In a few days many Americans will observe Valentine's Day, a holiday when people celebrate earthly love.

However, for some, even lifelong relationships are simply preludes to personal connections that will last throughout time. Whether or not marriages can last for eternity depends on whom you ask and what faith they follow.

Gina Thorderson, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, says marriages last for eternity - with one stipulation. The wedding vows must be made in her church's temple.

"The wedding can't be in a regular church or gazebo outside," she said. "There's authority in the temple that binds things here on earth. The authority comes from God."

Thorderson and her family are a part of the Latter-day Saints stake in Tupelo. With the closest temple in Memphis, she says that is where members of her church go for marriages and other sacred occasions.

"The Savior promised that certain sacred acts performed in this life would be effective in the world to come" Thorderson said. "Consider his words to Peter, And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven' (Matthew 16:19).

"When a marriage is performed by the proper authority in the holy temple, it can last through eternity rather than till death do you part."

Muslims also believe their earthly marriages will keep in the afterlife, provided both members of the union deserve to enter into paradise. In Islam people can win entrance to paradise through belief in Allah, or God, and his prophets and through good conduct.

Marriage without conflict
Dr. Mustafa Matalgah is an associate professor in the University of Mississippi's department of electrical engineering. As a practicing Muslim he says if both people in a marriage win paradise, the relationship will continue for eternity. The only difference is that there will no longer be problems or conflicts.

"Even though those spouses had some misconducts in this earthly life," he said, "they will not feel it or have anything like it in the afterlife."

Marc Perler, lay leader of Temple B'nai in Tupelo, says he is unaware of any Scripture that talks about relationships after mortal existence.

"In general, Judaism deals with this life, not with the afterlife," he said. "We're less concerned with the afterlife than we are with living our lives in this existence. What's important is the here and now."

However, Perler, who has enjoyed his decades-long partnership with his wife Polly, says he would like to think their relationship will continue after their physical death.

Among Jehovah's Witnesses the marriage relationship will end for some but can go on for others. John Capps, presiding elder at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses in south Tupelo, says that in the New Testament book of Revelation, chapters 7 and 14 say only 144,000 people will go to heaven.

"Those who go to heaven will be spirit creatures," he said. "There is neither male nor female. Marriage won't continue in heaven."

Those 144,000 will rule over the earth with Christ in heaven, Capps said. Satan and the bad influences that currently impact earth will be done away with, and the earth will be brought back to a paradise. And for those who remain here when the old system ends, their God-created purpose in life will be restored.

"There can be marriages there," Capps continued. However, "when the earth is full, procreation will have to stop."

Being like angels
Most Protestant churches teach that marriage does not continue in the afterlife.

"We base that on Matthew 22:30," said the Rev. John McAlister, pastor of First United Pentecostal Church of Verona.

That New Testament verse says, "At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven."

McAlister says he believes in the heavenly realm people will know their loved ones but not as husband and wife.

"Our belief is that marriage does not continue beyond this life," he said.

For members of faith groups with an eternal view of marriage, practice follows belief. Since spouse selection carries everlasting import, that decision often carries more weight.

Latter-day Saint Thorderson says the belief makes a difference in the number of lifelong Mormon marriages.

"People realize it'll last forever and make it work," she said. "Kids are automatically sealed to you. You wouldn't want to break that up."

Smaller divorce rates among Mormons support those statements. A recent issue of Demography, a scientific journal, affirmed that Latter-day Saints who marry in a Mormon temple are the least likely of all Americans to divorce.

In Islam spousal choice is crucial not only because spouses may spend forever with each other but also because they can help one another get to that place of perpetual bliss.

"They help each other on how to live on this earth in accordance with the law of God," Matalgah in Oxford said, "and therefore to win paradise in the afterlife."

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