Pres. Joseph F. Smith has a dream in 1918 and behold (drink!) it did bring unto him a revelation from God. Or it’s D&C fanfic from an old guy nearing the end of his days. You be the judge.
Drink count – 2
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My Book of Mormon 
September 11, 2018 at 2:55 am
And with this last “section” of the D&C, the final (canonical) pieces of the Coj Colds afterlife have been established (I’m just following Bryce’s lead; Coj Colds isn’t too topical, is it?)
This is our only scriptural allusion to the sealing of parents to children, not counting D&C 128, which, if taken alone, seems to suggest baptism for the dead by itself is sufficient to link the generations together. That might have been good enough for Joseph Smith, who probably just wanted these higher ordinances as exclusive initiation rites into the secret practice of polygamy, and didn’t necessarily intend them for the general church body to experience in the temple.
We also learn of the true, hellish nature of even the “spirit paradise” of the righteous dead, who view the separation of their spirits from their bodies as a bondage, and who get to do apparently nothing but constant missionary work. That’s nearly two hundred years and counting for the early Mot Coj Colds (really, is this too topical? will we have forgotten Russell Nelson’s rebranding nonsense within a few months, or not, do you think?) who are still awaiting their glorious resurrection. As for me, the Celestial Kingdom sounded pretty nice, if I could swing it. You get to have sex, at least sometimes, and even if it’s the purely procreative kind, it’s still nothing to sneeze at. Then when you’re not doing that, you get to play SimCity forever on a planetary scale (if only there were a name for such a game…) That will never get boring, right? But to have to endure decades or centuries of missionary work in the spirit world first? Hardly worth it.
We also get a rare mention of the pre-mortal existence, here referred to confusingly as the “world of spirits”. I say confusingly, because that’s a name usually associated with that place you hang out in after you die. But Joseph F. Smith mentions all those Biblical dead dudes waiting for Jesus (with a nice shout out to Mother Eve, too) and then that Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, et al, “were also in the spirit world”. Huh. I don’t think I ever considered that the Spirit World of the dead was the same place as the Pre-Existence, but that seems to be the implication.
We get here a reminder of how for Mot Coj Colds (OK, I’m sick of this joke, I’m going to just call them Mormons, it’s one less syllable), there is no cheap grace, for God’s legalistic requirement is that repenting in the spirit world may make you an “heir of salvation”, whatever that means, but you still have to pay the penalty of your transgressions, those all-you-can-eat buffetings of Satan, no doubt. After all this time, I’m still confused about temple work, and if it gets you to the Celestial Kingdom, then who even goes to the Terrestrial Kingdom, anyway?
More importantly, though, I’m still trying to figure out if the exiled Noldor elves, when they sail into the West, get to go all the way back to Valinor, or as punishment for their rebellion, only get to return as near as Tol Eressea, the Lonely Isle. Or is that idea just a non-canonical remnant of the earliest conception of Tolkien’s… Oops, sorry, I slipped into the wrong mythos for a second there…
As for the historical background, one small correction. The Second Manifesto was given in 1904, so it was during Joseph F. Smith’s administration, not Wilford Woodruff’s, but I’m sure there will be plenty to say about all that when we do Official Declaration 1. As for whether Joseph F. Smith was a polygamist, you don’t need to second guess yourselves…
September 12, 2018 at 5:37 pm
Sims. LOL