Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Alvin Dyer on the Great and Limitless Potential of All People in Mortality to Progress


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)