about what is appropriate to say and what is not. Those debates can get things way off point.
I think MB pretty much summed it up. I think people might be mis-reading him a little. He’s not saying the marriage ordinance isn’t necessary in order to have blessings (albeit conditional) sealed upon one, because it is. However, those blessings are not contingent upon the spouse keeping his/her part of the covenant. If one spouse abandons the covenant, only the potential eternal nature of the marriage itself is lost, not the other blessings.
That said, and with my understanding either the same or very similar to MB’s, I do find the church’s policies of cancellations and clearances to be somewhat confusing. I don’t find that to be a contra-indication of my understanding however. Just because something on earth is given to model the eternities certainly doesn’t mean it’s a perfect or inerrant model, it just gives us insight into something that remains beyond our comprehension.
All_blacks….you just listed all the reasons why the FP shouldhave cancelled my sealing. Item#1. Check….
Item #2 Check….Item #3 BROKEN….Item#4 BROKEN…. Item#5 BROKEN….. SO why usurp my free agency and force the sealing to remain in place when it is broken???? Why not utilize the excuse, “the Lord will sort this out in the end” AFTER you grant my cancellation?
This is an instance where I don’t think we really “get it”. The way it’s currently taught certainly seems black and white, but Joseph had an entirely different interpretation, and it’s likely we don’t see the full picture now.
I like what Bro Doug Ladle @ Ricks taught: the purpose of sealing covrnants is to link us back to God through Adam as a covenant people, organized in familial relationships. If people aren’t living the marriage covenant it is not enforced on the hereafter, this is why most cancelations are unnecessary, and why it’s not needed to reveal my husband to his step dad and mom after his moms sealing was canceled with the bio dad. He’s in the covenant and as long as he keeps the covenant its in full force, no matter what his parents do. The actual links aren’t as important as we think. If there is a gap in your family link on the way back in your family history, no worries – you can imagine either the covenant skipping that generation and linking back…. Or in essence were all just going to be brothers and sisters again in His covenant family. Ricks was the first time I was taught you have your spouse and your kids will be with their spouses separately, so these parent child links are there and familial, but more like going to visit for Sunday dinner every once in a while.
I wish we’d spproach it with a more, “no one will be unhappy in the next life” perspective.
It isn’t a man’s choice to brain a cancellation, because the sealing doesn’t “follow” him.
If two people who have made those covenants divorce civilly, remarry others civilly, and have children, the woman’s children are BIC but the man’s are not.
I don’t have access to Handbook 1, so I can’t recheck, but this was explained by way of warning to me when I requested a cancellation at the time my ex remarried.
“Brain” a cancellation? Lol! “Request” one. Well played, autocorrect.
A BIC can never be invalidated. No matter what the parents do. BIC is always in the covenant. That’s the most important thing – we should care if we are in the covenant or out of the covenant . . . and much less about direct links. In the next life we’ll all be brothers and sisters . . . but the way we link them helps turn our hearts to our fathers and get the work done.
Randell,
” SO why usurp my free agency and force the sealing to remain in place when it is broken????”
if it is broken then it isn’t in place. i.e. sealing is broken!
Honestly if you are blessed enough to remarry someone, then I’d be concentrating on that and not on the first crazy wife. And by the way your stake pres was just plain wrong. You wouldn’t be granted a cancellation under those conditions. The office of the first pres will just send it all back to him with instructions to read the handbook.
22.MB
True, but its a rather long way around to end up with the first quote that no one will be forced to live etc as in #19. I’d rather have a quick direct quote -but I agree with it, pls don’t get me wrong here, it’s about the reference more than doctrine.
#27 SilverRain,
I agree. It’s because the children’s fate is determined exclusively by the mother and what her status is. So if the husband remarries civilly he (in your hypothetical) is not marrying someone already in the sempiternal covenant, i.e. someone not ‘sealed’ as per the language, hence the children are not born in the covenant because their mom isn’t a part of it, as was the case with Ismael in Abraham’s day. But the first wife who remarries is still a part of that covenant so her children are BIC.
By the way you can read handbook 1 in the sribd site
I also think you are all conflating sealing to spouse and sealing to parents.
Sealing to a spouse: A SAVING ORDINANCE. The ordinance necessary to enter into the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom.
Sealing to children: A Linking Ordinance? The ordinance links families to the blessings of Abraham. PERIOD. In eternity, your children will be sealed to their spouses. NO one will be in a family reunion cabin in the sky hanging out. Each will be with their spouses.
SO when the First Presidency’s “analyst” called my SP to tell him that my ex was worried about what would happen to her girls if I had our sealing cancelled…I realized that this analyst had obviously not spoken with anyone in authority who knew the difference in the above.
#31, sealing to spouse, sealing to children.
I’d slightly disagree there, if only slightly. The power and the authority of the sealing is the same in my opinion. What separates children and parents is the marriage itself, not the sealing. Then sealing to a spouse isn’t actually the saving ordinance, the marriage for eternity is or the new and semptiternal covenant of marriage, then later that marriage is ‘sealed’, if I’m explaining myself right (difficult to do over the web and only in writing)
Then sealing children to parents, husbands to wife or wives, or joseph smith to several men as brothers, or Joseph sealed to another husband in polyandry, is all done by the sealing power i.e the authority to bond in heaven what is bound on earth, or in other word sealing is the authority to tie in heaven what is tied on earth, or do both at the same time. It’s what Jesus said to Peter basically in Mat 18:18
I agree with the OP and MB spells out a very important point…we are not sealed, but we are given the promise to be sealed upon conditions of righteousness.
So…my thinking circles around:
– you can have a promise to one day be sealed for eternity
– you can have your marriage dissolve at death
– you can have your marriage dissolve at death and then have work done for you in temples and then be sealed for eternity
– you can never be married and find a partner in the next life and there be sealed through proxy
– you can be sealed and then not be righteous and not have the blessings ever be bestowed
– you can get an earthly divorce but the temple sealing in tact so that you’re still sealed for eternity even if you were divorced on earth
– death can allow for individuals to be sealed to several partners
I’m sure that is not a comprehensive list of options that could happen within individual circumstances.
While the gospel is sold to us in plain and simply truths (the ideal)…our job in developing our faith is using the simple truths to apply to the complex mortal experience (the reality), which takes wisdom.
I believe there are things to have faith in, to hope for…but reality is ‘there are things we don’t understand’…and will get worked out in the next life because our ways are not God’s ways and we just don’t comprehend God’s ways.
If someone can start with explaining what the next life looks like married vs not married for the rest of eternity, then perhaps all these other opinions and teachings could be put in context.
-Would we all be single until Judgment day, and then married couples judged worthy are back together?
-Are we having spirit babies and you need male and female resurrected bodies to do that?
-Are single male and female resurrected bodies guarded by angels with flaming swords to prevent fooling around in heaven?
-If you’re not sealed to someone, do single resurrected beings lose gender?
Can we really make sense of marriage in the afterlife?
Otherwise, it’s just about a wonderful promise to a couple wanting to commit together in this life what they hope for in the next life, and work together to live up to promises…regardless of what will really happen in the next life.
But that doesn’t need to worry us…the Atonement is big enough to make all things right and just. We just need to work to become like God, live up to our covenants, and have faith it all gets worked out when we have a true vision of the afterlife when the veil is lifted from our eyes. ‘No one will be unhappy in the next life’.
We sometimes think there must be hard and fast rules to make it fair or make sense of it from our earthly perspective, but like the Lord taught in the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard…we should all know it is fair to be paid what we are…and the Lord takes care of others and His covenant arrangements with them, even if those differ from ours.