Some of you are realizing that not only has your once huge genealogy chart turned into an inverted pyramid, but you may just be the last descendant of the family, or the last carrying the rare name.
If you're reading this blog, ANCESTRY WORSHIP -GENEALOGY, you may also be thinking about or in the process of documenting the family you're from, as that last member.
Some thoughts on this.
A man who knows not much about the Latter Day Saints, said to me "And every man gets his own planet or something."
I said that was my understanding too. The man and his wife, and all their descendants. But think about this. The Latter Day Saints may have a certain cosmology in place when they envision the after earth life in eternity, but they also know how family charts connect, and so really this is a vision of a connected membership of their church in the after life. And they are interested in collecting the work of non-members because these also connect to LDS families and provide opportunities for more Ordinances to be done.
(My understanding is that by uploading your information to their databases, THEY ARE CLAIMING COPYRIGHT. If this is true, well, I don't like it. It challenges the notion that everyone whose name appears on a chart or who can be connected to dead persons don't mind their privacy being invaded.)
What I'm getting at is it might turn out that there are some living persons who you are connected to as family who aren't in your pyramid at all, inverted or upright. I can't say that you'll find them through any means and that they'll welcome you to visit. I have met people who were invited to family reunions after connecting due to genealogy. (There are even family reunions for people with certain surnames, related or not.)
Soon after talking to this man with the idea that every LDS man gets a planet, I attended a Fundamentalist Christian Bible Study with a new friend. There people at the Bible Study were talking about End Times and the Rapture. The group leader was asked a lot of questions. One person asked, "And we'll all be naked?" The group leader said, "We'll be like Adam and Eve again." She meant before the fall, when they themselves didn't notice or care about nakedness or feel any body shame. My answer was that a person in the After Life (I'm assuming heaven) would be in their Spirit Body was not well received. Probably the term "Spirit Body" was a bit New Age for this group. When asked "Will we recognize each other?" the group leader said, "Yes, but we won't be MARRIED anymore."
Instead we'll all be united with God.
So, here is where the Latter Day Saints vision is different. In LDS afterlife you are still married if Sealed to the same spouse you have. You will be with your family.
Frankly, I like the idea that you could perhaps want to go it alone after a long earthly marriage, and you could choose to. I also like the idea that you will be you. And recognize your friends. At least at first, until you move on to a "higher plane" of heaven. As a society we are just getting used to the frequent occurrence of Near Death Experiences and trying on the notion of Past Life Regression. We can only say that a person has been to heaven - and back - if they tell us how it went.
I'm fascinated by it all.
C 2018 Ancestry Worship Genealogy BlogSpot
This post has been edited July 2019.
