"He went and preached unto the spirits in prison"
There are just so many things I love about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I have had so much trouble deciding what topic I should kick off my dedicatory year.
But the beginning, I keep thinking. The topic that made me look twice and awoke my malnourished soul is what I should talk about. I take it for granted now because it is so ingrained in me and everything I do and how I view the world around me.
So there was this day, shortly after becoming friends with Brad where we were in my dorm room. I don't recall what we were talking about... religion maybe. But anyway he said "I'm a Mormon" off-hand like he might have been telling me he was going to see a movie. Given the type of person I am/was, I probably acted like I knew what he was talking about but inside I could only associate the word "Mormon" with "Weird" because that's pretty much all I knew about it. I pictured bonnets and petticoats in my head because maybe I was mixing up Mennonite with Mormon, what with them both starting with the letter M. I'm surprised (given my experience since then) that I really had never had ANY interaction with anyone I knew to be Mormon, had never heard anything about Mormons (good or bad) but yet I had heard of the word. I was immediately curious for Brad had declared that he was one. That's a whole other story but it was shortly after this that he explained to me just what it meant to be a Mormon, ie, his core beliefs. He started with the Joseph Smith story, the pre-earth life, and war in heaven. Really, in true missionary style. Weird, weird, and weirder. Just weird. I mean, what is wrong with you Mormons? That's what I was thinking anyway. Pre-earth life? What have you been smoking? It was probably the strangest religious doctrine I had ever heard of.
Then there was the "aha" moment. When Brad explained baptisms for the dead and the spirit prison and preaching to the spirits in prison. Nothing had ever made more sense to me. In the years prior to this, I remember wondering what happened to people who were born before Christ came. I wondered what happened to the billions of people who never had a chance to learn about the doctrine Christ. What about the good people who never knew Him? It wasn't fair in my mind. It didn't make sense. Therefore, God never really made sense to me.
So when I heard that Mormons believed that those who have not a knowledge of Christ are preached to in the spirit prison after this life, that they got a second chance, it blew me the heck away. It was like God finally made sense. He was finally the benevolent being I had always known He had to be. And that, my friends, is what made me want to know more. It was the spark that ignited the inferno that now lights my soul. The domino effect, if you will. The Spirit (which I had not learned to recognize at this time) bore a solid witness to me that this doctrine was true. It felt like I had always known it was true, I had only just forgotten it for a while. And I still know it is true. It's not something I bear testimony of often now because to me, it just is. There IS no question. It's like the laws of physics. God wants us all to return home and he will exert EVERY possible effort to get us there, INCLUDING, giving us an opportunity to accept truth AFTER this life. As confusing as spirituality is for so many, what a wonderful plan to give us every chance to accept the truth? So yeah, I was intrigued. "What other tidbits does this strange religion have?" I thought.
1 Peter 3:
But the beginning, I keep thinking. The topic that made me look twice and awoke my malnourished soul is what I should talk about. I take it for granted now because it is so ingrained in me and everything I do and how I view the world around me.
So there was this day, shortly after becoming friends with Brad where we were in my dorm room. I don't recall what we were talking about... religion maybe. But anyway he said "I'm a Mormon" off-hand like he might have been telling me he was going to see a movie. Given the type of person I am/was, I probably acted like I knew what he was talking about but inside I could only associate the word "Mormon" with "Weird" because that's pretty much all I knew about it. I pictured bonnets and petticoats in my head because maybe I was mixing up Mennonite with Mormon, what with them both starting with the letter M. I'm surprised (given my experience since then) that I really had never had ANY interaction with anyone I knew to be Mormon, had never heard anything about Mormons (good or bad) but yet I had heard of the word. I was immediately curious for Brad had declared that he was one. That's a whole other story but it was shortly after this that he explained to me just what it meant to be a Mormon, ie, his core beliefs. He started with the Joseph Smith story, the pre-earth life, and war in heaven. Really, in true missionary style. Weird, weird, and weirder. Just weird. I mean, what is wrong with you Mormons? That's what I was thinking anyway. Pre-earth life? What have you been smoking? It was probably the strangest religious doctrine I had ever heard of.
Then there was the "aha" moment. When Brad explained baptisms for the dead and the spirit prison and preaching to the spirits in prison. Nothing had ever made more sense to me. In the years prior to this, I remember wondering what happened to people who were born before Christ came. I wondered what happened to the billions of people who never had a chance to learn about the doctrine Christ. What about the good people who never knew Him? It wasn't fair in my mind. It didn't make sense. Therefore, God never really made sense to me.
So when I heard that Mormons believed that those who have not a knowledge of Christ are preached to in the spirit prison after this life, that they got a second chance, it blew me the heck away. It was like God finally made sense. He was finally the benevolent being I had always known He had to be. And that, my friends, is what made me want to know more. It was the spark that ignited the inferno that now lights my soul. The domino effect, if you will. The Spirit (which I had not learned to recognize at this time) bore a solid witness to me that this doctrine was true. It felt like I had always known it was true, I had only just forgotten it for a while. And I still know it is true. It's not something I bear testimony of often now because to me, it just is. There IS no question. It's like the laws of physics. God wants us all to return home and he will exert EVERY possible effort to get us there, INCLUDING, giving us an opportunity to accept truth AFTER this life. As confusing as spirituality is for so many, what a wonderful plan to give us every chance to accept the truth? So yeah, I was intrigued. "What other tidbits does this strange religion have?" I thought.
1 Peter 3:
18 For Christ also hath once asuffered for sins, the just for the bunjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to cdeath in the flesh, but quickened by the dSpirit:
20 aWhich sometime were bdisobedient, when once the clongsuffering of God waited in the days of dNoah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were esaved by fwater.
Doctrine & Covenants 76:
Thank you for posting this Rachel! I remember hearing about the spirit prison (most likely from Brad!), but I never really understood what that meant. This makes it make a lot more sense!
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