Had Adam been permitted by the Lord to partake of the Tree of Life, he then would have lived forever in his mortal condition; a life brought about by partaking of the fruit of another tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Indeed, Adam was a man who had fallen from a higher plane; he was without hope, certainly without any means whatsoever of his own to regain his former position in God’s grand Creation. A Higher than he must intercede.
God, knowing that Adam would fall into sin, therefore, even before the incidence of his transgression, made plans to rehabilitate him, and redeem him from the consequences of his guilt.
Redeem means, (1) To buy again something that has been sold, by paying back the price that bought it. (32:6) By sin came death; sin, the violation of divine law, it may be said, purchased it. God’s Plan of Redemption provided that the price which was paid for it be given back. What was that price? When it was paid, demand would be made by the one who paid the price for death to deliver up all those who were in its bondage, or held in its relentless grasp. The ransom was high; only God, Himself, could pay it. He, alone, could meet the prescribed terms! The Redeemer’s Plan of Salvation provided beforehand that He would pay the price, even with His own life, to loose the bands of death. That price was paid, the ransom met. He died, the Great Redeemer died.
There is more meaning to the great Sacrifice the Redeemer made than giving us the victory over death. It provides also that all men, no matter who, may be saved by giving heed to, and obeying the requirements enjoined upon them in His great Plan of Salvation which was adopted by the Council in Heaven even before the world was. The Plan of Salvation is the Gospel Plan. Note that one of those requirements which are made of men is repentance. God commands all men to repent. It is not optional in any case. He who will not repent, believe, and be baptized, “must be damned.” Note also that repentance is not only a doctrine. It is the main manifestation of a new life which those who accept the Gospel Plan and have been “born again,” make obvious to the understanding of their fellows. Genuine repentance brings forgiveness, and that was the special point Alma sought to impress upon Corianton’s mind. (D&C 64:10-14)
Repentance means to amend, or resolve to amend one‘s life as a result of contrition for one’s sins. (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary) Broken down by sorrow for sin, and humbly and thoroughly penitent, the repentant one is in a fit condition to be forgiven. Repentance of things that he did which should not have been done, and of things left undone that should have been done, could not, in our opinion, have been required of Adam, if he had eaten of the fruit of the Tree of Life because repentance of sin would not have changed his lot in any way. However, repentance was a must. In Adam’s mortal existence since partaking of the Forbidden Fruit, such another misadventure as eating of the Fruit of the Tree of Life, besides urging him further along the path of disobedience, would have accorded him no needed time to repent. And man’s repentance being a necessary part of the Plan of Salvation, God’s purposes therein, and His promise of Eternal Life would have come to naught. And too, His word would have been rendered void, “and the great Plan of Salvation would have been frustrated.” Repentance is vital to that Plan.
But behold, it was appointed unto man to die. Notwithstanding the pleasing assurance of the Tree of Life that he would live forever if he ate of its fruit, it was fixed, or established by God, as if by decree, that man was destined to die, or in the words of the Sacred Record, “cut off from the face of the earth.” Through death, or the separation of the body of flesh and blood from man’s immoral spirit, which that phrase signifies, man became an unclothed spirit, which but for the grace of God, he ever would remain.
We hereby note that Adam brought sin into the world by breaking God’s command. He, and all mankind, Alma noted, “had become carnal, sensual, and devilish, by nature.” That state all men have inherited to a greater or lesser degree. And as revealed, no evil or unclean thing can dwell in the presence of God, Adam was therefore “cut off” from His presence. Thus spiritually, Adam was dead, he being subject to the wiles of Satan, was driven forth from the Garden of Eden. Now, Adam having brought death to himself, and thus to all his children as pertaining to this earthly life, and also being deprived of God’s presence and guidance, he became both spiritually, and in prospect, temporally dead. For this cause Adam and his wife, Eve, were driven forth from the Garden of Eden to roam the earth at will, and thus they became free agents “to follow after their own will,” and as we have said, “being responsible for their own actions.”
In Adam’s Fall, we can see the beguiling allurements of Satan, made manifest, but he understood not the mind of God, and notwithstanding his evil designs, the Plan of God triumphed. Lucifer, the arch enemy of Christ and all that is good, struggled vainly to bring the purpose of God to naught. He sought to frustrate God’s Plan of Salvation. In tempting Adam and Eve, now as mortals, to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life and thereby live forever in their sins, he hoped that all God’s children would eke out such an existence in misery, therein being subject to the will of the devil. In spite of Satan’s cunning the purposes of God rolled on. God’s mind and will did not fail.
And so, death came upon all mankind. God decreed that after death and the resurrection therefrom, all men must stand before Him, and there answer for what they did while on Earth, or when in that probationary state of which Alma spoke to his son, Corianton.
After God had appointed that death should come to all mankind, and that, likewise, a resurrection of the bodies of men held captive by the grave, He decreed a Day of Judgment in the which we, in our resurrected condition, must give an account as before stated. So that man should be fully informed concerning God’s purposes in establishing death, the Resurrection, and a Day of Judgment, He saw, in His wisdom, that it was wise for them to know the reasons therefore, and sent His holy servants to converse with men.
These heavenly messengers, sent from God’s presence, were commissioned by Him to minister unto the children of men, making known to them the power and authority of God, the Plan of Salvation, and His great love. From then on men began to see the greatness of God, the glorious majesty of His presence, and the wisdom of His word. Wherefore, Alma had previously told the Ammonihahites when he and Amulek were on their famous mission to that people, God gave commandments to men. Man having transgressed the Laws of God by partaking of the Forbidden Fruit thereby became as Gods “knowing good from evil.” They were empowered by committing that same act to tell right from wrong and to choose good or evil. Discretion to this end increased within them. Not only did they see and recognize the truth, but they had power given them to act “according to their wills and pleasures, whether to do evil or to do good.”
God, seeing men’s mental and moral growth, as we have said, gave unto them commandments with which they were bidden to comply. Obedience to them brought forth the blessings of Heaven, neglect or refusal to obey them, the wrath of God. Gradually, that man who chooses to do iniquity, or to do evil without repentance, looses the firm grasp he once had upon things righteous. Slowly, but surely, he finds it gets easier to choose the evil. He becomes oblivious to God’s commands, and therein sees darkness where there is light. The penalty of such willful disobedience is death. Not death to the body of flesh and blood, for that came by Adam’s partaking of the Forbidden Fruit, but death, a second death, “which was an everlasting death as to things pertaining to righteousness.” Such a man prefers darkness to light, because his deeds are evil. No evil can enter the presence of God, and the doer thereof is likewise banned. Of him who refuses to repent there is no redemption, the justice of God cannot be thus violated. The supreme goodness and mercy of God cannot be made an excuse for evil. His promise of forgiveness is entirely predicated upon repentance with first a belief on His Only Begotten Son. Through Him, and Him alone, He said, “will I have mercy upon you.” Repentance is, we repeat, vital in the Plan of Redemption. “All them that repent, having a sincere heart and a steadfast spirit, can claim and will receive mercy through Mine Only Begotten Son, and will find rest with Me in My Kingdom, thus saith the Lord who is God over all the Earth.”
In this we see that man was given a time to repent, and also we can find in it a complete answer to the query of Corianton, that he who repents will receive of God’s mercy when after the resurrection he stands before God to be judged of his works while on Earth. With the righteous he will enter a state of happiness, while he who refuses to cast aside his wicked ways, and thereafter worship God, will be consigned to a place where misery prevails and where despair and anguish take possession of his soul.
Thus, to summarize, death came into the world by transgression. It held fast in its clutches the inevitable decree, “Thou shalt surely die.” (Mosiah 16:3) Evil, in no form, can dwell in God’s Kingdom. A way must be found in which God’s children can regain the place they once had—a home with Him in the Celestial Abode.
That Way has been found, The Lord God, Himself, has prepared it. That Plan or Way, is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. His great Sacrifice on Calvary paved the way for man’s return to glory; the resurrection of Christ from the dead broke the shackles of the grave that held man in its inexorable grasp. Through His Atonement we shall live again, and because of His resurrection we, too, will be raised to Immortality and Eternal Life, never to die again. The Sacrifice and Resurrection of Christ broke, by God’s power and mercy, the bands of death that otherwise would have held men forever in their state as spirits. Christ’s triumphant Resurrection gave Him power to intercede for us; thus through Him all men will be resurrected and placed beyond the power of hell and the grave. The Prophet Abinadi, in preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the wicked priests of King Noah, therein extolled the loving-kindness in which Christ would suffer and die for men, of His patience in serving them, and of His compassion for their helpless condition in their fallen state. Christ, Abinadi declared, stood between men and their just punishment, He took “upon Himself their iniquities and their transgressions.” (Mosiah 14:4)
Amulek, Alma’s missionary companion, in declaring the great and last Sacrifice which would be made by Jesus Christ, said to the apostate Zoramites in the Land of Antionum: “And thus He shall bring Salvation to all those who shall believe on His Name; this being the intent of this last Sacrifice, to bring about the bowels of mercy, which overpowereth justice, and bringeth about means unto men that they may have faith unto repentance. And thus mercy can satisfy the demands of justice, end encircles them in the arms of safety, while he that exercises no faith unto repentance is exposed to the whole law of the demands of justice; therefore only unto him that has faith unto repentance is brought about the great and eternal Plan of Redemption.”
Now that men had cut himself off from the presence of God, and by disobedience to His law had rendered service to Satan, thereby giving the devil victory over Christ, a just punishment awaited all mankind. In God’s justice His children were “forever to be cut off from His presence.” Mankind had become carnal, subject to the demands of the flesh. He had became devilish, often serving evil. To bring mankind back to God’s presence an atonement for the sins of the world must be made; in His justice His anger must be appeased, His wrath must be reconciled. Otherwise man and his Creator must be forever separated. God, Himself, brought about this great atonement, thereby proving His love and long-suffering for His children. He tempered justice with mercy “that God might be a perfect God, and a merciful God also.”
One, in contemplating the full demands of justice, may see in the Plan of Mercy a miscarriage of that same justice which rules the universe. But justice does not exclude mercy. Sometimes what we call justice may be rank injustice, because we do never know for certain what mitigating circumstances due to heredity or environment, are responsible in a case of transgression. Sometimes mercy is justice. In the Old Dispensation the Tables of Law were covered by the Mercy Seat, a wonderful type of the Government of God, Who has said: I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men. (D&C 64:10)
In this regard, we print again President John Taylor’s comments on the Justice of God: Is justice dishonored? No; it is satisfied, the debt is paid. Is righteousness departed from? No; this is a righteous act. All requirements are met. Is judgment violated? No; its demands are fulfilled. Is mercy triumphant? No; she simply claims her own. Justice, judgment, mercy and truth all harmonize as the attributes of Diety. “Justice and truth have met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” Justice and judgment triumph as well as mercy and peace; all the attributes of Deity harmonize in this great, grand, momentous, just, equitable, merciful and meritorious act. (Mediation and Atonement)
When Alma and Amulek were preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Ammonihahites (Alma 9-15), Amulek noted that the temporal body of men is destroyed by death. Death is the separation of the body of flesh and blood from the spirit of man. Before that separation occurs, there is a time appointed wherein men can prepare to meet their God. That time, he said, is now! This mortal life is a probationary state during which men can make himself ready to enjoy a life of happiness in the presence of God, or be cast into outer darkness where the Holy Spirit never dwells. These extremes are those endless states of happiness end misery of which Alma informed Corianton. Those endless states come after the resurrection of men, or after the reuniting of the soul has taken place.
About eight years after the notable mission of Alma and Amulek to the Ammonihahites, they again went on another tour of duty, this time to the Zoramites, there to proclaim to that apostate group the Name of Christ. As before they had preached to the Ammonihahites that now is the time for repentance, and that this life of mortality is the appointed season in which to prepare oneself to enter God’s presence, so they in like manner declared it to the Zoramites.
And now, my brethren, I would that, after ye have received so many witnesses, seeing that the holy scriptures testify of these things, ye come forth and bring fruit unto repentance.
Yea, I would that ye would come forth and harden not your hearts any longer; for behold, now is the time and the day of your salvation; and therefore, if ye will repent and harden not your hearts, immediately shall the great plan of redemption be brought about unto you.
For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors.
And now, as I said unto you before, as ye have had so many witnesses, therefore, I beseech of you that ye do not procrastinate the day of your repentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed.
Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this; for that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world.
For behold, if ye have procrastinated the day of your repentance even until death, behold, ye have become subjected to the spirit of the devil, and he doth seal you his; therefore, the Spirit of the Lord hath withdrawn from you, and hath no place in you, and the devil hath all power over you; and this is the final state of the wicked. (Alma 34:30-35)