Wow! I have thoroughly enjoyed this past week doing a deep dive into learning about the true nature of heaven. I’m so grateful for the vision of heaven that the Prophet Joseph Smith recorded as Section 76 of the Doctrine and Covenants. That was the scripture reading assignment for this week of Come Follow Christ. I’m grateful because Joseph Smith learned that the true nature of heaven is much more liberal, generous, fair, welcoming, beautiful, marvelous, glorious, and wonderful than any human before him had ever known. We are so blessed to learn this. It’s all because Christ is so much more than people knew about before Joseph came along.

I watched several videos about all this as I multitasked to enrich my scripture study. They were all so marvelous!

My favorite was this one below with Jared Halverson. He said the most romantic thing about his wife ever. Oh my!

He said that after he married his wife, he told her basically the following:

“Dear, I’m sorry. I doubted your existence. I didn’t think that people like you existed in the world. So, I have to break it to you, honey. You’re not the girl of my dreams because I never dreamed that good.”

Isn’t that just the most amazing, most romantic line a husband could ever say to his wife? Swoon!!!! I heard this as I was driving home from grocery shopping. I almost had to pull over to the side of the road and calm my beating heart. It’s just so lovely!

Then Brother Halverson went on to say, “And to think that heaven is not the heaven of our dreams because our dreams fall short. It is greater than that because Christ is greater than that.”

In other words, Joseph learned in this vision in D&C 76 that heaven is grander than any apostle, saint, prophet, philosopher or writer had described or written about before.

Watch above. It’s all so good! This vision shows that before Joseph Smith revealed these words about heaven, man’s view of heaven was too small. Perhaps our view of heaven is still too small today. Reading Section 76 will definitely expand your view!

Then I watched the commentary of Sister Lili De Hoyos Anderson about the same section 76. It’s in two parts, above and below.

Then below we have the commentary of Farrell and Rhonda Pickering. They share the chiasmuses that are in Section 76 and how it all relates to the plan of salvation. It’s so amazing how God works in so many layers of patterns. It’s all so gloriously rich and beautiful. I’ve also included screenshots from their video.

They shared that the moon is more than 25K times brighter than the stars, and the sun is 398K times brighter than the stars. That helps us gain perspective of the glories of the different divisions of heaven. Even the stars have glory.

Below are more screenshots from the video. They show that the plan of salvation relates to the stars, the ancient tabernacle of Old Testament times, and the temples of today.

I’m so grateful to know that because of what Joseph Smith revealed in this vision, as well as with the vision of the dead that Joseph F. Smith beheld in D&C 138, that heaven allows space for all people who want to be there. It’s not as restrictive and small as people taught about for centuries, based on Jonathan Edwards’ sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” That sermon taught that only a select few will go to heaven. Neither is it as long in duration as Dante’s Inferno had led people to believe for even more centuries. At least for most of us. Only the sons of perdition will suffer hell eternally. Jared Halverson explains that those people are those who willfully choose not to accept Jesus, even after they have had the testimony burned into their hearts. He says that very few people are that evil. As I’ve heard before, it’s like staring into the sun and declaring that it’s not shining.

People who die without knowing anything about Jesus will have the chance to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ in the spirit world. As Doctrine and Covenants 138 teaches, they will have the chance to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and be baptized by proxy by those on earth. That is one reason why temples exist on the earth today.

Even people who are evil will receive a lower degree of heaven after they have repented and suffered in hell for a time. They won’t be in hell forever. They will be redeemed from hell after Jesus has finished His work, through the end of His Millennial reign. See D&C 76:81-86. They will receive a glory of heaven that is likened unto the glory of the stars.

To see the vision in poetic form, check out what William W. Phelps wrote here. Lynn Johnson explains the poetic parallelisms/chiasmuses of D&C 76 here.

Here are two more videos about “The Vision,” what Section 76 was commonly called when it was first publicized. The top one shows more the historical context of The Vision, including shots of the John and Elsa Johnson home where it took place, in Hiram Ohio. I’m so grateful we have this knowledge to inspire and comfort us. Heavenly Father, with His Son Jesus Christ, truly extend to us the perfect balance of mercy and justice, as seen by this plan of heaven. We can know this is true by the power of the Holy Ghost.

P.S. I just love this vision of heaven so much that I also blogged about it four years ago. Go over here to see what I shared with completely different videos.