MULTIPLE MORTAL PROBATIONS

Today my reading from the Journal of Discourses was The Clay and the Potter Vol 1, pages 160-162. Roughly: God takes clay and fashions us, and tries and tries again, until he makes a beautiful vessel, or if it is impossible, he throws it back and let it rest. God will let us/our spirits rest, passive, for maybe a thousand years, until he can try again, and all his children can be redeemed (apart from the Sons of Perdition).

Now, this (sort of) sermon gets strong reactions from people. Some say it proves Eternal Lives in the sense of Reincarnation, also known as Multiple Mortal Probations. Others say such teachings are from the Devil, and the debate often causes name-callings on the specialized forums.

MMP proponents believe that our eternal spirits not only get incarnated (coming from the realm of the Pre-Existence) but also get reincarnated in a new body. Some maintain that this is what Resurrection actually means.

There are some passages in various diaries of early leaders or witnesses that indicate that they believed and shared those ideas. Some close associates of Joseph Smith even said they got that teaching from the Prophet himself, who allegedly prayed to know if he had committed adultery in any probations, and who would have said that reincarnation was what resurrection was.

Some New Testament passages also suggest this, when Jesus is asked who sinned, that man or his parents that he was born blind (although this could mean that they expected the faults of the parents to be on the child) and that Jesus may be an ancient prophet back to the Land of the Living (although that could just mean that the office of that prophet was now in the person of Jesus).I have to say that even if I don't have a testimony of MMP, and it may be false, it makes sense. I don’t believe our bodies will be reconstituted from the same elements as they are now constituted, years or millennia after our natural death.

Coming back during the Millennium could be through a new birth, as we are taught that people will be born at that time. It could also be after, born of Gods.

The fact that some Gods do not have a body and do get reincarnated is shown with the Holy Ghost and in the birth of Jesus, if, as some maintain, he qualified for the office of Savior and was subsequently born of a woman. Some accounts show that Brigham Young may have taught this, that Jesus had been a man on another world.

If our bodies will become perfect and celestial (if we qualify), then a change has to be operated in the flesh. Reincarnation may be the explication. This is not to say that Jesus did not take his body back like his Father before him. Translation is also something different.

Some say that the three different kingdoms are actually on this planet, and that we inherit a kingdom on this planet, depending on our circumstances. Some also say that we evolved from the lower state to the human state and then to the God state. All I am saying is that all this is possible.

MMP opponents claim that Joseph Smith said the doctrine was of the Devil. Now, there was a man who taught the transmigration of souls, that a man’s spirit was found in his progeny, and this is what was meant by Eternal life.

Joseph Smith did say that man served the Devil and asked him to leave, but that man’s teaching was not MMP. MMP is not the usual Reincarnation teachings of various eastern religions or of folklore, which says that we get reincarnated as animals, or as another person, anytime, anywhere. MMP is not a new existence at the end of each life, but, as I understand a new level of existence, depending on our worth, at a time fixed by God, and at an unknown frequency.

It is possible that the sermon (and subsequent sermons) mean our existence in the flesh, and how God fashions us while in the flesh, but those sermons do seem to suggest that another body at another time is what is meant.

I have no idea who’s right or wrong, but MMP does make sense to me.