You read the bible, but don't be confused that the average Christian is as studious as you. Most Christians have read part of the bible, but I would be surprized if the average Christian has read both the OT and the NT with any real intent, like you and I read it.
I wouldn't myself above other people like that. Wisdom is not in reading -- it is in understanding. (cf. the Ethiopian and St. Philip)
I doubt that we have a full understanding of what the fullness and blessing are that await those that gain EL.
EL = eternal life (I'm assuming)? If yes, then who could? Only God Himself and the saints who surround Him before the Throne, not any of us here on the earth, where we are as sojourners for now.
What this has to do with the anti-Biblical doctrine of the Mormon religion concerning marriage in heaven is beyond me. Please enlighten me as to the connection, because I am not seeing it, even as you quote in other posts about OT prophets who had multiple wives, as we know much was allowed according to the hardness of people's hearts, as our Lord Jesus Christ says concerning divorce in the time of Moses, for instance. (Matthew 19:8)
The crucifiction and the atonement and the resurrection allow mortal men to gain heaven, but what happens after that? Difficult to say, but it can be said that according to our works and how well be obeyed Jesus's commands on earth, we will find ourselves being next to Jesus and God or not.
According to
our works? No! No way. According to our cooperation with God that He may complete the good work which
He has begun in us (Philippians 1:6) is the Christian way. We do not and cannot 'earn' heaven by our own deeds -- all good reward is only by God's work in us. So it is not a matter of laws and ordinances, as though we are Jews, but of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life (as He is described in the Creed).
The Christian life is cooperative, not dictatorial, because even as Moses was given the commandments written by the finger of God, it was
by his cooperation that God's law was actually manifest in the people. (Remember that at first he did not want to lead them, and in the end he was brought down by hubris, showing that it was
God guiding them all the time, with Moses as His chosen one -- the good is not credited to Moses, and there are many fathers, following St. Paul, who identify the 'rock' which followed them throughout their journey as preconfiguration of our Lord Jesus Christ.)
We may have gained heaven, but will we recieve of its fullness?
From the Orthodox perspective, we receive God in His fullness in communion. The liturgy is rightly thought of as the foretaste of heaven itself, but only in that sense is there a 'fullness' that we do not yet know, because of course we are not permanently there yet. But we know what we will receive to the extent that we are receiving it now here on earth, and of course Christ represents the literal joining together of the heavens with the earth at the incarnation, so that when we proclaim the holy body and the precious blood to be present before us in communion, we can rightly say that God is with us in the gathered place (and we do). It is similar too with the calling down of the Holy Spirit upon the gifts during the Eucharistic prayers. The Holy Spirit is literally present there, just as in heaven, as He, being God, fills all things. (We do not have the carnal view as expressed in Mormon theology whereby God is physically bound in space and time, but that He should choose to
make Himself bounded, as He did in the incarnation of His Word, Jesus Christ, the Only-Begotten Son of God, Who was truly incarnate and took flesh from the holy virgin Theotokos St. Mary, which was true human flesh, just as our is, as He was in all things like us except sin, as St. Paul reminds us in Hebrews 4:15.)
And what do you think is the fullness of heaven?
It is all speculation from here, as we both recognize, but I believe there is wisdom to be had concerning this in the sermon given during the funeral for the martyrs of the New Year's day attack on the Church of the Saints in Alexandria in 2011 by HG Bishop Moussa, as you can hear in the following video (beginning at 3:29; the prayers before that said by Fr. Tadros Y. Malaty, while beautiful and holy, do not address this question):
It is a place of happiness in the resurrection to our perfection, in a place without death or pain or corruption of any kind, where we will be surrounded by the holy saints with whom together we will join in endless praise of God. As we praised Him together while on earth, so it will be in heaven, as heaven is the endless joy of being with God. It is not as in other religions a place of carnal pleasure (as we will not be bound in carnal bodies anymore), but of complete and utterly fulfilling
spiritual union with God and with one another.
I strongly suspect (and this is just private opinion, but since you asked...) that we will be as our first parents were in the Garden, before the fall, where they had such perfect and innocent spiritual union with God and with one another, before the whisperings of the serpent came. This 'natural' state of things is what some of the fathers have written was the 'purpose' of our creation in the first place -- that we should be in an innocent and natural constant communion with God, in a place of purity in all ways, and that the knowledge of God and would thereby come according to our own development (read: God
wanted to give Adam and Eve the knowledge of the Tree, but they were not ready for it, and yet took it when He had specifically told them not to because of their unreadiness; in this reading, Genesis is a story of
loss of innocence due to corruption and accompanying exile, which is interesting when you consider the Jewish history with exile), which here on earth has been in some sense made into a minefield by the reality of sin, but in heaven is a matter of
Theosis -- the endless progression in unity with God.
This kind of thinking, which is not without its challenges across Christian history (for a modern recap, see for instance
Fr. Athanasius Iskander of the Coptic Orthodox Church on some terminology that is preferable to 'Theosis'), is probably a sort of commonality between Christianity and Mormonism. We would definitely say, however, that Mormonism gets it wrong in that its perfection is (and please correct me if I'm wrong on this point, but this is how I've understood it) in mortal men progressing into
becoming a God with all the powers and such that God the Father has. That is definitely not the case with regard to Christianity, because
Theosis or
Theopoiesis (whichever you prefer; I'm not sure I agree with Fr. Athanasius or for that matter HH Pope Shenouda III in their criticisms of Theosis, which my own bishop and priest have both spoken approvingly of) are about unity
with God -- God stays God, and we stay people, but people who are 'Sons of God'
by adoption (as explained in the PDF at the link), distinct from Christ Who is God
by nature. (This is why, just by the way, I'm always harping on the Creed's use of
ousia; you can't really understand Christian theology unless you understand what is historically affirmed about
nature/s, and how the use of these terms and the theology behind them are utterly distinct from the Mormon theology, which is trapped in carnality.)
