Question about the Law of Translated Beings

Question: How is the law translated beings observe different from that of other celestial people?

Answer: While all celestial persons such as God’s elect keep a celestial law, some do so on a higher spiritual level than others. What set the three Nephite disciples of Jesus who inherited the Father’s kingdom apart from the nine who went to Jesus’ kingdom was their desire to “bring the souls of men unto me, while the world shall stand” (3 Nephi 28:9; cf. vv 3, 8). That was also “the thing which John, my beloved, who was with me in my ministry, before that I was lifted up by the Jews, desired of me” (3 Nephi 28:6)—John similarly being translated.

This was likewise the desire of Alma who—after a long and difficult ministry in the flesh—was evidently translated: “When Alma had done this he departed out of the land of Zarahemla, as if to go into the land of Melek. And it came to pass that he was never heard of more; as to his death or burial we know not of. Behold, this we know, that he was a righteous man; and the saying went abroad in the church that he was taken up by the Spirit” (Alma 45:18–19).

Didn’t Alma express his desire to bring souls to Jesus so long as the world shall stand when he exclaimed, “O that I were an angel, and could have the wish of mine heart, that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with a voice to shake the earth, and cry repentance unto every people!” (Alma 29:1)? That kind of universal ministry—beyond a person’s home environment—is precisely the ministry of translated beings such as the 144,000 end-time servants of God:

“What are we to understand by sealing the one hundred and forty-four thousand, out of all the tribes of Israel—twelve thousand out of every tribe? A. We are to understand that those who are sealed are high priests, ordained unto the holy order of God, to administer the everlasting gospel; for they are they who are ordained out of every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, by the angels to whom is given power over the nations of the earth, to bring as many as will come to the church of the Firstborn” (Doctrine & Covenants 77:11)—the Church of the Firstborn being God’s elect (cf. Matthew 24:31).

The laws of God that (1) his elect, (2) translated beings, and (3) the Savior himself obey all follow the principle of proxy salvation pertaining to the Davidic Covenant in which a person ministers as a savior to others. The difference is that God’s elect keep the terms of the Davidic Covenant on a local level—as within their own families or circle of friends—while translated beings keep these terms on a worldwide level, and Christ on a universal level. The kind of proxy salvation pertaining to these three levels thus varies accordingly: the first consists of physical protection, the second of divine intervention, and the third of spiritual salvation from sin.