Dear Gramps,
I have a question about being able to reach the celestial kingdom being a single woman. I was newly divorced when I joined the church and as yet, have remained single. I have a child who was lost in infancy and, even though I am an endowed member, and I am very concerned about not being able to reach the celestial level. My friends are wonderful in trying to explain about the 1,000 year reign of the Savior after the second coming, but I think I am just getting more confused. Could you perhaps give me some scripture to hold on to. Please help. I have two young children and two teenagers that I hope to reunite with their brother in the celestial kingdom.
Angela, from Nevada
Dear Angela,
I’m afraid that I can’t quote any scriptures that will directly address your concern, but there are one or two things that perhaps we can say. There is no question about your being able to reach the celestial kingdom as a single women. All those who have been baptized by the requisite priesthood authority, and who live in accordance with the baptismal covenants, will have all their sins forgiven them and will inherit the celestial kingdom, as well as all children who die before the age of accountability, as you have indicated.
However, the family relationship will continue in eternity only for those who are sealed to one another in the one of the holy temples, and who live in strict accordance with the obligations of the marriage covenant. Children born prior to a celestial marriage must be sealed to their parents in the temple. If the children are of majority age, they must be endowed prior to the sealing. But don’t despair! People are married, and are married in the temple, at all ages of life.
If, however, you may never have the opportunity for a celestial marriage during your lifetime in mortality, as your friends have indicated, there will yet be opportunity to comply with all the requirements for exaltation in the celestial kingdom and qualify to be heirs of all that the Father has promised to his faithful children. Joseph Fielding Smith gave this comforting counsel.
“Furthermore, there are thousands of young men as well as young women, who have passed to the world of spirits without the opportunity of these blessings. Many of them have laid down their lives in battle; many have died in their early youth; and many have died in their childhood. The Lord will not forget a single one of them. All the blessings belonging to exaltation will be given them, for this is the course of justice and mercy. So with those who live in the stakes of Zion and in the shadows of our temples; if they are deprived of blessings in this life these blessings will be given to them during the millennium, for the Lord has prepared at that time to . . . complete the salvation of man, and judge all things, and shall redeem all things, except that which he hath not put into his power, when he shall have sealed all things, unto the end of all things; and the sounding of the trumpets of the seven angels are the preparing and finishing of his work” (Answers to Gospel Questions, Vol.2, p.38).
Gramps
