Mormon doctrine of eternal marriage eternal families

Valentine’s Day (Día del Amor y la Amistad, Día del Cariño) is today (at least in many countries). It’s a day to celebrate love and friendship.

Today at Mormon Women, we want to celebrate marriage. Marriage is central to Mormon doctrine. We realize that not everyone is married, that some struggle in their marriages, some have had marriages that have ended. We are sensitive to the fact that marriage can be a sensitive topic for some. So if you are looking for a different Valentine’s Day post, Kathryn has a great post that explores more general thoughts about love.

But we believe talking about Mormon doctrine of marriage is important to understanding who we are and what we believe.

Sometimes people wonder why we talk about  marriage and family so much in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when the reality is that not everyone enjoys a happy marriage. Elder Russell M. Nelson addresses this in a talk given last Saturday. We invite you to take a minute and read it: The Doctrinal Importance of Marriage and Children

Our featured Mormon Women post for today is found at We Talk of Christ, We Rejoice in Christ: “The Greatest Love Story Ever Told.” Jocelyn shared notes from a talk she gave on Sunday on the doctrine of marriage in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Writing about the day her man proposed to her, Jocelyn writes:

I remember how beautiful the world was at that moment.  There were birds and butterflies fluttering around us.  I kid you not, I even saw a family of bunny rabbits hopping in the grass.

Hopefully, anyone who has ever been in love remembers that feeling…the feeling that the whole world surely must have been created just so that two people could fall in love.

Well, in fact, the world was created so that two people could fall in love.  Fall in love and form eternal families.

Everything in Mormon doctrine centers around Jesus Christ’s mission not only to save individuals, but to allow marriages and family relationships to continue beyond the grave. Jocelyn continues:

The Bible tells us that after the Lord created the world he “created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

So after creating the Universe, the very next thing that God did was place a man and a woman together and married them to each other for eternity.

Genesis 2:24 “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh.”

This is significant:  The very first marriage performed on earth was an Eternal one!  (No, “till death do us part” nonsense.  Death had not yet entered the world!)

If you have ever wondered what Mormon temples are all about, this is it. The crowning gospel ordinance performed in temples is eternal marriages — marriages that are not performed just “’til death do you part” but rather can continue, “sealed” by the authority of God, beyond death into the next life.

We hope you’ll read the rest of Jocelyn’s post for more of her thoughts and some great quotes and scriptures that explore Mormon doctrine about marriage further.

For more information on Mormon doctrine about marriage, temples, and eternal families, see the following:

– There’s a great downloadable document at Diapers and Divinity that Stephanie uses as a wedding gift (and could be a nice Valentine’s Day gift). The articles in this 80-page PDF also explore and explain more about the importance of marriage in God’s plan.

– See the Worldwide Leadership Training Broadcast from this past weekend. Past training meetings also addressed the Mormon doctrine related to marriage and family: