Mormon Folk Doctrine
  		(254217193)  Call Toll Free (888) 207-1872
Click the envelope to email the webmaster 
| Home | About | Members | Biography | Documents| NHF Chronology
  

 

I never want to be too flip or even cynical.  I dislike members of my church who are critical and who sound ungrateful.  I am proud to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in almost every way.  Lately I have been struggling with what I have come to call "Mormon Folk Doctrine" or doctrines popularly believed by us that are not found in the Standard Works.  Don't get me wrong, I like our folk doctrines (most of them), but I sometimes want clarification without worrying about the finger pointers.  You've felt it too.  Some radical starts asking questions, and immediately the index finger starts wagging.  I think we are too accustomed to criticism that we think all questions are anti.  How can we as a distinct people organize and establish what is doctrine or not unless we can discuss every view openly and without fear of some abstract reprisal? 

I humbly submit I do not know everything, but I want clarification.  If I'm wrong I want to know it.  Please challenge anything I write on this webpage.  Click on the email icon to the right to tell me what for...
 

 

 
Doctrinal Assumption What I Think What You Think
Once assigned to the Telestial Kingdom, one has no way to change his own status through all the eternities.  His fate is sealed and it is permanent.

 The plan of salvation as we teach it from the old missionary flipchart gets my mind cranking with its pre-earth life and 3 degrees of glory etc.  On the other hand, there are problems I can't solve with the chart as it is drawn.  By the way, I think every word from our temple ceremony is doctrinal and correct.

If we came from another world to this one, from where did we come?  What kind of world was it?  Was it physical or spiritually manifested only. 

I think we got the permanent Telestial kingdom idea from 1) the old heaven and hell doctrine of our orthodox Christian tradition  and 2) Section 76:112 which states, "And they shall be servants of the Most High; but where God and Christ dwell they cannot come, worlds without end.

Section 76 on the matter seems clear enough, but if one substitutes the concept of earth life with that of Telestial life, there does not appear to be much difference to me.

And there are also these verses in Section 88 that contradict our conventional thinking about things Telestial.  Section 88:29-32 states, "Ye who are quickened by a portion of the celestial glory shall then receive of the same, even a fulness.  And they who are quickened by a portion of the terrestrial glory shall then receive of the same, even a fulness.  And also they who are quickened by a portion of the telestial glory shall then receive of the same, even a fulness.  And they who remain shall also be quickened; nevertheless, they shall return again to their own place, to enjoy that which they are willing to receive, because they were not willing to enjoy that which they might have received

I am not saying I know anything, but maybe (just maybe) our pre-mortal life was yet another Telestial world like this one, and maybe we are in a constant state of progress toward the ultimate goal of being as much like God as we can possibly be like HIm. 

 
All work for the dead must be done by living earth-based persons Someone asked this question in a recent High Priest group meeting.  I didn't have an answer, but the finger waggers seemed to believe it was doctrinal.