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SALT LAKE CITY — Former President Bill Clinton recounted for a group of reporters Tuesday night the time he spent learning about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
A group of reporters ran into Clinton in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel after Clinton's speech at Miami's Florida International University. Clinton and the three journalists spoke about the former president's speech, dysfunction in Washington and golf, according to Politico. And Mormonism.
Clinton spoke of recruiting presentations he had attended at an LDS church house while growing up in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He said he admires the church's high ethical standards and belief in a celestial kingdom.
I didn't want to leave all these other people behind.
–Bill Clinton
He recounted the LDS belief in different degrees of heaven and said it was described to him as a pyramid that had many levels, according to BuzzFeed. Hitler and Stalin were at the very bottom, faithful Mormons were on top and everyone else was in between.
The thought of leaving friends and family in lower kingdoms was too much to accept.
"I didn't want to leave all these other people behind," he said.
Members of the LDS church believe in three different kingdoms of glory in the afterlife, the Mormon Newsroom explains. But Clinton's memory of LDS doctrine was not entirely correct: church members also believe that those who accept the teachings of the church after death will be given the opportunity to reach the higher levels of glory.
