T H E M I L L E N N I U M
A Perspective of the Everlasting Covenant
Part IX
What Are You Doing For the Next 1000 Years?
one LDS conception by Don R. Hender
It just isn't or doesn't seem
fair. Some are born in poverty with little or no opportunities in life. Some
have limiting handicaps which prevent any fully functional life. Some are
born at the wrong time and in the wrong part of the world. Some die off too
young for any real chance and others who do live, live in abusive and
impossible living conditions. Some never have heard of Christ or of the great
Gospel Plan of Happiness. So just where is the fairness in life's probationary
state? Where is the equal opportunity or the concept that all men are created
equal in all this? Are the greater blessings which God has to offer lost
to countless millions and truely only available for a chosen elite relatively
few because of such as these countless prohibitive circumstances? How does
a child who dies an infant due to a famine in 2000 BC China ever have an
opportunity to participate in the great Plan of Happiness and become as God
Is? Life just IS NOT fair in OH SO MANY WAYS!!
I have experienced a couple of 'doctrinal' hints concerning this matter. Some
years ago while teaching at Ricks College in Idaho, President and Prophet
Spencer W. Kimball spoke to us at one of our Devotionals. As was the case in
most of the LDS church colleges the girls far out numbered the boys and the
balance in numbers just did not work out. President Kimbal addressed this
inequity of matching numbers by giving a prophet's promise to our young
sisters. He told them not to settle for a marriage to a non LDS or unworthy
male who could not take them to the temple to be married and sealed and to
receive the highest blessings of heaven. He told them to live worthy in life
and that by no means would they lose any of those blessings of exaltation
which the gospel had to offer even if they happened to die a spinster. Some
comfort I suppose, but whereelse could such a prophet's promise be fulfilled
but in the days of the 1,000 years of the Millennium?
I have also heard it taught as doctrine that those parents who loose an infant
or younger children in this life, if they liver worthily, they will and are
promised to have the fulfilling opportunity to finish raising those children
of theirs in the Millennium. I've also heard and understood that there will
be births and marriages performed and families growing and developing
throughout the Millennium, just as they are now, but of course upon the higher
life style and blessings of life without the tempter being loose to distract
them.
From this I am left to expect and understand that while the Millennium is life
on a higher level, a Terrestrial level, it will be still counted as being a
part of this probationary era. And the fulness of the blessing of heaven will
be made available throughout and during the great Millennial reign. Just
couldn't a 1,000 year life span be used to 'makeup' for any of life's prior
injustices or one's inability to have the opportunity to obtain those
blessings of heaven? It is my testimony that such is so.
All too often in my view we teach the Plan of Salvation as going from death
to the resurrection and straight via Final Judgement into one of the three
Kingdoms of Glory or Outer Darknes without hardly ever including the time
frame and possibilities of the 1,000 year Millennium. Why is the Gospel being
taught to the spirits in the Spirit World by such as my father, Great Grandpa
Hender? And why do we do the all those baptisms, sealings and celestial
marriages for our dead ancestors? And why are we told that in the Millennium
the Lord's temples will be in operation around the clock performing all such
necessary ordinances of salvation for all who ever have lived upon this
earth if indeed some how some way during the Millennial process all those
who have passed on do not and will not receive of the greater blessings of
heaven according to their acceptance and living according to the principles
of the gospel after their death?
Some teach that repentance in the spirit would is not possible. How can this
be. Certainly we are busy doing a lot of useless busy work in our temples if
that is the case. A member of our ward whom I highly respect, and who had
lost three of his young sons in an automobil accident, once related to me
and my companion home teacher that in a dream as I recall, he witnessed the
course of the resurrection taking place in the Millennial era. He said it
came in 'waves' as of the waves of the sea. Some would come in one wave and
so be greeted by those already here with great expectation and joy. And so on
wave after wave as the resurrection did continue and others also came forth
and did become a part of the Millenial reign and era. Certainly partly due
to the fact that such appearances would be reliant and dependant upon the time
element of processing the ordinance work for them here in the temples as
the Millenium would continue to progress.
I have had my own little dream testimony relative to the Millennium. We often
hear what other 'Traditional Christians' refer to as the 'rapture', that is
the resurrection and being caught up to heaven when the Millennium does come.
I have desired to live on into the Millennium and to be 'twinkled' rather than
to spend any time with my body in the grave. Whether this will be I do not
know. But my dream was that I was still living when the consuming fires of
the wrath of God came upon the earth for the cleasing of it of the wicked.
In my dream during this process I was indeed 'caught up' into heaven rising
up and out away from the holocaust below. It was a most marvelous experience
and feeling of rising and changing from one state to another. And when I had
arrived above I remember in by dream beholding my wife, the most beautiful and
glorious creature I had ever seen.
So it is for these and other reasons I now like to teach our Father in
Heaven's Plan of Happiness including the 1000 year Millennium. And I do
consider it to be part and particle of this earthly probation, a very nice
extention of it which answers and resolves all possiblities of seeming
unfairness in God's Great Plan of Exaltation, Redemption, Salvation and
Happiness. This is not to belittle the importance of 'this day being that
day we have to prepare to meet God.' Heaven forbid! We all need to take upon
ourselves that responsibilty as soon as we can and not to procrastinate the
day of our repentance. For indeed that same spirit which we have and deal
with here and now, has that same enfluence upon us in the life to come. Thus
we need to proceed as soon as possible and the more the advantage to us if
we do so! And for sure we need to be living and preparing ourselves that we
may and might be a part of the 1,000 year life with our Savior, under his
reign so we can have that most positive of answers to that question. What
are we going to be doing over the next 1,000 years? It is real. It is near
upon us. And we need be ready and prepared that we are not lost from it.
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