Plan Of Salvation

Plan of Salvation

You might hear the “plan of salvation” or the “plan of happiness” a lot when learning about Mormons.  And, naturally, you might wonder what on earth that means.  Basically, Mormons believe that God wants us to be happy and will give us as many opportunities as He can for us to be happy, for us to be saved.  God’s “work and glory” is to “bring to pass the immortality and the eternal life of man.”  God didn’t create us to discard us—He truly wants us to return to Him.  The plan of salvation works, as you might expect, through Christ.  But there are other elements you need to be aware of, although they work closely with Christ’s sacrifice and Atonement. 

And what is the eternal life of man (and woman)?  Eternal life is to live again with God.  In the beginning, in the beliefs of Mormonism, we did live with God.  We lived before we lived on earth.  And God would have us do more than live.  He would have us progress forever in His truth, growing to become more like Him.  This is our happiness and His purpose. 

But we couldn’t live as spirits with God forever—both Creation and Fall were essential parts of God’s plan.  Without Creation, we would have stayed spirits.  Yes, we would have also stayed with God forever, and never left, but we’d be without bodies.  And we also couldn’t really learn to decide to live righteously.  It’d be very difficult to want to be anything other than good in God’s constant presence, which means that good wouldn’t mean as much as it would here on earth.  We needed to choose to do good of our own will and do good even when evil looks kind of attractive, too.  Likewise, then, the Fall also had to happen.  Adam and Eve would have remained immortal without it and remained innocent, rather than good.  Without the ability to choose between good and evil, there would have been little point to coming to earth. 

Through the Fall, death and sin entered the world.  This was necessary.  But no unclean thing can live in God’s presence and we aren’t able to cleanse ourselves from the sin we inevitably commit.  To return to God, we needed a Savior.  Jesus Christ, Son of God, was our Redeemer and He was the Redeemer voluntarily.  Through His great sacrifice, we were able to be resurrected and to return to God, if we repent and turn to Christ. 

Mormonism teaches that every one of us goes through the life-cycle of the plan of salvation.  We all live, we all die, and we’re all resurrected and judged.  The steps are in detail below. 

Pre-mortal Existence:  Before we were born, we lived with God.  We are and were His spirit children and He taught and guided us while we lived with Him.  This was an active time.  We developed talents and we made friendships with our brothers and sisters.  But we couldn’t progress as far as we needed to in God’s presence.  The Plan of Salvation was set forth for our welfare—we would go to earth to develop and be tested, to see if we’d choose good even if it was hard.  We would need a Savior to return, however. Lucifer asked to be the Savior, but rebelled against the plan.  He didn’t like the idea of free will—his idea was that everyone should come back to God and that sin should be impossible, which would ruin the point of having a mortal life in the first place.  Jesus Christ was chosen as the Savior and He and God created the world.  Lucifer continued to rebel and became a devil, fallen from heaven.  A third of the spirits followed him.  The devil and the other rebelling spirits will never be born.  They will never have bodies. 

Birth:  To be born, we had to have been faithful before we were born.  If someone was born, they accepted the Plan.  Birth is the first step. 

Mortality:  Again, we came here to be tested.  Can we live how God would have us live if we don’t live with Him?  We can, of course.  Each one of us.  We can learn to have faith in things that can’t be proven—things of the spirit.  We can learn to treat each other gently and kindly and to look out for each other.  And we learn to live within families. 

Death:  In many ways, death is like birth.  It’s a beginning, rather than the end—a transition, really.  We move from the mortal world into the spirit world. 

Spirit World:  The spirit world is in two parts.  People who didn’t learn the gospel of Christ in their life go to spirit prison, but they can learn and accept it in death.  God will give us every opportunity.  Those who learned and lived the gospel go to spirit paradise. 

Resurrection:  It doesn’t matter if we are righteous or not—we’ll all be resurrected.  Our spirit will join our body again.  Christ’s death and resurrection gave everyone that gift. 

Judgment: After the Second Coming of Christ, where He will reign over the Millennium, then comes the Last Judgment.  We’ll all be judged for our obedience to the commandments and faith.  There are four places we may go after this Judgment.  The Lord revealed to the founder of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith that there are three kingdoms in heaven—the Celestial (or highest), the Terrestial, and the Telestial.  Only a very few, the very most wicked, go to Outer Darkness, where the devil lives.