Saturday, August 17, 2013

Lesson 31 Scriptures and Quotes: “Sealed … for Time and for All Eternity”


Lesson 31: “Sealed … for Time and for All Eternity”

Reading 1 – Benjamin Johnson wrote in his memoirs:  "In the evening he called me and my wife to come and sit down, for he wished to marry us according to the Law of the Lord. I thought it was a joke, and said, I should not marry my wife again, unless she courted me, for I did it all the first time. He chided my levity, told me he was in earnest, and so it proved, for we stood up and were sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise." (Benjamin Johnson, My Life's Review, p96)

Reading 2 – Doctrine and Covenants 131:1-4

Reading 3 - President George Q. Cannon said:  "We believe in the eternal nature of the marriage relation, that man and woman are destined, as husband and wife, to dwell together eternally. We believe that we are organized as we are, with all these affections, with all this love for each other, for a definite purpose, something far more lasting than to be extinguished when death shall overtake us. We believe that when a man and woman are united as husband and wife, and they love each other, their hearts and feelings are one, that that love is as enduring as eternity itself, and that when death overtakes them it will neither extinguish nor cool that love, but that it will brighten and kindle it to a purer flame, and that it will endure through eternity; and that if we have offspring they will be with us and our mutual associations will be one of the chief joys of the heaven to which we are hastening. . . . God has restored the everlasting priesthood, by which ties can be formed, consecrated and consummated, which shall be as enduring as we ourselves are enduring, that is, as our spiritual nature; and husbands and wives will be united together, and they and their children will dwell and associate together eternally, and this, as I have said, will constitute one of the chief joys of heaven; and we look forward to it with delightful anticipations." (JD, 14:320-21)

Reading 4 – Elder Parley P. Pratt said, “I had loved before, but I knew not why. But now I loved—with a pureness—an intensity of elevated, exalted feeling, which would lift my soul. … I felt that God was my heavenly Father indeed; that Jesus was my brother, and that the wife of my bosom was an immortal, eternal companion. … In short, I could now love with the spirit and with the understanding also” (Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt [1975], 298).

Reading 5 - Lorenzo Snow wrote:  "When two Latter-day Saints are united together in marriage, promises are made to them concerning their offspring that reach from eternity to eternity. They are promised that they shall have the power and the right to govern and control and administer salvation and exaltation and glory to their offspring worlds without end. And what offspring they do not have here, undoubtedly there will be opportunities to have them hereafter.
"What else could man wish? A man and a woman in the other life, having celestial bodies, free from sickness and disease, glorified and beautified beyond description, standing in the midst of their posterity, governing and controlling them, administering life, exaltation and glory, worlds without end!" (Lorenzo Snow: Deseret News Weekly, 3 April 1847, p. 481)
Reading 6 - President Joseph Fielding Smith wrote: “Marriage, as understood by Latter-day Saints, is a covenant ordained to be everlasting. It is the foundation for eternal exaltation, for without it there could be no eternal progress in the kingdom of God” (Doctrines of Salvation, comp. Bruce R. McConkie, 3 vols. [1954–56], 2:58).

Doctrine and Covenants 132:1-2

Doctrine and Covenants 132:3-4

Reading 7 – Doctrine and Covenants 132:7

Reading 8 – Doctrine and Covenants 132:19-20

Doctrine and Covenants 42:22

Reading 9 - President Spencer W. Kimball wrote:  “When the Lord says all thy heart, it allows for no sharing nor dividing nor depriving. …
“The words none else eliminate everyone and everything. The spouse then becomes preeminent in the life of the husband or wife, and neither social life nor occupational life nor political life nor any other interest nor person nor thing shall ever take precedence over the companion spouse. …
“Marriage presupposes total allegiance and total fidelity. Each spouse takes the partner with the understanding that he or she gives totally to the spouse all the heart, strength, loyalty, honor, and affection, with all dignity. Any divergence is sin; any sharing of the heart is transgression. As we should have ‘an eye single to the glory of God,’ so should we have an eye, an ear, a heart single to the marriage and the spouse and family” (Faith Precedes the Miracle [1972], 142–43).

President Gordon B. Hinckley gave this simple counsel to married couples: “Be fiercely loyal one to another” (Ensign, Feb. 1999, 4).

Doctrine and Covenants 132:30-31

Reading 10 - Elder Bruce R. McConkie explained what is involved in the Patriarchal order of the Melchizedek Priesthood that Abraham and Sarah received. "Joseph Smith says that in the temple of God there is an order of the priesthood that is patriarchal. 'Go to the temple,' he says, 'and find out about this order.' So I went to the temple, and I took my wife with me, and we kneeled at the altar. There on that occasion we entered, the two of us, into an 'order of the priesthood.' When we did it, we had sealed upon us, on a conditional basis, every blessing that God promised Father Abraham — the blessings of exaltation and eternal increase. The name of that order of the priesthood, which is patriarchal in nature, because Abraham was a natural patriarch to his posterity, is the New and Everlasting Covenant of Marriage" ("Eternal Family Concept," Address given at Priesthood Genealogical Research Seminar, BYU, 23 June 1967, 7; cited in Joseph Fielding McConkie and Craig J. Ostler, Revelations of the Restoration, 1053).
Reading 11 - Brother Ted L. Gibbons has explained the importance of marrying by a covenant:  When the Lord taught his first lesson about eternal marriage, the [person] to be married, [Isaac] . . . was not even consulted in the matter. Abraham sent his servant back to the ancestral lands with one simple instruction. Find a woman who is of the covenant lineage (Genesis 24:3,4). There are no other recorded requirements! Age was not a factor. Appearance did not seem to be a consideration. Hair color and complexion and weight were not critical issues. The message here is simple enough. The most important thing about marriage is the covenant. Marry in the covenant, this story seems to be teaching. Nothing else comes close to being this important.

Rebekah was a wonderful woman. She was hard working and obedient and beautiful. But none of these things entered into the instructions given by Abraham. The reason was (and is) that without the covenant, none of those other things would (or will) matter when the portal of the grave slams shut" (Commentary by Ted L. Gibbons on D&C Lesson 31: Sealed For Time and For All Eternity, found in LDS Living magazine.)

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