TG Mortality 29 - Alma 41

Mortality and its position in the wider framework of eternity was one of Alma the Younger's preoccupations.  He prayed and pondered "many days" to understand them.  In this chapter he lays out  the context of the rules of Justice that govern our present existence and that have powerful implications for our eternal state afterwards

First, our fallen condition.  As long as we are in a "state of nature" or in a "carnal state," we men are "in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity," "without God in the world," having "gone contrary to the nature of God" and "in a state contrary to the nature of happiness" (v. 11).

Second, our opportunity to escape.  We must repent of our sins and follow and encourage our desires for righteousness (v. 6), which brings the power of the atonement into our lives, we are "redeemed of the Lord," "taken out" and "delivered" both from our fallen state in this life and from its eternal consequences in the next (v. 7).  "The way is prepared that whosoever will may walk therein and be saved" (v. 8).

Third - and this is the center of Alma's point in this chapter  - we have been made free to choose between these two conditions, and this choice reveals the deepest wellsprings of our will.  Men repent and their works become good because "the desires of their hearts are good" (v. 3).  On the other hand if they 'desired to do evil all the day long" (v. 5) then  they will not accept the atonement's delivery from their natural state and their works will be evil, "for behold, they are their own judges whether to do good or do evil," and "thus they stand or fall" (v. 7).

Fourth, the person we become in this life is who we are in the next life, and we inherit the consequences of who we become.

4  ....raised to endless happiness to inherit the kingdom of God, or to endless misery to inherit the kingdom of the devil, the one on one hand, the other on the other.

5  The one raised to happiness according to his desires of happiness, or good according to his desires for good; and the other to evil according to his desires of evil; for as he has desired to do evil all the day long even so shall he have his reward of evil when the night cometh.

6  And so it is on the other hand.  If he hath repented of his sins, and desired righteousness until the end of his days, even so shall he be rewarded unto righteousness.

7  ....and thus they stand or fall; for behold, they are their own judges, whether to do good or do evil.

Fifth, the law of justice restores to us in the resurrection what we have made ourselves into by our consistent actions over time - "desired righteousness until the end of his days" (v. 6) or "desired to do evil all the day long" (v. 5).

12  And now behold is the meaning of the word restoration to take a think of a natural state and place it in an unnatural state, or to place it in a state opposite to its nature?

13  O, my son, this is not the case; but the meaning of the word restoration is to bring back again evil for evil, or carnal for carnal, or devilish for devilish-good for that which is good; righteous for that which is righteous: just for that which is just; merciful for that which is merciful.

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