Trivia for NT Lesson 34`

As I was working on my lesson, I discovered that there is a word that we as Latter-day Saints use regularly as we discuss the Plan of Salvation -- but it is a word that does not exist in the English language. It simply isn't in the dictionary. Do you know what this word is?

When I posed the question to my Gospel Doctrine class yesterday, one person did come up with the word. Some wrong answers were "pre-existence" and "Kolob". (I guess Kolob could be a right answer, but the word I was thinking of is even more common to Latter-day Saints.)

It is a word that nearly any active member of the Church (over the age of 12?) would know.

So here's the word. It's "telestial". It does not exist in the dictionary or appear on dictionary.com. It doesn't appear in the KJV of the New Testament. Interestingly, however, in 1 Corinthians 15 where Paul discusses the degrees of glory, he mentions Celestial and Terrestrial, but not Telestial. He follows that with comparison of the glories to the sun, moon and stars. I can't help but think that the missing reference to Telestial is a lost plain-and-precious truth. Joseph Smith DID correct this ommission in the JST.

OK, so if you google "telestial" you will find lots of LDS-related sites that mention Telestial. You'll also find a UK phonecard company with the name Telestial -- so I guess the word technically exists outside of the LDS community. My guess, however, is that they invented the word -- by combining "tele" (as in telephone, telecommunications, etc. and meaning "distant") with "celestial". I also wonder whether the person who named it might have been LDS -- or if it's just happenstance.