LDS Quotes on The Plan of Salvation
“This may raise the ridiculous idea that the Fall took God by surprise and upset His plan, or else — more ridiculously still — that God planned the whole thing for conditions which, He well knew, were never going to be realised. In fact, of course, God saw the crucifixion in the act of creating the first nebula.”
“Death is a kind of graduation day for life. It is our only means of entrance to our eternal lives.”
“Any joy we savor in the absence of our loved ones is a partial joy, a fractured joy. Heaven apart from those we love is just hell by another name. Joseph said as much: ‘Let me be resurrected with the Saints,’ he said to his people in Nuavoo, ‘whether I ascend to heaven to descend to hell, or go to any other place.'”
“The Book of Mormon affirms more simply: ‘Men are, that they might have joy.’ Plato was closer to the gospel on this point than the larger portion of Christian theologians: ‘He who framed this whole universe was good, and one who is good can never become jealous of anything. And so, being free of jealousy, he wanted everything to become as much like himself as was possible.’ Not for his glory or happiness, but for theirs.”
“We came to this earth that we might have a body and present it pure before God in the Celestial Kingdom…The great principle of happiness consists of having a body.”
| Words of Joseph Smith, 60
“Whereby all his children, be they alive or dead, might have the privilege of accepting or rejecting the gospel of his beloved Son.”
| Conference Report, April 1945, 69, 71.
“Heaven is not a reward for merit or a repair of an Adamic catastrophe; it is an eternal sociality of celestial beings, existing, striving, and creatively engaging in loving relation…As the image and likeness of the Creator, man is a creator too, and is called to creative co-operation in the work of God.”
“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 Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world; but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy.
“It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle in our return to God; a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”
“We want a script, and we find we stand before a blank canvas. We expect a road map, and we find we have only a compass. We have yet to learn, as the poet John Ciardi wrote, that ‘clean white paper, waiting under a pen, is a gift beyond human history and hurt and heaven.”
“A counselor in the First Presidency, J. Reuben Clark Jr. testified of his belief that we do not ‘seal our eternal progress by what we do here. It is my belief that God will save all of His children that he can: and while, if we live unrighteously here, we shall not go to the other side in the same status, so to speak, as those who lived righteously; nevertheless, the unrighteous will have their chance, and in the eons of the eternities that are to follow, they, too, may climb to the destinies to which they who are righteous and serve God have climbed.'”
“I believe that our Heavenly Father wants to save every one of his children. I do not think he intends to shut any of us off. . . . I believe that in his justice and mercy he will give us the maximum reward for our acts, give us all that he can give, and in the reverse, I believe that he will impose upon us the minimum penalty which it is possible for him to impose.”
| Conference Report, October 3, 1953, p. 84
The Lord loves each of us too much to merely let us go on being what we now are, for he knows what we have the possibility to become!
| “In Him All Things Hold Together”
“Elder James E. Talmage wrote in the first edition of the Church-published Articles of Faith, ‘Advancement from grade to grade within any kingdom, and from kingdom to kingdom, will be provided for. Eternity is progression.’ He later elaborated, no man will be detained in the lower regions ‘longer than is necessary to bring him to a fitness for something better. When he reaches that stage the doors will open and there will be rejoicing among the hosts who welcome him into a better state.'”
I was heartbroken. I grieved over my son’s condition and had to come to terms with the fact that he might never enjoy full health. I felt like I was drowning in sorrow—sorrow that felt inescapable because it went hand in hand with my love for my precious child.
At first, I felt that my grief meant I lacked faith. But with time, I understood that grief was a normal, healthy response to my son’s illness. In God’s plan for me, grief was a refining fire that transformed my love for others, my perspective on life’s challenges, and my faith in Heavenly Father.
“I testify that the earth and all life upon it are of divine origin. The Creation did not happen by chance. It did not come ex nihilo (out of nothing). And human minds and hands able to build buildings or create computers are not accidental. It is God who made us and not we ourselves. We are His people! The Creation itself testifies of a Creator. We cannot disregard the divine in the Creation. Without our grateful awareness of God’s hand in the Creation, we would be just as oblivious to our provider as are goldfish swimming in a bowl. With deep gratitude, we echo the words of the Psalmist, who said, “O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.”
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.”
| “Brim with Joy” (Alma 26:11), BYU Devotional, January 23, 1996
“From these verses it is clear that our Heavenly Father did not ask for volunteers to invent and present different and competing plans of salvation, as some have assumed. Rather, it was our Heavenly Father’s plan, and He presented it to His spirit children who were gathered in the Grand Council in Heaven. Jesus Christ, who was “chosen from the beginning” to be the Savior in that plan, humbly proposed that Heavenly Father’s plan be sustained, saying, “Father, thy will [i.e., plan] be done.” It was in this setting that Satan made an unwelcome and arrogant proposal to change Heavenly Father’s plan so that it provided universal salvation for everyone (see Moses 4:1). Before we discuss how he claimed to accomplish this, it is important to note that Satan is referred to in these verses as “the father of all lies” (Moses 4:4). On another occasion he is called “a liar from the beginning” (D&C 93:25). We would be absurdly naïve to assume that Satan was telling the truth when he made this exaggerated claim of universal salvation.
“If we understand Satan’s character and history, it would be more appropriate to view him as the first con man trying to sell us a product that he knew he could never provide. He alleged that he could give us all salvation if we would follow him rather than the plan our Heavenly Father had created for our salvation and which was upheld by our Savior Jesus Christ.
“What Satan proposed was a lie. It would not have worked. It was not a viable alternative to Heavenly Father’s already perfect plan, but rather it was a trap set to ensnare and deceive people into following Satan. It was, in the end, a plan of damnation, not a plan of salvation.”
| “Satan’s Rebellion”
“Let us be no more tossed to and fro by every worldly wind and doctrine of man (see Ephesians 4:14). We declare to the world that the heavens are open and the truth of God’s eternal plan has again been made known to mankind. We live in the dispensation of the fulness of times. We live in a day when we have the witness through the scriptures of the great plan the Lord has given to His children from the beginning of time down to this present and last dispensation. The evidence is well documented; we are not left alone to wander through mortality without knowing of the master plan which the Lord has designed for His children. He has bound Himself by solemn covenant to give us the blessings of heaven according to our obedience to His law. Oh, remember, remember that these things are true, for the Lord God has revealed these eternal truths unto us.”
| "The Plan of Salvation," Ensign, Nov. 2006
“A problem related to perceptions of Mormonism’s monopoly on truth is the impression that Mormons claim a monopoly on salvation. It grows increasingly difficult to imagine that a body of a few million, in a world of seven billion, can really be God’s only chosen people and heirs of salvation. That is because they aren’t. One of the most unfortunate misperceptions about Mormonism is in this tragic irony: Joseph Smith’s view is one of the most generous, liberal and universalist conceptions of salvation in all Christendom.”
“To believe that weaknesses and deficiencies in your character are unchangeable is to reject the central truth of the plan of salvation. You are not cast in stone. You not only can change but you do change all of the time. You are a dynamic, changing, evolving being. You are always changing. You never stay the same. You cannot stand still.”
| "The Fourth Missionary"
“We, the Latter-day Saints, take the liberty of believing more than our Christian brethren: we not only believe . . . the Bible, but . . . the whole of the plan of salvation that Jesus has given to us. Do we differ from others who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? No, only in believing more.”
| Brigham Young, in Journal of Discourses, 13:56;
“If He could come forward in the night, kneel down, fall on His face, bleed from every pore, and cry, “Abba, Father (Papa), if this cup can pass, let it pass,” then little wonder that salvation is not a whimsical or easy thing for us. If you wonder if there isn’t an easier way, you should remember you are not the first one to ask that. Someone a lot greater and a lot grander asked a long time ago if there wasn’t an easier way.”
| Missionary Work and the Atonement
“‘Repentance will be possible even after death,’ wrote James E. Talmage. To some, he continued, ‘it may appear that to teach the possibility of repentance beyond the grave may tend to weaken belief in the absolute necessity of repentance and reformation in this life. There is no reason for such objection,’ he explains, when we consider that willful neglect here and now will render the process that much more lengthy and difficult in the future…Our error here, once again, may be in adopting a language of salvation as either/or, as an event that transpires rather than a process that unfolds.”
“Sometime in the eternities to come, we will see that our trials were calculated to cause us to turn to our Heavenly Father for strength and support. Any affliction or suffering we are called upon to bear may be directed to give us experience, refinement, and perfection.”
| "The Blessings of Righteous Obedience", Ensign, Nov. 1977
“Grace doesn’t grease the wheels of the law. Grace isn’t God’s way of jury rigging a broken law. It’s the other way around. The law is just one small cog in a world animated entirely–from top to bottom, from beginning to end–by grace.”
| Grace Is Not God's Backup Plan: An Urgent Paraphrase of Paul's Letter to the Romans
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
“Suppose there was a woman named Oohku who lived from 370–320 B.C. in the interior of Borneo. Obviously, she never heard of Jesus Christ or the Judeo-Christian God: she was never baptized, nor did she ever make any institutional or psychological commitment to Christ or the Christian church. She couldn’t have done these things; she was simply born in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Is it right for God to condemn this woman to eternal hell just because she was never able to come to God through Christ? Of course not . . . God is just and loving.”
| “Universalism, Hell, and the Fate of the Ignorant,” Modern Theology 6, no. 2 (January 1990): 176.
“To those who know and understand the plan of salvation, defiling the body is an act of rebellion [see Mosiah 2:36–37] and a denial of our true identity as sons and daughters of God.”
| “We Believe in Being Chaste,” Ensign, May 2013, 43.
“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
God doesn’t care nearly as much about where you have been as He does about where you are and, with His help, where you are willing to go.
| Pathways to Happiness
“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.”
“Our Heavenly Father is more liberal in His views, and boundless in His mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive.”
| History, 1838–1856, volume D-1
“Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God.”
“One of the major missions of the Church is to uniquely identify these individuals who have died and perform the necessary saving ordinances in their behalf, for they cannot do it for themselves. Once these ordinances are performed, if the individual accepts the gospel in the great world of spirits, then this work will be effective.”
| “Moral Values and Rewards,” Ensign, May 1981, 68.
“Through tears and trials, through fears and sorrows, through the heartache and loneliness of losing loved ones, there is assurance that life is everlasting. Our Lord and Savior is the living witness that such is so.”
| "I Know That My Redeemer Lives!" Ensign, May 2007
“Zion-building is not preparation for heaven. It is heaven, in embryo. The process of sanctifying disciples of Christ, constituting them into a community of love and harmony, does not qualify individuals for heaven; sanctification and celestial relationality are the essence of heaven. Zion, in this conception, is both an ideal and a transitional stage into the salvation toward which all Christians strive.”
“…the strait and narrow path, though clearly marked, is a path, not a freeway nor an escalator. Indeed, there are times when the only way the strait and narrow path can be followed is on one’s knees!”
| A Brother Offended, Ensign, May 1982, 37
I will take the liberty of saying to every man and woman who wishes to obtain salvation through him (the Savior) that looking to him, only, is not enough: they must have faith in his name, character and atonement; and they must have faith in his father and in the plan of salvation devised and wrought out by the Father and the Son. What will this faith lead to? It will lead to obedience to the requirements of the Gospel; and the few words that I may deliver to my brethren and sisters and friends this afternoon will be with the direct view of leading them to God.
| Journal of Discourses, Vol.13, p. 56, from talk given July 18, 1869
“If you understand the great plan of happiness and follow it, what goes on in the world will not determine your happiness.”
| "The Father and the Family," Ensign, May 1994
“Some members of the Church believe that wayward children unconditionally receive the blessings of salvation because of and through the faithfulness of parents. However, ‘The tentacles of Divine Providence’ described by Elder Orson F. Whitney may be considered a type of spiritual power, a heavenly pull or tug that entices a wandering child to return to the fold eventually. Such an influence cannot override the moral agency of a child but nonetheless can invite and beckon. Ultimately, a child must exercise his or her moral agency and respond in faith, report with full purpose of heart, and act in accordance with the teachings of Christ.’ A pull, a tug, an enticement, invite, beckon. In there words, we hear an echo of the original promise, ‘I will draw all men unto me.'”
“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