“No man will be kept in hell longer than is necessary to bring him to a fitness for something better. When he reaches that stage the prison doors will open and there will be rejoicing among the hosts who welcome him into a better state.”
“Satan, in fact, is the Hebrew word for accuser. Accusatory judgment is Satan’s role, not Christ’s. We do not know the inmost depths of the human heart; it is only revealed by love. But those who condemn have generally little love, and therefore the mystery of the heart which they judge is closed to them. It is impossible to know another completely and not love that person deeply.”
“I can’t imagine pain greater than stepping across the veil and realizing I had not done what I came here to do – or realizing that I had given up my life to little or nothing, only then to find that it was gone.”
| No Doubt About It
“Now a good many people in the world do not know what the resurrection is. Do you teach your children and your associates what it means? . . . [The Savior’s] resurrection is plain to the Latter-day Saints who understand the gospel, but there are so many who do not understand what it means. . . . The purpose of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is to prepare every man, woman and child for the time when all those who have died will be brought forth from their graves, and when our Heavenly Father will establish his kingdom upon this earth and the righteous will dwell there and Jesus Christ will be our King and our Law-giver.”
| Teachings of Presidents of the Church, George Albert Smith, Ch. 7, “The Immortality of the Soul”
We will take the best men we can find among them – when they pass through the veil they are in happiness, they are in glory, they go among the disembodied spirits; but they do not go where there are resurrected bodies, for they cannot live there: a Prophet or an Apostle cannot live there. They also go into the spiritual world to live with spirits. Do they commune with the Father and Son? The Father communes with them as He pleases, through the means of angels, or otherwise the Son and Holy Ghost. This is the situation of the Prophet, the Apostle, and all Saints before they receive their resurrected bodies; but they are looking forward to the time when they shall receive their bodies from the dust; and those that have been faithful, probably, will now soon get their resurrected bodies. Abraham has had his body long ago, and dwells with the Father and the Son, among all the Prophets and faithful Saints who received their resurrected bodies immediately after the resurrection of the Savior [Section 133:55]. They were then prepared to enter into the Father’s rest and be crowned with glory and eternal lives, but they were not prepared before.
No spirit of Saint or sinner, of the Prophet or him that kills the Prophet, is prepared for their final state: All pass through the veil from this state and go into the world of spirits; and there they dwell, waiting for their final destiny.
| Journal of Discourses 6:293-294, August 15, 1852
Although we do not fully understand the sacred mechanics by which the Savior’s atoning sacrifice heals and restores, we do know, that to ensure a righteous judgment, the Savior will clear away the underbrush of ignorance and the painful thorns of hurt caused by others. By this He assures that all God’s children will be given the opportunity, with unobscured vision, to choose to follow Him and accept the great plan of happiness.
| Ensuring a Righteous Judgment - General Conference 2020
“Jacob, in 2 Nephi 9:41, in speaking of the straight and narrow, reminds us that ‘the keeper of the gate is the Holy One of Israel’ and that Jesus ‘employeth no servant there.’ The emphasis rightly is on the fact that Jesus ‘cannot be deceived.’ There is another dimension of reassurance, too: not only will the ultimate judgment not be delegated in order to serve the purposes of divine justice, but also divine mercy can best be applied by him who knows these things what only he can know.”
| For the Power Is in Them (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1970), 37.
“The final judgment is not just an evaluation of a sum total of good and evil acts – what we have done. It is an acknowledgement of the final effect or our acts and thoughts – what we have become.”
“Why can’t we resist the urge to second-guess and evaluate each other?…Sometimes I wonder if the final judgment will be a breeze compared with what we’ve put each other through here on earth.”
| No Doubt About It
“At the time of the coming of Christ, ‘They who have slept in their graves shall come forth, for their graves shall be opened; and they also shall be caught up to meet him in the midst of the pillar of heaven. They are Christ’s, the first fruits, they who shall descent with him first, and they who are first caught up to meet him; and all this by the voice of te sounding of the trump of the angel of God.’ These are the just, ‘whose names are written in heaven, where God and Christ are the judge of all. These are they who are just men made perfect through Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, who wrought out this perfect atonement through the shedding of his own blood.’
“Following this great event, and after the Lord and the righteous who are caught up to meet him have descended upon the earth, there will come to pass another resurrection. This may be considered as a part of the first, although it comes later. In this resurrection will come forth those of terrestrial order, who were not worthy to be caught up to meet him, but who are worthy to come forth to enjoy the millennial reign.” (Doctrines of Salvation, 2:296)
The first resurrection will extend into the Millennium and include all those worthy of the celestial kingdom who live and die during the thousand years.
| Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual, p. 163
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