Our ultimate quest in life is to prepare to meet our Maker. We do this by striving daily to become more like our Savior, Jesus Christ
| Opening Message, April 2020 General Conference
Mortality
LDS Quotes About Mortality
I won’t deny that it is possible for our restless hearts to find rest in God, but I do want to deny that this rest results from the satisfaction of our desires. God does not save us from our hungers by satisfying them. God saves us from the tyranny of our desires by saving us from the impossible work of satisfying them.
| Future Mormon: Essays in Mormon Theology By Adam Miller
“It is difficult for mortal minds to comprehend the majesty of the Creation. It is much easier for us to think about good things to eat or fun things to do. But I would like to stretch our minds to think of things beyond our easy grasp. The creation of man and woman was wondrous and great. So was the creation of the earth as their mortal dwelling place.”
“The Creation, great as it is, is not an end in itself but a means to an end. We come to the earth for a brief period of time, endure our tests and trials, and prepare to move onward and upward to a glorious homecoming. Our thoughts and deeds while here will surely be more purposeful if we understand God’s plan and are thankful for and obedient to His commandments. As beneficiaries of the divine Creation, what shall we do? We should care for the earth, be wise stewards over it, and preserve it for future generations. And we are to love and care for one another. We are to be creators in our own right—builders of an individual faith in God, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and faith in His Church. We are to build families and be sealed in holy temples. We are to build the Church and kingdom of God upon the earth. We are to prepare for our own divine destiny—glory, immortality, and eternal lives. These supernal blessings can all be ours, through our faithfulness.”
“The Master could overwhelm us with his supernal knowledge, but he does not. He honors our agency. He allows us the joy of discovery.”
| “Gratitude for the Mission and Ministry of Jesus Christ,” BYU Education Week Devotional Address, BYU Speeches
“Being human, we would expel from our lives sorrow, distress, physical pain, and mental anguish and assure ourselves of continual ease and comfort. But if we closed the doors upon such, we might be evicting our greatest friends and benefactors. Suffering can make saints of people as they learn patience, long-suffering, and self-mastery. The sufferings of our Savior were part of his education.”
| The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball (1982), 168
“Righteous character is more valuable than any material object you own, any knowledge you have gained through study, or any goals you have attained, no matter how well lauded by mankind. In the next life your righteous character will be evaluated to assess how well you used the privilege of mortality.”
“The words death and happiness are not close companions in mortality, but in the eternal sense they are essential to one another.”
As we consider our mortal existence on this earth and the purpose of life expressed by Alma that ”this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God” (Alma 34:32), what is the Lord’s way to help us achieve this very purpose? It is simply, by using this metaphor, to help us build a bridge of faith in our life for crossing and overcoming the walls of unbelief, indifference, fear, or sin. Our mortal life is the time for men to meet God by building a bridge of faith, opening the door into immortality and eternal life.
| Ensign, November 2001
“Though each of us will pass through the doors of death, the timing of that departure is less important than is the preparation for eternal life.”
Teenagers also sometimes think, “What’s the use? The world will soon be blown all apart and come to an end.” That feeling comes from fear, not from faith. No one knows the hour or the day (see D&C 49:7), but the end cannot come until all of the purposes of the Lord are fulfilled. Everything that I have learned from the revelations and from life convinces me that there is time and to spare for you to carefully prepare for a long life.
| Ensign, May 1989, p. 59
“Years ago a scientist named A. Cressy Morrison tried to dispel the notion that the earth was created by pure chance. In his book, Man Does Not Stand Alone, he itemized a number of factors that, had they been different, would have made life impossible on the world. If the earth’s crust were 10 feet thicker, there would be no oxygen, or if the oceans had been a few feet deeper, oxygen and carbon monoxide would have been absorbed. If it were not tilted at 23 degrees, we would have had no seasons and water vapor would have moved to the poles. If the moon were closer, tides would have been so enormous that lowlands would be submerged. The planet’s atmosphere is just thick enough to let in the solar rays needed for vegetation, but not enough to kill life. Essential elements exist in just the right proportions for life, he wrote, citing many other factors that argue against a haphazard creation.”
| Church News, June 15, 1996, p. 16
“We are often left to work out problems, without the dictation or specific direction of the Spirit. That is part of the experience we must have in mortality. Fortunately, we are never out of our Savior’s sight, and if our judgment leads us to actions beyond the limits of what is permissible and if we are listening to the still small voice, the Lord will restrain us by the promptings of His Spirit.”
| Teaching by the Spirit (address delivered at new mission presidents’ seminar, 22 June 1994), 8.
“An eternal perspective helps us maintain complete fidelity to the covenants we make. President Packer emphasized that “ordinances and covenants become our credentials for admission into [God’s] presence. To worthily receive them is the quest of a lifetime; to keep them thereafter is the challenge of mortality.”
| “Prepare for Blessings of the Temple,” Ensign, March 2002, p. 22
“How can you and I really expect to glide naively through life, as if to say, ‘Lord, give me experience, but not grief, not sorrow, not pain, not opposition, not betrayal, and certainly not to be forsaken. Keep from me, Lord, all those experiences which made Thee what Thou art! Then, let me come and dwell with Thee and fully share Thy joy!’ ”
| "Lest Ye Be Wearied and Faint in Your Minds," Ensign, May 1991, 88
“Those who “live without God in the world” anxiously glean their few and fleeting satisfactions, but they are unable to find real happiness. . . . Ignorant of the plan of salvation, many simply do not know what the journey of life is all about. Therefore, modern selfishness and skepticism brush aside the significance of the Savior. . . .”
| Ensign, March 1998, p. 9
“The only way to take sorrow out of death is to take love out of life.”
Your trust in the Lord must be more powerful and enduring than your confidence in your own personal feelings and experience.
To exercise faith is to trust that the Lord knows what He is doing with you and that He can accomplish it for your eternal good even though you cannot understand how He can possibly do it. We are like infants in our understanding of eternal matters and their impact on us here in mortality. Yet at times we act as if we knew it all. When you pass through trials for His purposes, as you trust Him, exercise faith in Him, He will help you. That support will generally come step by step, a portion at a time. While you are passing through each phase, the pain and difficulty that comes from being enlarged will continue. If all matters were immediately resolved at your first petition, you could not grow.”
| “Trust in the Lord,” Ensign, November 1995, p. 17
“Why would God go out of his way to hide evidence and make his own (world-historically pivotal) message more obscure and less credible? Or even more to the point, what about God’s own absence? Why put us in the same weak position as Lehi? Why give us a text, at least twice removed from God himself, rather than give us some kind of direct interaction with God? Is this a game or a test? Is God just testing us to see if we’ll believe things that we don’t have good evidence for? If this is the case, then what is God testing for, credulity? Is credulity the measure of a life, the litmus test for salvation? In effect, is God saying, ‘You’re welcome to join me in eternal bliss, but only if you’re willing to believe (in exactly the right way) things that I intentionally and unnecessarily made it really hard to understand and believe?’ I don’t buy it. I don’t buy this version of the story.”
| Future Mormon, p. 21
“In the gospel race there are no losers, only quitters.”
When the challenges of mortality come, and they come for all of us, it may seem hard to have faith and hard to believe. At these times only faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His Atonement can bring us peace, hope, and understanding. Only faith that He suffered for our sakes will give us the strength to endure to the end. When we gain this faith, we experience a mighty change of heart, and like Enos, we become stronger and begin to feel a desire for the welfare of our brothers and sisters. We pray for them, that they too will be lifted and strengthened through faith on the Atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ.
| “Finding Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,” Ensign, Nov. 2004, p. 7
If we do not have a deep foundation of faith and a solid testimony of truth, we may have difficulty withstanding the harsh storms and icy winds of adversity which inevitably come to each of us.
Mortality is a period of testing, a time to prove ourselves worthy to return to the presence of our Heavenly Father. In order for us to be tested, we must face challenges and difficulties. These can break us, and the surface of our souls may crack and crumble – that is, if our foundations of faith, our testimonies of truth are not deeply embedded within us.
| “On Being Spiritually Prepared,” Ensign, February 2010, p. 5
“You and I cannot really expect to glide through life . . . naively petitioning, ‘Lord, give me experience but not grief, a deeper appreciation of happiness but not deeper sorrow, joy in comfort but not in pain, more capacity to overcome but not more opposition; and please do not let me ever feel perplexed while on thy errand. Then let me come quickly and dwell with thee and fully share thy joy.”
“We would have been inexpressibly more miserable, if we had retained the memory of our former glory, and past actions.”
“I believe that, notwithstanding the fact the spirits of men, as an incident to mortality, are deprived of memory and cast out of the presence of God, there still persists in the spirit of every human soul a residuum from his pre-existent spiritual life which instinctively responds to the voice of the Spirit until and unless it is inhibited by the free agency of the individual.”
| Revelation (address to seminary and institute faculty, Brigham Young University, 8 July 1960), 6–7.
From [the] majestic world of spirits we enter the grand stage of life to prove ourselves obedient to all things commanded of God. During mortality we grow from helpless infancy to inquiring childhood and then to reflective maturity. We experience joy and sorrow, fulfillment and disappointment, success and failure. We taste the sweet, yet sample the bitter. This is mortality. Then to each life comes the experience known as death. None is exempt. All must pass its portals. To most, there is something sinister and mysterious about this unwelcome visitor called death. Perhaps it is a fear of the unknown which causes many to dread its coming . . . [The Savior’s] words to the grieving Martha and to His disciples today bring comfort to us:” ‘I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”
| “Mrs. Patton – the Story Continues,” Ensign, November 2007, pp. 22-23
Fear not; ask questions. Be curious, but doubt not! Always hold fast to faith and to the light you have already received. Because we see imperfectly in mortality, not everything is going to make sense right now. . . . It’s true that “faith is not . . . a perfect knowledge” (Alma 32:21), but as you exercise your faith, applying gospel principles every day under any circumstances, you will taste the sweet fruits of the gospel, and by this fruit you will know of its truth (see Matthew 7:16–20; John 7:17; Alma 32:41–43).
| “The Reflection in the Water,” Church Educational System fireside for young adults, November 1, 2009
The assurance that the resurrection will include an opportunity to be with our family members – husband, wife, parents, brothers and sisters, children, and grandchildren – is a powerful encouragement for us to fulfill our family responsibilities in mortality. It helps us live together in love in this life in anticipation of joyful reunions and associations in the next. – and, finally – The assurance of immortality also helps us bear the mortal separations involved in the death of our loved ones. Every one of us has wept at a death, grieved through a funeral, or stood in pain at a graveside. I am surely one who has. We should all praise God for the assured resurrection that makes our mortal separations temporary and gives us the hope and strength to carry on.
| “Resurrection,” General Conference, April 1, 2000
“The people around us are not perfect. People do things that annoy, disappoint, and anger. In this mortal life it will always be that way. Nevertheless, we must let go of our grievances. Part of the purpose of mortality is to learn how to let go of such things. That is the Lord’s way. Remember, heaven is filled with those who have this in common: They are forgiven. And they forgive.”
| The Merciful Obtain Mercy
“In other words, that Jesus Christ, under the direction of His Father, was the organizer and builder of this world; that out of the elements that existed in space, He, the great Master, compounded, produced and materialized this substantial world upon which you and I live; that we are indebted to Him, and to our Father in heaven, for this life that we are enjoying, the bodies that we have, the beautiful world that we inhabit. We sometimes wonder where our heaven will be, that is, the people of the world wonder. We Latter-day Saints have no reason to doubt where our heaven will be, for the Lord has made known to us, that this splendid world that has been provided for us will ultimately be redeemed, having obeyed the laws of its being, and become celestialized, the home of celestial beings; so that if we shall ever come into heaven, or heavenly conditions, it will be, ultimately, upon this redeemed world. Jesus Christ has been the organizer and the builder of it, possessed with power to do all that.”
| Conference Report, April 1914