Women Need Their Husbands to be saved?

Before making my mind up to officially leave the Mormon Church for good I committed much of my time investigating many of the old concerns or a question I had about the Church’s doctrine in the past. I Googled every tidbit of Mormonism that left a bad taste in my mouth, or a lingering question in my mind. Some of the resources I read were as the Mormons would say “anti-Mormon”, and others were from official Mormon publications, but the most damning information about the Church’s doctrine came from the Bible.

As I was doing my research I was thinking about all I had been taught as a Mormon, I thought about the missionary discussions, my baptism, and about my first experience in the Mormon Temple. After the endowment ceremony was completed we were instructed to come forward to the veil (a curtain hanging from ceiling to floor), when I first approached the veil I was aware that my husband was behind it.

As I heard his voice through the veil, he reached through and took my hand and led me to the Celestial room. At the time I didn’t know this part of the ceremony was an assimilation of what would happen when he called me out of the grave in my resurrected body, and would led me to God’s presence.

I was so caught up in trying to remember all the things I learned from the temple ceremony and trying to drink the whole scene in it never crossed my mind that I just learned I would need to have my husband’s acceptance to live in the presence of God.

My research confirmed what I had learned previously in the temple; a Mormon woman needed her husband’s acceptance to become his goddess wife, to be exalted, and to be his female counterpart when he becomes a god of his own world.

Mormonism teaches of the importance for couples to be married and sealed in the Mormon temple. This doctrine is especially important for the women, considering they must have a male priesthood holder to accompany them into the highest level of the Celestial Kingdom.

Mormon Apostle Erastus Snow preached Mormon women must keep themselves “worthy” to have a husband, if not they may be received as a servant by someone else.

“Do the women, when they pray, remember their husbands? Do you uphold your husband before God as your lord? What!-my husband to be my lord? I ask, Can you get into the celestial kingdom without him? Have any of you been there? You will remember that you never go into the celestial kingdom (during the temple ceremony) without the aid of your husband. If you did, it was because your husband was away, and some one had to act proxy for him. No woman will get into the celestial kingdom, except her husband receives her, if she is worthy to have a husband; and if not, somebody will receive her as a servant” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 5, p 291)

When Mormons go through the endowment ceremony for the first time they are given a “new name” and it’s with this new name a Mormon man will “call” is wife from the grave. Knowing they must do their best to be the best wife and mother, all the while keeping themselves worthy and unspotted puts an incredible amount of pressure on the women.

In her Oct 2007 General Conference talk Julie B. Beck gave just a small taste of the pressures Mormon women go through to become acceptable as a goddess wife to their husbands and mother of their spirit children in eternity.

Knowing this it would be no surprise to hear that many women worry if they are doing all they can to be their very best, having “prefect obedience” and faith to the laws and ordinances of the Mormon gospel. I know I worried about my standing as a Mormon wife and mother and never really sharing my feelings knowing I would be told I had to just keep trying to live the gospel the best I could, hardly words of encouragement.

As a Christian I know that women don’t have to hope and pray their husbands will find favor in them and take them to meet God. To say that a woman needs her husband to call her from the grave, to save her, and to resurrect her is blasphemy plain and simple.

In John 5:25 Jesus said- “Verily, verily I say unto you. The hour is coming, and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.”

1 Corinthians 15:52-“In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”

Psalm 49:7 reads- “None of them can by any means redeem his brother, not gave to God a ransom for him.”

Those of us who are saved will hear the Lord’s voice. Jesus purchased us with his blood if we’ve put our trust in him for our salvation we belong to him. Only he has that right to redeem us and to call us forward to meet him. If the Mormon women could just have trust and faith in Jesus Christ they would see this doctrine to be the false teaching it is.

Jesus’ love and atonement is more powerful than any counterfeit Mormon priesthood that has no power over the will and laws of God.

In John 14:6, Jesus says that “no man cometh unto the Father except, but by me”. We do not need the Mormon priesthood, our husbands, or prophets to intercede for us. We can go straight to Jesus whether it’s in prayer or when we die. There should be no one coming between us and our Savior. I pray the Mormon women learn this before it’s too late for them.

Melissa Grimes

melissa@lifeafter.org

1.October 2007 General Conference – Mothers Who Know by Julie B. Beck – http://lds.org/general-conference/2007/10/mothers-who-know?lang=eng

Bishops and Young Women in the Ward

Throughout my life as a Mormon I served in many areas of the Church. However, the one place I spent most of my time was in the Young Women’s program. I served as a counselor to the president and then as a Young Women’s president.

Being a teenager at heart helped me to really enjoy serving in this area of the Church. I liked hanging out with the girls, and teaching them the things I believed then would lead them to happiness and exaltation. As I think back now on the times I spent with them I can’t help but feel a twinge of regret and heartache for teaching them what I know now to be false doctrines.

Yesterday I was looking over one of the manuals I taught from which is still in use today, all I could do was shake my head at the things I was reading. In the Young Women’s Manual 2, Lesson 11: Appreciating the Bishop (page 41), I read;

“The bishop presides over every person in the ward and directs their local church activities. … All of your adolescent life you will be under the direction of the bishop. He will appoint teachers and supervisors to do his work, but he will be very much interested in your progress. Your life here will be constantly weighed by him, for he is the judge of your worthiness … to receive higher ordinances, and to be worthy to go to the Temple.” (S. Dilworth Young, More Precious than Rubies [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1959], pp. 40–41).”

At this point I had to stop reading. I began asking myself questions, and wondering why a man who wasn’t the young girls father, or legal guardian would be allowed to have so much authority over her, authority which doesn’t even belong to him? It’s the parents who have the God given right and authority to direct, teach, and guide their children on the correct path. As we read in Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it”

In Mormonism the bishop is believed to be the judge of not only her worthiness, but every single member he presides over. He also calls her in for yearly interviews to weigh and measure her life, and above all to make sure she is remaining pure and chaste. I can’t imagine how this would play on the mind of a young woman.

To believe this man who sits behind the desk before her has the power to judge whether or not she is worthy enough in his eyes to attend the temple. To believe he holds her salvation in his hands and can yank it away anytime he chooses to without provocation. What this man is doing is attempting to rob Jesus of his authority.

Jesus is the only one who has the authority to judge us. Once we have accepted him we belong to him, and no one can snatch us from his hand (John 10:29).

These girls are taught at a very young age before they enter the Young Women’s program how the temple is the ultimate goal for any good, and worthy Mormon. In Young Women’s program this goal is expounded upon even more in their lessons. They dangle the temple in front of the girls as if it were a carrot, in hopes of directing them on the path the church wants them to go on. In turn teaching them they can’t function without the approval of bishop, or another mortal man.

Teaching these girls that their worthiness is determined by a man and not Jesus Christ is very offensive to me. Mormonism begins at a very early age teaching women to be subservient to men, because he is the one who will judge her. This continues on to her adult life when she learns it’s her husband who will call her from her grave, if he is pleased with her at the second coming.

I truly pray for all the young women and men in Mormon chapels all over the world, I pray they will learn the truth. I pray a Christian friend will have the courage to witness to them of God’s love for them, of his son Jesus Christ, and how only he has the right to judge one’s worthiness.

In Christ,

Melissa Grimes