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Question

 

Dear Gramps,

My father-in-law and I were having a friendly discussion on Gospel Doctrine. We were trying to figure out whether or not children will be born during the millennium. I felt that they would, my father-in-law felt that they would not. Can you give us any information on this topic?

Amber

 

Answer

 

Dear Amber,

You are right and your father-in-law is wrong. Now you have a problem. How are you going to tell your father-in-law that he’s wrong without alienating him and his whole family from you forever more? There is one approach that you might try–pass the buck. Tell him that you posed the question to the Ask Gramps web site and this is the answer that you got. Tell him that you don’t quite know what to think about it, and ask his opinion on the subject. Then you could agree with whatever he says, and save your family relationship!

Here are the facts of the matter. When the Savior comes to initiate his great Millennial reign, all of the wicked people living on the earth at that time will be swept off, and their spirits will be remanded to the custody of Satan for a period of a thousand years, and they will then be resurrected at the end of the Millennium and will inherit a telestial glory.

The rest of the mortals who are living at the time of the coming of the Savior–the good people of the earth–will not be destroyed, but will continue to live out their mortal lives as they move into the millennial period. During this period they will continue to have children, who will live “to the age of a tree” and then be transferred from mortality to immortality without a separation of the body and the spirit, as is recorded in Doctrine and Covenants 101:30-31

In that day an infant shall not die until he is old; and his life shall be as the age of a tree;

 

And when he dies he shall not sleep, that is to say in the earth, but shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye, and shall be caught up, and his rest shall be glorious.

The purpose of having a mortal strain during the Millennium will be so that they may enter the holy temples and act as proxies for all the prior inhabitants of the earth who have not known or have not accepted the gospel in mortality, but afterwards received in the spirit world and wish to follow the Savior in obedience to the principles of the gospel. The saving ordinances of the gospel must be performed by mortals, not resurrected beings. So the mortals living during the Millennium will be available to perform that essential and sacred work. Thus all of our Father’s children who are willing to obey the Father’s commandments will have the opportunity to make their sacred covenants with the Father, and have the signs of those covenants administered in their behalf by mortal proxies.

This doctrine of the Kingdom was first taught by Paul, who used it to demonstrate to the unbelieving Corinthians the truthfulness of the resurrection. He said,

Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?(1 Cor. 15:29)

 

Gramps

 

 

 

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