While he
did, unfortunately, hold to the popular view of the time that black people and
others born into less fortunate circumstances were of less faithfulness in the pre-existence,
Alvin Dyer did write the following, showing that he believed that, regardless
of one’s socio-economic and cultural background, everyone had the ability to
progress without limitation:
Every spirit born to a natural
body is an individual character. It brings to that body, prepared for its
tenancy, a nature all its own, fashioned and made ready by its degree of
advancement in the pre-earth life existence called by the Lord, the “first
estate” (Abraham 3:26). Since man is an individual and an agent unto himself,
he will, as he did in his spirit form before mortal birth, aspire to and attain
greatness, mediocrity, or a lowliness so far as the absorption of intelligence
or light and truth is concerned, thus causing the limitless variations of
mankind. The principle of agency makes possible the expansion of tendencies,
likes and dislikes. In fact, the nature and character of the spirit can be
improved in the course of mortal life (D&C 130:18-19). The Prophet Amulek
refers to the probation of mortality as a time to improve the status of our
place over that with which we entered earth-life existence (Alma 34:33). (Alvin
R. Dyer, Who Am I? [Salt Lake City
Deseret Book Company, 1966], 540)
