Marriage & Family

Readings in the Student Manual:
 

 
Readings in this Page:

Pres. Joseph F. Smith
The Sacred and Eternal Character of the Institution of Marriage
Gospel Doctrine, p. 272
 

... [This] institution of marriage is not a man-made institution.  It is of God.  It is honorable, and no man who is of marriageable age is living his religion who remains single.  It is not simply devised for the convenience alone of man, to suit his own notions, and his own ideas; to marry and then divorce, to adopt and then to discard, just as he pleases.  There are great consequences connected with it, consequences which reach beyond this present time, into all eternity, for thereby souls are begotten into the world, and men and women obtain their being in the world.

Marriage is the preserver of the human race.  Without it, the purposes of God would be frustrated; virtue would be destroyed to give place to vice and corruption, and the earth would be void and empty.

Neither are the relationships that exist, or should exist, between parents and children, and between children and parents, of an ephemeral nature, nor of a temporal character.  They are of eternal consequence, reaching beyond the veil ...

The man and the woman who engage in this ordinance of matrimony are engaging in something that is of such far-reaching character, and is of such vast importance, that thereby hangs life and death, and eternal increase.  Thereupon depends eternal happiness, or eternal misery.

The Prophet Joseph Smith
Living Eternal Laws and Covenants Brings the Enjoyment of Eternal Blessings
The Words of Joseph Smith, p.232

All Blessings that were ordained for man by the council of heaven were on conditions of obedience to the law thereof. No man can obtain an eternal blessing unless the contract or covenant be made in view of eternity. All contracts in view of this life only terminate with this life. ...

Those who keep no eternal Law in this life or make no eternal contract are single [and] alone in the eternal world (Luke 20-35) and are only made angels to minister to those who shall be heirs of salvation never becoming Sons of God having never kept the Law of God --i.e. eternal Law. The earthly is the image of the Heavenly shows that is by the multiplication of lives that the eternal worlds are created and occupied ...

Elder Joseph Fielding Smith
Marriage Brings Glory
The Progress of Man, p. 391

The greatest glory that can be given to man is found in the eternal covenant of marriage-- the power to become gods, even the sons of God and to possess the power to create and hold the everlasting right of increase.

Elder Brigham H. Roberts
A Definition of Celestial Marriage and Its Implications
A Comprehensive History of the Church, Vol. 2, pp.93-95

The chief and greatest feature of this marriage system--usually called "Celestial Marriage," by members of the church--because [it is] conceived to be the marriage system that obtains in celestial worlds--is the eternity of the marriage covenant. "Until death us do part," is usually the mutual covenant of man and woman in the orthodox "Christian" marriage ceremony. That is, the marriage covenant is understood among Christian churches generally as being a matter that pertains to time only, the contract obligations ending with death. But the new marriage law of the Church of the Latter-day Saints ... makes the covenant of marriage to hold for time and for all eternity ... [that] is, the covenant of marriage holds good through time and will be in effect and of binding force in and after the resurrection.

In other words this marriage system regards man as enduring eternally, and formulates his marriage covenants in harmony with that view of him. Of course this contemplates the continuation of the marriage state in eternity. Not only the spiritual and intellectual companionship, but all the relations of the wedded state, with the joys of parentage-- "the power of endless lives," being among the means of man's exaltation and glory.

... [This] ... view of marriage ... throws a new light upon man's future existence. It destroys the vagueness which through nearly all ages has hidden the glory and exaltation destined for man in the future eternities of God. ...

[The] revelation of God to Joseph Smith ... held out to man the hope of a tangible, future existence in a resurrected, immortal body of flesh and bones quickened by the spirit, and clothed with the glory of an immortal youth. The future life was to be a reality, not merely a land of phantoms; man's heavenly home was to be upon the earth, after the earth had become sanctified and made a celestial sphere. His relations with his kindred and friends were to be of a nature to satisfy the longings of the human heart for society, for fellowship; and needed only the revelation of this marriage system to complete the circle of his promised future felicity.

For grant to man in his resurrected state a real, tangible existence; an immortal youth that knows no pain or sickness or disease; the power to hive knowledge and wisdom as the centuries, the millenniums and eternity roll by; grant him power to build and inhabit; to love and be loved; and add to that the associations of superior intelligences and the power of endless lives--the power and privilege to perpetuate his race under an eternal marriage covenant--grant this, and the future happiness, exultation and glory of man stands revealed as being absolutely without limitations, and far greater and beyond in majesty anything within his power to conceive in his present state of development.