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Dear Gramps, In your answers I read a couple of times that when worthy sisters do not have a chance to marry while on earth they will have that blessing in the millennium. I always believed I was the one to be sitting at the altar. Now I hear that mortals are going to do it for me, and to be honest I really don’t like that idea at all. I have been looking forward to that event since I was a child, it’s sad enough I never had a chance here, but to still not be able to sit at the altar with my new husband to be is pretty disappointing!!! At the same time another question is popping up. If we, resurrected people are not able to do temple work what are we to do there for thousand years, knit socks?? Winnifred, from Europe

Dear Winnifred,

Let me quote from President Joseph Fielding Smith.

“Will resurrected beings during the millennium actually take part in the endowment work of the temple along with mortal beings? The answer to this question is no! That is, they will not assist in performing the ordinances. Resurrected beings will assist in furnishing information, which is not otherwise available, but mortals will have to do the ordinance work in the temples. Baptism, confirmation, ordination, endowment, and sealings all pertain to this mortal life and are ordinances required of those who are in mortality. Provision has been made for these ordinances to be performed vicariously for those who are worthy but who died without the opportunity in this life of receiving these ordinances in person” (Doctrines of Salvation, Vol.2, p.178).

Now about knitting socks— The sealing of husband to wife in the temple takes about five minutes. There will very possibly be many more resurrected beings than mortals living on the earth during the millennium, and I imagine that there will be plenty to do to keep them all busy doing the work of the Lord. We know very little about the particular activities and assignments that resurrected people will have during the millennium, but surely one of them will be, as President Smith said above, to help identify and gather the records of all the people who didn’t have the opportunity to receive the gospel on the earth, but afterwards received it so that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit D&C 138:10.

Gramps