Scary News From My Teacher

So, yet again, we were sitting in relgion class (second half of New Testiment) and the subject of foreordination/predestination came up. I asked the simple yet LOADED question of, “In our notes and our readings we can agree that it’s somewhat accepted that every single member of our church was foreordained to be a member. However, do we know if there are any other times where people are foreordained to do something more than just be a member of the church?” My teacher’s answer was that the only times that we hear anything about foreordination or anything along those lines deal with either 1) the entire family of Israel being a chosen people and are really loose or 2) only worry about leaders, prophets, or important people. He pretty much said that there isn’t any foreordination thrown onto normal people, how that only leaders and other people that are super important and have major rolls to play, have to worry about any sort of foreordination. Fun, right?

It only gets better, after class I go to the head of the class and say to him that lately I've been having discussions with others about this topic and how that we couldn't agree if foreordination was a common thing that everyone gets or that it was a small selected group of people.

This was his view of it.

We learn that everyone who has the priesthood is said to have been foreordained. However there's a problem with this. the problem is that that's saying that EVERYONE is foreordained because as soon as we start talking about work for the dead, we start including EVERYONE. This is a minor problem. He says that this is sort of what it means that many are called but few are chosen. Everyone is called and given the opportunity of given the priesthood, but only a few are chosen to be the foreordained. His views were that foreordination is only for a few. How that scriptually speaking there are only a few people that have the title of being foreordained, and that it is a rare case reserved for only a few select people. That He gave a few people have special things going for them.

The fun part comes when we include the all knowing God aspect. My teacher then went on to ask, what would happen had Abraham or Joseph Smith not done their job? They still had their free will, but did they? He pretty much said that people with foreordination have one of two options, either 1) son/daughter of predition 2)exaltation. There isn't any middle ground as he put it. You either make it, or you fail.

Hope that makes your day a little happier and a little brighter.