For the Family
Marriages on Earth and in Heaven
by the Rev. Erik E. Sandstrom
Lessons: Deuteronomy 22:23-26; Mark 12:18-27; Conjugial Love 41
"For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven..." (Mark 12:25).
It seems like the Lord is saying that they do not marry in heaven. What He means is that the idea of eternal marriage in heaven, after death, where one man and one woman live as husband and wife forever, was dead on earth. People no longer knew about eternal marriage in heaven.
What people did not know was that marriage begins here on earth and continues in heaven. That means that you can fall in love and marry someone here, and you will be together with that person, forever, as angels in heaven. We start our eternal life here as people on earth and continue forever, as angels in heaven. That means that we have to live by the Lord's commandments, since the only way we love the Lord is by keeping His Commandments. As He said, "He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me" (John 14:21).
So when the Lord said to the Sadducees that in "heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage," He means that marriage in heaven starts here on earth. But, of course, we know some people do not find anyone to marry on earth. Can they be married in heaven?
Certainly, they can. The marriage they want is already started if they love both what is good and what is right. Good and right, or good and truth, both come from the Lord, and they are married or conjoined in just one person. If you love what is good and like to speak what is right, then that is a marriage inside you, from the Lord. And if you have this marriage inside you, you can be led by the Lord to become an angel of heaven.
All angels of heaven are men and women who have died. No angel ever came into existence without first being born as a baby here on earth. And each birth on earth is a new creation, for a new individual is created with the only purpose that he or she may grow up, learn to obey the Lord, live a happy and productive life on earth, find a marriage partner, raise a family, and after death take his or her place in the Lord's kingdom. There people live to eternity, still performing the same happy and productive activities that they did on earth.
And if you never find anyone here on earth-never fall in love-but still love what is good and right, just and fair, then you will meet the person you could have met here on earth, but after death instead. You can laugh about how close you came to meeting on earth, or maybe you even did meet, but did not find out you could be married at that time. So if someone (a good person) has not been married on earth, he or she can be married after death. This is because he or she had started being married on earth. The Lord's marriage of good and truth, of what is just and fair, was already in that person while on earth.
But we can, of course, be married before we die. And that is one purpose of life: to find a partner to marry. It is wonderful when two people meet and fall in love, and want to marry and have a family. Marriage is a happy celebration. In a wedding we come to the Lord carefully, in church, with a minister making sure everything is done the right way. Then there are happy talks, songs and dances, and children playing. A wedding feast is a picture of heaven. "Heaven is like a wedding feast," the Lord said in a parable. And there is really nothing happier than a wedding-except a husband and a wife staying married forever, as angels in heaven.
A husband and a wife in heaven become one soul. That is what the Lord meant when He said, "they shall be one flesh." They feel united, and happier every day, forever. That is what marriage can be for us, when we turn to the Lord and keep His commandments. We can forever be "as angels of God in heaven."
Amen.
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