Scripture Blog

This weblog is my personal online scripture journal. I try to read the scriptures each morning as I exercise on my cross-trainer. It has a great impact on my life and my testimony of the Savior and his restored church. The journal is really for my own benefit but I have set it up as a web log in hopes to benefit anyone else that may be interested. "For he that diligently seeketh shall find; and the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto them, by the power of the Holy Ghost..." 1 Nephi 10:19

Thursday, July 15, 2021

D&C 93

 We learn through modern revelation that in the creation,  the Gods explained - 

"...we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them;

26 And they who keep their first estate shall be added upon; and they who keep not their first estate shall not have glory in the same kingdom with those who keep their first estate; and they who keep their second estate shall have glory added upon their heads for ever and ever."  (Abraham 3:25–26)

Of both estates - 

"Every spirit of man was innocent in the beginning; and God having redeemed man from the fall, men became again, in their infant state, innocent before God."  (Doctrine and Covenants 93:38)

Because of agency, the redemption was in place for both estates.  How we learn to repent determines the outcome of each estate.  The Institute of Religion, New Testament manual states - 

“Some accounts that we have of the premortal life teach that we ‘were on the same standing’ (Alma 13:5), and that we were ‘innocent’ in the beginning (D&C 93:38). We were given laws and agency, and commandments to have faith and repent from the wrongs that we could do there. “ . . . Man could and did in many instances, sin before he was born.” (Smith, The Way to Perfection, page 44.) 

“God gave his children their agency even in the spirit world, by which the individual spirits had the privilege, just as men have here, of choosing the good and rejecting the evil, or partaking of the evil to suffer the consequences of their sins. . . . Some even there were more faithful than others in keeping the commandments of the Lord. . . . 

“The spirits of men . . . had an equal start, and we know they were all innocent in the beginning; but the right of free agency which was given to them enabled some to outstrip others, and thus, through the eons of immortal existence, to become more intelligent, more faithful, for they were free to act for themselves, to think for themselves, to receive the truth or rebel against it.” (Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 1:5859; quoted in Life and Teachings of Jesus and His Apostles, page 336.)