This is a post I submitted to r/ScriptureStudy with some selected comment threads. If you wish to be credited for your comment please let me know and I'll add your name to your comment.
I had a discussion about the idea represented in this verse that caused me to think about this forum, in the sense of being able to ask a question without worrying (too much) about being criticized in some way for thinking too much.
First, let me disclaim any criticism for any church leader, past or present. That is not my intent, nor desire.
Everything I can find from the church, or authority, that discusses this scripture, or even mentions it in passing, focuses on the family unit we'll have in the eternities. I don't have a problem with that, and I don't disagree. If the family unit is the basis for everything else, it makes sense to focus on the main building block.
But that's not what the sentence means, at least not fully. There is no qualifier that limits what form of sociality is being talked about here. Well, perhaps the phrase 'coupled with eternal glory' is a qualifier, but it's not specific at all.
It seems to me that we can infer that the inverse is true as well, though I cannot find anything to back it up. I.e., the sociality which exists here existed in the pre-mortal existence, coupled with a–perhaps different kind of–eternal glory.
Further, we can assume, based on the use of the broadly defined word 'sociality', that not just church related society was being discussed, but all the myriad forms of social groups we have now.
We can assume that not only did we have, and will have, wards and stakes and bishops and Elder's Quorums and the like, but we did have, and will have, dancing troupes and popular singers and cooking stars and sports and … the list goes on. We might even have had, and will have, forums where we discuss things of interest to us, which we'll access through our own little white stones. :]
I realize I'm founding this belief on a single verse, and am quite possibly over analyzing this, but I don't think so.
My question is, does anyone have a non-emotional rebuttal to this? I mean, is there something said by somebody with some authority that will put paid to this theory?
The spirits that dwell in these tabernacles on this earth, when they leave them go directly into this world of spirits. What! A congregated mass of inhabitants there in spirit, mingling with each other, as they do here? Yes, brethren, they are there together, and if they associate together, and collect together, in clans and in societies as they do here, it is their privilege. No doubt they yet, more or less, see, hear, converse and have to do with each other, both good and bad. If the Elders of Israel in these latter times go and preach to the spirits in prison, they associate with them, precisely as our Elders associate with the wicked in the flesh, when they go to preach to them (DBY, 378)1.