A New Witness for God (Volume 1 of 3)Roberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
Religion
A New Witness for God (Volume 1 of 3)
Roberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
Latter Day Saint churches
Closely associated with the matter treated in the foregoing paragraphs,
is the subject of the different degrees of glory. Nothing is more
clearly stated in holy writ than that men will be judged and rewarded
according to their works. [17] And as their works vary in degree of
righteousness, so will their rewards vary, and so will they have
bestowed upon them different degrees of glory according as their
works shall merit, and their intelligence be capable of receiving and
enjoying. Messiah said to his disciples: "In my Father's house are many
mansions: if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a
place for you; * * * that where I am there ye may be also." [18] Still
it is commonly held among Christian sects, that he who attains heaven
partakes immediately of the highest glories; while he who misses heaven
goes direct to hell and partakes of all its miseries forever.
Yet nothing is clearer than the fact that there are different heavens
spoken of in scripture and different degrees of glory. When Solomon
dedicated the temple he had builded, he exclaimed in his prayer:
"Behold the heaven and heaven of heavens, cannot contain thee; how much
less this house which I have builded!" [19] Paul in writing to the
Corinthians says: "I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, * *
* such an one caught up to the _third_ heaven; and I knew such a man,
* * * how that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable
words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter." [20]
Reasoning on the resurrection, the last writer quoted says: "There are
also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial, but the glory of the
celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is
one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon and another glory
of the stars: for as one star differeth from another star in glory, so
also is the resurrection of the dead." In all this, however, the great
subject is but vaguely hinted at, for a full understanding of it we are
indebted to a revelation given to Joseph Smith, February 16th, 1832.
From that revelation we summarize the following: [21]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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