"What Must I Do To Be Saved?"

I believe that very possibly the most asked question among believers in the Christian world is “What must I do in order to be saved?” The responses to this question very quickly demonstrate the grave confusion that exists among the pretenders of Christian truth on a subject so basic to the Lord’s teachings. Most of the questioners’ intent assumes the false conclusion that to be “saved” means being allowed to enter heaven as opposed to being consigned to hell after death. Those are the two grand and much over-simplified options mistakenly preached by a majority of the priests and ministers in the Christian world today. In previous posts to this blog, I have discussed in detail the modern-day revealed words of the Lord concerning the numerous and varied conditions in which the individual inhabitants of this world will find themselves for the duration of eternity. The Lord hinted at these conditions when He spoke of the “many mansions” that exist in His Father’s house (John 14:2). In spite of this confusion, we may be reasonably certain that what the typical Christian desires, when they inquire as to what is required on their part to be “saved,” is that they are able to live with God for the eternities and not with Lucifer.

That which we must do in order to return to our Heavenly Father was often the subject of the Lord’s instructions, and the requirements are few. To the Prophet Moroni the Lord said, “Therefore, repent all ye ends of the earth, and come unto me, and believe in my gospel, and be baptized in my name; for he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned; and signs shall follow them that believe in my name” (Ether 4:18). To the Saints in America, the Lord said, “Repent, all ye ends of the earth, and come unto me and be baptized in my name, that ye may be sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost, that ye may stand spotless before me at the last day. Verily, verily, I say unto you, this is my gospel; and ye know the things that ye must do in my church” (3 Nephi 27:20-21). What is required of us in order that we may be saved in the Kingdom of Heaven is the subject of the Latter-day Saint Church’s fourth Article of Faith: “We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.”

Speaking from the standpoint of the ordinances required in order that we may be saved in the Kingdom of Heaven, the Lord has stated clearly that we must take upon ourselves the covenants inherent in the ordinances of baptism and confirmation and subsequently remain faithful to these commitments to the end of our days. Simply stated, these are the requirements.

However, imbedded in these few words is much that must be understood and done in order that the prescribed ordinances may be declared valid that is, justified by the Holy Ghost at some future point in time. The actions of faith and repentance must precede the ordinances of baptism and confirmation if the latter are to be eventually declared valid. The subjects of faith and repentance are worthy of their own individual discussions, which discussions will follow shortly in subsequent writings. For now it suffices to say that if the ordinances of baptism and confirmation are to effect their intended end namely, the remission of past sins, then faith and valid repentance on the part of the individual must have preceded the performing of the enumerated ordinances.

While it would seem understandable that proper priesthood authority would be necessary in order to have the ordinances of baptism and confirmation validated, not even this point escapes the confusion of the conflicted Christian world. Thus a simple declaration here will suffice namely, the Holy Priesthood of God, the Melchizedek Priesthood, was restored to the earth by Peter, James, and John by the laying on of hands to the Prophet Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in 1829, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only Church upon the face of the earth that possesses and exercises this Priesthood in behalf of the true believers of Christianity.

However, this is not all that we should understand on the subject of “being saved.” What has not been stated here thus far is of eternal consequence. While it is true that satisfying the required performances of the ordinances of baptism and confirmation and remaining faithful will allow an individual to return to the presence of their Heavenly Father, these ordinances will not qualify them to fully satisfy their God-given potential. In order to fulfill our full potential, we must take upon ourselves, and remain faithful to, all of the covenants that are inherent in the ordinances of baptism, confirmation, receipt of the Melchizedek Priesthood, the endowment, and the new and everlasting covenant of marriage. Discussions concerning these additional ordinances will be presented later.

Salvation Comes Through Obedience

Recently, I heard a member of a professed Christian church who had been asked to pray at an LDS religious assembly explain her church’s approach to prayer before offering the requested invocation. She explained that while the members of her faith were known in this world as individuals, they pray as a community, that is, they recite a common prayer in unison given that they believe that they are saved in community. Undoubtedly, if she or just about any other participant in one of today’s professed Christian churches were to be asked concerning the future eternal condition of those who are not members of their “community,” the answer would almost certainly be something to the effect that “they are lost.” The beliefs that God’s children are saved in “community” and that those who die without the opportunity to avail themselves of the gospel of Jesus Christ while in mortality are “lost” to their Heavenly Father are indelible marks of the lingering apostasy from the Lord’s true gospel.

Paul while writing to the Philippians may have well said it best. “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). The prophet Nephi’s words confirm this truth. “For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” (2 Nephi 25:23). The realizing of salvation is very much a personal, an individual matter. Salvation is not a singular condition that one receives or loses in some grand totality. The conditions or degrees of salvation that God’s children will inherit after the resurrection are many. They will span the breadth of the three great kingdoms of glory to which most of us will be assigned following the final judgment. At that day, we will stand before the “judgment bar” as individuals and not in community to be judged according to our individual faithfulness in living the gospel during our stay in mortality (2 Nephi 33:10-15).

But what about all of God’s spirit children who never had the opportunity to hear and accept the Lord’s gospel during their mortal probation? Are they just “lost”? The answer to that question will certainly vary depending upon the party answering. The only possible answer worth consideration here, however, is the correct one. God would be an unjust God and thus would cease to be God in fact if He were to deny any of His children the opportunity to exercise their agency in choosing the quality of their eventual and eternal existence.

Peter awakens our thoughts as to how this end is accomplished. “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water” (1 Peter 3:18-20). “For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit” (1 Peter 4:6). Through modern-day revelation, we understand that Christ did not go personally to the wicked. “[A]nd among the ungodly and the unrepentant who had defiled themselves while in the flesh, his voice was not raised;” during the space of the three days in which his body lay in the tomb (Doctrine and Covenants 138:20 and following). The Lord used this short space of time to visit the righteous dead announcing to them a message of gladness concerning their imminent resurrection.

Also during these three days, He organized the beginnings of the missionary effort among the wicked. Commencing then and continuing through the Millennium, missionaries from among the Saints of God in paradise are sent to the spirits of God’s children in prison to teach the willing the gospel of Jesus Christ. If they accept the message and the saving ordinances that have been performed in their behalf by living proxies upon the earth, then they are moved to paradise to await their resurrection among the righteous. Joseph Smith taught this truth plainly. “. . . Every man that has been baptized and belongs to the kingdom has a right to be baptized for those who have gone before; and as soon as the law of the Gospel is obeyed here by their friends who act as proxy for them, the Lord has administrators there to set them free” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 367).

Thus those who are “lost” to God, that is, fail to return to His presence are those who consciously rejected the Lord’s gospel at some point in their existence, the gospel being the only means by which mankind may be saved. The earthly faithful and the repentant dead will be saved through their “obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.” Our third Article of Faith reads: “We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.”

Our Responsibility For Sins

During their sojourn in the garden at Eden, Adam and Eve received instructions and commands from their Heavenly Father personally. The report of one such command we have recorded as follows: “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, nevertheless, thou mayest choose for thyself, for it is given unto thee; but, remember that I forbid it, for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” Moses 3:16-17). In time, Eve and then Adam partook of that fruit which had been forbidden them.

The consequences of their actions were several and of eternal importance. Their physical bodies evolved from a state of immortality to a state of mortality thereby introducing death’s destructive impact into the world. The earth itself fell from its terrestrial condition to that of a telestial body. Our first parents experienced the impact of the first spiritual death as they were no longer able to associate intimately with their Father. As they were banished from the garden, they were just as certainly banished from God’s presence. Jesus Christ became their mediator with the Father, and their contacts with God were limited to their uttering prayers to Him and in return, His inspiration to them through the power of the Holy Ghost. There were also positive effects of their transgressions. Through the exercise of their agency, they would gain experience through dealing with the effects of good and evil. Indeed, this was the core argument Lucifer had used to persuade Eve to partake of the forbidden fruit. By learning to choose between the consequences of good and evil, she and Adam could learn wisdom and become more like their Heavenly Father. Also in their fallen condition, they had received the ability to procreate thus making the human family possible. In this context, it is not unimportant that another of God’s commands to Adam and Eve was that they “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it” (Moses 2:28).

Thus two deaths were brought into the world through the transgressions of Adam and Eve. One was physical in nature, and the other was spiritual. Given our mortal condition, the day would come that our immortal spirit being would separate itself from our mortal body in death. The spiritual death, our inability to have any intimate, face-to-face relationship with our Heavenly Father, is the result of mankind’s sinful nature. God cannot abide sin in any degree, and therefore we must exist here on the earth absent personal contact with Him.

The consequences of these two deaths were overcome through the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. The healing results of Christ’s atonement apply to us mortals individually in conditional and unconditional terms respectively. Through the atonement, the effects of the physical death are overcome for each of God’s spirit children unconditionally. It was Adam’s transgression that brought physical death into the world; we had no role to play in producing that consequence. Thus our freedom from the effects of this death, our resurrection, is a gift wrought through the Lord’s atonement that we cannot refuse. However, our freedom from the effects of the spiritual death, a death that comes upon each of us individually as a result of our birth into this telestial environment as well as our own sinning, is of a conditional nature. The degree of freedom from this spiritual death or the degree of salvation that will be our reward is conditionally dependent upon our faithfulness in living the gospel of Jesus Christ. Simply stated, we as individuals are not responsible for the consequences of father Adam’s transgression, but we are fully accountable for our own sins. The second Article of Faith of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reads, “We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression.”

The Godhead

The Saints of God who worshipped Jesus Christ as the savior of the world down through the dispensations from Adam to the present day were taught and clearly understood the nature of the Godhead. Each generation understood that visitations by the Father to his spirit children on earth ceased with the banishment of our first parents from the garden. From that day to this, Jesus Christ became our mediator with the Father. On the very few occasions the Father has manifested Himself to His earthly children, His purpose has been to introduce His Son and to bear witness of Jesus Christ’s role and mission as the creator and savior of this world. It was also clearly understood down through the generations that the only avenue by which God’s children could return to the presence of their Father was through the name of Jesus Christ. We understand those words to mean that individuals must avail themselves of the ordinances of baptism and confirmation and then live the gospel of Jesus Christ faithfully for the remainder of their days. They understood the role of the Holy Ghost to be that of a personal revelator, guardian, and guide for each believer to the extent the individual was worthy to receive such blessings. The Saints who lived before the mortal mission of the Savior looked forward to the day of His birth and His atonement. Those Saints living since His birth, rejoice in the reality of His birth and His atonement.

Prophets down through the ages have been blessed by the Lord’s presence. Many of them have spoken with Him face to face. But the scriptural record offers no greater illuminating visitation of the Lord to one of His prophets than the appearance of the Lord to the Brother of Jared. Exercising great faith, he asked the Lord to touch each of sixteen stones he had gathered in order that they might be made to “shine.” These stones would then provide light during their long voyage to the promised land in encased vessels. The Brother of Jared was “struck with fear” when he was able to actually see the finger of the Lord touching each of the stones. Recognizing the great faith of this prophet, the Lord appeared to him in person. The Lord’s words are a vivid testimony of His nature then and in the future. “And never have I showed myself unto man whom I have created, for never has man believed in me as thou hast. Seest thou that ye are created after mine own image? Yea, even all men were created in the beginning after mine own image. Behold, this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit; and man have I created after the body of my spirit; and even as I appear unto thee to be in the spirit will I appear unto my people in the flesh” (Ether 3:15-16).

The scriptural record and the teachings of the prophets make it clear that the Godhead consists of three separate and distinct beings: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. This then is the basis of our first Article of Faith: “We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.”

These beings have made themselves manifest in pairs or as a trio at various times. As Stephen was being stoned, “he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus Standing on the right hand of God, And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55-56). After John the Baptist had baptized the Savior, “the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:16-17). After praying in a wooded grove near his home for direction as to which of the churches in his vicinity he should join, the Father and the Son appeared to Joseph Smith in 1820. “When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other--This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!” (Joseph Smith - History 1:17).

The Godhead consists of three personages who have different roles namely, the Father, His Son as creator and savior, and the Holy Ghost as testifier and sealer. We further understand that Jesus Christ possesses a resurrected body of flesh and bones. Physical evidence of this fact was given to the Saints who lived among the Jews after His resurrection as well as to those who lived on this American continent and to whom the Savior appeared after His resurrection in Jerusalem. Through modern-day scripture and prophetic teachings, we know that the Father also possesses a resurrected body of flesh and bones. The Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit in order that he may accomplish his assigned mission.

Why is it important to understand the true nature of God? In 1833, the Lord revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith a few verses from the record of John the Baptist wherein the Baptist bears testimony of the role and divinity of Jesus Christ. Then the Lord said to the Prophet, “I give unto you these sayings that you may understand and know how to worship, and know what you worship, that you may come unto the Father in my name, and in due time receive of his fulness” (D&C 93:19). If we are not only to be worthy of returning to our Father in Heaven after leaving this world but also of having the opportunity to fulfill the full purpose of our creation, then we must know who our Father and His son, Jesus Christ, are, and we must know how we are to properly worship them. An achievement of this magnitude may be accomplished only if we possess a clear understanding of our mission.

What Do Mormons Believe?

In the mid-1960s, our young family moved to Seattle from Salt Lake City, and in time, I was offered a teaching position in higher education. Following on the heels of this blessing, I was called to serve as a counselor in our ward’s bishopric. Not long thereafter, our bishop received a telephone call from a religion professor at a Methodist college located within our ward boundaries asking if someone would be willing to represent our Church at a forum on religions being sponsored by his institution? This educator wanted his students to become better acquainted with the basic beliefs of various religions, and so a representative from each of several selected churches was being asked to meet with his students for that purpose over a period of weeks. The bishop asked if I would accept the assignment, and I consented gladly.

The paramount question for me concerned the approach I should take. I gave the matter prayerful consideration, and it became quickly apparent that under the circumstances a forthright, aggressive discussion of our basic beliefs was best. Once the issue of the approach was resolved, I knew what my main resource would be namely, the Articles of Faith by James E. Talmage. The challenge would be to elaborate sufficiently on each of the thirteen articles in my one-hour of allotted time. Following my remarks, the religion professor would have an opportunity to respond. Lastly, those present would have an opportunity to ask me questions.

In 1842, the Prophet Joseph Smith received a letter from John Wentworth, the editor of the Chicago Democrat, written on behalf of a George Bastow who was authoring a history of the State of New Hampshire. Mr. Bastow sought information concerning the origins and the beliefs of the Mormon Church. In what we know as the Wentworth Letter, the Prophet fulfilled the request made of him, and from that writing we derive our thirteen Articles of Faith.

The appointed day for my presentation arrived. The weather was sunny and warm, so the discussion was staged on an outdoor patio attached to the student union building. The tables and chairs were filled with students and interested adults. The audience was larger than the available seating, so many of the attendees sat on the wall that bordered the patio as well as anywhere else possible. The host professor and I sat at a table upon which I had my books and notes. A folded newspaper was all that he had on the table before him. After a brief introduction, the time was mine.

When my presentation was completed, he had an opportunity to respond. From personal experience, I knew what the tenor of feeling on that conservative religious campus was vis-a-vis the Latter-day Saint Church, so I had every reason to believe his remarks might well be sharp and critical. From the fold of the newspaper before him, he withdrew a copy of Elder Talmage’s Articles of Faith. He admitted to the audience that he had not believed that I would be forthright concerning the Church’s beliefs, and so he was prepared to use this resource to criticize my remarks. My presentation had totally disarmed him, and he was left with little of substance to say. The questions that followed from the audience were thoughtful and courteous.

The intended purpose of this writing is to set the course this blog will take in the coming weeks which is to discuss each of the elements of these Articles of Faith as well as some possible related topics. From time to time, it behooves each of us to review the particulars of our bedrock beliefs.