Relief Society

Sunday Reflections

Our Father in heaven established a plan of salvation for his spirit children...to enable them to advance and progress until they obtain eternal life.

In the premortal spirit world, we rejoiced to learn of Heavenly Father's plan of salvation. This plan is to enable the children of God to become like him and have the power and wisdom and knowledge which he possesses.

The Fall of Adam and Eve was part of Heavenly Father's plan.  Had Adam and Eve not partaken, the great gift of mortality would not have come to them.  Moreover, they would have had no posterity, and the great commandment given to them by the Lord would not be fulfilled.

Jesus Christ offered Himself as a sacrifice to save us from the Fall and from our sins.  Adam's transgression brought these two deaths, spiritual and temporal -- man being banished from the presence of God, and becoming mortal and subject to all the ills of the flesh.  In order that he should be brought back again, there had to be a  reparation of the broken law.  Justice demanded it.

Building on the foundation of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we work out our salvation during mortality.  The plan of salvation consists of the following steps: faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost and finally enduring to the end.

All people will receive the blessing of resurrection through the atonement of Jesus Christ. 

We came into this world to die.  Physical death of the mortal man, is not a permanent separation of the spirit and the tabernacle of flesh, notwithstanding the fact that the body returns again to the elements, but is only a temporary separation which shall cease at the resurrection day when the body shall be called forth from the dust to live again animated by spirit.

The faithful will inherit eternal life with their families in the presence of Heavenly Father. The Scriptures say that eternal life -- which is the life possessed by our Eternal Father and his Son, Jesus Christ, -- is the greatest gift of God (see D&C 14:7).  The glorious blessing of eternal inheritance...does not come except through willingness to keep the commandments and even to suffer with Christ if need be.

(From  the third chapter, "Teachings of Joseph Fielding Smith", The Plan of Salvation.)

This was a very in depth lesson on the plan of salvation, I have but skimmed the surface and invite you all to read it carefully.  

Wishing you much joy this week

Liese