Degrees of Glory

A vision divides the resurrected into three orders and names them by three lights already standing in Paul’s letter — sun, moon, stars. One of the three names appears nowhere in scripture before this vision.

What this page maps. Modern revelation, reported as the text gives it. D&C 76 is a first-person plural vision report — “We, Joseph Smith, Jun., and Sidney Rigdon, being in the Spirit” (D&C 76:11) — and the page attributes its statements to the vision account as the text frames them. The occasion, place, and circumstances of any section on this page are outside this wiki’s source text except where a verse states them; D&C 76:11 states its own date inside the verse, and that date is quoted here as verse text.

Standing disclosure — KJV-overlap material. This page reports verbal correspondence with the King James text as textual fact, including where the correspondence follows the KJV’s English translation. What that correspondence implies about the origin of the Doctrine and Covenants text — in any direction — is an external question outside this wiki’s scope.

Account

The word that had no prior carrier

Of the three names the vision uses, two are Paul’s and one is not. “terrestrial” stands at eleven frozen verses in the corpus — 1 Corinthians 15:40 and ten in the Doctrine and Covenants (76:71, 76:78, 76:80, 76:86, 76:87, 76:91, 76:97, 88:21, 88:23, 88:30). “telestial” stands at nine, and all nine are in the Doctrine and Covenants — 76:81, 76:88, 76:89, 76:91, 76:98, 76:109, 88:21, 88:24, 88:31. Both counts are of distinct frozen verses across the whole corpus, matched case-insensitively as exact substrings. The asymmetry is a textual fact and this page does not read anything into it.

The three lights

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 76:70: “These are they whose bodies are celestial, whose glory is that of the sun, even the glory of God, the highest of all” - 1 Corinthians 15:40: “There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.”

Paul’s letter supplies two of the three tiers and the sun/moon/star figure; the vision supplies the third tier and assigns each light to a named order. The word “telestial” has no carrier in the corpus outside the Doctrine and Covenants (nine verses, listed above).

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 76:98: “for as one star differs from another star in glory, even so differs one from another in glory in the telestial world” - 1 Corinthians 15:41: “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.”

Divergences: the vision reads “differs” where the letter reads “differeth,” and the vision applies the star-to-star comparison to a named order (“in the telestial world” — D&C 76:98) which the letter does not name.

The celestial company, in Hebrews’ words

Seven consecutive verses of the vision’s celestial description track a passage in Hebrews clause by clause.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 76:66: “These are they who are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly place, the holiest of all.” - Hebrews 12:22: “But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem”

Divergence: Hebrews reads “mount Sion” and closes the clause on “the heavenly Jerusalem”; the vision reads “Mount Zion” and closes on “the heavenly place, the holiest of all” (D&C 76:66).

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 76:67: “These are they who have come to an innumerable company of angels” - Hebrews 12:22: “and to an innumerable company of angels”

The four-word run “innumerable company of angels” stands at exactly these two frozen verses in the corpus.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 76:67: “to the general assembly and church of Enoch, and of the Firstborn” - Hebrews 12:23: “To the general assembly and church of the firstborn”

The vision interposes a name Hebrews does not carry at this point — Enoch — between “church of” and “the Firstborn.”

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 76:68: “These are they whose names are written in heaven, where God and Christ are the judge of all.” - Hebrews 12:23: “which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all”

Divergence: Hebrews names God alone as judge; the vision names two — “God and Christ are the judge of all” (D&C 76:68).

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 76:69: “These are they who are just men made perfect through Jesus the mediator of the new covenant” - Hebrews 12:23: “and to the spirits of just men made perfect”

Hebrews says “the spirits of just men made perfect”; the vision drops “the spirits of” and predicates the phrase directly of the persons described.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 76:69: “through Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, who wrought out this perfect atonement through the shedding of his own blood” - Hebrews 12:24: “And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling”

Both attach blood to the mediator in the same clause; the wording of the attachment differs — “the shedding of his own blood” (D&C 76:69) against “the blood of sprinkling” (Hebrews 12:24).

Two more of Paul’s sentences in the celestial passage

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 76:59: “Wherefore, all things are theirs, whether life or death, or things present, or things to come, all are theirs” - 1 Corinthians 3:22: “Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours”

The letter’s list opens with three personal names and “the world”; the vision’s begins at “life.” The grammatical person differs throughout — “all are yours” against “all are theirs.”

[Textual] — verbatim quotation. () - D&C 76:59: “and they are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” - 1 Corinthians 3:23: “And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.”

The only divergences are the pronoun (“they” for “ye”) and the internal punctuation.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 76:61: “Wherefore, let no man glory in man, but rather let him glory in God” - 1 Corinthians 3:21: “Therefore let no man glory in men.”

“man” for “men,” and the vision continues into a positive command the letter does not carry at this point.

The written thing the vision does not locate

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 76:58: “Wherefore, as it is written, they are gods, even the sons of God” - Psalms 82:6: “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.”

The vision appeals to something written and does not say where. The Psalm is where the predication stands in the frozen corpus; the pairing is the wiki’s, not the vision’s, so this record is asserted_by: wiki. John 10:34 also carries the words as a quotation of what “is written” — “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?” — and is disclosed here rather than ranked against the Psalm.

The telestial company

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 76:99: “For these are they who are of Paul, and of Apollos, and of Cephas.” - 1 Corinthians 1:12: “every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ.”

The letter names four allegiances including Christ’s; the vision names three here and continues the list into names the letter does not carry — “some of Christ and some of John, and some of Moses, and some of Elias, and some of Esaias, and some of Isaiah, and some of Enoch” (D&C 76:100). In the letter the divided allegiance is a fault to be corrected in a living congregation; in the vision it is a description of an order of the resurrected. What that difference of use means is a separate question this page does not settle.

The three degrees inside the highest

⚖️ Interpretation — weigh this. () A short later statement subdivides the highest order: “In the celestial glory there are three heavens or degrees” (D&C 131:1). A reader who knows Paul’s letters will hear an echo of “such an one caught up to the third heaven” (2 Corinthians 12:2). The evidence for connecting them is a shared ordinal and a shared noun, and nothing more: the letter counts heavens without saying how many exist or what distinguishes them, and the statement in D&C 131 counts degrees within one named order. Whether the two are counting the same thing is the reader’s to weigh; the wiki does not assert it.

Significance

The vision’s own account of where its material came from is unusually explicit, and it is worth stating plainly because it governs how the correspondences above should be read. The vision says its occasion was a verse of John encountered during translation (“we came to the twenty-ninth verse of the fifth chapter of John” — D&C 76:15); it says the response was sight, not exegesis (“the Lord touched the eyes of our understandings and they were opened” — D&C 76:19); and it says the writing was commanded twice (D&C 76:28, D&C 76:49). What the vision does not do is claim its language as quotation. It never names Paul as a source for sun, moon, and stars, never names Hebrews for the celestial catalogue, and appeals to something “written” (D&C 76:58) exactly once without saying where. So the overlap tabled above is, on the text’s own terms, unexplained — and the wiki reports it as such: the parallels are extensive, the variants are these, the text gives no account of them, and the origin of the correspondence is outside this wiki’s scope in both directions.

Key references

D&C 76:11–19 — the vision’s frame; the verse of John that occasioned it
D&C 76:50–70 — the celestial order; the Hebrews catalogue
D&C 76:71–80 — the terrestrial order
D&C 76:81–112 — the telestial order
D&C 88:21–32 — each glory as a law one is or is not able to abide
D&C 131:1–4 — three degrees within the celestial glory
1 Corinthians 15:40–41, Hebrews 12:22–24 — the passages the vision’s language tracks

The Resurrection · Sons of Perdition · The Redemption of the Dead · Light and Truth · Atonement · Index · Connections

Sources

Doctrine and Covenants sections 76, 88, and 131 (verse text only; headnotes excluded). Cross-references quoted from 1 Corinthians 1, 1 Corinthians 3, 1 Corinthians 15, 2 Corinthians 12, Hebrews 12, Psalms 82, and John 10.

Every quote is verbatim from the frozen source text, cited to its exact reference and checked character-for-character; no quote crosses a verse boundary. Fourteen connection records are registered here, thirteen [textual] and one [interpretive], all asserted_by: wiki — the vision names no source for any of the language tabled above. Distribution figures are counts of distinct frozen verses in the corpus, derived by search at the time of writing.