1. According to an 1832 vision of Joseph Smith's (D&C 76), heaven contains three gradations, or degrees of glory: the telestial kingdom, the terrestrial kingdom, and the celestial kingdom. The telestial kingdom is the lowest gradation; the celestial kingdom is where the fulness of God's glory resides. Resurrected souls inherit a degree of glory appropriate to their merit. In the endowment, the degrees of glory function as stages in one's progress towards the presence of God. The telestial world is the fallen world in which we now live. From there one progresses to the terrestrial world, represented as an anteroom to the divine presence, which resides just beyond the veil in the celestial world.