Teachings of the Presidents of the Church Chapter 18. Beyond the Veil: Life in the Eternities

Beyond the Veil: Life in the Eternities

Attention Activity
Tell the class to imagine that they have been asked to prepare dinner for the president or leader of the country. That leader will be arriving in four hours. Ask, “What are the major things that you would be worried about? How would you feel knowing that the leader has a personal chef that prepares exceptional food everyday? What would you say when the leader of the country says that the meal was wonderful? What do you think that the leader of the country expects from your dinner? (Try to help the class understand that the most important thing would be to simply do the best that you could do.) How would you feel if instead of preparations you sat and watched TV and microwaved hot dogs instead? Even if the president said that it was good, how would you feel? (Once again help the class understand that you simply have to do your best.)

Class Discussion
Today’s lesson is very similar to the situation with the leader of the nation. Have students look at the 1st paragraph on page 219 under the heading “God has prepared three degrees of glory…” to find out what event is similar to the dinner with the president. (If you want to go further to show that the doctrine of 3 degrees of glory is a Bible doctrine you can look at other paragraphs in this section where Joseph quotes the Bible to show some of the scriptural basis for this doctrine. If that isn’t a theme you want to pursue, move on after the first paragraph.) Split the class into 3 groups and assign each group a section to skim over. One group is the Celestial Kingdom, one is the Terrestrial Kingdom and one is the Telestial Kingdom. (You want to spend some time here, but make sure that you leave enough time for the final section because that is where the real power and application can come from. Unless there are some real questions from the class about any of the sections, and then let the Spirit dictate how much time to spend answering potential questions.) Tell each group to skim over the section that they are assigned and be ready to share a few points that summarize what qualifies a person to go to each kingdom. Take a few minutes to get a couple ideas from each group. After each kingdom has been discussed, you can tie things back to the attention activity. In the celestial kingdom section 2nd paragraph on page 221 it says that to be in the celestial kingdom we have to qualify to be a god. “How can we possibly live up to that? What is it that God expect of us?”
Have the class turn to page 224 2nd paragraph in the section “The torment of the wicked is to know they have come short…” to find out what the answer is. This is the best paragraph in this section, but all can be used to help teach the point that what God expects is that we do our best. What will condemn us in the next life is if we haven’t done our very best. Just like with the hot dogs, we will know for eternity that we could have done better, and we simply didn’t. We wasted our time watching TV instead of preparing for the great event.

Application
Ask class member, “What type of things do we need to do to make sure that we don’t face the sad situation described by Joseph Smith? How do we make sure we are fully living up to our potential?”