How The Pearl of Great Price Holds the Solution to the LGBT+ Issue in the Church

Recently I had lunch with my last companion from my mission. As we caught up he told me about how his dad is now the Bishop of the ward he grew up in and how they just had a pioneer stock family leave the Church as they had a son who was gay. He explained that his dad had done everything he could to be an ally and inclusive yet they still left because there were lines he was unable to cross.

We talked for nearly an hour about the LGBT+ issues that members are facing within the Church and how the apostles have handled it. I explained how the Pearl of Great Price could be used to solve the issues we are facing. In the end, he said he had never had anyone explain the Church’s stance is the way it is, and he told me “You gotta write this up.” So here are the main points and highlights of how The Pearl of Great Price holds the solution to the LGBT+ Issue in the Church.

The Pearl of Great Price teaches us how to be “true to our authentic self”

One of the most repeated phrases around the LGBT+ movement is “I am being true to my authentic self.” They infer or flat-out say that your authentic self is your sexual orientation. And the only way to be true to it is to act out your sexual orientation. Furthermore, they claim that to tell someone not to act on their desires is to ‘do them harm.’ In essence, they believe we are sexual creatures and that we can be boiled down to that sexual desire. And that is the root of who we are. Hence why things like the Law of Chastity being taught are considered hate speech to this group.

The Pearl of Great Price destroys this false ideology. From Abraham 3 and Moses 1 we learn that we are children of God. Gods in embryo. Furthermore, we learn that God presented us with a plan to help us become like Him, ie to reach godhood. We all joyfully accepted and agreed to this plan. Not only that, we fought for it. Now that we are here on earth, the only way to be true to our real authentic self is to be true to the plan that our authentic self fought for.

This is not my opinion, this is what has been taught by the prophets and apostles. Jeffrey R. Holland taught, “What we “really are” is embryonic Gods, and surely this world is trying to make us forget that, make us pursue something else. It does not take a theologian to recognize that anything else will be a tragic disappointment in the strictest prophetic as well as Aristotelian sense.” Or M. Russell Ballard when in 2019 he taught, “This is who you and I really are and who you have always been: a son or daughter of God, with spiritual roots in eternity and a future overflowing with infinite possibilities. You are—first, foremost, and always—a spiritual being. And so when we choose to put our carnal nature ahead of our spiritual nature, we are choosing something that is contrary to our real, true, authentic spiritual selves.”

God’s goal is to help each of us obtain eternal life

Moses 1:39 teaches that God’s work and glory is “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” As Satan is the antithesis of God, his work and glory could be summarized as “to bring to pass the spiritual death and eternal damnation of man.”

Immortality for all mankind was obtained when Christ conquered death that first Easter Morning. But eternal life is something more, whereas the vast majority of Christianity use the terms salvation, exaltation, and eternal life interchangeably, in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we understand that salvation is merely entering into a Kingdom of Glory and that exaltation or eternal life is obtaining the highest degree of glory within the Celestial Kingdom. We understand that Temple Marriage is the covenant that enables exaltation. If you asked most members to define exaltation they would say it is to obtain godhood.

Now, this is where things go off the rails with the LGBT+ movement. Many in the Church who advocate for the Church to accept gay marriage see Temple Marriage between a man and a woman as being exclusionary towards LGBT+ couples. To them, Temple Marriage is merely a ticket to be punched on the pathway to eternal life. The Church denying same-sex couples this ordinance is homophobic and wrong. They, members in the LGBT+ movement, advocate and even some professors at BYU preach, that there will be a revelation allowing same-sex couples to get sealed in the temples.

But there is a MASSIVE issue with this, they don’t understand what eternal life is. Godhood is not merely being omniscient or omnipotent. Godhood is not about being able to create worlds or merely ‘become like God.’ The essence of Godhood is parenthood. The KEY difference between those who are saved in the celestial kingdom and those who are exalted in the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom is that ONLY those who are exalted can have children. In the words of Ezra Taft Benson, “exaltation is eternal fatherhood and eternal motherhood.” In D&C 132:15-17 we learn that those who are not exalted are “appointed angels in heaven, which angels are ministering servants, to minister for those who are worthy of a far more, and an exceeding, and an eternal weight of glory.” and that “they cannot be enlarged, but remain separately and singly, without exaltation, in their saved condition, to all eternity; and from henceforth are not gods, but are angels of God forever and ever.”

The TRUE understanding of what Exaltation is is VITAL to combat Satanic counterfeits and movements regarding marriage. Temple Marriage is not merely the ‘last punch’ in the ticket we need to be exalted, Temple Marriage is actually the beginning of exaltation itself. It is the joining together of a man and woman to form a new eternal unit. If we keep our sealing covenants the family unit we start on earth is but merely continued into eternity with exaltation. Therefore, Exaltation/Eternal Life/Godhood is becoming like our Heavenly Parents, who are in a heterosexual eternal union of Husband and Wife, God and Goddess, Heavenly Mother and Heavenly Father, whose purpose and glory revolves around having children and helping exalt them.

Godhood is what every single one of us desired, fought for, and supported in the pre-existence. We don’t need a new gospel to be more inclusive, we already have the perfect gospel plan, we just need to do a better job at teaching it! Regardless of our temporary sexual orientation, we are eternal beings with the potential, and desire, to become like God. Ours is the job to live worthy to receive all the blessings of the temple when the opportunity comes. And regardless of our sexual orientation, for some, that blessing will come quickly in their youth, for others later in life, and for some, like many faithful straight single sisters and same-sex attracted brothers and sisters, that opportunity might not come until the millennium, but we are promised, it will come.

The real battle has very little to do with sexual orientation.

The real battle being waged has actually almost nothing to do with sexual orientation. Now, before I can explain I need to make something clear: When I reference “the LGBT+ movement” I am not talking about your friends and family who experience same-sex attraction. I am talking about the movement. With that context we can continue:

What are the first two commandments that God gave to Moses? That He was our God, and NOTHING should come before Him. What have our prophets and apostles repeatedly taught regarding our identity? That we are Children of God and that we are not defined by our orientation. Elder David A. Bednar taught this exact concept when he said, “There are no homosexual members of the Church. We are not defined by sexual attraction. We are not defined by sexual behavior. We are sons and daughters of God.” This is VITAL to understanding the real battle. If we cede the status of Child of God we have lost the war no matter how the battle might turn out.

Yet the LGBT+ movement teaches that we are our sexual orientation. The world demands that we label ourselves by our gender pronouns and our orientation. The LGBT+ movement seeks to replace God and our relationship with him with our sexual orientation. Just as the idolatry of old sacrificed children to false gods, so too must we sacrifice our status as a child of God to appease the pagan gods of wokeness. And they must do this, for to allow the idea to exist that we are Children of God is to acknowledge that we have divine potential, the potential for Godhood.

No wonder when the apostles preach that we are all Children of God and to be ‘true to our authentic self’ we must put off the natural man regardless of our attraction, those pushing the LGBT+ movement become irate. When the divine nature of man is taught we are preaching against their god of carnal sexual desires. Our doctrine is fundamentally incompatible with the LGBT+ movement that seeks to identify us as anything other than our true and authentic selves, ie Children of God.

“Most important, each of us is a child of God with a potential destiny of eternal life. Every other label, even including occupation, race, physical characteristics [sexual orientation], or honors, is temporary or trivial in eternal terms. Don’t choose to label yourselves or think of yourselves in terms that put a limit on a goal for which you might strive.”
Dallin H. Oaks, “Where Will This Lead?” April 2019.

The Pearl of Great Price exposes Satan’s tactics

Satan’s tactic from the beginning has been to supplant our relationship as Children of God with something less! In the Pearl of Great Price, we learn that God revealed Himself to Moses and outlined that Moses was His son. And What did Satan do? The very first thing he attempted to do was replace God with something else. In Moses 1:12-13, we read that “Satan came tempting him, saying: Moses, son of man, worship me. And it came to pass that Moses looked upon Satan and said: Who art thou? For behold, I am a son of God,” This same tactic is used today, just with different labels. When the LGBT+ movement tries to label everyone as gay, lesbian, transgender, cisgender, etc, they are trying to put that first before God.

Satan seeks to destroy the powers of prayer which are our lifelines of communication with God by replacing our relationship with Heavenly Father with anything else. He does this by getting us to identify as anything other than as Children of God. How is prayer and being a child of God connected? The Bible Dictionary has the following entry about prayer: “As soon as we learn the true relationship in which we stand toward God (namely, God is our Father, and we are His children), then at once prayer becomes natural and instinctive on our part (Matt. 7:7–11). Many of the so-called difficulties about prayer arise from forgetting this relationship.”

Satan’s goal is to get us to forget or forsake our relationship with God. This breaks the lines of communication, and God’s heart. It literally causes God to weep. In Moses 7:28-31, Enoch details seeing God weeping. Enoch is shocked and he asks God how and why is He weeping??? In verses 32-33 God replies: “Behold these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands… And unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood;” How can we reject our Father, His gospel, and the Atonement of Christ who died to enable our exaltation and not make God and the heavens weep? And if God and the heavens weep, then surely the earthly mouthpieces of God will issue a call to repentance.

Conclusion

Sooner or later every single one of us will stand before the judgment bar of God. We will remember who we really are, and we will have to account for how we spent our second estate. Did we assist God in His work and glory? Or did we help Satan with this work and glory? If we use the scriptures, especially those found in the Pearl of Great Price we will be able to detect and reject Satan’s attempts to dissuade us from loyally to our authentic selves, our God, and His plan of Exaltation. I can not think of a better way to close than to share this quote from President Benson:

A few years ago, we knew our Elder Brother and our Father in heaven well. We rejoiced at the upcoming opportunity for earth life that could make it possible for us to have a fullness of joy like they had. We could hardly wait to demonstrate to our Father and our Brother, the Lord, how much we loved them and how we would be obedient to them in spite of the earthly opposition of the evil one.

And now we’re here—our memories are veiled—and we’re showing God and ourselves what we can do. And nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father and how familiar his face is to us. And then, as President Brigham Young said, we’re going to wonder why we were so stupid in the flesh.

God loves us. He’s watching us, he wants us to succeed, and we’ll know someday that he has not left one thing undone for the eternal welfare of each of us. If we only knew it, there are heavenly hosts pulling for us—friends in heaven that we can’t remember now, who yearn for our victory. This is our day to show what we can do—what life and sacrifice we can daily, hourly, instantly bring to God. If we give our all, we will get his all from the greatest of all.

Ezra Taft Benson Ensign, July 1975

If you liked this article you will love these other articles on LGBT+ issues: 10 tips to be better disciples and love our LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters and The Lie About Loving the LGBTQ+ Community That Many Latter-day Saints Are Believing

10 tips to be better disciples and love our LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters.

The Lie About Loving the LGBTQ+ Community That Many Latter-day Saints Are Believing