What do members of “eternal families” do in heaven and how do they qualify or prepare to do it?

I like to walk, especially in the woods. When we first moved to the Austin area our small neighborhood of only a handful of streets was surrounded by woods filled with densely growing mountain cedars (Ashe juniper), oaks (Live, Red, and Bur oaks), grasses, and cactus, checkered with deer trails (and the occasional deer blind or feeder) and a few long pick-up-truck rutted “roads” leading to the South Fork of the San Gabriel River. Today, those woods are fast filling up with beautiful new homes, filled with beautiful young families. It is a glorious thing, driving through these new neighborhoods on weekend evenings, streets, sidewalks, and yards filled with playing children and neighbors visiting and walking, to consider the vital work parents are doing in each of these homes to instill in their children virtue and goodness.

During the few trips abroad we have made, observing families together has been, for me, one of life’s great pleasures. Particularly memorable was a visit to Istanbul, where one weekend evening we passed so many fathers and mothers, beautifully clothed in traditional Muslim attire, with handsome and happy children in tow. It seems that families are highly valued in every nation and culture in the world. But how do families factor into eternity?

A Pew Research study found that “two-thirds of U.S. adults believe deceased people are reunited with loved ones in heaven.”[1] If we believe that we can be with our families in heaven, do we give as much attention and effort to understanding what that means and how to prepare for this eventuality as we do for building, acquiring, furnishing, maintaining and beautifying our earthly homes?

President Russell M. Nelson addressed this question so personally in his 2019 Conference message, “Come Follow Me”:

The spirit in each of us naturally yearns for family love to last forever. Love songs perpetuate a false hope that love is all you need if you want to be together forever. And some erroneously believe that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ provides a promise that all people will be with their loved ones after death.

In truth, the Savior Himself has made it abundantly clear that while His Resurrection assures that every person who ever lived will indeed be resurrected and live forever, much more is required if we want to have the high privilege of exaltation. Salvation is an individual matter, but exaltation is a family matter.

Listen to these words spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ to His prophet: “All covenants, contracts, bonds, obligations, oaths, vows, performances, connections, associations, or expectations, that are not made and entered into and sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise … are of no efficacy, virtue, or force in and after the resurrection from the dead; for all contracts that are not made unto this end have an end when men are dead [D&C 132:7].”

President Nelson outlined the essential requirements for a family to be truly “together” in heaven, that is to enjoy the same “connections” and “associations” as husbands and fathers, wives and mothers, sons and daughters, that we enjoy in this life. “We qualify for [this] privilege,” he said, “by making covenants with God, keeping those covenants, and receiving essential ordinances.” In a key prophetic declaration that we should all ponder and internalize, he added that “Adam and Eve, Noah and his wife, Abraham and Sarah, Lehi and Sariah, and all other devoted disciples of Jesus Christ—since the world was created—have . . . made the same covenants with God. They have received the same ordinances that we as members of the Lord’s restored Church today have made: those covenants that we receive at baptism and in the temple.” In other words, the initiatory, endowment and sealing ordinances did not originate with Joseph Smith. They have been part of Heavenly Father’s plan since “before the foundation of the world,” that is before the world was even created![2]

President Nelson goes on to describe the “weeping” and “anguish” of heart he feels for the good people, even dear friends and relatives, whom he loves, admires and respects, but who “ignore the pleadings” and “invitations” of Jesus Christ, declining “the ordinances that will exalt them with their families and bind them together forever.”

They need to understand that while there is a place for them hereafter . . . that is not the place where families will be reunited and be given the privilege to live and progress forever. . . . That is not the kingdom where they will experience the fulness of joy—of never-ending progression and happiness. . . . I feel to say to my reticent friends: “In this life, you have never settled for second best in anything. Yet, as you resist fully embracing the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, you are choosing to settle for second best. The Savior said, ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions.’ However, as you choose not to make covenants with God, you are settling for a most meager roof over your head throughout all eternity.”

Why does God set entry requirements or conditions to receive His most prized gift or spiritual treasure—eternal family life? One way to think about this is to consider the question: what do members of an “eternal family” do in heaven? We know that the “same sociality which exists among us here,” that is, in this context, the sociality or relationship as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters (which will NOT exist other than in the celestial kingdom),[3] “will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy” (D&C 130:2). But what we will actually do in heaven? If all we did was sit on clouds and play harps praising God, why would any entry requirements be needed (except possibly harp lessons)?

Fortunately, we know what God does in the heavens. To the Prophet Joseph Smith He revealed, “this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). We also know something very important about how He does His work—through councils (Abraham 5:2-3, 5 (the gods “counseled among themselves”)). God (or Elohim) also utilized the fundamental leadership principle of delegation, delegating some of the work of creation, for example, to Jehovah and Michael (among possibly many others).[4] These truths teach us that God shares His work with all of His children who qualify and desire to do it. Why? Because He, like all earthly parents, wants to help His children grow up to have the capacities that He has and to do the things that He does. What earthly parent wants less for his or her child?

Think of it this way. If you needed a complicated surgical procedure, who would you want to operate on you? Of course, you would want the most qualified surgeon you could find. Someone who passed the MCAT, graduated from college and medical school, finished his or her residency and received all of the professional certifications needed to perform your surgery. God’s work requires no less—yes, even more! It requires obtaining the character of God in order to have the capacity of God.

God knew that none of us could obtain this character by our own efforts. Thus, He “provided a Savior”[5], who, when He had qualified (growing from “grace to grace” (D&C 93:12), “doing nothing of himself,” but only that which He had seen “the Father do” (John 5:19), received from His Father “all power . . . in heaven and earth” (Matt. 28:18). With this infinite power, Christ is “able to make us holy” (D&C 60:7)—IF we enter the course of “study” and work the Father outlined to receive that power. That course is called the “covenant path” and it leads, repeatedly, through the Lord’s holy house. Through Christ’s atonement, these necessary ordinances are available to all those in the Spirit World who never received the opportunity to know and truly accept them in mortality.

In the temple we are taught how to receive the consummate “endowment of power” promised in the scriptures (D&C 38:32, 38; 43:26; 105:15), “the power to bless others in our service—at home and in the Church. As we learn so well from the scriptures, this ‘power and authority,’ . . . applicable to both men and women, is none other than priesthood power or God’s power, which He taught can only be governed by priesthood principles. . . . As we—again, men and women—exercise our priesthood authority righteously, we are promised supernal blessings or spiritual treasures: ‘thy confidence [shall] wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews from heaven. The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth; and thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever’ (Doctrine and Covenants 121:36–38, 41–46). In short, persuasion, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, love unfeigned, kindness, pure knowledge, discernment, judgment, wisdom, faithfulness, increased love, and charity are principles of priesthood power that apply in all of our roles, as parents and grandparents, siblings and extended family, and in our callings” and service in our communities and spheres of influence (Drawing, 259-60). May we each appreciate and rejoice in the “small and simple things” (Alma 37:6), or commandments, our Savior has given us to keep and to do and trust that, as we follow Him, choice by “little” choice, He knows best how to accomplish His and our Father’s purpose, or work, in our journey back to Their eternal home.

[1] “Few Americans Blame God or Say Faith Has Been Shaken Amid Pandemic, Other Tragedies,” 2. Views on the afterlife, Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/11/23/views-on-the-afterlife/. For a fascinating and inspiring overview of Catholic beliefs about heaven (topics including “Clouds and harps,” “St. Peter and the Pearly Gates,” “How many heavens?” “Heaven is not egalitarian,” “Where is heaven?” “Time and eternity,” “New heavens and a new earth,” “The New Jerusalem,” etc.), see Jimmy Akin, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Heaven: What do we really know about heaven—and what does the Church teach?” Catholic Answers, https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-heaven  [2] Stephen L. Fluckiger, Drawing Upon the Spiritual Treasures of the Temple, 155 & n. 8, quoting Quentin L. Cook, “Safely Gathered Home.” “Andrew Skinner suggests, note 8 adds, that ‘probing reflection on the temple ceremony teaches us that in our premortal existence we possessed an extensive knowledge’ of the Savior’s redemptive mission, including the ordinances established ‘from the foundation of the world’ to enable us to receive exaltation, including the ‘symbolism and specific tokens centering on the bodily sacrifice of Christ’ (Skinner, Temple Worship, 50, 52).” [3] God has not revealed much about the kind of “sociality” that will exist in kingdoms other than the celestial, other than to say that men and women in these other heavens “neither marry nor are given in marriage; but are appointed angels in heaven, which angels are ministering servants . . . For these angels did not abide my law; therefore, they cannot be enlarged, but remain separately and singly, without exaltation, in their saved condition, to all eternity” (D&C 132:16-17; see also Matt. 22:30). But one thing should be absolutely clear from God’s revelations: if you simply “expect” that the sweetest and most fulfilling relationships that you enjoy in mortality with your beloved spouse and children will continue after death (keeping in mind that civil marriages by their own terms are until “death do you part”) without complying with God’s clearly articulated conditions for such privilege, you are likely to be sorely disappointed. Reflecting on the grand doctrine of eternal marriage restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith, which has existed since Adam, whom God Himself sealed to Eve before the Fall, Parley P. Pratt recorded: “[Joseph Smith] taught me many great and glorious principles concerning God . . . and the heavenly order of eternity. It was at this time that I received from him the first idea of eternal family organizations. . . . It was from him that I learned that the wife of my bosom might be secured to me for time and all eternity. . . . I had loved before, but I knew not why. But now I loved—with a pureness—an intensity of elevated, exalted feelings, which would lift my soul from the transitory things of this groveling sphere and expand it as the ocean.” Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, LDS Quotations, https://ldsquotations.com/author/parley-p-pratt/#:~:text=It%20was%20at%20this%20time,but%20I%20knew%20not%20why. [4] See Drawing, “The Creation and Fall,” 157-59 & n. 18; see also Doctrines of the Gospel Teacher Manual, Chapter 7, “The Creation” (“Adam, who was known as Michael in the premortal existence, helped Jehovah create this earth. Others may also have helped with the Creation . . . see Doctrines of Salvation, 1:74–77).”) [5] Drawing, 160. Image Unsplash (in collaboration with Curated Lifestyle) #celestialmarriage #heaven #Catholic views on afterlife #LDS views on afterlife