Three Degrees of Glory – 6/2/13

I teach Sunday School, but our Gospel Doctrine teacher is excellent, so it probably was good.

The three degrees of heaven lesson was one of my major roadblock moments in trying to stay LDS about two years ago. I ran head long into the dichotomy of Grace vs. Tiered Salvation. It didn’t make sense to me! If grace fills the gap then how do some people receive grace but not enough for exaltation?

Some good friends here gave me an interface concept. If grace covers our mistakes as long as we keep our faces towards the source of the light AND grace forestalls our personal final judgment until we have either reached our full potential or stopped progressing by our own fully informed choice to turn away from the source of light and quit trying THEN grace and tiered salvation/eternal progression can occupy the same space in my head.

The more detailed explanations from my original dichotomy moment and the wonderful perspectives offered on this board can be found here:

http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2288&hilit=wins&start=20

It is good stuff!

I’m glad I missed it. Reports from my wife (a one-off attendance with bad timing) was that by the end of the lesson the board had one thing written on there:

“Telestial kingdom: forsook testimony in this life/whoremongers”

She said she’d have laughed if it wasn’t so tragic.

Like many other things, it’s all figurative to me these days and everything goes in one ear, gets the “staylds filtration” and then the majority goes straight out the other ear.

Does anyone have any good church sourced quotes on 3 degrees? I’d love to add a few to the quotes thread.

I am actually teaching this lesson next week and have done a quick look through. I think there is definitely some potential for having a good conversation on the history of “the vision” and looking critically at what it actually tells us and what it doesn’t about where we go after this life.

Is there anything special about the history?

Share! Share!

All I have right now is that joseph and sidney were in the same room with others and that joseph would describe what he saw in the shared vision and then sidney would say “I see the same.” Then sidney would describe somthing from the vision and joseph would exclaim, “I see the same.” Then tbey got together a few days later to write it all down.

Also it is interesting to note that it was called “the vision” because there was no written record of the “first vision” at this point, as the first known written recollection wouldn’t come for about another six month.

Wow. If you have any further reading in that one I’d appreciate it.

To be honest. When I think of the endowment and the progression between ‘worlds’ I really think the whole concept is figurative.

Most of eternity is taught ‘for effect’ in most religions. Joseph/God even says as much.

I guess once the motivation generated from the hell-fire and brimstone approach to ‘become’ was waning another approach was generated. Necessity is the mother of invention after all.

5 Wherefore, I revoke not the judgments which I shall pass, but woes shall go forth, weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, yea, to those who are found on my left hand.

6 Nevertheless, it is not written that there shall be no end to this torment, but it is written endless torment.

7 Again, it is written eternal damnation; wherefore it is more express than other scriptures, that it might work upon the hearts of the children of men, altogether for my name’s glory. (Doctrine and Covenants, Doctrine and Covenants, D&C 19)

3 degrees, for Mormons, is just another ‘more express’ way of describing the inconceivable and indescribable. How can God possibly describe in words we can understand the reality of what the expansive, infinite, eternities hold?

He tried the metaphor of fire vs angels on clouds

He’s trying (with Mormons) the diagram on a chalk board with circles and arrows. We keep trying to put more lines and cut-offs and delineations.

Maybe soon He’ll have to try a different metaphor. For now, if a few more people are responding to it and “becoming” then it’s fit for purpose.

Funny thing is, there is very little revealed doctrine on what really happens when we die. Most of it is speculation. On the other hand there are huge piles of revelation on how to treat others and “become” before we die. I’ll recognise the tipped scales and worry more about the latter.

I think the five degrees of glory likely came about because if everyone is a King, then no one is. Kings require peasants, otherwise they have nothing to rule.

It is men who desire power who construct such ideas.

The Vision says that very few people are consigned to hell. Somewhere in RSR he called it the contraction of hell. But in spite of that quote about the telestial kingdom being so great we’d kill ourselves now to get there (Am I dreaming that up? Can’t remember.), it seems like a lot of the emphasis in Plan of Salvation lessons is on how unacceptable (practically hellish) anything but the celestial kingdom is, and debating and defining what it takes to get there.

I haven’t heard anyone yet say what we are actually supposed to do once we get wherever we might go.

Read; play Monopoly, Rummy and Free Cell; play or listen to good music; invent new sports; learn everything there is to know; create a universe and a few billion spirits.

You know, the simple things.

Well anecdotal anyways.

If it is a mirror of how things run here, it will just be constant church, with meetings that literally last an eternity, with no breaks, because we can no longer die from starvation. Endless and eternal reams of paperwork, assignments to clean the black holes once an astronomical cycle, space scouts on Tuesdays, family cosmos evenings on Mondays, nursery assignments that last millions of years.

So, I hope it’s not like that, and not like the Duggars either. One or two kids at a time is lots.

Aside from that, as a major plot point to our existence, and the entire point of our being here, it would be nice to know what the afterlife actually entails.

According to the newsroom, all that planet stuff the missionaries talked about was bogus speculation, and from what I can tell, the universe seems to be getting along just fine creating and destroying its own stars and worlds without our help.

But also apparently Jehovah was able to create a world and rule it without the benefit of a body, so then planet making is not exclusive to resurrected and glorified beings.

Bit of a paradox there, especially if God is no respecter of persons.

At least the Greek gods had clear jobs. Making weapons, ruling the sea, fornicating with humans, or overthrowing their parent gods. We have minimal insight, other than some celestial MacGuffin anecdotes. (A MacGuffin being a motivating plot device that causes much sacrifice and strife to try to attain, with little explanation as to why it is important)