Saturday, April 18, 2020

Mark A. Smith vs. the false belief people who explicitly reject the gospel in mortality get a "second chance" in the Spirit World




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)