NO SUBSEQUENT ESTATE ADDITIONAL CHANCE
Full salvation will be denied [to] anyone who
rejects a reasonable and legitimate opportunity during mortality to fully
embrace the gospel and comply therewith.
Church of The Firstborn membership is
restricted to those who fully embrace and conform to the laws, commandments,
covenants, and ordinances of the gospel of Jesus Christ during the estate,
either second or third estate, the gospel is legitimately, in God’s judgment,
made available to them.
Church of
the Firstborn can be defined as the third degree of the Celestial Kingdom. When a person is
qualified for exaltation in the third degree of the Celestial Kingdom, aid
person becomes a member of the Church of the Firstborn (the Firstborn being
Christ).
The traditional
phrase used for this gospel principle states that there is “no second
chance.” That “second chance” phrase is, however, not literally correct. During
this second estate, a person might be given two, three, or even many
opportunities to embrace the gospel. Accepting and embracing the gospel as
early as possible during mortality is necessary in order to maximize spiritual
improvement and otherwise receive the utmost benefit from this second of our
four estates. This principle of the gospel is tied to estates, rather than to a
number of chances.
A person who is given a legitimate
opportunity during mortality to join the church and refuses to do so cannot
have Church membership during his third or fourth estate.
I a person does now, however, have a
legitimate opportunity during mortality for acceptance and fully embracement of
the gospel, that person will receive an opportunity during his third estate. If
that third estate opportunity is rejected, there will be no such opportunity
given to the person during his fourth estate.
Heresies among the Saints! Sadly it is so.
Are there not those among us who believe . . . that there will be a second
chance for salvation for those who reject the gospel here but accept it in the
spirit world; that there will be progression from one kingdom of glory to
another in the world to come? And are there not those among us who refuse to
follow the Brethren on moral issues, lest their agency and political rights be
infringed, as they suppose? Truly, there are heresies among us (Bruce R.
McConkie, The Millennial Messiah,
60).
Thus the false heretical doctrine that people
who fail to live the law in this life (having had an opportunity so to do) will
have a further chance of salvation in the life to come in a soul-destroying
doctrine, a doctrine that lulls its adherents into carnal security and thereby
denies them a hope of eternal salvation (Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 2:181-196).
These are they who are the spirits of men
kept in prison, whom the Son visited, and preached the gospel unto them, that
they might be judged according to men in the flesh; Who received no the
testimony of Jesus I the flesh, but afterwards received it (D&C 76:72-74).
Salvation or the dead is the system by means
of which those who “die without knowledge of the gospel” may gain such knowledge
in the spirit world (D&C 128:5). Then, following the vicarious performance of
the necessary ordinances, the dead become heirs of the Celestial Kingdom on the
same basis as through the gospel truths had been obeyed in mortality.
Ordinances relative to salvation for the dead are effective only as to those
who did not have opportunity, during mortality, to accept the gospel, but who
would have taken the opportunity had it come to them. (For example, see Joseph Fielding
Smith, Doctrines of Salvation,
2:179.)
Those who did not have a legitimate
opportunity to accept the gospel during mortality and did not do so, and then
do accept it when they hear the gospel in the current spirit world, will not be
admitted to the celestial kingdom, but, at
best, to the terrestrial kingdom. (Mark A. Smith, Sr. Only Repentance [Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2003], 177-79)