Pass/ Fail

The minimum grade which will get you credit for a class in high school is a D.  The minimum score which will get you that D is 60.  As in, 60 out of 100.  Now, my children will agree that 60% was never an acceptable score in our family, because we the parents knew that they could do better.  It's not a very high bar.  But in terms of pass or fail, 60 will get you squeaked through, and 59 will fail you.

The standard heaven-or-hell concept before Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon received the vision which became Doctrine & Covenants 76 was essentially a pass/fail concept.  If you earned the equivalent of 60%, you were in heaven; only 59%, you were consigned to hell.  That doesn't even address the issue of what happens to those who never had the chance of any knowledge of Jesus Christ, who were assumed to go to hell, lost forever, no matter how good and worthy they might be otherwise.

One great key to this vision, as is so often the case, is that Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon were meditating upon a question.  The question arose from the translation of John 5:28-29, which the Holy Ghost directed should be written differently than given in the King James version. The King James says:  

28 Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice,

29 And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.

But they were shown that it should read thus: (D&C 76)

16 Speaking of the resurrection of the dead, concerning those who shall hear the voice of the Son of Man:

17 And shall come forth; they who have done good in the resurrection of the just; and they who have done evil, in the resurrection of the unjust.

(18)" Now this caused us to marvel, for it was given unto us of the Spirit."

 Don't the evil merit damnation?  Are they not cast out from God and sent to hell?  Isn't that the result of being evil?

The key to understanding, the key to having this sublime, truth-giving, perception-altering vision, was that they were in tune and stopped, to ponder.  They marveled.  They asked for understanding.

President McKay said, "I think we pay too little attention to the value of meditation, a principle of devotion...Meditation is one of the most secret, most sacred doors through which we pass into the presence of the Lord." (CR April 1967) He gave the Savior's example of retreating into the wilderness for forty days after his baptism, to fast and commune with his Father.  He opened himself to receive all he needed to go forward in his great ministry and mission.

The vision which opened up to Joseph and Sidney completely shot the assumptions of the rewards of the next life.  There were others present on that day, who like those accompanying Paul on the road to Damascus, saw the light and felt the glory, though they did not see the vision.  They did not make a motion or a sound, as recorded by one man who was there, who slipped into the room after this vision had commenced.  Philo Dibble had stopped by to talk to Joseph about some matter which I'm sure he forgot all about.  

Only a very few souls from this life will be completely, eternally cut off from God and from any level of reward.  Any degree of light.  To merit that result, you have to have truly known God and then repudiated Him.  The famous description from the Prophet later is, "He has got to say that the sun does not shine while he sees it; he has got to deny Jesus Christ when the heavens have been opened to him...."  To have been so pure in heart and then allow pride or unrepented sin creep in and take dominance leads a person not just to drop out, but to lash out and destroy.  Only such an extreme case is outside of the pardoning power of Christ.

In this vision those who have not done well, whose acts have been wicked, will be thrust down to hell--for a period of time, until they suffer themselves for the things which they have done, because they would not accept the Savior's suffering for them.  Why? Because they were not willing to repent in this life.  To be made ready the hard way, they will be released from Satan's power and redeemed in that sense, to that degree.  This is how the wicked will spend the thousand years of the Millenium, while the righteous spend it on the earth, already resurrected, doing the final work of God for all people.  The telestial will lose so much of what their Father hoped to give them, yet they will inherit a degree of glory.

Those who live a good life in the world's terms, who tried to do well, but have rejected the plan of God and the saving power of Christ, will be in the next rung up the heavenly ladder.  The terrestrial come around to it on the second try.  They will also be those who had the witness and the covenants and "were not valiant" in the testimony of Christ.  I am glad that I do not have to judge those terms.  Only God can judge whether any person had the knowledge, by the witness of the Spirit, to recognize but choose not to act.

The crowning glory of exaltation is the final, glorious kingdom, the celestial, the promise of all that the Father has; the meaning of Paul's declaration to the Romans:

16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:

17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.

18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. (Romans 8)

Joint-heirs with Christ means that we will gain all that Christ has gained. Children and heirs, not forever-inferior creatures. This is the purpose of baptism.  This is our Father's hope for all of us, that we might become "those who overcome by faith and are sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise....they who are just men made perfect through Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, who wrought out this perfect atonement through the shedding of his own blood." (D&C 76:53, 69) This is what all the work of the temples is meant to offer to all who did not have the opportunity.

We will each come to a place where we can abide, where we belong.  Only those who will be everlastingly cast out will not be better off than if they had remained without this mortal experience and without a body.  God will reward every impulse for good ever displayed by his children, and they will inherit whatever degree of light and power they are capable of.  Some will be limited, some without limits at all.

 The wonderful truth is that it's not about pass or fail, or the minimum score.  It's about who you have become.  Our Father reaches out to each of us.  He wants us to become all that we can, all that He sees in us. He will bless every one of us in every way that we will let Him, hoping for our best.  He is anxious to have us return to him in joy.