The issue of celestial marriage began with D&C section 132 where polygamy was first introduced as a doctrine. Ex-Mormon author Ed Decker has a good explanation: “The key to meriting the highest degree of glory within the celestial grouping is the ability to procreate. In each case, it will be one man and as many wives as possible to advance the massive numbers of offspring necessary to people that new man/god’s future world, over which he will be the god. Obviously, he will be very busy raising up his ‘increase.’ Remember that while each woman must be just as pure and worthy as each man, the power and authority and rights of godhood rest with the man, not the woman. One point that might help clarify the situation is that, even today, many single LDS women are sealed to LDS leaders to be their wives in the next stage of eternal progression. Many of them do this in order not to be a servant (unmarried) in the celestial kingdom. It must be a real hardship to have done everything else so perfectly to be awarded a place in the celestial glory, yet fail in that one major area of marriage and have to sit out eternity on the sidelines.” (Complete Handbook on Mormonism, p.129 )
Mormon Bruce R. McConkie goes into much more detail: “Marriages performed in the temples for time and eternity, by virtue of the sealing keys restored by Elijah, are called celestial marriages. The participating parties become husband and wife in this mortal life, and if after their marriage they keep all the terms and conditions of this order of the priesthood, they continue on as husband and wife in the celestial kingdom of God. If the family unit continues, then by virtue of that fact the members of the family have gained eternal life (exaltation), the greatest of all the gifts of God, for by definition exaltation consists in the continuation of the family unit in eternity. Those so inheriting are the sons and daughters of God, the members of his family, those who have made their callings and elections sure, They are joint-heirs with Christ to all that the Father hath, and they receive the fulness of the glory of the Father, becoming gods in their own right. (D. & C. 132; Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 2, pp. 58-99.) Baptism is the gate to the celestial kingdom; celestial marriage is the gate to an exaltation in the highest heaven within the celestial world. (D. & C. 131:1-4.) To gain salvation after baptism it is necessary to keep the commandments of God and endure to the end (2 Ne. 31:17-21); to gain exaltation after celestial marriage the same continued devotion and righteousness is required. Those who have been married in the temples for eternity know that the ceremony itself expressly conditions the receipt of all promised blessings upon the subsequent faithfulness of the husband and wife…. Celestial marriage is a holy and an eternal ordinance; as an order of the priesthood, it has the name the new and everlasting covenant of marriage. Adam was the first one on this earth to enter into this type of union, and it has been the Lord's order in all ages when the fulness of the gospel has been on earth. Its importance in the plan of salvation and exaltation cannot be overestimated. The most important things that any member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ever does in this world are: 1. To marry the right person, in the right place, by the right authority; and 2. To keep the covenant made in connection with this holy and perfect order of matrimony — thus assuring the obedient persons of an inheritance of exaltation in the celestial kingdom.” (Mormon Doctrine, 2d ed. [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1966], 118.)
Fawn Brodie’s excellent study of Joseph Smith explains what this entails: “The temple mysteries were closely bound up with Joseph's new theories about the nature of heaven and hell. After death, he said, all souls went to the world of spirits...where they remained in a not unpleasant imprisonment until the Judgment Day. Only those who had joined the true church could clamber immediately up the road to godhood. Those who had missed the chance to hear the gospel on earth could be freed from the world of spirits by the good offices of any Mormon. To liberate a dead relative or friend one simply acted as proxy in the ordinances of baptism and ‘sealing.’ In this manner not only relatives but also all the heroic figures of the past could be released from spiritual bondage, and every Mormon was granted the opportunity of going through the oddly exciting temple ritual not once but hundreds of times.” (No Man Knows My History, p.282)
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The idea of celestial marriage rests on the assumption that marriage is not a temporary earthly covenant but the engine of eternal progression, a mechanism through which exalted beings reproduce spirit offspring and populate future worlds. This turns marriage into a cosmic requirement rather than a gift of companionship. It also assumes that the highest form of salvation depends on marital status and reproductive capacity, which is foreign to the biblical vision of redemption. Scripture presents marriage as a temporal union grounded in creation, not as an eternal system of divine reproduction. When Jesus was asked directly about marriage in the resurrection, He did not hint at eternal unions or exalted families but stated plainly that resurrected life is not structured around marriage at all. His answer dismantles the entire premise of celestial marriage by removing marriage from the eternal order altogether. If marriage does not continue in the resurrection, then no eternal hierarchy, no exalted lineage, and no reproductive destiny can be built upon it.
The deeper problem is that celestial marriage assumes a universe in which salvation is not the restoration of fellowship with God but the ascent to godhood through ritual progression. Marriage becomes a requirement for deification, and the family becomes the machinery of eternal increase. This is not an extension of biblical teaching but a replacement of it. The New Testament never presents salvation as a ladder of ordinances or a system of eternal reproduction. It presents salvation as union with Christ, not as the continuation of earthly structures into eternity. The LDS system depends on the very thing Jesus denies: the persistence of marriage beyond death.
The doctrine of baptism for the dead follows the same pattern of expanding a single obscure reference into an elaborate system of postmortem salvation. The entire structure rests on a passing remark in a letter where the writer does not endorse the practice, explain it, or connect it to Christian life. The LDS interpretation assumes that the early church practiced proxy baptism, yet no historical evidence supports this. The New Testament consistently teaches that the decisive moment of accountability is death, not a later ritual performed by the living. When Scripture says that humans die once and then face judgment, it closes the door on the idea of a second chance mediated through temple rites. The LDS doctrine reopens that door by creating a vast spiritual bureaucracy in which the living perform endless ordinances to alter the fate of the dead. This shifts the focus from Christ’s finished work to human ritual activity and from personal faith to vicarious ceremony.
Both doctrines share a common flaw: they redefine salvation as something achieved through systems, structures, and ordinances rather than through the grace of God revealed in Christ. They assume that eternity operates on the same terms as mortality, with marriages, genealogies, rituals, and administrative processes continuing forever. The biblical vision is the opposite. Eternity is not an extension of earthly institutions but a transformation of human existence in the presence of God. When Scripture speaks of the resurrection, it speaks of a life in which earthly categories no longer define identity or destiny. The LDS system depends on those categories remaining intact. The biblical gospel depends on them being surpassed.
My more simple explanation is intended for easy understanding, and was originally part of an apologetics course for home-school high schoolers.
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