Post by Heloram –
The glad tidings of great joy of which my father spoke brings so much hope, yet it carried with it a warning to those who fail to exercise the faith unto repentance. For me, my father’s speech raises a few points as well as questions.
1. There is hope for those who have died not knowing the will of God and have sinned ignorantly.
2. But if you know and you rebel, there is no hope unless you somehow muster enough faith in Jesus Christ to repent.
3. Does a remission of sins actually take place even though the Lord hasn’t come yet?
4. How can prophets declare this to every nation, what about the Lamanites who will kill them on site? Yet it must be that every nation, kindred and tongue receive these glad tiding so they may have the opportunity to rejoice.
5. God knows His children and because of their stiffneckedness He gave them a law, even the law of Moses.
6. Yet this law, the law of Moses avails nothing if they harden their hearts after witnessing so many signs, wonders, types and shadows concerning Christ’s coming and His atoning sacrifice.
7. The Blood of Christ even atones for the sins of little children, even if they were able to sin. Children who die in their infancy are saved.
8. Only through the name of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent, can salvation come.
You have to be in awe that our Father in Heaven has provided for us such a comprehensive plan. All of us have a chance, an opportunity to hear, accept, repent and be received back into His presence. And many of us have a long, long way to go.
The natural man is an enemy to God, after all, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and puts off the natural man and becomes a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becomes as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord sees fit to inflict upon him, even as a child submits to his father.
The prophets along with my father profess that the time will come when the knowledge of a Savior will spread throughout every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. When that time comes, no one will be found blameless before God, except it be little children, only through repentance and faith on the name of the Lord God Omnipotent.
Once every one has been taught they will no longer be found blameless in the sight of God. The words of the prophets will stand as a bright testimony against this people, at the judgment day; of which we will be judged, every man according to his works, whether they be good, or whether they be evil. If the works are evil we are consigned to an awful view of our own guilt and abominations, which will cause us to shrink from the presence of the Lord into a state of misery and endless torment, from where we can no more return; therefore we will have drunk damnation to our own souls.
I am not very anxious to drink out of the cup of the wrath of God, which will happen if we know and then don’t do. Mercy will only have claim on us and rescue us from justice if we repent and put off the natural man. Here is how my father worded the consequences if we don’t.
“And their torment is as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flames are unquenchable, and whose smoke ascendeth up forever and ever. Thus hath the Lord commanded me.”
Book of Mormon, Mosiah 3
