Mormons Need Hope – Ex-Mormons in Jesus (YouTube)
What Do Mormons Have? Forever Families! Oh Really?
by Mark Champneys Evangelism Director
Mormons often boast about things that Mormonism has that no other religion has. This seems to be an attempt to convince both themselves and others that the LOS Church is “the one true church.” But do Mormons really have any of these things? I have come to realize that the answer is a resounding “no” when a person takes a closer look at virtually any of them.
Let’s begin with their well-known claim to offer a religion with forever families. They speak of being sealed in the temple, both in a temple ..wedding and in temple sealing ceremonies, so that their family can be together forever in the celestial kingdom. The LOS Church teaches that if a person otherwise meets the requirements for entrance into the celestial kingdom (the highest of the three heavenly kingdoms), then they also need to be sealed to spouse and children in a ceremony performed by proper priesthood authority in the temple in order to be assured that they will be together forever as a family unit in eternity.
Does this doctrine really mean anything? I once visited temple square and went along on a tour with an LDS sister missionary leading. Questions were not allowed along the way, but the tour ended downstairs in the north visitors center where there was a large display with the words “forever families.” So I inquired if I could ask her a question about forever families, to which she nodded yes.
I told her that my LOS mother had done a great deal of genealogy work on my line, and had presented me with a data CD containing over 4,000 names of my relatives. I asked her to imagine those 4,000 names put together in a massive pedigree chart on the wall showing all their interconnections. “So here is my question,” I said. “Where on this chart is the family unit? Will my wife and our kids be a family unit, or will my kids be family units with their kids? Or what if my parents want me to be with them? If we are all sealed, how do you identify sealed family units?”
She seemed startled at the question. “Well, I guess we’ll all just be together,” she proposed. She had never thought about it before. Whereupon I explained that the only thing that gives a family unit any meaning is the concept of death. Ultimately we are all just one family with Adam and Eve as our parents, but because of death, my kids become a family unit with my spouse and me. Yet we will die, and they will become family units with their kids, and so on. In heaven, however, we will all be alive, so we are back to being one human family. So the concept of a family unit is empty in eternity.
But there is a larger problem. In Mormonism, the sealing ceremony only has effect in the celestial kingdom. Before her death in 1999, my mother once wished out loud that I would come back to Momonism and be sealed again to our family. “Mom, LDS sealings only apply in the celestial kingdom. Neither you, nor I, nor anyone in our family meets the requirement of the celestial law to stop all sin [LDS-style repentance] which means none of us will be there. That means that none of the temple sealings already done mean a hill of beans anyway.” Her eyes glazed over in thought as she knew I was correct. Even if she could do the impossible and be good enough, many of of us would surely fall short, rendering the idea of a complete family in heaven meaningless even then.
Ironically, my wife and myself and my four children are Christians and have all received salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone-so we will all be together with each other in heaven. We are truly going to be a forever family in God’s presence. So who really has forever families? Hmmmmm?
Visit Mark’s You-Tube Channel Video – Moments of Truth – When Scientists Ignore Science: The Second Law of Thermodynamics
