This has turned out to be a lengthy and weighty post, so I’ve stopped at phase I and will continue phases II and III in forthcoming posts. I’ve called the phases the following:
- What happens after we die? Phase I: The Spirit World
- What happens after we die? Phase II Universal Resurrection for All: The crowning Act of Christ’s Atonement was Victory Over Physical Death for All Mankind. Paul’s Description of Resurrected Bodies
- What happens after we die? Phase III Final Judgment and the Eternal Thereafter. There are Many Mansions in Heaven with Four Different Real Estate Location Options
For skimmers, I’ve packed the headings with info.
I recently read an online newspaper article having something to do with Mormons. I can’t remember the topic though it was a fair treatment. In the comments someone posted a snide note about Mormons and their “post mortem second chances and magic underwear.” This was very curious to me.
Maybe it’s because I don’t have a vindictive disposition or maybe it’s because my field of civic education heavily emphasizes teaching youth mutual respect in a pluralistic society, but I just don’t get the practice of deriding things that others hold sacred. You could believe Muhammad was the last prophet, reject modern energy, look forward to the first coming of the Messiah, believe salvation comes through a one-time confession of Jesus, worship rocks, meticulously protect the life of bugs, the list goes on and I’ll respect it as your belief. The eleventh Article of Faith for Latter-day Saints (Mormons) says, “We claim the privilege of worshipping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience; and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where or what they may.” Inherent in that is respect for others’ belief, not just “toleration” (a word I see to describe your attitude toward a fly on the wall).
You’ve already read my post about how Latter-day Saints (Mormons) wear underclothing as a reminder of their covenant with God made in the holy Temple to always remember Jesus Christ and keep His commandments. This post addresses the “post mortem second chances” part of the sneer.
“[Jesus] is the way the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the Father, but by [Him].” Many people never have the opportunity to accept Jesus and live His gospel. Is it just to consign them to burning in hell when they never had the opportunity to choose? No, it’s not and that’s not how God operates.
What’s the big deal about Jesus? If you’re a good person, why does Jesus matter?
Jesus matters for many reasons, one being because of the tension between mercy and justice. God is our loving Heavenly Father. He loves us in the best way a Father could love a child, only exponentially compounded by His infinite capacity to love. He wants all of His children to both live with Him and reach their eternal potential. He is anxious to look past our weaknesses and give us the power to grow, provided through His Son’s Atonement. However, justice requires payment for every sin and on our own we don’t have the capital to pay off our debt of sin to live in God’s presence.
Not sure if you’ve sinned? Sin is falling short of living God’s commandments. Christ taught that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul and mind and the next greatest is to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:36-40).
Have you ever fallen short of these two commandments? Then you have sinned and because of justice’s demands you have to provide some kind of payment for sin in order to be free from punishment. (As a side note that could be a whole post, not all sins are equal as it seems mainstream Christianity teaches. Sex outside of marriage and murder are not equivalent to failing to fully live the first two commandments.) However, you do not have the power to pay for sin enough to cleanse you and enter the presence of God who “cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance” (Doctrine & Covenants 1:31).
So Heavenly Father sent Someone who was able and willing to make payment for sin, Jesus Christ. And unique to Latter-day Saint (Mormon) doctrine, He also took upon Himself the pains and sicknesses of the world in addition to sin, so He would know how to comfort us in our dark places (Alma 7:11-12). Jesus took upon Himself all that came into the world because of the Fall of Adam including sin, sickness, fear, sorrow and more. It is through Jesus Christ that God is fair, though life rarely seems fair. It is through Jesus Christ that Heavenly Father can meet the demands of justice while still extending mercy because Jesus paid the price for sin.
How do we gain access to Jesus’ payment and receive mercy? It is by accepting and living His gospel. After His resurrection, Jesus visited people in America and defined what exactly the good news of the gospel is (maybe He clearly defined it to people in and around Jerusalem and it didn’t survive the record):
“And no unclean thing can enter into his kingdom; therefore nothing entereth into his rest save it be those who have washed their garments in my blood, because of their faith, and the repentance of all their sins, and their faithfulness unto the end. Now this is the commandment: Repent, all ye ends of the earth, and come unto me and be baptized in my name, that ye may be sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost, that ye may stand spotless before me at the last day. Verily, verily, I say unto you, this is my gospel…” (3 Nephi 27:19-21).
In short, without Jesus, we are exposed to the demands of justice or in other words we have to pay for our own sins, which is where the burning in hell comes in. If we choose this method of payment instead of utilizing the payment Christ has completed, we cannot eventually overcome and live in God’s presence. We have not the ability to pay for sin enough to cleanse us for God’s kingdom. We can only gain entrance through the merits of Jesus Christ (2 Nephi 2:6-9).
You can be a good person, but even the best people fall short of the two greatest commandments and possess sin. Though many things exist in our lives by the grace of God, we activate Christ’s protection from justice’s demands (grace) by accepting Christ’s payment for our personal sins and by accepting His terms as our new Creditor. His terms are to live His gospel (outlined by Him previously).
Once I accepted the gospel of Jesus Christ and began living it fervently, it opened a whole new world of spiritual development for me. Instead of worrying about what will happen after this life, I’m more concerned with spiritually understanding and growing to acquire more of God’s attributes, such as faith, patience, virtue, love, kindness, knowledge, long-suffering and more. Nothing that I left behind is worth more than a close relationship with Someone willing to pay for my sins and experience my pains and grief so I can have peace in this life and hope for the next, nothing.
Is it strange to you that God requires acceptance of Jesus to escape exposure to the demands of justice (burning in hell) when Christianity reaches only a small portion of the world’s population? Even a smaller portion accesses baptism by His authority as claimed by the Latter-day Saints (Mormons), which is a requirement to live the gospel. That means only a sliver of His children even get the chance to reject or accept Jesus Christ and His gospel. This Wikipedia article doesn’t have statistics, but it shows a listing of world religions. Christianity is a small part of a long list.
It would not be just of God to condemn His children to be exposed to the demands of justice (burn in hell) when they had no opportunity to escape by accepting Christ and living His gospel. God judges people according to how they lived with the knowledge they had in mortality. Then after death and before final judgment, if they never had the opportunity to hear about the Way the Truth and the Life, Jesus Christ, and His gospel, they have their first chance to accept it, including baptism.
How? Well, stay with me…
What happens when we die? Phase I The Spirit World, a temporary place before final judgment where change is still possible. How God makes the strait gate available to all of His children. How you choose to live in mortality matters.
Latter-day Saints (Mormons) accept that God has followed in our time His pattern of calling prophets, just like Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Peter. The Old Testament that we have now is the existing record of what God revealed to ancient prophets. Revelation to modern prophets in part is contained in a book of scripture called the Doctrine & Covenants. New revelation usually happens when prophets are seeking answers to questions through prayer or pondering the scriptures. For example, Peter was praying on the housetop when the revelation came that the new Christians no longer would follow the previously required dietary code and the gospel could then be taken to the Gentiles (Acts 10:9-18).
Similarly, a Prophet in 1918, Joseph F. Smith, was pondering scriptures because of his young daughter’s death, specifically “reflecting upon the great and atoning sacrifice that was made by the Son of God, for the redemption of the world; And the great and wonderful love made manifest by the Father and the Son in the coming of the Redeemer into the world” (Doctrine & Covenants 138:1-3).
While he was pondering, his mind reverted to the writings of Peter… ‘For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.” (1 Peter 3:18-20) For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit” (1 Peter 4:6).
He described that as he pondered over these scriptures of the New Testament, a vision opened to him and he saw the spirit world, which is where people go after death. You can read the full recording of the vision here.
What did this Prophet see first in the spirit world? He saw a large gathering of “the spirits of the just, who had been faithful in the testimony of Jesus while they lived in mortality” (v12).
Why were they gathered? “They were assembled awaiting the advent of the Son of God into the Spirit World” (v16).
When was this visit? It was “limited to the brief time intervening between the crucifixion and his resurrection” (v27).
This meant He was only there for three days because He rose from the tomb three days after He died on the cross. When Jesus told the thief on the cross He would see him in paradise (Luke 23:43) He meant they would be in the spirit world together.
When the Savior appeared to this group what did He say? “He preached to them the everlasting gospel, the doctrine of the resurrection and the redemption of mankind from the fall, and from individual sins on conditions of repentance” (v18-19).
Who did not get to receive a visit from Jesus during his brief visit to the spirit world between His death and resurrection? “But unto the wicked he did not go, and among the ungodly and the repentant who had defiled themselves while in the flesh, his voice was not raised. Neither did the rebellious who rejected the testimonies and the warnings of the ancient prophets behold his presence, nor look upon his face” (v20-21).
What was the state of these people in the spirit world? “Where these were, darkness reigned, but among the righteous there was peace” (v22).
Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus is a description of the division between the righteous and wicked prior to the Savior’s visit to the spirit world. During this visit, He bridged a gulf between the two. It also describes the state of unrest of those who died in their sins (Luke 16:20-25).
How did the people in the spirit world view separation from their bodies? “For the dead had looked upon the long absence of their spirits from their bodies as a bondage” (v50).
If Jesus did not go among the wicked, how did the Son of God preach unto the disobedient spirits in prison from the days of Noah as is recorded in Peter’s writings in 1 Peter 3:18-20; 1Peter 4:6? This modern prophet receiving the vision wondered the same thing, “And as I wondered, my eyes were opened, and my understanding quickened, and I perceived that the Lord went not in person among the wicked and the disobedient who had rejected the truth, to teach them; But behold, from among the righteous, he organized his forces and appointed messengers, clothed with power and authority, and commissioned them to go forth and carry the light of the gospel to them that were in darkness, even to all the spirits of men; and thus was the gospel preached to the dead” (v29-30).
What did these messengers ordained by Christ preach to those who had “died in their sins, without a knowledge of the truth, or in transgression, having rejected the prophets”? (v32)
“These were taught faith in God, repentance from sin, vicarious baptism for the remission of sins, the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands” (v33).
“The gospel” as Christ defined for the ancient American Christians , which has been taught since the days of Adam (Moses 6:50-53) is taught in the spirit world. The gospel, as previously outlined, is 1.Faith in God 2. repentance 3. baptism (by one with God’s authority to baptize) 4. receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. 5. faithfulness unto the end.
What is vicarious baptism?
Vicarious means to act or serve as a substitute for another. Christ’s sacrifice for sin (Atonement) was a vicarious offering. He did for us what we could not do for ourselves and He stood in our place. Vicarious baptism is when someone else is baptized on behalf of someone else whose body and spirit have been separated by death. These vicarious baptisms are conducted in sacred Temples, such as the Washington, D.C. Temple.
The baptismal fonts in Temples have oxen that represent the twelve tribes of Israel.
Paul used the early Church’s practice accepted practice of vicarious baptism as support to persuade his audience (likely the Sadducees who did not believe in the resurrection) that there was reason to believe in the resurrection, “Else, what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:29).
Out of God’s mercy, He makes the gospel of Jesus Christ, including the ordinances of baptism and confirmation performed by His authority, available to all of His children, regardless of their circumstance in mortality. For some, it is made available in the spirit world because they rejected it in mortality. This is the case for the disobedient spirits that Peter described and Joseph F. Smith saw. For others it is a first chance to accept the gospel, which they hear for the first time from missionaries ordained by Christ during His brief visit in the spirit world. If it is rejected in mortality, but accepted in the spirit world, the final reward is a peaceful place that is not with both God and Jesus Christ (this will be explained in more detail in sections below). If it is their first chance, eternal life with God and Jesus Christ is still possible and they are judged by how they lived with the amount of knowledge they had. But everyone must accept the gospel (faith in Christ, repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Ghost and faithfulness), in order to enter His presence.
Latter-day Saints (Mormons) trace their family history to perform these ordinances for their ancestors. These people in the spirit world then have the opportunity to accept the ordinances or decline them. God forces no one to accept His gospel. Ultimately, everyone who ever lived on the earth will have an opportunity for receive Christ’s gospel and its ordinance by proper authority.
What do Mormons mean when they say baptism has to be by one with authority?
At the death of the Apostles and after Christ’s ascension into heaven, the authority given by Christ to perform ordinances of the gospel namely baptism and confirmation of the Holy Ghost was lost from the earth. The authority, called the priesthood, was dispensed again when John the Baptist, the same who baptized Jesus Christ, personally visited Joseph Smith and ordained him to the priesthood (JSH 1:66-75).
Thomas Griffith, an LDS judge on the D.C. circuit court of appeals explained the restoration of priesthood authority in this way in a Harvard lecture on Mormonism:
Latter-day Saints call the reestablishment of Christ’s Church in modern times the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Mormonism views itself as the successor of Christ’s New Testament Church, which lost its way shortly after its founding by Christ and apostolic leadership. Central to the Restoration, ancient prophets and apostles, now resurrected came in bodily form—not in apparition—to Joseph Smith and to others and gave them priesthood authority to organize anew Christ’s Church. John the Baptist, Peter, James and Johan, Moses, Elijah and other ancient worthies visited Joseph Smith and conferred on him this authority, which has remained with the Church since. In Mormon teaching, this priesthood link to Christ gives vitality to the ordinances of the Church and facilitates current revelation to its current apostolic leadership.
But I’ve already been baptized in such and such church…
Just within the past few weeks I was sitting in my Religion and Society class at Georgetown University. My professor is a Jesuit trained Catholic priest who I’ve come to feel privileged to get to learn from his insights and experience. Our focus is Latin America. While we were discussing the affects of immigration to the States on worship, he described how it mattered little to go from a Presbyterian church to the Catholic to the Methodist because they each recognize the others’ baptism. In this context, he said that it is very offensive to these Christians when churches require re-baptism because it is essentially saying that the previous baptism was not enough. I think he was thinking about the Pentecostals at the time, but the latter half of our session was going to address the Mormons.
Then my mind turned to the lesson I attended the previous week with the missionaries who were teaching a very impressive spiritual man who recognized that God was directing him to participate in the Church, but did not understand why he would have to be baptized again. The missionaries then spoke again of John the Baptist’s personal visit to Joseph Smith to ordain him to the priesthood, which then enabled him to ordain others.
Latter-day Saints respect churches that emerged during the time period between the loss of priesthood authority with the death of the apostles and the restoration of the priesthood in the 1820s as preparatory for Christ to restore His original Church. Without their existence, especially without the Protestant Reformation, the world would know very little about Christ or any of His commandments. Latter-day Saints (Mormons) view these churches as stepping stones to prepare people to receive the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which includes baptism by someone who can trace their line of authority back to John the Baptist or Peter James and John. Latter day Saints (Mormons) believe that in order for baptism to be binding on earth and in heaven, it must be by God’s authority, which He has restored as previously described (Doctrine & Covenants 128:9). If it is not by God’s authority, it would only be binding on earth.
But no offense is intended.
I’m unclear how other churches claim authority to baptize. I know the Catholic church claims authority back to Peter, but in terms of other churches’ claim to officiate in ordinances, it’s something I’d like to learn more about.
So I can do whatever I want in mortality and then make it to heaven?
No, God doesn’t work that way. I’ll develop this more in part III:
What happens after we die? Phase III Final judgment and the Eternal Thereafter. There are Many Mansions in Heaven with Four Different Real Estate Location Options
But for now, there are four possible final locations in the afterlife. Heaven is divided into three kingdoms and the fourth is where Satan lives in outer darkness. The best kingdom in heaven is where Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father live, and the faithful. The faithful are described as:
They are they who received the testimony of Jesus, and believed on his name and were baptized after the manner of his burial, being buried in the water in his name, and this according to the commandment which was given—That by keeping the commandments they might be washed and cleansed from all their sins, and receive the Holy Spirit by the laying on of the hands of him who is ordained and sealed unto this power; And who overcome by faith and are sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, which the Father sheds forth upon all those who are just and true.” (Doctrine & Covenants 76:51-53)
It is is this section of heaven, where the faithful live with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, that family relationships exist beyond mortality and into eternity. In other words, the faithful have eternal relationships of mother, father, sister, brother, husband, wife, son and daughter.
What about the people who knew about the gospel, but rejected it in mortality and then accepted it in the spirit world? In other words, they preferred promiscuity, substance abuse, pride and other deviousness instead of faithful living even when they knew better, but then accepted Christ and His gospel in the spirit world.
They ultimately settle in a peaceful place whose glory differs from the place of the faithful “even as that of the moon differs from the sun” (v71).
They who are the spirits of men [meaning mankind] kept in prison, whom the Son visited, and preached the gospel unto them, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh; who received not the testimony of Jesus in the flesh, but afterwards received it. These are they who are the honorable men of the earth, who were blinded by the craftiness of men. These are they who receive of his glory, but not of his fullness…These are they who are not valiant in the testimony of Jesus…” (v73-76,79)
This and the third division of heaven contain most of the earth’s population. The third division is for those who never accept Christ in the spirit world and suffer for their sins for a thousand years with Satan while Christ reigns personally on the earth. So there is an end to their torment, but it’s a long time to suffer weeping and waling and gnashing of teeth. I’ll develop this more in the forthcoming post. In neither of these divisions of heaven do family units exist. Only the highest division, with God and Jesus, is the family continued beyond mortality.
Faithfulness to God is not something that most of the earth’s population chooses, but as this whole post explains, God is merciful by making it available to His children, even though He knows “strait is the gate and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life and few there be that find it: (Matthew 7:14).
What about people who were faithfully Muslim, Catholic, Buddhist, Baptist, Jain, Baptist, Jehovah’s Witness, Seventh Day Adventist, etc and lived faithfully to their religion and knowledge and then learned about the fullness of Jesus’ gospel from missionaries in the spirit world?
I wondered this a lot when I was a missionary in Texas where people are so faithfully Baptist and their preachers scare their congregations with a great deal of misinformation (some of it’s true and twisted, some of it simply isn’t true). Then there were other faithful people who were satisfied in their own churches and did not know about a restoration of priesthood authority and viewed the claim of modern revelation through Apostles and Prophets today as false prophets.
I’d also frequently wonder about Muslim countries and China where it’s illegal to proselyte.
Joseph Smith recorded a revelation, which I think applies to this:
“Thus came the voice of the Lord unto me, saying: All who have died without a knowledge of this gospel, who would have received it if they had been permitted to tarry, shall be heirs of the celestial kingdom of God [the highest part of heaven]; Also all that shall die henceforth without a knowledge of it, who would have received it with all their hearts, shall be heirs of that kingdom; For I, the Lord will judge all men according to their works, according to the desire of their hearts” (Doctrine & Covenants 137:7-9).
So the catch is, that they have to receive the fullness of Christ’s gospel in the spirit world. By that I mean, enter into a covenant relationship with God by baptism by proper authority and receive the Holy Ghost to be sanctified and live faithfully to His commandments and continue to repent. Some of these faithful people, even in the spirit world, will continue to hold to their mortal beliefs. In this case, my interpretation is that they will receive the peaceful place of the second division of heaven, but not the highest. But for those who truly love God and want to obey Him, He provides a way for them to choose to accept His gospel without penalizing them for their life circumstances. He rewards them for living well to their knowledge and provides a way for them to accept the fullness.
He is so merciful.
What about little children who die?
“And I also beheld that all children who die before they arrive at the years of accountability are saved in the celestial kingdom of heaven” (v10).
Doesn’t God accept me as I am? Why does it matter how I live? The purpose of mortality.
In my Religion and Society class at Georgetown University, the professor gave me a few minutes to answer questions from the class about Mormons. The class was more than politely attentive, they seemed riveted with what I was saying regarding the religion’s requirements. I described commandments that was my assumption most religious people lived, which each of them were, so I was somewhat surprised with their amazement. I described keeping the Sabbath day holy, which is to lay aside the things of the world as much as possible to worship the Lord the whole day on Sunday. I don’t go shopping or plan recreation, I make it a day of worship. I live the Law of Chastity, which I’ve already explained in a prervious post. It means that I’m 27 and still waiting for the man to want me enough to be his forever as my husband. I live the modern health requirements, which the Lord revealed through Joseph Smith (Doctrine & Covenants 89). This means I don’t drink alcohol and never have, not even wine at dinner. This means that I constantly rely on the Savior to repent of un-Christian feelings in my heart or thoughts in my head. This means I honor my father and mother and I don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. When reading online dialogue, I try to skip over its currently trendy abbreviation and I’m even trying to eliminate “Oh my Gosh” from my vocabulary. It means I make space in my life for quality scripture study and prayer and other spiritual ventures and commandment keeping.
Why all the hassle? Doesn’t God accept me as I am?
Some people judge obedience to the commandments as trying to get into heaven by works. This is a misconception of the Latter-day Saint (Mormon) faith, which I suspect comes from viewing it through the lens of mainstream Christian teaching that salvation comes by a one time event through a confession of Jesus (Romans 10:9-10).
Latter-day Saints (Mormons) believe the purpose of mortality is to experience the process of change enabled by Jesus Christ. In other words, they believe that salvation is a process of putting off the natural man and becoming a saint through the atonement of Jesus Christ (Mosiah 3:19).
Latter-day Saints (Mormons) are more interested in the sanctification process of living the covenant relationship started at baptism. As they keep their commitment, they receive a greater portion of the Holy Ghost, which purifies the heart and purges sin (3 Nephi 27: 19-21).
Christ enables the process of keeping the commandments. Every time I get better at keeping the commandments, I receive a greater portion of the Spirit, which purifies my heart and draws me closer to Christ. For example, I always observe the Sabbath day, but some Sundays, my heart and mind are more worshipful and I put more effort in focusing on Christ as I take the Sacrament, which is His Last Supper. As I focus on Christ, He gives me the power to better keep the commandments (Helaman 14:13). I progress spiritually and learn more about His mysteries. (Remember the two greatest commandments mentioned previously? That’s a process to keep those. I can’t do it completely yet. He enables me to do what I can now.)
Through this process of sanctification, I come to know God (John 17:3).
Latter-day Saints (Mormons) are less interested in just making it to heaven in the mainstream Christian view of salvation and more interested in coming to know God and becoming more holy. He shares His holiness with those who seek Him (Doctrine & Covenants 88:63).
It’s a process for everyone. No matter where you are, there’s always a beginning and God gives you the power to do it. You give Him all that is really yours to give, your heart and mind which comprise your will.
So, yes, God accepts me as I am and by living the gospel of Jesus Christ He enables me to become more like He is (Matthew 5:48).
